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" Sir, you are mocking me. Vou shall marry the girl."
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ÎTtf l^oïli íLgíton ÎÊÏJitton.
KENELM CHILLINGLY
HIS
ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS
«
BY
LORD LTTTON
(BIB BDWARD BÏÏLWER LTTTON BABW
COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUMB.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1896.
}
f à
3!^^^ ff
KENELM CHILLFNGLY.
BOOIC I.
CHAPTER L
Sir Peter Chillingly, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.E.S.
and F.A.S., was tlie representative of an ancient family, and
a landed proprietor of some importance. He had married
young, not from any ardent inclination for the connubial
State, bui/ in compliance with the request of his parents.
They took the pains to select his bride ; and if they might
have chosen better they might have chosen worse, which
is more than can be said for many men who choose wives
for themselves. Miss Caroline Brotherton was in all re¬
spects a suitable connection. She had a pretty fortune,
which was of much use in buying a couple of farms, long
desiderated by the Chillinglys as necessary for the round¬
ing of their property into a ring-fence. She was highly
connected, and brought into the county that experience
of fashionable life acquired by a young lady who has
attended a course of balls for three seasons, and gone
out in matrimonial honors, with credit to herself and her
chaperon. She was handsome enough to satisfy a husband's
pride, but not so handsome as to keep perpetually on the
3
4
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
qui vive a husband's jealousy. She was considered highly
accomplished; that is, she played upon the pianoforte so
that any musician would say she " was very well taught
but no musician would go out of his way to hear her a
second time. She painted in water-colors—well enough to
amuse herself. She knew French and Italian with an ele¬
gance so lady-like, that, without having read more than
selected extracts from authors in those languages, she spoke
them both with an accent more correct than we have any
reason to attribute to Rousseau or Ariosto. What else a
young lady may acquire in order to be styled highly accom¬
plished I do not pretend to know, but I am sure that the
young lady in question fulfilled that requirement in the
opinion of the best masters. It was not only an eligible
match for Sir Peter Chillingly,—it was a brilliant match.
It was also a very unexceptionable match for Miss Caroline
Brotherton. This excellent couple got on together as most
excellent couples do. A short time after marriage. Sir Peter,
by the death of his parents—who, having married their
heir, had nothing left in life worth the trouble of living for
—succeeded to the hereditary estates ; he lived for nine
months of the year at Exmundham, going to town for the
other three months. Lady Chillingly and himself were both
very glad to go to town, being bored at Exmundham ; and
very glad to go back to Exmundham, being bored in town.
With one exception it was an exceedingly happy marriage,
as marriages go. Lady Chillingly had her way in small
things ; Sir Peter his way in great. Small things happen
every day, great things once in three years. Once in three
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
ft
years Lady Chillingly gave way to Sir Peter ; households so
managed go on regularly. The exception to their connubial
happiness was, after all, hut of a negative description. Their
affection was such that they sighed for a pledge of it ; four¬
teen years had he and Lady Chillingly remained unvisited
by the little striinger.
Now, in default of male issue. Sir Peter's estates passed
to a pistant cousin as heir-at-law ; and during the last four
years this heir-at-law had evinced his belief that, practically
speaking, he was already heir-apparent; and (though Sir
Peter was a much younger man than himself, and as healthy
as any man well can be) had made his expectations of a
speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous. He had refused
his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighboring
squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good
arable land for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced
nothing but fagots and rabbits, with the blunt declaration
that he, the heir-at-law, was fond of rabbit-shooting, and that
the wood would be convenient to him next season if he came
into the property by that time, which he very possibly might.
He disputed Sir Peter's right to make his customary fall of
timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery
on that subject. In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one
of those persons to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if
single, marry at the age of eighty in the hope of a family.
Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to
frustrate the expectations of this unamiable relation that Sii
Peter Chillingly lamented the absence of the little stranger
Although belonging to that class of country gentlemen to
6
KENELM CHILLINaLT.
wliom certain political reasoners deny the intelligence vouch¬
safed to other members of the community, Sir Peter was not
without a considerable degree of book-learning, and a great
taste for speculative philosophy. He sighed for a legitimate
inheritor to the stores of his erudition, and, being a very
benevolent man, for a more active and useful dispenser of
those benefits to the human race which philosophers confer
by striking hard against each other ; just as, how full soever
of sparks a flint may be, they might lurk concealed in the
flint tiU doomsday, if the flint were not hit by the steel.
Sir Peter, in short, longed for a son amply endowed with the
combative quality, in which he himself was deficient, but
which is the first essential to all seekers after renown^ and
especially to benevolent philosophers.
Under these circumstances one may well conceive the joy
that filled the household of Exmundham and extended to all
the tenantry on that venerable estate, by whom the present
possessor was much beloved, and the prospect of an heir-at-
law with a special eye to the preservation of rabbits much
detested, when the medical attendant of the Chillinglys de¬
clared that " her ladyship was in an interesting way and to
what height that joy culminated when, in due course of time,
a male baby was safely enthroned in his cradle. To that
cradle Sir Peter was summoned. He entered the room with
a lively bound and a radiant countenance : he quitted it with
a musing step and an overclouded brow.
Yet the baby was no monster. It did not come into the
world with two heads, as some babies are said to have done ;
it was formed as babies are in general—^was on the whole
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
7
a thriving baby, a fine baby. Nevertbeless, its aspect awed
tbe father as already it bad awed the nurse. The creature
looked so unutterably solemn. It fixed its eyes upon Sir
Peter with a melancholy reproachful stare ; its lips were com¬
pressed and drawn downward, as if discontentedly meditating
its future destinies. The nurse declared in a frightened
uhisper that it had uttered no cry on facing the light. It
had tpkcn possession of its cradle in all the dignity of silent
sorrow. A more saddened and a more thoughtful counte¬
nance a human being could not exhibit if he were leaving
the world instead of entering it.
" Hem !" said Sir Peter to himself on regaining the soli¬
tude of his library ; " a philosopher who contributes a new
inhabitant to this vale of tears takes upon himself very
anxious responsibilities "
At that moment the joy-bells rang out from the neighbor¬
ing church-tower, the summer sun shone into the windows,
the bees hummed among the flowers on the lawn ; Sir Peter
roused himself and looked forth. "After all," said he,
cheerily, " the vale of tears is not without a smile."
8
E£N£LM CHILLINGLT.
CHAPTER IT.
A FAMILY council was held at Ezmundham Hall to
deliberate on the name by which this remarkable infant
should be admitted into the Christian community. The
junior branches of that ancient house consisted, first, of the
obnoxious heir-at-law—a Scotch branch—named Chillingly
Gordon. He was the widowed father of one son, now of the
age of three, and happily unconscious of the injury inflicted
on his future prospects by the advent of the new-born ; which
could not be truthfully said of his Caledonian father. Mr.
Chillingly Gordon was one of those men who get on in the
world without our being able to discover why. His parents
died in his infancy, and left him nothing; but the family
interest procured him an admission into the Charter House
School, at which illustrious academy he obtained no remark¬
able distinction. Nevertheless, as soon as he left it the state
took him under its special care, and appointed him to a clerk¬
ship in a public office. Prom that moment he continued to
get on in the world, and was now a commissioner of customs,
with a salary of £1500 a year. As soon as he had been thus
enabled to maintain a wife, he selected a wife who assisted to
maintain himself. She was an Irish peer's widow, with a
jointure of £2000 a year.
A few months after his marriage. Chillingly Gordon
effected insurances on his wife's life, so as to secure himself
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
9
an annuity of £1000 a year in case of her decease. As she
appeared to he a fine healthy woman, some years younger
than her husband, the deduction from his income effected by
the annual payments for the insurance seemed an over-sacri¬
fice of present enjoyment to future contingencies. The result
bore witness to his reputation for sagacity, as the lady died in
the second year of their wedding, a few months after the birth
of her only child, and of a heart-disease which had been
latent to the doctors, but which, no doubt, Gordon had afieo-
tionately discovered before he had insured a life too valuable
not to need some compensation for its loss. He was now,
then, in the possession of £2500 a year, and was therefore
very well off, in the pecuniary sense of the phrase. He had,
moreover, acquired a reputation which gave him a social rank
beyond that accorded to him by a discerning state. He was
considered a man of solid judgment, and his opinion upon all
matters, private and public, carried weight. The opinion
itself, critically examined, was not worth much, but the way
he announced it was imposing. Mr. Fox said that " No one
ever was so wise as Lord Thurlow looked." Lord Thurlow
could not have looked wiser than Mr. Chillingly Gordon.
He had a square jaw and large red bushy eyebrows, which he
lowered down with great effect when he delivered judgment.
Ha bad another advantage for acquiring grave reputation.
He was a very unpleasant man. He could be rude if you
contradicted him ; and as few persons wish to provoke rude¬
ness, so he was seldom contradicted.
Mr. Chillingly Mivers, another cadet of the house, was
also distinguished, but in a different way. He was a bache
A*
10
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
lor, now about tbe age of thirty-five. He was eminent for a
supreme well-bred contempt for everybody and everything.
He was the originator and chief proprietor of a public jour¬
nal called " The Londoner," whif^h had lately been set up on
that principle of contempt, and, we need not say, was exceed¬
ingly popular with those leading members of the community
who admire nobody and believe in nothing. Mr. ChDlingly
Mivers was regarded by himself and by others as a man who
might have achieved the highest success in any branch of
literature, if he had deigned to exhibit his talents therein.
But he did not so deign, and therefore he had full right to
imply that, if he had written an epic, a drama, a novel, a
history, a metaphysical treatise, Milton, Shakespeare, Cer¬
vantes, Hume, Berkeley would have been nowhere. He held
greatly to the dignity of the anonymous ; and even in the
journal which he originated, nobody could ever ascertain
what he wrote. But, at all events, Mr. Chillingly Mivers
was what Mr. Chillingly Gordon was not—^viz., a very clever
man, and by no means an unpleasant one in general society.
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was a decided adhe-
Tjnt to the creed of what is called "muscular Christianity,"
and a very fine specimen of it too. A tall stout man with
broad shoulders, and that division of lower limb which inter¬
venes between the knee and the ankle powerfully developed
He would have knocked down a deist as soon as looked at
him. It is told by the Sieur de Joinville, in his Memoir
of Louis, the sainted king, that an assembly of divines and
theologians convened the Jews of an oriental city for the pur-
pose of arguing with them on the truths of Christianity, and
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
11
a certain knight, who was at that time crippled, and support¬
ing himself on crutches, asked and obtained permission to be
present at the debate. The Jews flocked to the sunmums,
when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him
the leading question whether he owned the divine conception
ol' our Lord. "Certainly not," replied the rabbi; whereon
tho pious knight, shocked by such blasphemy, uplifted his
cruteh and felled the rabbi, and then flung himself among the
other misbelievers, whom he soon dispersed in ignominious
flight and in a very belabored condition. The conduct of tho
knight was reported to the sainted king, with a request that
it should be pr operly reprimanded ; but the sainted king de¬
livered himself of this wise judgment :
" If a pious knight is a very learned elerk, and can meet in
fair argument the doctrines of the misbeliever, by all means
let him argue fairly ; but if a pious knight is not a learned
clerk, and the argument goes against him, then let the pious
knight cut the discussion short by the edge of his good
sword."
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was of the same
opinion as St. Louis ; otherwise, he was a mild and amiable
man. He encouraged cricket and other manly sports among
his rural parishioners. He was a skilful and bold rider, but
he did not hunt; a convivial man—and took his bottle freely.
But his tastes in literature were of a refined and peaceful
character, contrasting therein the tendencies one might Lave
expected from his muscular development of Christianity. He
was a great reader of poetry, but he disliked Scott and Byron^
whom he considered flashy and noisy: he maintained that
12
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Pope waa only a versifier, and that the greatest poet in the
language was Wordsworth; he did not care much for the
ancient classics ; he refused all merit to the French poets ;
he knew nothing of the Italian, but he dabbled in Gennan,
and was inclined to bore one about the Hermann and Horo-
thea of Goethe. He was married to a homely little wife, who
revered him in silence, and thought there would be no schism
in the Church if he were in his right place as Archbishop
of Canterbury; in this opinion he entirely agreed with his
wife.
Besides these three male specimens of the Chillingly race,
the fairer sex was represented, in the absence of her ladyship,
who still kept her room, hy three female Chillinglys—^sisters
of Sir Peter—^and all three spinsters. Perhaps one reason why
they had remained single was, that externally they were so
like each other that a suitor must have been puzzled which to
choose, and may have been afraid that if he did choose one,
he should he caught next day kissing another one in mistake.
They were all tall, all thin, with long throats—and beneath
the throats a fine development of bone. They had all pale
hair, pale eyelids, pale eyes, and pale complexions. They all
dressed exactly alike, and their favorite color was a vivid
green : they were so dressed on this occasion.
As there was such similitude in their persons, so, to an
ordinary observer, they were exactly the same in character
and mind. Very well behaved, with proper notions of
female decorum—^very distant and reserved in manner to
strangers—^very afiectionate to each other and their relations
or favorites—very good to the poor, whom they looked upon
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
13
IS a difièrent order of creation, and treated with that sort of
benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb ani¬
mals. Their minds had been nourished on the same books
—what one read the others had read. The books were
mainly divided into two classes—novels, and what they
called " good books." They had a habit of taking a speci¬
men of each alternately—one day a novel, then a good book,
then a novel again, and so on. Thus if the imagination was
overwarmed on Monday, on Tuesday it was cooled down to a
proper temperature ; and if frost-bitten on Tuesday, it took
a tepid bath on Wednesday. The novels they chose were
indeed rarely of a nature to raise the intellectual thermometer
into blood-heat: the heroes and heroines were models of
correct conduct. Mr. James's novels were then in vogue,
and they united in saying that those " w&re novels a father
might allow his daughters to read." But though an ordinary
observer migbt have failed to recognize any distinction be¬
tween these three ladies, and, finding them habitually dressed
in green, would have said they were as much alike as one pea
is to another, they had their idiosyncratic differences, when
duly examined. Miss Margaret, the eldest, was the com¬
manding one of the three; it was she who regulated their
household (they all lived together), kept the joint puree,
and decided every doubtful point that arose,—whether they
should or should not ask Mrs. So-and-so to tea—whether
Mary should or should not be discharged—whether or not
they should go to Broadstairs or to Sandgate for the month
of October. In fact. Miss Margaret was the WILL of the
body corporate.
14
KENELM CUILLINGLY,
Miss Sibyl was of milder nature and more melancholic
temperament; she had a poetic turn of mind, and occasion¬
ally wrote verses. Some of these had been printed on satin
paper, and sold for objects of beneficence at charity bazaars.
The county newspapers said that the verses "were charac¬
terized by all the elegance of a cultured and feminine mind."
The other two sisters agreed that Sibyl was the genius of the
household, but, like all geniuses, not suflSciently practical for
the world. Miss Sarah Chillingly, the youngest of the three,
and now just in her forty-fourth year, was looked upon by the
others as " a dear thing, inclined to be naughty, but such a
darling that nobody could have the heart to scold her."
Miss Margaret said " she was a giddy creature." Miss Sibyl
wrote a poem on her, entitled—
" Warning to a young Lady against the Pleasures of the
World."
They all called her Sally ; the other two sisters had no di¬
minutive synonyms. Sally is a name indicative of fastness.
But this Sally would not have been thought fast in another
household, and she was now little likely to sally out of the
one she belonged to. These sisters, who were all many
years older than Sir Peter, lived in a handsome old-fash¬
ioned red-brick house, with a large garden at thi, back, in
the principal street of the capital of their native county
They had each £10,000 for portion ; and if he could have
married all three, the heir-af>law would have married them,
and settled the aggregate £30,000 on himself. But we have
kenelm CniLLINQLY.
1.»
not yet come to recognize Mormonism as legal, though, if our
social progress continues to slide in the same grooves as at
present, heaven only knows what triumphs over the preju¬
dices of our ancestors may not he achieved by the wisdom of
our descendants !
CHAPTER III.
Sir Peter stood on his hearthstone, surveyed the gucsta
seated in semicircle, and said; "Friends,—in Parliament,
before anything affecting the fate of a Bill is discussed, it is,
I believe, necessary to introduce the Bill." He paused a
moment, rang the bell, and said to the servant who entered,
" Tell nurse to bring in the Baby."
Mr. Gordon Chillingly.—" I don't see the necessity
for that. Sir Peter. We may take the existence of the Baby
for granted."
Mr. Mivers.—" It is an advantage to the reputation of
Sir Peter's work to preserve the incognito. Omne ignotum
pro magnifico."
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly.—"I don't
approve the cynical levity of such remarks. Of co'irse wa
must all be anxious to see, in the earliest stage of being, the
future representative of our name and race. Who would not
wish to contemplate the source, however small, of the Tigris
or the Nile ! "
Miss Sally (tittering).—" He I he !"
16
kenelm chillingly.
Miss ÍIargahet.—" For shame, you giddy thing I"
The Baby enters in the nurse's arms. All rise and gather
round the Baby, with one exception—Mr. Gordon, who has
c(iased to be heir-at-law.
The Baby returned the gaze of its relations with the most
contemptuous indifiierence. Miss Sibyl was the first to pro¬
nounce an opinion on the Baby's attributes. Said she, in a
solemn whisper—" What a heavenly mournful expression ! it
seems so grieved to have left the angels !"
The Kev. John.—"That is prettily said, cousin Sibyl;
but the infant must pluck up its courage and fight its way
among mortals with a good heart, if it wants to get back to
the angels again. And I think it will ; a fine child." He
took it from the nurse, and moving it deliberately up and
down, as if to weigh it, said cheerfully, " Monstrous heavy I
by the time it is twenty it will be a match for a prize-fighter
of fifteen stone!"
Therewith he strode to Gordon, who, as if to show that he
now considered himself wholly apart from all interest in the
afl'airs of a family that had so ill-treated him in the birth of
that Baby, had taken up the " Times" newspaper and con¬
cealed his countenance beneath the ample sheet. The Parson
abruptly snatched away the " Times" with one hand, and,
with the other substituting to the indignant eyes of the ci-
devant heir-at-law the spectacle of the Baby, said, " Kiss it."
" Kiss it !" echoed Chillingly Gordon, pushing back his
chair—" kiss it ! pooh, sir, stand oflF! T never kissed my own
baby ; I shall not kiss another man's. Take the thing away,
sir ; it is ugly ; it has black eyes."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
17
Sir Peter, wlio was near-sighted, put on his spectacles and
examined the face of the new-born. " True," said he, " it has
black eyes—very extraordinary—^portentous; the first Chil¬
lingly that ever had black eyes."
"Its mamma has black eyes," said Miss Margaret; "it
lakes after its mamma; it has not the fair beauty of the
Chillinglys, but it is not ugly."
"Sweet infant 1" sighed Sibyl; "and so good—does not
cry."
" It has neither cried nor crowed since it was born," said
the nurse ; " bless its little heart 1"
She took the Baby from the Parson's arms, and smoothed
back the frill of its cap, which had got ruiflcd.
" You may go now, nurse," said Sir Peter.
CHAPTER IV.
" I AGREE with Mr. Shandy," said Sir Peter, resuming his
stand on the hearthstone, "that among the responsibilities
of a parent the choice of a name which his child is to bear
for life is one of the gravest. And this is especially so with
those who belong to the order of baronets. In the case of a
peer, his Christian name, fused in his titular designation, dis¬
appears. In the case of a Mister, if his baptismal be caco¬
phonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not ostentatiously
parade it; he may drop it altogether on his visiting cards,
2
18
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
and may be imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezcr
Jones. In bis signature, save where the forms of the law
demand Ebenezer in full, be may only use an initial, and be
your obedient servant E. Jones, leaving it to be conjectured
that E. stands for Edward or Ernest—names inoffensive, and
not suggestive of a Dissenting Chapel, like Ebenezer. If a
man called Edward or Ernest be detected in some youthful
indiscretion, there is no indelible stain on his moral character;
but if an Ebenezer be so detected, he is set down as a hypo¬
crite—it produces that shock on the public mind which is felt
when a professed saint is proved to be a bit of a sinner. But
a baronet never can escape from his baptismal—it cannot lie
perdu, it cannot shrink into an initial, it stands forth glaringly
in the light of day; christen him Ebenezer, and he is Sir
Ebenezer in full, with all its perilous consequences if he
ever succumb to those temptations to which even baronets
are exposed. But, my friends, it is not only the effect that
the sound of a name has upon others which is to be thought¬
fully considered; the effect that his name produces on tho
man himself is perhaps still more important. Some names
stimulate and encourage the owner, others deject and paralyze
him ; I am a melancholy instance of that truth. Peter has
been for many generations, as you are aware, the baptismal
to which the eldest-bom of our family has been devoted. On
the altar of that name I have been sacrificed. Never has
there been a Sir Peter Chillingly who has, in any way, dis¬
tinguished himself above his fellows. That name has been a
dead weight on my intellectual energies. In the catalogue
of illustrious Englishmen there is, I think, no immortal Sir
kenelm chillingly.
19
Peter, except Sir Peter Teazle, and lie only exists on the
comic stage."
Miss Sibyl.—" Sir Peter Lely?"
Sir Peter Chillingly.—"That painter was not an
Englishman. He was bom in Westphalia, famous for hams.
I confine my remarks to the children of our native land. I
am aware that in foreign countries the name is not an extin¬
guisher to the genius of its owner. But why? In other
countries its sound is modified. Pierre Corneille was a great
man ; but I put it to you whether, had he been an English¬
man, he could have been the father of European tragedy as
Peter Crow?"
Miss Sibyl.—" Impossible !"
Miss Sally.—" He ! he 1"
Miss Margaret.—"There is nothing to laugh at, you
giddy child I"
Sir Peter.—" My son shall not be petrified into Peter."
Mr. Gordon Chillingly.—" If a man is such a fool—
and I don't say your son will not be a fool, cousin Peter—as
to be influenced by the sound of his own name, and you want
the booby to tum the world topsy-turvy, you had better call
him Julius Caesar, or Hannibal, or Attila, or Charlemagne."
Sir Peter (who excels mankind in imperturbability of
temper).—" On the contrary, if you inflict upon a man the
burden of one of those names, the glory of which he cannot
reasonably expect to eclipse or even to equal, you cmsh him
beneath the weight. If a poet were called John Milton or
William Shakespeare, he could not dare to publish even a
sonnet. No ; the choice of a name lies between the two
20
kenelm chillinqly.
extremes of ludicrous insignificance and oppressive renowa
For this reason I have ordered the family pedigree to he sus¬
pended on yonder wall. Let us examine it with care, and
see whether, among the Chillinglys themselves or their alli¬
ances, we can discover a name that can he home with be¬
coming dignity by the destined head of our house—a name
neither too light nor too heavy."
Sir Peter here led the way to the family tree—a goodly
roll of parchment, with the arms of the family emblazoned at
the top. Those arms were simple, as ancient heraldic coats
are—three fishes argent on a field azur -, the crest a mer¬
maid's head. All flocked to inspect the pedigree, except Mr.
Gordon, who resumed the " Times" newspaper.
" I never could quite make out what kind of fishes these
are," said the Kev. John Stalworth. "They are certainly
not pike, which formed the emblematic blazon of the Hotofts,
and are still grim enough to frighten future Shakespeares, on
the scutcheon of the Warwickshire Lucys."
" I believe they are tenches," said Mr. Mivers. " The
tench is a fish that knows how to keep itself safe, by a
philosophical taste for an obscure existence in deep holes
and slush."
Sir Peter.—"No, îlivers; the fishes are dace, a fish
that, once introduced into any pond, never can be got out
^gain. You may drag the water—you may let off the water
—^you may say ' Those dace are extirpated,'—^vain thought !
—the dace reappear as before ; and in this respect the arms
are really emblematic of the family. All the disorders and
revolutions that have occurred in England since the Hep-
kenelm chillingly.
21
tarchy have left the Chillinglys the same rrx;e in the same
place. Somehow or other the Norman Conquest did not
despoil them ; they held fiefs under Eudo Dapifer as peace¬
fully as they had held them under King Harold ; they took
no part in the Crusades, nor the Wars of the Roses, nor
the Civil Wars between Charles I. and the Parliament. As
the dace sticks to the water, and the water sticks by the
dace, SP the Chillinglys stuck to the land and the land
stuck by the Chillinglys. Perhaps I am wrong to wish
that the new Chillingly may he a little less like a dace."
" Oh 1" cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had
teen inspecting the pedigree through an eyeglass, " I don't
see a fine Christian name from the beginning, except Oliver."
Sir Peter.—" That Chillingly was born in Oliver Crom¬
well's Protectorate, and named Oliver in compliment to him,
as his father, bom in the reign of James I., was christened
James. The three fishes always swam with the stream.
Oliver!—Oliver not a bad name, but significant of radical
doctrines."
Mr. Mivers.—" I don't think so. Oliver Cromwell made
short work of radicals and their doctrines; but perhaps we
can find a name less awful and revolutionary."
"I have it—I have it," cried the Parson. "Here is a
descent from Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley. Sir
Kenelm Digby ! No finer specimen of muscular Christianity.
He fought as well as he wrote ;—eccentric, it is true, but
always a gentleman. Call the boy Kenehn !"
"A sweet name," said Miss Sibyl—"it breathes of ro¬
mance."
22
kenelm chillingly.
"Sir Kenelm Chillingly 1 It sounds well—imposing 1"
said Miss Margaret.
" And," remarked Mr. Mivers, " it has this advantage—•
that while it has sufi&cient association with honorable dis¬
tinction to affect the mind of the namesake and rouse his
emulation, it is not that of so stupendous a personage as
to defy rivalry. Sir Kenelm Digby was certainly an accom¬
plished and gallant gentleman; hut what with his silly
superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man now¬
adays might be clever in comparison without being a prodigy.
Yes, let us decide on Kenelm."
Sir Peter meditated. " Certainly," said he, after a pause—
" certainly the name of Kenelm carries with it very crotchety
associations ; and I am afraid that Sir Kenelm Digby did not
make a prudent choice in marriage. The fair Venetia was no
better than she should he ; and I should wish my heir not
to be led away by beauty, but wed a woman of respectable
character and decorous conduct."
Miss Makqaret.—" A British matron, of course."
Three Sisters (in chorus).—" Of course—of course I"
" But," resumed Sir Peter, " I am crotchety myself, and
crochets are innocent things enough; and as for marriage,
the Baby cannot marry to-morrow, so that we have ample
time to consider that matter. Kenelm Digby was a man
»ny family might be proud of ; and, as you say, sister Mar¬
garet, Kenelm Chillingly does not sound amiss—Kenelm
ChiUingly it shall be !"
The Baby was accordingly christened Kenehn, after which
ceremony its face grew longer than before.
kenelu chillinqly.
23
CHAPTER V.
Before his relations dispersed, Sir Peter summoned Mr.
Gordon into his library.
" dousin," said he, kindly, " I do not blame you for the
want of family affection, or even of humane interest, which
you exhibit towards the New-born."
"Blame me, cousin Peter! I should think not. I ex¬
hibit as much family affection and humane interest as could
be expected from me—circumstances considered."
"I own," said Sir Peter, with all his wonted mildness,
" that after remaining childless for fourteen years of wedded
life, the advent of this little stranger must have occasioned
you a disagreeable surprise. But, after all, as I am many
years younger than you, and, in the course of nature, shall
outlive you, the loss is less to yourself than to your son.
and upon that I wish to say a few words. You know too
well the conditions on which I hold my estate not to be
aware that I have not legally the power to saddle it with
any bequest to your boy. The New-born succeeds to the
fee-simple as last in tail. But I intend, from this moment,
to lay by something every year for your son out of my in¬
come ; and, fond as I am of London for a part of the year,
I shall now give up my town-house. If I live to the years
the Psalmist allots to man, I shall thus accumulate some-
24
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
thing handsome for your son, which may be taken in the
way of compensation."
Mr. Gordon was by no means softened by this generous
speech. However, he answered more politely than was hii
wont, "My son will be very much obliged to you, should
he ever need your intended bequest." Pausing a moment,
he added, with a cheerful smile, " A large percentage of in¬
fants die before attaining the age of twenty-one."
"Nay, but I am told your son is an uncommonly fin«
healthy child."
" My son, cousin Peter I I was not thinking of my son,
but of yours. Yours has a big head. I should not wonder
if he had water in it. I don't wish to alarm you, but he
may go off any day, and in that case it is not likely that
Lady Chillingly will condescend to replace him. So you
WÜ1 excuse me if I still keep a watchful eye on my rights ;
and, however painful to my feelings, I must stUl dispute
your right to cut a stick of the field timber."
"That is nonsense, Gordon. I am tenant for life with¬
out impeachment of waste, and can cut down all timber
not ornamental."
" I advise you not, cousin Peter. I have told you before
that I shall try the question at law, should you provoke it,—■
amicably, of course. Rights are rights ; and if I am driven
to maintain mine, I trust that you are of a mind too liberal
to allow your family affection to me and mine to be influ¬
enced by a decree of the Court of Chancery. But my fly
is waiting. I must not miss the train."
"Well, good-bye, Gordon. Shake hands."
KENJELM CHIiiLINQIiY.
25
" Shake hands !—of course—of course. By the by, as I
came through the lodge, it seemed to me sadly out of repair.
1 believe you are liable for dilapidations. Good-bye."
" The man is a hog in armor," soliloquized Sir Peter, when
his cousin was gone ; " and if it be hard to drive a common
pig in the way he don't choose to go, a hog in armor is indeed
undrivable. But his boy ought not to suffer for his father's
hoggishness ; and I shall begin at once to see what I can lay
by for him. After all, it is hard upon Gordon. Poor Gor¬
don !—poor fellow—^poor fellow 1 Still I hope he will not go
to law with me. I hate law. And a worm will turn—espe¬
cially a worm that is put into Chancery."
CHAPTER VI.
Despite the sinister semi-predictions of the d-devant heir-
at-law, the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed
with dignity, through the infant stages of existence. Ho
took his measles and whooping-cough with philosophical
equanimity. He gradually acquired the use of speech, but
he did not too lavishly exercise that special attribute of hu¬
manity. During the earlier years of childhood he spoke as
little as if he had been prematurely trained in the school of
Pythagoras. But he evidently spoke the less in order to
o fleet the more. He observed closely and pondered deeply
over what he observed. At the age of eight he began to
B
26
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
converse more freely, and it was in that year that he startled
his mother with the question—" Mamma, are you not some¬
times overpowered by the sense of your own identity ?"
Lady Chillingly—I was about to say rushed, but Lady
Chillingly never rushed—Lady Chillingly glided less sedately
than her wont to Sir Peter, and, repeating her son's question,
said, "The boy is growing troublesome, too wise for any
woman ; he must go to school."
Sir Peter was of the same opinion. But where on earth
did the child get hold of so long a word as " identity," and
how did so extraordinary and puzzling a metaphysical ques ¬
tion come into his head ? Sir Peter summoned Kenelm, and
ascertained that the boy, having free access to the library, had
fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and was
prepared to dispute with that philosopher upon the doctrine
of innate ideas. Quoth Kenelm, gravely—"A want is an
idea ; and if, as soon as I was born, I felt the want of food
and knew at once where to turn for it, without being taught,
surely I came into the world with an ' innate idea.' "
Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed,
and scratched his head without getting out a proper answer
as to the distinction between ideas and instincts. "My
child," he said at last, " you don't know what you are talk ing
about ; go and take a good gallop on your black pony ; and I
forbid you to read any books that are not given to you by
myself or your mamma. Stick to Puss in Boots "
KENELM CHlLLINaLT.
27
CHAPTER VIL
Sir Peter ordered his carriage and drore to the house
of the stout Parson. That doughty ecclesiastic held a family
living a few miles distant from the Hall, and was the only
one oí the cousins with whom Sir Peter habitually communed
on his domestic aifairs.
He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited tastes
other than clerical. Over the chimney-piece were ranged
fencing-foils, boxing-gloves, and staffs for the athletic exer¬
cise of single-stick ; cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up tho
angles. There were sundry prints on the walls : one of Mr.
Wordsworth, flanked by two of distinguished race-horses;
one of a Leicestershire short-horn, with which the Parson,
who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich pastures,
had won a prize at the county show; and on either side
of that animal were the portraits of Hooker and Jeremy
Taylor. There were dwarf bookcases containing miscella¬
neous works very handsomely bound. At the open window,
a stand of fiower-pots, the flowers in full bloom. The Parson's
flowers were famous.
The appearance of the whole room was that of a man who
is tidy and neat in his habits.
" Cousin," said Sir Peter, " I have come to consult you."
And therewith he related the marvellous precocity of Kenehn
Chillingly. " You see the name begins to work on him
28
kenelu chillinqly.
rather too much. He must go to school; and now what
school shall it be ? Private or public ?"
The Key. John Stalworth.—" There is a great deal to
be said for or against either. At a public school the chances
are that Kenelm will no longer be overpowered by a sense of
his own identity; he will more probably lose identity alto¬
gether. The worst of a public school is that a sort of
common character is substituted for individual character.
The master, of course, can't attend to the separate develop¬
ment of each boy's idiosyncrasy. All minds are thrown into
one great mould, and come out of it more or less in the same
form. An Etonian may be clever or stupid, but, as either,
he remains emphatically Etonian. A public school ripens
talent, but its tendency is to stifle genius. Then, too, a
public school for an only son, heir to a good estate, which
will be entirely at his own disposal, is apt to encourage reck-
ess and extravagant habits ; and your estate requires careful
management, and leaves no margin for an heir's notes of
hand and post-obits. On the whole, I am against a public
school for Kenelm."
" Well, then, we will decide on a private one."
" Hold !" said the Parson ; " a private school has its draw¬
backs. You can seldom produce large fishes in small ponds,
In private schools the competition is narrowed, the energies
stinted. The schoolmaster's wife interferes, and generally
coddles the boys. There is not manliness enough in those
academies; no fagging, and very little fighting. A clever
boy turns out a prig ; a boy of feebler intellect turns out a
well-behaved young lady in trousers. Nothing muscular in
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
29
the system. Decidedly, the namesake and descendant of
Kenelm Digby should not go to a private seminary."
" So far as I gather from your reasoning," said Sir Peter,
with characteristic placidity, " Kenelm Chillingly is not to
go to school at all."
" It does look like it," said the Parson, candidly ; " but,
on consideration, there is a medium. There are schools
whicl\ unite the best qualities of public and private schools,
large enough to stimulate and develop energies mental and
physical, yet not so framed as to melt all character in one
crucible. For instance, there is a school which has at this
moment one of the first scholars in Europe for head-master—
a school which has turned out some of the most remarkable
men of the rising generation. The master sees at a glance if
a boy be clever, and takes pains with him accordingly. He
is not a mere teacher of hexameters and sapphics. His learn¬
ing embraces all literature, ancient and modern. He is a good
writer and a fine critic—admires Wordsworth. He winks at
fighting, his boys knows how to use their fists, and they are
not in the habit of signing post-obits before they are fifteen.
Merten School is the place for Kenelm."
" Thank you," said Sir Peter. "It is a great comfort in
life to find somebody who can decide for one. I am an
inesolute man myself, and in ordinary matters willingly let
Lady Chillingly govern me."
" I should like to see a wife govern me," said the stout
Parson.
" But you are not married to Lady Chillingly. And now
let us go into the garden and look at your dahlias."
30
KENëLM chillinqly.
CHAPTER VIH.
The youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Morton
S;hool, and ranked, according to his merits, as lag of the
penultimate form. When he came home for the Christmas
holidays he was more saturnine than ever—in fact, his
countenance bore the impression of some absorbing grief.
He said, however, that he liked school very well, and eluded
all other questions. But early the next morning he mounted
his black pony and rode to the Parson's rectory. The rev¬
erend gentleman was in his farmyard examining his bullocks
when Kenelm accosted him thus briefly :
" Sir, I am disgraced, and I shall die of it if you cannot
help to set me right in my own eyes."
"My dear boy, don't talk in that way. Come into mj
study."
As soon as they entered that room, and the Parson had
carefully closed the door, he took the boy's arm, turned him
round to the light, and saw at once that there was something
very grave on his mind. Chucking him under the chin, the
Parson said cheerily, " Hold up your head, Kenelm. I am
sure you have done nothing unworthy of a gentleman."
"I don't know that. I fought a boy very little bigger
than myself, and I have been licked. I did not give in,
though ; but the other boys picked me up, for I could not
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
31
stand any longer—and the fellow is a great bully—and his
name is Butt—and he's the son of a lawyer—^and he got my
head into chancery—and I have challenged him to fight
again next half—and unless you can help me to lick him, T
shall never be good for anything in the world—^never. It.
will break my heart."
" I am very glad to hear you have had the pluck to chal¬
lenge him. Just let me see how you double your fist.
Well, that's not amiss. Now, put yourself into a fighting
attitude, and hit out at me—hard—^harder I Pooh I that
will never do. You should make your blows as straight as
an arrow. And that's not the way to stand. Stop—so;
well on your haunches—weight on the left leg—^good ! Now,
put on these gloves, and I'll give you a lesson in boxing."
Five minutes afterwards Mrs. John Chillingly, entering
the room to summon her husband to breakfast, stood as¬
tounded to see him with his coat off, and parrying the blows
of Kenelm, who flew at him like a young tiger. The good
pastor at that moment might certainly have appeared a fine
type of muscular Christianity, but not of that kind of Chris¬
tianity out of which one makes Archbishops of Canterbury.
" Good gracious me !" faltered Mrs. John Chillingly ; and
then, wife-like, flying to the protection of her husband, she
seized Kenelm by the shoulders, and gave him a good
shaking. The Parson, who was sadly out of breath, was
not displeased at the interruption, hut took that opportunity
to put on his coat, and said, "We'll begin again t»-morrow.
Now, come to breakfast." But during breakfast Kenelm's
face still betrayed dejection, and he talked little, and ate less.
32
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
As soon as the meal was over, he drew the Parson into the
garden and said, " I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps it
is not fair to Butt, that I should be taking these lessons ; and
if it is not fair, I'd rather not "
" Give 1P.3 your hand, my boy I" cried the Parson, trans¬
ported. " The name of Kenelm is not thrown away upon
you. The natural desire of man in his attribute of fighting
animal (an attribute in which, I believe, he excels all other
animated beings, except a quail and a gamecock), is to beat
his adversary. But the natural desire of that culmination of
man which we call gentleman, is to beat his adversary fairly.
A gentleman would rather be beaten fairly than beat unfairly,
Is not that your thought ?"
" Yes," replied Kenelm, firmly ; and then, beginning t >
philosophize, he added,—" And it stands to reason ; because
if I beat a fellow unfairly, I don't really beat him at all."
" Excellent ! But suppose that you and another boy go
into examination upon Caesar's Commentaries or the multi¬
plication-table, and the other boy is cleverer than you, but
you have taken the trouble to learn the subject and he has
not ; should you say you beat him unfairly ?"
Kenelm meditated a moment, and then said decidedly,
« No."
"That which applies to the use of your brains applita
equally to the use of your fists. Bo you comprehend me ?"
" Yes, sir ; I do now."
" In the time of your namesake. Sir Kenelm Bigby, gen¬
tlemen wore swords, and they learned how to use them, be¬
cause, in case of quarrel, they had to fight with them.
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
33
Nobody, at least in England, fights with swords now. It is
a democratic age, and if you fight at all, you are reduced to
fists; and if Kenelm Digby learned to fence, so Kenelm
Chillingly must learn to box ; and if a gentleman thrashes a
drayman twice his size, who* has not learned to box, it is not
unfair ; it is but an exemplification of the truth, that knowl¬
edge is power. Come and take another lesson on boxing to¬
morrow."
Kanelm remounted his pony and returned home. He
found his father sauntering in the garden with a book in his
hand. " Papa," said Kenelm, " how docs one gentleman
write to another with whom he has a quarrel, and he don't
want to make it up, but he has something to say about the
quarrel which it is fair the other gentleman should know?"
" I don't understand what you mean."
" Well, just before I went to school I remember hearing
you say that you had a quarrel with Lord Hautfort, and that
he was an ass, and you would write and tell him so. When
you wrote did you say, ' You are an ass' ? Is that the way
one gentleman writes to another?"
" Upon my honor, Kenelm, you ask very odd questions.
But you cannot learn too early this fact, that irony is to the
high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar ; and when one
gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say
it point-blank—^he implies it in the politest terms he can
invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free warren over
a trout^stream that runs through his lands. I don't care a
rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my
right to fish in it. He was an ass to raise the question ; for,
B* 3
34
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
if ho had not, I should not have exercised the right. As h«
did raise the question, I was obliged to catch his trout."
" And you wrote a letter to him ?"
"Yes."
" How did you write, papa ? What did you say ?"
" Something like this. ' Sir Peter Chillingly presents his
compliments to Lord Hautfort, and thinks it fair to his lord¬
ship to say that he has taken the best legal advice with regard
to his rights of free warren, and trusts to be forgiven if he
presumes to suggest that Lord Hautfort might do well to
consult his own lawyer before he decides on disputing
them.' "
" Thank you, papa. I see "
That evening Kenelm wrote the following letter :
" Mr. Chillingly presents his compliments to Mr. Butt, and
thinks it fair to Mr. Butt to say, that he is taking lessons in
boxing, and trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest
that Mr. Butt might do well to take lessons himself before
fighting with Mr. Chillingly next half."
" Papa," said Kenelm the next morning, " I want to write
to a schoolfellow whose name is Butt; he is the son ol' a
lawyer who is called a Serjeant. I don't know where to direct
to him."
" That is easily ascertained," said Sir Peter. " Serjeant
Butt is an eminent man, and his address will be in the Court
Guide." The address was found—Bloomsbury Square, and
Kenelm directed his letter accordingly. In due course he
received this answer :
kenelm chillingly.
35
" You are an insolent little fool, and I'll thrash you within
an inch of your life.
" Robert Butt."
After the receipt of that polite epistle, Kenelm Chillingly's
scruples vanished, and he took daily lessons in muscular
Christianity.
Kenelm returned to school with a brow cleared from care,
and three days after his return he wrote to the Rev. John :
" Dear Sir,—I have licked Butt. Knowledge is power
Your affectionate
" Kenelm.
—Now that I have licked Butt, I have made it up
with him."
From that time Kenelm prospered. Eulogistic letters from
the illustrious head-master showered in upon Sir Peter. At
the age of sixteen Kenelm Chillingly was the head of the
school, and quitting it finally, brought home the following
letter from his Orbilius to Sir Peter, marked " confidential" :
" Dear Sir Peter Chillingly,—I have never felt more
anxious for the future career of any of my pupils than I do
for that of your son. He is so clever that, with ease to him¬
self, he may become a great man. He is so peculiar, that it
is quite as likely that he may only make himself known to the
world as a great oddity. That distinguished teacher. Dr.
Arnold, said that the difference between one boy and another
was not so much talent as energy. Your son has talent, has
energy,—yet he wants something for success in life; he wants
the faculty of amalgamation. He is of a melancholic and
36
kenelm cnillin3lt.
therefore unsocial temperament. He will not act in concert
with others. He is lovable enough ; the other boys like him,
especially the smaller ones, with whom he is a sort of hero ;
but he has not one intimate friend. So far as school learning
is concerned, he might go to college at once, and with the
certainty of distinction, provided he chose to exert himself.
But if I may venture to offer an advice, I should say employ
the next two years in letting him see a little more of real life
and acquire a due sense of its practical objects. Send him to
a private tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a
man of the world, and if in the metropolis so much the better.
In a word, my young friend is unlike other people ; and, with
qualities that might do anything in life, I fear, unless you
can get him to be like other people, that he will do nothing.
Excuse the freedom with which I write, and ascribe it to tbe
singular interest with which your son has inspired me. I have
the honor to be, dear Sir Peter, yours truly,
" William Horton."
Upon tbe strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed
summon another family council ; for he did not consider that
his three maiden sisters could offer any practical advice on
the matter. And as to Mr. Gordon, that gentleman having
gone to law on the great timber question, and having been
signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir Peter that he dis¬
owned him as a cousin and despised him as a man—not
exactly in those words—^more covertly, and therefore moie
stingingly. But Sir Peter invited Mr. Mivers for a week's
shooting, and requested the Rev. John to meet him.
Mr. Mivers arrived. The sixteen years that had elapsed
since he was first introduced to the reader, had made no per¬
ceptible change in his appearance. It was one of his maxims
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
37
that in youth a man of the world should appear older than
he is; and in middle age, and thence to his dying day,
younger. And he announced one secret for attaining thiit
art in these words : " Begin your wig early, thus you never
become gray."
Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice con¬
form to his precepts ; and while in the prime of youth in¬
augurated a wig in a fashion that defied the flight of time,
not curly and hyacinthine, but straight-haired and unassum¬
ing. He locked five-and-thirty from the day he put on that
wig at the age of twenty-five. He looked five-and-thirty
now at the age of fifty-one.
" I mean," said he, " to remain thirty-five all my life. No
better age to stick at. People may choose to say I am more,
but I shall not own it. No one is bound to criminate him¬
self."
Mr. Mivers had some other aphorisms on this important
subject. One was, " Refuse to be ill. Never tell people
you are ill ; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those
things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.
It should never be allowed to get in the thin end of the
wedge. But take care of your constitution, and, having
ascertained the best habits for it, keep to them like clock¬
work." Mr. Mivers would not have missed his constitutional
walk in the Park before breakfast, if, by going in a cab to
St. Giles's, he could have saved the city of London from
conflagration.
Another aphorism of his was, " If you want to keep
young, live in a metropolis; never stay above a few weeks
38
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
at a time in the country. Take two men of similar constitu¬
tion at the age of twenty-five; let one live in London and
enjoy a regular sort of club-life; send the other to some
rural district, preposterously called 'salubrious.' Look at
these men when they have both reached the age of forty-
five. The London man has preserved his figure, the rural
man has a paunch. The London man has an interesting
delicacy of complexion ; the face of the rural man is coarse-
gi-ained and perhaps jowly."
A third axiom was, " Don't he a family man ; nothing
ages one like matrimonial felicity and paternal ties. Never
multiply cares, and pack up your life in the briefest compass
you can. Why add to your carpet-bag of troubles the con¬
tents of a lady's imperials and bonnet-boxes, and the travel¬
ing fourgon required by the nursery ? Shun ambition—it is
so gouty. It takes a great deal out of a man's life, and
gives him nothing worth having till he has ceased to enjoy
it."
Another of his aphorisms was this, " A fresh mind keeps
the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain ofiF
those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to con¬
sider it when it becomes to-day."
Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivera
appeared at Exmundham totus, teres, but not rotundus—a
man of middle height, slender, upright, with well-cut, small,
slight features, thin lips, enclosing an excellent set of teeth,
even, white, and not indebted to the dentist. For the sake
of those teeth he shunned acid wines, especially hock in all
ils varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks. He drank
kenelm chillingly.
39
even Lis tea cold. " There are," he said, " two things in life
that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his
stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of
consolations : there are no comforters for dyspepsia and
toothache." A man of letters, but a man of the world, he
had so cultivated his mind as both, that he was feared as
the one, and liked as the other. As a man of letters he
despised the world; as a man of the world he despised
letters. * As the representative of both he revered himself.
CHAPTER IX.
On the evening of the third day from the arrival of Mr.
Mivers, he, the Parson, and Sir Peter were seated in the
host's parlor, the Parson in an arm-chair by the ingle,
smoking a short cutty-pipe ; Mivers at length on the couch,
slowly inhaling the perfumes of one of his own choice
trabucos. Sir Peter never smoked. There were spirits and
hot water and lemons on the table. The Parson was famed
for skill in the composition of toddy. From time to time the
Parson sipped his glass, and Sir Peter, less frequently, did
the same. It is needless to say that Mr. Mivers eschewed
toddy; but beside him, on a chair, was a tumbler and large
carafe of iced water.
Sir Peter.—" Cousin Mivers, you have now had time to
study Kenelm, and to compare his character with that assigned
to him in the Doctor's letter."
40
kenelm CHILLINGLr.
Mivers (languidly).—" Ay."
Sir Peter.—" I ask you, as a man of the world, what you
tliink I had hest do with the boy. Shall I send him to
such a tutor as the Doctor suggests? Cousin John is not
of the same mind as the Doctor, and thinks that Kenelm'a
oddities are fine things in their way, and should not be pre¬
maturely ground out of him by contact with worldly tutors
and London pavements."
"Ay," repeated Mr. Mivers, more languidly than before.
After a pause he added, " Parson John, let us hear you."
The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe, and emptied his fourth
hinibler of toddy, then, throwing back his head in the dreamy
fashion of the great Coleridge when he indulged in a mono-
• Ogue, he thus began, speaking somewhat through his nose :
"At the morning of life "
Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his
couch, and closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning
himself to a homily.
" At the morning of life, when the dews "
" I knew the dews were coming," said Mivers. " Dry
them, if you please; nothing so unwholesome. We anticipate
what you mean to say, which is plainly this—When a fellow
is sixteen he is very fresh ; so he is. Pass on—what then ?"
"If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cyni¬
cism," said the Parson, " why did you ask to hear me ?"
"That was a mistake, I grant; hut who on earth could
conceive that you were going to commence in that florid style ?
Morning of life indeed !—^bosh 1'"
"Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing
kenelm chillingly.
41
John's style in ' The Londoner and I will beg you to re
member that my son's morning of life is a serious thing t<
his father, and not to be nipped in its bud by a cousin. Pro¬
ceed, John I"
Quoth the Parson, good-humoredly, " I will adapt my style
to the taste of my critic. When a fellow is at the age of six¬
teen, and very fresh to life, the question is whether he should
begin thus prematurely to exchange the ideas that belong to
youth for the ideas that properly belong to middle age,—
whether he should begin to acquire that knowledge of the
world which middle-aged men have acquired and can teach.
I think not. I would rather have him yet awhile in
the company of the poets—in the indulgence of glorious
hopes and beautiful dreams, forming to himself some type
of the Heroic, which he will keep before his eyes as a stand¬
ard when he goes into the world as man. There are two
schools of thought for the formation of character—the Real
and Ideal. I would form the character in the Ideal school,
in order to make it bolder and grander and lovelier when it
takes place in that every-day life which is called the Real.
And therefore I am not for placing the descendant of Sir
Kenelm Digby, in the interval between school and college,
with a man of the world, probably as cynical as cousin Mivera,
and living in the stony thoroughfares of London."
Mr. Mivers (rousing himself).—" Before we plunge into
that Serbonian bog—the controversy between the Realistic
and the Idealistic academicians—I think the first thing to
decide is what you want Kenelm to be hereafter. When I
order a pair oi snoes, I decide beforehand what kind of shoei
42
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
they are to be—court pumps or strong walking-shoes; and
I don't ask the shoemaker to give me a preliminary lecture
upon the différent purposes of locomotion to which leather
can he applied. If, Sir Peter, you want Kenelm to scribble
lackadaisical poems, listen to Parson John ; if you want to fill
his head with pastoral rubbish about innocent love, which
may end in marrying the Miller's Daughter, listen to Parson
John ; if you want him to enter life a soft-headed greenhorn,
who will sign any bill carrying fifty per cent, to which a young
scamp asks him to be security, listen to Parson John : in fine,
if you wish a clever lad to become either a pigeon or a ring¬
dove, a credulous booby or a sentimental milksop, Parson John
IS the best adviser you can have."
" But I don't want my son to ripen into either of those
imbecile developments of species."
" Then don't listen to Parson John ; and there's an end of
the discussion."
" No, there is not. I have not heard your advice what to
do if John's advice is not to be taken."
Mr. Mivers hesitated. He seemed puzzled.
" The fact is," said the Parson, " that Mivers got up ' The
Londoner' upon a principle that regulates his own mind,—
find fault with the way everything is done, but never commit
rourself by saying how anything can be done better."
" That is true," said Mivers, candidly. " The destructive
•rder of mind is seldom allied to the constructive. I and
' The Londoner' are destructive by nature and by policy. We
can reduce a building into rubbish, but we don't profess to
turu rubbish into a building. We are critics, and, as you
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
43
Bay, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the proposition
of amendments that can be criticised hy others. Neverthe¬
less, for your sake, cousin Peter, and on the condition that if
I give my advice you will never say that I gave it, and if you
take it, that you will never reproach me if it turns out, m
most advice does, very ill—I will depart from my custom
and hazard my opinion."
" I accept the conditions."
" Well, then, with every new generation there springs up a
new order of ideas. The earlier the age at which a man
seizes the ideas that will influence his own generation, the
more he has a start in the race with his contemporaries. If
Kenelm comprehends at sixteen those intellectual signs of the
time which, when he goes up to college, he will find young
men of eighteen or twenty only just prepared to compre¬
hend, he will produce a deep impression of his powers for
reasoning, and their adaptation to actual life, which will be
of great service to him later. Now the ideas that influence
the mass of the rising generation never have their well-head
in the generation itself. They have their source in the gen¬
eration before them, generally in a small minority, neglected
or contemned by the great majority which adopt them later.
Therefore a lad at the age of sixteen, if he wants to get at
such ideas, must come into close contact with some superior
mind in which they were coneeived twenty or thirty years
before. I am consequently for placing Kenelm with a person
from whom the new ideas can be learned. I am also for
his being placed in the metropolis during the process of this
initiation. With such introductions as are at our command,
44
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
he may come in contact not only with new ideas, but with
eminent men in all vocations. It is a great thing to mix
betimes with clever people. One picks their brains uncon¬
sciously. There is another advantage, and not a small one,
in this early entrance into good society. A youth learns
manners, self-possession, readiness of resource; and he is
much less likely to get into scrapes and contract tastes for
low vices and mean dissipation, when he comes into life
wholly his own master, after having acquired a predilection
for refined companionship, under the guidance of those com¬
petent to select it. There, I have talked myself out of
breath. And you had better decide at once in favor of my
advice ; for as I am of a contradictory temperament, myself
of to-morrow may probably contradict myself of to-day."
Sir Peter was greatly impressed with his cousin's argu¬
mentative eloquence.
The Parson smoked his cutty-pipe in silence until appealed
to by Sir Peter, and he then said, " In this programme of
education for a Christian gentleman, the part of Christian
seems to me left out."
" The tendency of the age," observed Mr. Mivers, calmly,
" is towards that omission. Secular education is the neces¬
sary reaction from the special theological training which
arose in the dislike of one set of Christians to the teach¬
ing of another set ; and as these antagonists wiU not agree
how religion is to be taught, either there must be no teaching
at all, or religion must be eliminated from the tuition."
" That may do very well for some huge system of national
education," said Sir Peter, " but it does not apply to Keuelm,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
45
ns one of a family all of whose members belong to the Estab¬
lished Church. He may be taught the creed of his forefathers
without offending a Dissenter."
"Which Established Church is he to belong to?" asked
Mr. Mivers,—" High Church, Low Church, Broad Church,
I'useyite Church, Kitualistic Church, or any other Established
Church that may be coming into fashion?"
" Pshaw 1" said the Parson. " That sneer is out of place.
You know very well that one merit of our Church is the spirit
of toleration, which does not magnify every variety of opinion
into a heresy or a schism. But if Sir Peter sends his son at
the age of sixteen to a tutor who eliminates the religion of
Christianity from his teaching, he deserves to be thrashed
within an inch of his life ; and," continued the Parson, eye¬
ing Sir Peter sternly, and mechanically turning up his cuffs,
" I should lilte to thrash him."
"Gently, John," said Peter, recoiling; "gently, my dear
kinsman. My heir shall not he educated as a heathen, and
Mivers is only bantering us. Come, Mivers, do you happen
to know among your London friends some man who, though
a scholar and a man of the world, is still a Christian ?"
" A Christian as by law established ?"
" Well—^yes."
" And who will receive Kenelm as a pupil ?"
" Of course I am not putting such questions to you out of
idle curiosity."
" I know exactly the man. He was originally intended for
orders, and is a very learned^theologian. He relinquished
the thought of the clerical profession on succeeding to a small
46
KENELM CHILLINOLY.
landed estate by the sudden death of an elder brother. He
then came to London and bought experience ; that is, he was
naturally generous—he became easily taken in—got into diflS-
culties—the estate was transferred to trustees for the benefit
of creditors, and on the payment of £400 a year to himself.
By this time he was married and had two children. Ha
found the necessity of employing his pen in order to add to
his income, and is one of the ablest contributors to the peri¬
odical press. He is an elegant scholar, an efiiective writer,
much courted by public men, a thorough gentleman, has a
pleasant house, and receives the best society. Having been
once taken in, he defies any one to take him in again. His
experience was not bought too dearly. No more acute and
accomplished man of the world. The three hundred a year
or so that you would pay for Kenelm would suit him very
well. His name is Welby, and he lives in Chester Square."
" No doubt he is a contributor to ' The Londoner,' " said
the Parson, sarcastically.
" True. He writes our classical, theological, and meta¬
physical articles. Suppose I invite him to come here for a
day or two, and you can see him and judge for yourself. Sir
Peter?"
" Do."
kinilm ohillinqlt.
47
CHAPTER X.
Mr. Welbt arrived, and pleased everybody. A man of
pedantry in him, yet you could soon see that his reading
covered an extensive surface, and here and there had dived
deeply. He enchanted the Parson hy his comments on St.
Chrysostom ; he dazzled Sir Peter with his lore in the an¬
tiquities of ancient Britain; he captivated Kenelm hy his
readiness to enter into that most disputatious of sciences called
metaphysics ; while for Lady Chillingly, and the three sisters
who were invited to meet him, he was more entertaining,
hut not less instructive. Equally at home in novels and in
good hooks, he gave to the spinsters a list of innocent works
in either ; while for Lady Chillingly he sparkled with anec¬
dotes of fashionable life, the newest hons mots, the latest scan¬
dals. In fact, Mr. Welhy was one of those brilliant persons
who adorn any society amidst which they are thrown. If at
heart he was a disappointed man, the disappointment was con-
nea' 3d hy an even serenity of spirits ; he had entertained high
and justifiable hopes of a brilliant career and a lasting repu¬
tation as a theologian and a preacher ; the succession to his
estate at the age of twenty-three had changed the nature of
his ambition. The charm of his manner was such that he
sprang at once into the fashion, and became beguiled hy hi?
manners, easy and courteous. There was no
48
KENELM CUILLINGLT.
own genial temperament into that lesser but pleasanter kind
of ambition which contents itself with social successes and
enjoys the present hour. When his circximstances compelled
him to eke out his income by literary profits, he slid into the
grooves of periodical composition, and resigned all thoughts of
the labor required for any complete work, which might take
much time and be attended with scanty profits. He still re¬
mained very popular in society, and perhaps his general repu¬
tation for ability made him fearful to hazard it by any great
undertaking. He was not, like Mivers, a despiser of all men
and all things ; but he regarded men and things as an indif¬
ferent though good-natured spectator regards the thronging
streets from a drawing-room window. He could not be called
hlasé, but he was thoroughly désillusionné. Once over-roman-
tie, his character now was so entirely imbued with the neutral
tints of life that romance oflended his taste as an obtrusion of
violent color into a sober woof. He was become a thorough
Realist in his code of criticism, and in his worldly mode of
action and thought. But Parson John did not perceive this,
for Welby listened to that gentleman's eulogies on the Ideal
school without troubling himself to contradict them. He had
grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only
as a critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the
po ished cruelty of sarcasm.
He came off with flying colors through an examination
into his Church orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir
Peter. Amid a cloud of ecclesiastictd erudition, his own
opinions vanished in those of the Fathers. In truth, he was
a Realist in religion as in everything else. He regarded
kenelm chillingly.
49
Christianity as a type of existent civilization, which ought
to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types of
that civiliziition—such as the liberty of the press, the repre¬
sentative system, white neckcloths and black coats of an
evening, etc. He belonged, therefore, to what he himself
railed the school of Eclectical Christiology, and accommo¬
dated the reasonings of Deism to the doctrines of the Church,
if not as a creed, at least as an institution. Einally, he
united all the Chillingly votes in his favor; and when he
departed from the Hall, carried off Kenelm for his initiation
into the new ideas that were to govern his generation.
CHAPTEK XL
Kenelm remained a year and a half with this dis¬
tinguished preceptor. During that time he learned much
in book-lore ; he saw much, too, of the eminent men of the
day, in literature, the,law, and the senate. He saw, also, a
good deal of the fashionable world. Fine ladies, who had
been friends of his mother in her youth, took him up, coun¬
seled and petted him. One in especial, the Marchioness of
Glenalvon, to whom he was endeared by grateful association.
For her youngest son had been a fellow-pupil of Kenelm's
at Merten School, and Kenehn had saved his life from
di owning. The poor boy died of consumption later, and
her grief for his loss made her affection for Kenelm yet
c 4
50
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
more tender. Lady Glenalvon was one of the queens of the
London world. Though in her fiftieth year, she was still
very handsome : she was also very accomplished, very clever,
and veiy kind-hearted, as some of such queens are ; just one
of those women invaluable in forming the manners and
elevating the charaeter of young men destined to make a
figure in after-life. But she was very angry with herself in
thinking that she failed to arouse any such ambition in the
heir of the Chillinglys.
It may here be said that Kenelm was not without great
advantages of form and countenance. He was tall, and the
youthful grace of his proportions concealed his physical
strength, which was extraordinary rather from the iron
texture than the bulk of his thews and sinews. His face,
though it certainly lacked the roundness of youth, had a
grave, sombre, haunting sort of beauty, not artistically regu¬
lar, but picturesque, peculiar, with large dark expressive
eyes, and a certain indescribable combination of sweetness
and melancholy in his quiet smile. He never laughed audi¬
bly, but he had a quick sense of the comic, and his eye
would laugh when his lips were silent. ^ He would say queer,
droll, unexpected things, which passed for humor ; but, save
for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said the.m with
more seeming innocence of intentional joke if he had been
a monk of La Trappe looking up from the grave he was
digging in order to utter " memento mori."
That face of his was a great " take in." Women thought
it full of romantic sentiment—the face of one easily moved
to love, and whose love would be replete alike with poctiy
KENEI.M CHILLINGLT.
51
and passion. But he remained as proof as the youthful
Hippolytus to all female attraction. He delighted the Parson
by keeping up his practice in athletic pursuits, and obtained
a reputation at the pugilistic school, which he attended regu¬
larly, as the best gentleman boxer about town.
He made many acquaintances, but still formed no friend¬
ships. Yet every one who saw him much conceived affection
for l\im. If he did not return that affection, he did not
repel it. He was exceedingly gentle in voice and mannm*;
and had all his father's placidity of temper—children and
dogs took to him as by instinct.
On leaving Mr. Welby's, Ken elm carried to Cambridge a
mind largely stocked with the new ideas that were budding
into leaf. He certainly astonished the other freshmen, and
occasionally puzzled the mighty Fellows of Trinity and St.
John's. But he gradually withdrew himself much from
general society. In fact, he was too old in mind for his
years ; and after having mixed in the choicest circles of a
metropolis, college suppers and wine-parties had little charm
for him. He maintained his pugUistic renown ; and on cer¬
tain occasions, when some delicate undergraduate had been
bullied by some gigantic bargeman, his muscular Christianity
nobly developed itself. He did not do as much as he might
have done in the more intellectual ways of academical dis¬
tinction. Still, he was always among the first in the college
examinations ; he won two university prizes, and took a very
creditable degree, after which he returned home, more odd,
more saturnine—in short, less like other people—than when
he had left Merten School. He had woven a solitude round
52
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
him out of hia own heart, and in that solitude he sate still
and watchful as a spider sits in his web.
Whether from natural temperament, or from his educa¬
tional training under such ■ teachers as Mr. Mivers, who
carried out the new ideas of reform by revering nothing in
the past, and Mr. Welby, who accepted the routine of the
present as realistic, and pooh-poohed all visions of the future
as idealistic, Kenebn's chief mental characteristic was a kind
of tranquil indifferentism. It was difficult to detect in him
either of those ordinary incentives to action—^vanity or am¬
bition, the yearning for applause or the desire of power. To
all female fascinations he had been hitherto star-proof. He
had never experienced love, but he had read a good deal about
it, and that passion seemed to him an unaccountable aberra¬
tion of human reason, and an ignominious surrender of the
equanimity of thought which it should be the object of
masculine natures to maintain undisturbed. A very eloquent
book in praise of celibacy, and entitled " The Approach to the
Angels," written by that eminent Oxford scholar, Decimus
Roach, had produced so remarkable an effect upon his youth¬
ful mind, that, had he been a Roman Catholic, he might have
become a monk. Where he most evinsed ardor, it was a logi¬
cian's ardor for abstract truth—^that is, for what he considered
truth ; and as what seems truth to one man is sure to seem
falsehood to some other man, this predilection of his was not
without its inconveniences and dangers, as may probably be
seen in the following chapter.
Meanwhile, rightly to appreciate his conduct therein, 1
entreat thee, 0 candid Reader (not that any Reader ever is
kenelm chillingly.
53
candid), to remember that be is brimful of new ideas, which,
met by a deep and hostile undercurrent of old ideas, becom
more provocatively billowy and surging.
CHAPTER XII.
There had been great festivities at Exmundham, in cele¬
bration of the honor bestowed upon the world by the fact
that Kenelm Chillingly had lived twenty-one years in it.
The young heir had made a speech to the assembled
tenants and other admitted revelers, which had by no means
added to the exhilaration of the proceedings. He spoke with
a fluency and self-possession which were surprising in a youth
addressing a multitude for the first time. But his speech was
not cheerful.
The principal tenant on the estate, in proposing his health,
had naturally referred to the long line of his ancestors. His
father's merits as man and landlord had been enthusiastically
commemorated, and many happy auguries for his own future
career had been drawn, partly from the excellences of his
parentage, partly from his own youthful promise in the
honors achieved at the university.
Kenelm Chillingly in reply largely availed himself of those
new ideas which were to influence the rising generation, and
with which he had been rendered familiar by the journal of
Mr. Mivers and the conversation of Mr. Welby.
51
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
He briefly disposed of the ancestral part of the question.
He observed that it was singular to note how long any given
family or dynasty could continue to flourish in any given nook
of matter in creation, without any exhibition of intellectual
powers beyond those displayed by a succession of vegetable
crops. " It is certainly true," he said, " that the ChilHnglys
I have lived in this place from father to son for about a fourth
part of the history of the world, since the date which Sir
Isaac Newton assigns to the Deluge. But, so far as can be
judged by existent records, the world has not been in any
way wiser or better for their existence. They were bom to
eat as long as they could eat, and when they could eat no
longer they died. Not that in this respect they were a whit
less insignificant than the generality of their fellow-creatures.
Most of us now present," continued the youthful orator, " are
only bom in order to die ; and the chief consolation of our
wounded pride in admitting this fact, is in the probability
that our posterity will not be of more consequence to the
scheme of nature than we ourselves are." Passing from that
philosophical view of his own ancestors in particular, and of
the human race in general, Kenelm Chillingly then touched
ffith serene analysis on the eulogies lavished on his father as
[Can and landlord.
"As man," he said, "my father no doubt deserves all that
can be said by man in favor of man. But what, at the best,
is man? A cmde, straggling, undeveloped embryo, of whom
it is the highest attribute that he feels a vague consciousness
that he is only an embiyo, and cannot complete himself till
he ceases to be a man ; that is, until he becomes another
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
55
being in another form of existence. We can praise a dog as
a dog, because a dog is a completed em, and not an embryo.
But to praise a man as man, forgetting that he is only a germ
out of which a form wholly different is ultimately to spring,
is equally opposed to Scriptural belief in his present crudity
and imperfection, and to psychological or metaphysical exam¬
ination of a mental construction evidently designed for purposes
that he can never fulfill as man. That my father is an embryo
not more incomplete than any present, is quite true; but
that, you will see on reflection, is saying very little on his
behalf. Even in the boasted physical formation of us men,
you are aware that the best-shaped amongst us, according to
the last scientific discoveries, is only a development of some
hideous hairy animal, such as a gorilla; and the ancestral
gorilla itself had its own aboriginal forefather in a small
marine animal shaped like a two-necked bottle. The proba¬
bility is that, some day or other, we shall he exterminated by
a new development of species.
"As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I
must respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly be¬
stowed on him. For all sound reasoners must concur in this,
that the first duty of an owner of land is not to the occupiers
to whom he leases it, but to the nation at large. It is his
duty to see that the land yields to the community the utmost
it can yield. In order to effect this object a landlord should
put up his farms to competition, exacting the highest rent ha
can possibly get from responsible competitors. Competitive
examination is the enlightened order of the day, even in pro¬
fessions in which the best men would have qualities that defy
56
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
examinstion. In agriculture, happily, the principle of eom
petitive examination is not so hostile to the choice of the best
man as it must he, for instance, in diplomacy, wbore a Talley¬
rand would be excluded for knowing no language but his
own ; and still more in the army, where promotion would be
denied to an officer who, like Marlborough, could not spell. But
in agriculture a landlord has only to inquire who can give the
highest rent, having the largest capital, subject by the strictest
penalties of law to the conditions of a lease dictated by the
most scientific agriculturists under penalties fixed by the
most cautious conveyancers. By this mode of procedure,
recommended by the most liberal economists of our age—^bar¬
ring those still more liberal who deny that property in land is
any property at all—^by this mode of procedure, I say, a land¬
lord does his duty to his country. He secures tenants who
can produce the most to the community by their capital,
tested through competitive examination into their bankers'
accounts and the security they can give, and through the
rigidity of covenants suggested by a Liebig and reduced into
law by a Chitty. But on my father's land I see a great many
tenants with little skill and less capital, ignorant of a Liebig
and revolting from a Chitty, and no filial enthusiasm can in¬
duce me honestly to say that my father is a good landlord.
He has preferred his affection for individuals to his duties to
the community. It is not, my friends, a question whether a
handful of farmers like yourselves go to the workhouse or
not. It is a consumer's question. Do you produce the maxi¬
mum of corn to the consumer?
" With respect to myself," continued the orator, wanning,
KENELII CHILLINGLT.
57
as the cold he had engendered in his audience became more
freezingly felt—" with respect to myself, I do not deny that,
owing to the accident of training for a very faulty and con¬
tracted course of education, I have obtained what are called
* honors' at the University of Cambridge ; but you must not
icgard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future pas¬
sage through life. Some of tho most useless persons—espe¬
cially narrow-minded and bigoted—have acquired far higher
honors at the university than have fallen to my lot.
"T thank you no less for the civil things you have said
of me and of my family ; but I shall endeavor to walk to that
grave to which we are all bound with a tranquil indifference
as to what people may say of me in so short a journey. And
the sooner, my friends, we get to our journey's end, the better
our chance of escaping a great many pains, troubles, sins, and
diseases. So that when I drink to your good healths, you
must feel that in reality I wish you an early deliverance from
the ills to which flesh is exposed, and which so generally in
crease with our years, that good health is scarcely compatibU
with the decaying faculties of old age. Gentlemen, your good
healths 1"
58
kenelm chillinglï.
CHAPTER XIIL
The morning after these birthday rejoicings, Sir Peter and
Lady Chillingly held a long consultation on the peculiarities
of their heir, and the best mode of instilling into his mind the
expediency either of entertaining more pleasing views, or at
least of professing less unpopular sentiments—compatibly of
course, though they did not say it, with the new ideas that
were to govern his centuiy. Having come to an agreement
on this delicate subject, they went forth, arm in arm, in search
of their heir. Kenelm seldom met them at breakfast. He
was an early riser, and accustomed to solitary rambles before
his parents were out of bed.
The worthy pair found Kenelm seated on the banks of a
trout-stream that meandered through Chillingly Park, dipping
his line into the water, and yawning, with apparent relief in
that operation.
" Does fishing amuse you, my hoy ?" said Sir Peter, heartily.
" Not in the least, sir," answered Kenelm.
•• Then why do you do it ?" asked Lady Chillingly,
" Because I know nothing else that amuses me more."
" Ah ! that is it," said Sir Peter ; " the whole secret of
Kenelm's oddities is to he found in these words, my dear ; ho
Deeds amusement. Voltaire says truly, ' amusement is one of
the wants of man.' And if Kenelm could be amused like
other people, he would he like other people."
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
59
" In that case," said Kenelm, gravely, and extracting from
the water a small but lively trout, which settled itself in Lady
Chillingly's lap—" in that case I would rather not be amused.
I have no interest in the absurdities of other people. The
instinct of self-preservation compels me to have some interest
in my own."
" Kenelm, sir," exclaimed Lady Chillingly, with an anima¬
tion into which her tranquil ladyship was very rarely betrayed,
"take away that horrid damp thing! Put down your rod
and attend to what your father says. Your strange conduct
gives us cause of serious anxiety."
Kenelm unhooked the trout, deposited the fish in his basket,
and raising his large eyes to his father's face, said, " What is
there in my conduct that occasions you displeasure ?"
"Not displeasure, Kenelm," said Sir Peter, kindly, "but
anxiety ; your mother has hit upon the right word. You see,
my dear son, that it is my wish that you should distinguish
yourself in the world. You might represent this county, as
your ancestors have done before. I had looked forward to the
proceedings of yesterday as an admirable occasion for your
introduction to your future constituents. Oratory is the
talent most appreciated in a free country, and why should
you not be an orator? Demosthenes says that delivery,
deliveiy, delivery, is the art of oratory ; and your delivery i&
excellent, graceful, self-possessed, classical."
" Pardon me, my dear father, Demosthenes does not say
delivery, nor action, as the word is commonly rendered ; he
says, ' acting or stage-play'—ùn6xpi<n<; ; the art hy which a
man delivers a speech in a feigned eharacter—whence we get
60
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
the word hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy I is,
according to Demosthenes, the triple art of the orator. Do
you wish me to become triply a hypocrite?"
" Kenelm, I am ashamed of you. You know as well as I
do that it is only hy metaphor that you can twist the woid
ascribed to the great Athenian into the sense of hypocrisy.
But assuming it, as you say, to mean not delivery, but acting,
I understand why your début as an orator was not successful.
Your delivery was excellent, your acting defective. An orator
should please, conciliate, persuade, prepossess. You did the
reverse of all this ; and though you produced a great effect,
the effect was so decidedly to your disadvantage, that it would
have lost you an election on any hustings in England."
"Am I to understand, my dear father," said Kenelm, in
the mournful and compassionate tones with which a pious
minister of the Church reproves some abandoned and hoary
sinner—" am I to understand that you would eommend to
your son the adoption of deliberate falsehood for the gain of a»
selfish advantage ?"
" Deliberate falsehood I you impertinent puppy 1"
" Puppy 1" repeated Kenelm, not indignantly but musingly
puppy !—a well-bred puppy takes after its parents."
Sir Peter burst out laughing.
Lady Chillingly rose with dignity, shook her gown, un¬
folded her parasol, and stalked away speechless.
"Now, look you, Kenelm," said Sir Peter, as soon as he
had composed himself. " These quips and humors of yours
are amusing enough to an eccentric man like myself, but tbey
will not do for the world ¡ and how at your age, and with the
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
61
rare advantages you have had in an early introduction to the
best intellectual society, under the guidance of a tutor ac¬
quainted with the new ideas which are to influence the eon-
duct of statesmen, you could have made so silly a speech
as you did yesterday, I cannot understand."
"My dear father, allow me to assure you that the ideas
I expressed are the new ideas most in vogue—^ideas expressed
in still plainer, or, if you prefer the epithet, still sillier terms
than I employed. You will flnd them instilled into the
public mind by ' The Londoner,' and by most intellectual
journals of a liberal character."
" Kenelm, Kenelm, such ideas would turn the world topsy¬
turvy."
" New ideas always do tend to turn old ideas topsy-turvy.
And the world, after all, is only an idea, which is turned
topsy-turvy with every successive century."
" You make me sick of the word ideas. Leave off your
metaphysics and study real life."
" It is real life which I did study under Mr. Welby. He
is the Archimandrite of Realism. It is sham life which you
wish me to study. To oblige you I am willing to commence
it. I daresay it is very pleasant. Real life is not ; on the
contrary—dull." And Kenelm yawned again.
" Have you no young friends among your fellow-col¬
legians ?"
" Friends 1 certainly not, sir. But I believe I have some
enemies, who answer the same purpose as friends, only they
don't hurt one so much."
" Do you mean to say that you lived alone at Cambridge ?"
kenelm chillingly.
" No, I lived a good deal with Aristophanes, and a littio
with Conic Sections and Hydrostatics."
" Books. Dry company."
" More innocent, at least, than moist company. Did yoa
ever get drunk, sir ?"
" Drunk !"
" I tried to do so once with the young companions whom
you would commend to me as friends. I don't think I suc¬
ceeded, but I woke with a headache. Deal life at college
abounds with headache."
" Kenelm, my boy, one thing is clear—^you must travel."
" As you please, sir. Marcus Antoninus says that it is all
one to a stone whether it be thrown upwards or downwards.
When shall I start?"
"Very soon. Of course there are preparations to make;
you should have a traveling companion. I don't mean a
tutor—you are too clever and too steady to need one—^but
a pleasant, sensible, well-mannered young person of your own
age."
" My own age—^male or female ?"
Sir Peter tried hard to frown. The utmost he could do
was to reply gravely, " Female I If I said you were too
steady to need a tutor, it was because you have hitherto
seemed little likely to be led out of your way by female
allurements. Among your other studies may I inquire if you
have included that which no man has ever yet thoroughly
mastered—the study of woman?"
" Certainly. Do you object to my catching anothci
trout ?"
KENELM CHILIINGLY.
63
" Trout be ^blest, or the reverse. So you have studied
woman. I should never have thought it. Where and when
did you commence that department of science ?"
" When ? ever since I was ten years old. Where 7
first in your own house, then at college. Hush !—a bite !"
And another trout left its native element and alighted on
Sir Peter's nose, whence it was solemnly transferred to the
basket.
" At ten years old, and in my own house. That flaunting
hussy Jane, the under-housemaid "
" Jane 1 No, sir. Pamela, Miss Byron, Clarissa—females
in Richardson, who, according to Dr. Johnson, 'taught the
passions to move at the command of virtue.' I trust for
your sake that Dr. Johnson did not err in that assertion ; for
I found all these females at night in your own private apai*t-
ments."
" Oh !" said Sir Peter, " that's all."
" All I remember at ten years old," replied Kenelm.
" And at Mr. Welby's or at college," proceeded Sir Peter,
timorously, " was your acquaintance with females of the same
kind?"
Kenelm shook his head. " Much worse ; they were very
naughty indeed at college."
" I should think so, with such a lot of young fellows run¬
ning after them."
" Very few fellows run after the females I mean—rather
avoid them."
" So much the better."
"No, my father, so muck the worse; without an intimate
64
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
knowledge of those females there is little use going to college
at all."
" Explain yourself."
" Every one who receives a classical education is introduced
into their society—Pyrrha and Lydia, Glycera and Corinna,
and many more all of the same sort ; and then the females in
Aristophanes, what do you say to them, sir ?"
" Is it only females who lived two thousand or three thousand
years ago, or more probably never lived at all, whose intimacy
you have cultivated? Have you never admired any real
women ?"
" Ileal women ! I never met one. Never met a woman
who was not a sham, a sham from the moment she is told to
be pretty-behaved, conceal her sentiments, and look fibs when
she does not speak them. But if I am to learn sham life, I
suppose I must put up with sham women."
" Have you been crossed in love, that you speak so bitterly
of the sex?"
" I don't speak bitterly of the sex. Examine any woman
on her oath, and she'll own she is a sham, always has been,
and always will be, and is proud of it."
" I am glad your mother is not by to hear you. You will
think differently one of these days. Meanwhile, to turn to
the other sex, is there no young man of your own rank with
whom you would like to travel?"
" Certainly not. I hate quarreling."
" As you please. But you cannot go quite alone ; I will
find you a good traveling servant. I must write to town to¬
da Y about your preparations, and in another week or so I hope
kenelm chillingly.
65
all will be ready. Your allowance will be whatever you like
to fix it at ; you bave never been extravagant, and—^boy—I
love you. Amuse yourself, enjoy yourself, and come back
cured of your oddities, but preserving your honor."
Sil Peter hent down and kissed his son's brow. Kenehn
was moved ; he rose, put his arm round his father's shoulder,
and lovingly said, in an undertone, " If ever I am tempted to
do a base thing, may I remember whose son I am—I shall be
safe then." He withdrew his arm as he said this, and took
his solitary way along the banks of the stream, forgetful of
rod and line.
CHAPTEK XIV.
The young man continued to skirt the side of the stream,
until he reached the boundary pale of the park. Here, placed
on a rough grass mound, some former proprietor, of a social
temperament, had built a kind of belvedere, so as to command
a cheerful view of the high-road below. Mechanically the
heir of the Chillinglys ascended the mound, seated himself
within the belvedere, and leant his chin on his hand in a
thoughtful attitude. It was rarely that the building was
honored by a human visitor—its habitual occupants were
spiders. Of those industrious insects it was a well-populated
colony. Their wehs, darkened with dust, and ornamented
with the wings, and legs, and skeletons of many an unfortu¬
nate traveler, clung thick to angle and window-sill, festooned
5
CG
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
the rickety table ou which the young man leant his elbow,
and described geometrical circles and rhomboids between the
gaping rails that formed the backs of venerable chairs. One
large black spider—^who was probably the oldest inhabitant,
and held possession of the best place by the window, ready to
offer perfidious welcome to every winged itinerant who might
be tempted to turn aside from the high-road for the sake of a
little cool and repose—^rushed from its innermost penetralia at
the entrance of Kenelm, and remained motionless in the centre
of its meshes, staring at him. It did not seem quite sura
whether the stranger was too big or not.
" It is a wonderful proof of the wisdom of Providence,"
said Kenelm, " that whenever any large number of its crea¬
tures forms a community or class, a secret element of disunion
enters into the hearts of the individuals forming the congre¬
gation, and prevents their co-operating heartily and effectually
for their common interest. ' The fleas would have dragged
me out of bed if they had been unanimous,' said the great Mr.
Curran ; and there can be no doubt that if all the spiders in
this commonwealth would unite to attack me in a body, 1
should fall a victim to their combined nippers. But spiders,
though inhabiting the same region, constituting the same
race, animated by the same instincts, do not combine even
against a butterfly; each seeks his own special advantage, and
not that of the community at large. And how completely the
life of each thing resembles a circle in this respect, that it can
never touch another circle at mere than one point. Nay, I
doubt if it quite touches it even there,—^there is a space
between every atom—self is always selfish ; and yet there are
kenelm CniLLINGLT.
67
eminent masters in the Academe of New Ideas who wish to
make us believe that all the working classes of a civilized
world could merge every difierence of race, creed, intellect,
individual propensities and interests, into the construction of
a single web, stocked as a larder in common 1" Here the
soliloquist came to a dead stop, and, leaning out of the window,
contemplated the high-road. It was a very fine high-road—
straight and level, kept in excellent order by turnpikes at
every eight miles. A pleasant greensward bordered it op
either side, and under the belvedere the benevolence of some
mediaeval Chillingly had placed a little drinking-fountain foi
the refreshment of wayfarers. Close to the fountain stood a
rude stone bench, overshadowed by a large willow, and com¬
manding from the high table-ground on which it was placed a
wide view of corn-fields, meadows, and distant hills, suffused
in the mellow light of the summer sun. Along that road
there came successively a wagon filled with passengers
seated on straw—an old woman, a pretty girl, two children ;
ihen a stout farmer going to market in his dog-cart; then
three flies carrying fares to the nearest railway station ; then
a handsome young man on horseback, a handsome young lady
by his side, a groom behind. It was easy to see that the
young man and young lady were lovers. See it in his ardent
looks and serious lips parted but for whispers only to be heard
by her ;—see it in her downcast eyes and heightened color.
" 'Alas ! regardless of their doom,' " muttered Kenelm, " what
trouble those ' little victims' are preparing for themselves and
their progeny ! Would I could lend them Decimus Roach's
'Approach to the Angels' !" The road now for some minutes
68
KENELM CHILLINGLT,
became solitary and still, when there was heard to the right a
sprightly sort of carol, half sung, half recited, in musical voice,
with a singularly clear enunciation, so that the words reached
Kenelm's ear distinctly. They ran thus :
" Elaek Karl looked forth from his cottage-door,
He looked on the forest green ;
And down the path, with his dogs before.
Came the Ritter of Neirestein :
Singing—singing—^lustily singing,
Down the path, with his dogs before.
Came the Ritter of Neirestein."
At a voice so English, attuned to a strain so Germanic,
Kenelm pricked up attentive ears, and, turning his eye down
the road, beheld, emerging from the shade of beeches that
overhung the park pales, a figure that did not altogether har¬
monize with the idea of a Kitter of Neirestein. It was,
nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough. The man was
attired in a somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with
a high-crowned Tyrolese hat ; a knapsack was slung behind
his shoulders, and he was attended by a white Pomeranian
dog, evidently foot-sore, but doing his best to appear pro¬
ficient in the chase by limping some yards in advance of his
master and sniffing into the hedges for rats and mice and
such small deer.
By the time the pedestrian had reached to the close of his
refrain he had gained the fountain, and greeted it with an
exclamation of pleasure. Slipping the knapsack from his
shoulder, he filled the iron ladle attached to the basin. Ho
then called to the dog by the name of Max, and held the
ladle for him to drink. Not till the animal had satisfied his
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
69
tliirst did the master assuage his own. Then, lifting his haï
and bathing his temples and face, the pedestrian seated him¬
self on the bench, and the dog nestled on the turf at his feet.
After a little pause the wayfarer began again, though in a
lower and slower tone, to chant his refrain, and proceeded,
with abrupt snatches, to link the verse on to another stanza.
It was evident that he was either endeavoring to remember
or to ^vent, and it seemed rather like the latter and more
laborious operation of mind.
« < Why on foot, why on foot, Ritter Karl,' quoth he,
'And not on thy palfrey gray ?'
Palfrey gray—^hum—^gray.
' The run of ill luek was too strong for me.
And has galloped my steed away.'
That will do—good 1"
""irood indeed I He is easily satisfied," muttered Kenelm.
'' But such pedestrians don't pass the road every day. Let us
talk to him." So saying, he slipped quietly out of the window,
descended the mound, and, letting himself into the road by a
screened wicket-gate, took his noiseless stand behind the way-
farer and beneath the bowery willow.
Tbe man had now sunk into silence. Perhaps he had
tired himself of rhymes ; or perhaps the mechanism of verse-
making had been replaced by that kind of sentiment, or that
kind of reverie, which is common to the temperaments of those
who indulge in verse-making. But the loveliness of the scene
70
KENEIiU CHILLINQLT.
betöre bim had caught his eye and fixed it into an intent gaxe
upon wooded landscapes stretching farther and farther to the
range of hills on which the heaven seemed to rest.
"I should like to hear the rest of that German ballad,"
said a voice, abruptly.
The wayfarer started, and, turning round, presented to
Kenelm's view a countenance in the ripest noon of manhood,
with locks and beard of a deep rich auburn, bright blue eyes,
and a wonderful nameless charm both of feature and expression,
very cheerful, very frank, and not without a certain nobleness
of character which seemed to exact respect.
"I beg your pardon for my interruption," said Kenelm,
lifting his hat ; " hut I overheard you reciting ; and though
I suppose your verses are a translation from the German, I
don't remember anything like them in such popular German
poets as I happen to have read."
"It is not a translation, sir," replied the itinerant. "I
was only trying to string together some ideas that came into
my head this fine morning."
"You are a poet, then?" said Kenelm, seating himself on
the bench.
" I dare not say poet. I am a verse-maker."
" Sir, I know there is a distinction. Many poets of the
[resent day, considered very good, are uncommonly had
verse-makers. For my part, I could more readily imagine
them to be good poets if they did not make verses at all.
But can I not hear the rest of the ballad ?"
"Alas! the rest of the ballad is not yet made. It is
rather a long subject, and my flights are veiy brief."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
71
" That is much in their favor, and very unlike the poetry
in fashion. You do not belong, I think, to this neighbor¬
hood. Are you and your dog traveling far ?"
"It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the
Bumraer. I am traveling far, for I travel till September.
Tiife amid summer fields is a very joyous thing."
" Is it indeed ?" said Kenelm, with much naïveté. " I
should have thought that, long before September, you would
have got very much bored with the fields and the dog and
yourself altogether. But, to be sure, you have the resource
of verse-making, and that seems a very pleasant and absorb¬
ing occupation to those who practice it—from our old friend
Horace, kneading labored Alcaics into honey in his summer
rambles among the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal
Bichelieu, employing himself on French rhymes in the in¬
tervals between chopping off noblemen's heads. It does not
seem to signify much whether the verses be good or had,
BO far as the pleasure of the verse-maker himself is con¬
cerned ; for Richelieu was as much charmed with his
occupation as Horace was, and his verses were certainly not
Horatian."
" Surely at your age, sir, and with your evident educa-
lion "
" Say culture ; that's the word in fashion nowadays."
"—Weil, your evident culture—^you must have made
verses.
" Latin verses — yes — and occasionally Greek. I was
obliged to do so at school. It did not amuse me."
" Try English."
72
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelm shook his head. " Not I. Every cobbler should
stick to his last."
" Well, put aside the verse-making : don't you find a
sensible enjoyment in those solitary sunMner walks, when
you have Nature all to yourself—enjoyment in marking all
the mobile, evanescent changes in her face—^lier laugh, her
smile, her tears, her very frown?"
" Assuming that by Nature you mean a mechanical series
of external phenomena, I object to your speaking of a ma¬
chinery as if it were a person of the feminine gender—lier
laugh, her smile, etc. As well talk of the laugh and smile
of a steam-engine. But to descend to common-sense. I
grant there is some pleasure in solitary rambles in fine
weather and amid varying scenery. You say that it is a
holiday excursion that you are enjoying : I presume, there¬
fore, that you have some practical occupation which con¬
sumes the time that you do not devote to a holiday ?"
"Yes; I am not altogether an idler. I work sometimes,
though not so hard as I ought. 'Life is earnest,' as the
poet says. But I and my dog are rested now, and as I have
still a long walk before me, I must wish you good-day."
" I fear," said Kenelm, with a grave and sweet politeness
of tone and manner, which he could command at times, and
which, in its difierence from merely conventional urbanity,
was not without fascination—" I fear that I have offended
you by a question that must have seemed to you inquisitive—■
perhaps impertinent ; accept my excuse ; it is very rarely that
I meet any one who interests me ; and you do." As he spoke
he offered his hand, which the wayfarer shook very cordially
kenelm cnillinqly.
73
" I should be a churl indeed if your question could have
given me offense. It is rather perhaps I who am guilty of
impertinence, if I take advantage of my seniority in years, and
tender you a counsel. Do not despise Nature, or regard her
as a steam-engine ; you will find in her a very agreeable and
conversable friend, if you will cultivate her intimacy. And I
don't know a better mode of doing so at your age, and with
your strong limbs, than putting a knapsack on your shoulders,
and turning foot-traveler, like myself."
" Sir, I thank you for your counsel ; and I trust we may
meet again, and interchange ideas as to the thing you call Na¬
ture—a thing which science and art never appear to see with
the same eyes. If to an artist Nature has a soul, why, so has
a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all matter that it contem¬
plates ; science turns all that is already gifted with soul into
matter. Good-day, sir."
Here Kenelm turned back abruptly, and the traveler went
his way, silently and thoughtfully.
CHAPTER XV.
Kenelm retraced his steps homeward under the shade of
his " old hereditary trees." One might have thought his path
along the greenswards, and by the side of the babbling rivulet,
was pleasanter and more conducive to peaceful thoughts than
the broad, dusty thoroughfare along which plodded the wan-
1)
74
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
derer lie had quitted. But the man addieted to reverie fern i
his own landseapes and colors his own skies.
" It is," soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, " a strange yearn¬
ing I have long felt—to get out of myself—to get, as it were,
into another man's skin—and have a little variety of thought
and emotion. One's self is always the same self ; and that is
why I yawn so often. But if I ean't get into another man's
skin, the next best thing is to get as unlike myself as I possi¬
bly can do. Let me see what is myself. Myself is Kenelm
Chillingly, son and heir to a rich gentleman. But a fellow
with a knapsack on his back, sleeping at wayside inns, is
not at all like Kenehn Chillingly—especially if he is very
short of money, and may come to want a dinner. Perhaps
that sort of fellow may take a livelier view of things; he
can't take a duller one. Courage, Myself,—^yon and I can
but try."
Por the next two days Kenelm was observed to be unusually
pleasant. He yawned much less frequently, walked with his
father, played piquet with his mother, was more like other
people. Sir Peter was charmed ; he ascribed this happy
change to the preparations he was making for Kenelm's travel¬
ing in style. The proud father was in active correspondence
with his great London friends, seeking letters of introduc¬
tion to Kenelm for all the courts of Europe. Portmanteaus,
with every modern convenience, were ordered ; an experienced
courier, who could talk all languages—and cook French dishes
if required—was invited to name his terms. In short, every
arrangement worthy a young patrician's entrance into the
great world was in rapid progress, when suddenly Konelm
kenelm chillingly.
75
Chillingly disappeared, leaving behind him on Sir Peter's
library-table the following letter :
"My very dear Father,—Obedient to your desire, I
depart in search of real life and real persons, or of the best
imitations of them. Forgive me, I beseech you, if I com¬
mence that search in my own way. I have seen enough of
ladies and gentlemen for the present—^they must be all very
mucl^ alike in every part of the world. You desired me to be
amused. I go to try if that be possible. Ladies and gentle¬
men are not amusing; the more lady-like or gentleman-like
they are, the more insipid I find them. My dear father, I go
in quest of adventure like Amadis of Gaul, like Don Quixote,
like Gil Bias, like Roderick Random—like, in short, the only
real people seeking real life—the people who never existed
except in books. I go on foot, I go alone. I have provided
myself with a larger amount of money than I ought to spend,
because every man must buy experience, and the first fees are
heavy. In fact, I have put fifty pounds into my pocket-book
and into my purse five sovereigns and seventeen shillings.
This sum ought to last me a year, but I daresay inexperience
will do me out of it in a month, so we will count it as no¬
thing. Since you have asked me to fix my own allowance, I
will beg you kindly to commence it this day in advance, by
an order to your banker to cash my cheques to the amount of
five pounds, and to the same amount monthly—viz., at the
rate of sixty pounds a year." With that sum I can't starve,
and if I want more it may be amusing to work for it. Pray
don't send after me, or institute inquiries, or disturb the
household, and set all the neighborhood talking, by any
mention cither of my project or of your surprise at it. I will
not fail to write to you from time to time.
" You will judge best what to say to my dear mother If
76
kenelm chillingly.
you tell her tlie truth, which of course I should do did I tell
her anything, my request is virtually frustrated, and I shall be
the talk of the county. You, I know, don't think telling fibs
is immoral, when it happens to be convenient, as it would be
in this case.
" I expect to be absent a year or eighteen months ; if 1
prolong my travels it shall be in the way you proposed. I
will then take my place in polite society, call upon you to pay
all expenses, and fib on my own account to any extent re¬
quired by that world of fiction which is peopled by illusions
and governed by shams.
" Heaven bless you, my dear father, and be quite sure that
if I get into any trouble requiring a friend, it is to you I shall
turn. As yet I have no other friend on earth, and with
prudence and good-luck I may escape the infliction of any
other friend.—^Yours ever affectionately, Kenelm.
" P.S.—Dear father, I open my letter in your library to
say again ' Bless you,' and to tell you how fondly I kissed
your old beaver gloves, which I found on the table."
When Sir Peter came to that postscript he took off his
spectacles and wiped them—they were very moist.
Then he fell into a profound meditation. Sir Peter was, as
T have said, a learned man ; he was also in some things a sen¬
sible man ; and he had a strong sympathy with the humorous
side of his son's crotchety character. What was to be said to
Lady Chillingly? That matron was quite guiltless of any
crime which should deprive her of a husband's confidence in a
matter relating to her only son. She was a virtuous matron
—^morals irreproachable—manners dignified, and s7ie-harone(y.
Any one seeing her for the first time would intuitively say,
"Your ladyship" Was this a matron to be suppressed in
kenelm chillingly.
77
any well-ordered domestic circle? Sir Peter's conscience
loudly answered, " No but when, putting conscience into
his pocket, he regarded the question at issue as a man of the
world. Sir Peter felt that to communicate the contents of his
son's letter to Lady Chillingly would be the foolishest thing
he could possibly do. Did she know that Kenelm had ab¬
sconded with the family dignity invested in his very name, no
marital authority, short of such abuses of power as constitute
the offense of cruelty in a wife's action for divorce from social
board and nuptial bed, could prevent Lady Chillingly from
oummoning all the grooms, sending them in all directions,
with strict orders to bring back the runaway dead or alive—
the walls would be placarded with handbills, " Strayed from
his home," etc.,—the police would be telegraphing private in¬
structions from town to town—^the scandal would stick to
Kenelm Chillingly for life, accompanied with vague hints of
criminal propensities and insane hallucinations—he would be
ever afterwards pointed out as " the man who had dis-
ahpeared." And to disappear and to turn up again, instead
of being murdered, is the most hateful thing a man can do ;
all the newspapers bark at him, " Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart,
and all strict explanations of the unseemly fact of his safe
existence are demanded in the name of public decorum, and
no explanations are accepted—it is life saved, character lost.
Sir Peter seized his hat and walked forth, not to deliberate
whether to fib or not to fib to the wife of his bosom, but to
consider what kind of fib would the most quickly sink into
the bosom of his wife.
A few turns to and fro the terrace sufiSced for the con-
78
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
ception and maturing of the fib selected ; a proof that Sir
Peter was a practiced fibber. He re-entered the house,
passed into her ladyship's habitual sitting-room, and said,
with careless gayety, " My old friend the Duke of Clareville
is just setting off on a tour to Switzerland with his family.
His youngest daughter, Lady Jane, is a pretty girl, and
would not be a bad match for Kenelm."
" Lady Jane, the youngest daughter with fair hair, whom
I saw last as a very charming child, nursing a lovely doll
presented to her by the Empress Eugénie. A good match
indeed fc Kenelm."
" I an glad you agree with me. Would it not be a favor¬
able step towards that alliance, and an excellent thing foi
K' uelm generally, if he were to visit the Continent as one of
th Duke's traveling party ?"
■' Of course it would."
" Then you approve what I have done—the Duke starts
the day after to-morrow, and I have packed Kenelm off
to town, with a letter to my old friend. You will excuse
all leave-taking. You know that though the best of sons
he is an odd fellow; and seeing that I had talked him
into it, I struck while the iron was hot, and sent him
off by the express at nine o'clock this morning, for fear
that if I allowed any delay he would talk himself out
of it."
"Do you mean to say Kenelm is actually gone? Good
gracious 1"
Sir Peter stole softly from the room, and, summoning his
valet, said, " I have sent Mr. Chillingly to London. Pack
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
79
ap the clothes he is likely to want, so that he can have them
sent at once, whenever he writes for them."
And thus, hy a judicious violation of truth on the part of
his father, that exemplary truth-teller Kenelm Chillingly
saved the honor of his house and his own reputation from the
breath of scandal and the inquisition of the police. He was
not " THE MAN WHO HAD DISAPPEAEED."
book: IX.
CHAPTER I.
Kenelm Chillingly had quitted the paternal homo at
daybreak, before any of the household was astir.
" Unquestionably," said he, as he walked along the solitary
lanes—" unquestionably I begin the world as poets begin
poetry, an imitator and a plagiarist. I am imitating an itin¬
erant verse-maker, as, no doubt, he began by imitating some
other maker of verse. But if there be anything in me, it will
work itself out in original form. And, after all, the verse-
maker is not the inventor of ideas. Adventure on foot is a
notion that remounts to the age of fable. Hercules, for in-
stancOj—^that was the way in which he got to heaven, as a foot-
traveler. How solitary the world is at this hour I Is it not
for that reason that this is of all hours the most beautiful ?"
Here he paused, and looked around and above. It was the
very height of summer. The sun was just rising over gentle
sloping uplands. All the dews on the hedgerows sparkled.
There was not a cloud in the heavens. Uprose from the
green blades of the corn a solitary skylark. His voice woke
up the other birds. A few minutes more, and the joyous
concert began. Kenelm reverently doffed his hat and bowed
his head in mute homage and thanksgiving.
(80)
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
81
CHAPTER II
Anour nine o'clock Kenelm entered a town some twelve
miles distant from his father's house, and towards which he
had designedly made his way, because in that town he was
scarcely if at all known by sight, and he might there make
the purchases he required without attracting any marked ob¬
servation. He had selected for his traveling costume a shoot¬
ing-dress, as the simplest and least likely to belong to his rank
as a gentleman. But still in its very cut there was an air of
distinction, and every laborer he had met on the way had
touched his hat to him. Besides, who wears a shooting-dress
in the middle of June, or a shooting-dress at all, unless he be
either a gamekeeper or a gentleman licensed to shoot ?
Kenelm entered a large store-shop for ready-made clothes,
and purchased a suit, such as might be worn on Sundays by a
small country yeoman or tenant-farmer of a petty holding,—a
stout coarse broadcloth upper garment, half coat, half jacket,
with waistcoat to match, strong corduroy trousers, a smart
Belcher neckcloth, with a small stock of linen and woolen
socks in harmony with the other raiment. He bought also a
leathern knapsack, just big enough to contain this wardrobe,
and a couple of books, which, with his combs and brushes, he
had brought away in his pockets. For among all his trunks
at home there was no knapsack.
These purchases made and paid for, he passed quickly through
D* 6
82
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
the town, and stopped at a humble inn at the outskirts, to
which he was attracted by the notice, " Refreshment for man
and beast." He entered a little sanded parlor, which at that
hour he had all to himself, called for breakfast, and devoured
the best part of a fourpenny loaf, with a couple of hard eggs.
1 bus recruited, he again sallied forth, and deviating into a
thick wood by the roadside, he exchanged the habiliments with
which he had left home for those he had purchased, and by the
help of one or two big stones sunk the relinquished garments
into a small but deep pool which he was lucky enough to find
in a bush-grown dell much haunted by snipes in the winter.
" Now," said Kenelm, " I really begin to think I have got
out of myself. I am in another man's skin ; for what, after
all, is a skin but a soul's clothing, and what is clothing but a
decenter skin ? Of its own natural skin every civilized soul
is ashamed. It is the height of impropriety for any one but
the lowest kind of savage to show it. If the purest soul now
existent upon earth, the Pope of Rome's or the Archbishop
of Canterbury's, were to pass down the Strand with the skin
which nature gave to it bare to the eye, it would be brought
up before a magistrate, prosecuted by the Society for the Sup¬
pression of Vice, and committed to jail as a public nuisance.
"Decidedly I am now in another man's skin. Kenelm
Chillingly, I no longer
Remain
Yours faithfully;
But am,
"With profound consideration,
Your obedient humble Servant."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
S3
With light step and elated crest, the wanderer, thus trans¬
formed, sprang from the wood into the dusty thoroughfare.
He had traveled on for about an hour, meeting but few
other passengers, when he heard to the right a loud shrill
young voice, " Help, help !—will not go—I tell you, I will
not !" Just before him stood, by a high five-barred gate, a
pensive gray cob attached to a neat-looking gig. The bridle
was loose on the cob's neck. The animal was evidently
accustomed to stand quietly when ordered to do so, and glad
of the opportunity.
The cries, " Help, help !" were renewed, mingled with
louder tones in a rougher voice, tones of wrath and menace.
Evidently these sounds did not come from the cob. Kenelm
looked over the gate, and saw a few yards distant, in a grass-
field, a well-dressed boy struggling violently against a stout
middle-aged man who was rudely hauling him along by the
arm.
The chivalry natural to a namesake of the valiant Sir
Kenelm Digby was instantly aroused. He vaulted over the
gate, seized the man by the collar, and exclaimed, "For shame,
what are you doing to that poor boy ?—let him go !"
" Why the devil do you interfere ?" cried the stout man—
his eyes glaring and his lips foaming with rage. " Ah, are
you the villain ?—^yes, no doubt of it. I'll give it to you,
jackanapes !" And still grasping the boy with one hand, with
the other the stout man darted a blow at Kenelm, from which
nothing less than the practiced pugilistic skill and natural
alertness of the youth thus suddenly assaulted could have
saved his eyes and nose. As it was, the stout man had the
84
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
worst oí it ; the blow was parried, returned with a dexterous
manœuvre of Kenehn's right foot in Cornish fashion, and p)-o-
cumhit humi hos,—the stout man lay sprawling on his back.
The boy, thus released, seized hold of Kenelm by the arm,
and hurrying him along up the field, cried, " Come, come
before he gets up 1 save me ! save me 1" Ere he had recovered
his own surprise, the boy had dragged Kenelm to the gate,
and jumped into the gig, sobbing forth, " Get in, get in. I
can't drive ; get in, and drive—^you. Quick ! quick !"
" But," began Kenelm.
" Get in, or I shall go mad." Kenelm obeyed, the boy
gave him the reins, and seizing the whip himself, applied it
lustily to the cob. On sprang the cob. " Stop—stop—stop,
thief ! — villain ! — Holloa !—thieves—thieves—thieves !—
stop !" cried a voice behind. Kenelm involuntarily turned
his head and beheld the stout man perched upon the gate and
gesticulating furiously. It was but a glimpse ; again the whip
was plied, the cob frantically broke into a gallop, the gig
jolted and bumped and swerved, and it was not till they had
put a good mile between themselves and the stout man that
Kenelm succeeded in obtaining possession of the whip, and
calming the cob into a rational trot.
" Young gentleman," then said Kenelm, " perhaps you will
have the goodness to explain."
" By-aud-by ; get on, that's a good fellow; you shall be well
paid for it—^well and handsomely."
Quoth Kenelm, gravely, " I know that in real life payment
and service naturally go together. But we will put aside the
payment till you tell me what is to be the service. And first,
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
85
wliitlier am I to drive you? We are coming to a place where
three roads meet ; which of the three shall I take ?"
" Oh, I don't know; there is a finger-post. I want to get
to—^but it is a secret; you'll not betray me. Promise—
swear."
" I don't swear except when I am in a passion, which, I am
sorry to say, is very seldom ; and I don't promise till I know
what I promise ; neither do I go on driving runaway boys in
other men's gigs unless I know that I am taking them to a
safe place, where their papas and mammas can get at
them."
" I have no papa, no mamma," said the boy dolefully, and
with quivering lips.
" Poor hoy ! I suppose that burly brute is your sehool-
master, and you are running away home for fear of a flog¬
ging-"
The boy hurst out laughing ; a pretty silvery merry laugh,
it thrilled through Kenelm Chillingly. " No, he would not
flog me ; he is not a schoolmaster ; he is worse than that."
" Is it possible ?" What is he ?"
"An uncle."
"Hum! uncles are proverbial for cruelty; were so in the
classical days, and Kichard III. was the only scholar in his
frmily."
" Eh 1 classical, and Richard HI. !" said the boy, startled,
and looking attentively at the pensive driver. " Who are you?
you talk like a gentleman."
"I beg pardon. I'll not do so again if I can help it."
"Decidedly," thought Kenelm, "I am" beginning to be
86
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
mnuscd. What a blessing it is to get into another inan''8
skin, and another man's gig too 1" Aloud, " Here we are at
the finger-post. If you are running away from your uncle, it
is time to inform me where you are running to."
Here the boy leaned over the gig and examined the finger¬
post. Then he clapped his hands joyfully.
"All right! I thought so—'To Tor-Hadham, eighteen
miles.' That's the road to Tor-Hadham."
" Do you mean to say I am to drive you all that way—
eighteen miles ?"
"Yes."
" And to whom are you going ?"
" I will tell you by-and-by. Do go on—do, pray. I can't
drive—never drove in my life—or I would not ask you.
Pray, pray, don't desert me ! If you are a gentleman, you will
not ; and if you are not a gentleman, I have got £10 in my
purse, which you shall have when I am safe at Tor-Hadham.
Don't hesitate; my whole life is at stake!" And the boy
began once more to sob.
Kenelm directed the pony's head towards Tor-Hadham,
and the boy ceased to sob.
" You are a good, dear fellow," said the boy, wiping his
eyes. " I am afraid I am taking you very much out of you r
road."
" I have no road in particular, and would as soon go to
Tor-Hadham, which I have never seen, as anywhere else. 1
am but a wanderer on the face of the earth."
" Have you lost your papa and mamma too ? Why, you
are not much older'than I am."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
87
Little gentleman," said Kenelm, gravel}"^, "lam just
of age ; and you, I suppose, are about fourteen."
"What fun I" cried the boy„abruptly. " Isn't it fun?"
" It will not be fun if I am sentenced to penal servitude
for stealing your uncle's gig, and robbing his little nephew of
£10. By the by, that choleric relation of yours meant to
knock down somebody else when he struck at me. He asked,
' Are you the villain ?' Pray who is the villain ? he is evi¬
dently in your confidence."
" Villain ! he is the most honorable, high-minded But
no matter now ; I'll introduce you to him when we reach
Tor-Hadham. Whip that pony; he is crawling."
" It is up-hill ; a good man spares his beast."
No art and no eloquence could extort from his young
companion any further explanation than Kenelm had yet
received ; and indeed, as the journey advanced, and they
approached their destination, both parties sank into silence.
Kenelm was seriously considering that his first day's experi¬
ence of real life in the skin of another had placed in some
peril his own. He had knocked down a man evidently re¬
spectable and well-to-do, had carried off that man's nephew,
and made free with that man's goods and chattels—i.e., his
gig and horse. All this might be explained satisfactorily to
a justice of the peace, but how ? By returning to his former
«kin ; by avowing himself to be Kenelm Chillingly, a dis¬
tinguished univei-sity medalist, heir to no ignoble name and
some £10,000 a year. But then what a scandal ! he who
abhorred scandal ; in vulgar parlance, what a " row" ! he who
denied that the very word " row" was sanctioned by any
88
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
classic authorities in the English language. He would have
to explain how he came to he found disguised, carefully dis¬
guised, in garments such as ^no baronet's eldest son—even
though that baronet be the least ancestral man of mark whom
it suits the convenience of a First Minister to recommend to
the Sovereign for exaltation over the rank of Mister—was
ever beheld in, unless he had taken flight to the gcld-diggings.
Was this a position in which the heir of the Chillinglys, a
distinguished family, whose coat of arms dated from the
earliest authenticated period of English heraldry under
Edward III. as Three Fishes azur, could be placed without
grievous slur on the cold and ancient blood of the Three
Fishes ?
And then individually to himself, Kenelm, irrespectively
of the Three Fishes. What a humiliation! He had put
aside his respected father's deliberate preparations for his en¬
trance into real life ; he had perversely chosen his own walk
on his own responsibility ; and here, before half the first day
was over, what an infernal scrape he had walked himself into !
And what was his excuse ? A wretched little boy, sobbing
and chuckling by turns, and yet who was clever enough to
twist Kenelm Chillingly round his finger ; twist liim—a man
who thought himself so much wiser than his parents—a man
who had gained honors at the University—a man of the
gravest temperament—a man of so nicely a critical turn of
mind that there was not a law of art or nature in which he
did not di tect a flaw,—^that he should get himself into this
mess was, to say the least of it, an uncomfortable reflection.
The boy himself, as Kenelm glanced at him from time to
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
89
tiwe, became impish and Will-of-the-Wisp-ish. Sometimes
be laughed to himself loudly, sometimes he wept to himself
quietly ; sometimes, neither laughing nor weeping, he seemed
absorbed in reflection. Twice as they came nearer to the
town of Tor-Hadham, Kenelm nudged the boy, and said,
" My boy, I must talk with you and twice the boy, with¬
drawing his arm from the nudge, had answered dreamily,—
" Hush 1 I am thinking."
And so they entered the town of Tor-Hadham ; the cob
very much done up.
CHAPTER III.
''Now, young sir," said Kenelm, in a tone calm, but
peremptory—"now we are in the town, where am I to
take you ? and wherever it be, there to say good-bye."
" No, not good-bye. Stay with me a little bit. I begin to
feel frightened, and I am so friendless and the boy, who
had before resented the slightest nudge on the part of
Kenelm, now wound his arm into Kenelm's, and clung to
him caressingly.
I don't know what my readers have hitherto thought
of Kenelm Chillingly, but amid all the curves and wind¬
ings of his whimsical hiimor there was one way that went
straight to his heart—^you had only to be weaker than
himself, and ask his protection.
He turned round abruptly, he forgot all the strangeness
90
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
of his position, and replied, " Little brute that you are, I'll
be shot if I forsake you if in trouble. But some compassion
is also due to the cob—^for his sake say where we are to
stop."
"I'm sure I can't say; I never was here before. Let us
g) to a nice quiet inn. Drive slowly—we'll look out for one."
Tor-Hadham was a large town, not nominally the capital
of the county, but in point of trade, and bustle, and life,
virtually the capital. The straight street, through which
the cob went as slowly as if he had been drawing a Tri¬
umphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated ap¬
pearance. The shops had handsome façades and plate-glass
windows ; the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evi¬
dently not merely of business, but of pleasure, for a largo
proportion of the passers-by was composed of the fair sex,
smartly dressed, many of them young, and some pretty. In
fact, a regiment of Her Majesty's —^th Hussars had been
sent into the town two days before, and between the officers
of that fortunate regiment, and the fair sex in that hospitable
town, there was a natural emulation which should make the
greater number of slain and wounded. The advent of these
heroes, professional subtracters from hostile, and multipliers
of friendly, populations, gave a stimulus to the caterers for
those amusements which bring young folks together—archery-
meetings, rifle-shootings, concerts, balls, announced in bills
attached to boards and walls, and exposed at shop-windows.
The boy looked eagerly forth from the gig, scanning
especially these advertisements, till at length he uttered an
excited exclamation, " Ah, I was right—there it is 1"
KENELM CniLLINOLT.
Ol
"There what is?" asked Kenelm. "The Inn?" His
companion did not answer, hnt Kenelm following the boy's
eyes pereeived an immense hand-bill :
"To-morrow Night Theatre opens,
Kichard III. Mr. Compton."
"Dp just ask where the theatre is," said the boy, in a
whisper, turning away his head.
Kenelm stopped the cob, made the inquiry, and was di¬
rected to take the next turning to the right. In a few
minutes the compo portico of an ugly dilapidated building,
dedicated to the Dramatic Muses, presented itself at the
angle of a dreary deserted lane. The walls were placarded
with play-bills, in which the name of Compton stood forth
as gigantic as capitals could make it. The boy drew a sigh.
"Now," said he, "let us look out for an inn near here—
the nearest."
No inn, however, beyond the rank of a small and ques¬
tionable-looking public-house, was apparent, until at a dis¬
tance somewhat remote from the theatre, and in a quaint,
old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat newly-whitewashed
house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large black letters
of ftinereal aspect, " Temperance Hotel."
" Stop," said the boy ; " don't you think that would suit
us ? it looks quiet."
" Could not look more quiet if it were a tombstone," re¬
plied Kenelm.
The boy put his hand upon the reins and stopped the cob,
92
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
The cob was in that condition that the slightest touch sufficed
to stop him, though he turned his head somewhat ruefully,
as if in doubt whether hay and corn would be within the
regulations of a Temperance Hotel. Kenelm descended and
entered the house. A tidy woman emerged from a sort of
glass cupboard which constituted the bar, minus the comfort¬
ing drinks associated with the heau idéal of a bar, but which
displayed instead two large decanters of cold water with
tumblers à discretion, and sundry plates of thin biscuits and
sponge-cakes. This tidy woman politely inquired what was
his "pleasure."
" Pleasure," answered Kenelm, with his usual gravity, " is
not the word I should myself have chosen. But could you
oblige my horse—I mean that horse—with a stall and a feed
of oats, and that young gentleman and myself with a pri¬
vate room and a dinner ?"
" Dinner 1" echoed the hostess—" dinner 1"
" A thousand pardons, ma'am. But if the word ' dinner*
shock you I retract it, and would say instead, ' something to
eat and drink.' "
" Drink ! This is strictly a Temperance Hotel, sir."
" Oh, if you don't eat and drink here," exclaimed
Kenelm, fiercely, for he was famished, " I wish you good-
morning."
" Stay a bit, sir. "We do eat and drink here. But we aru
very simple folks. We allow no fermented liquors."
"Not even a glass of beer?"
" Only ginger-beer. Alcohols are strictly forbidden. We
have tea, and coffee, and milk. But most of our customers
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
93
prefer the pure liquid. As for eating, sir,—anything you
order, in reason."
Kenelm shook his head and was retreating, when the boy,
who had sprung from the gig and overheard the conversation,
cried, petulantly, "What does it signify? Who wants fer¬
mented liquors? Water will do very well. And as for din¬
ner,—anything convenient. Please, ma'am, show us into a
private room ; I am so tired." The last words were said in
a caressing manner, and so prettily, that the hostess at once
changed her tone, and muttering, " poor boy 1" and, in a still
more subdued mutter, "what a pretty face he has!" nodded,
and led the way up a very clean old-fashioned staircase.
" But the horse and gig—where are they to go ?" said
Kenelm, with a pang of conscience on reflecting how ill
treated hitherto had been both horse and owner.
" Oh, as for the horse and gig, sir, you will find Jukes's
livery-stables a few yards farther down. We don't take in
horses ourselves—our customers seldom keep them ; but you
will find the best of accommodation at Jukes's."
Kenelm conducted the cob to the livery-stables thus indi¬
cated, and waited to see him walked about to cool, well
rubbed down, and made comfortable over half a peck of oats
—-for Kenelm Chillingly was a humane man to the bruto
creation—and then, in a state of ravenous appetite, returned
to the Temperance Hotel, and was ushered into a small
drawing-room, with a small bit of carpet in the centre, six
small chairs with cane seats, prints on the walls descriptive
of the various effects of inl oxicating liquors upon sundry spe¬
cimens of mankind—some resembling ghosts, others fiends,
94
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
and all with a general aspect of beggary and perdition, con¬
trasted by Happy-Family pictures—smiling wives, portly
husbands, rosy infants, emblematic of the beatified condition
of members of the Temperance Society.
A table with a spotless cloth, and knives and forks for two,
chiefly, however, attracted Kenehn's attention.
The boy was standing by the window, seemingly gazing on
a small aquarium which was there placed, and contained the
usual variety of small fishes, reptiles, and insects, enjoying
the pleasures of Temperance in its native element, including,
of course, an occasional meal upon each other.
" What are they going to give us to eat ?" inquired Kenelm.
" It must be ready by this time, I should think."
Here he gave a brisk tug at the bell-pull. The boy
advanced from the window, and as he did so Kenelm was ,
struck with the grace of his bearing and the improvement in
his looks, now that he was without his hat, and rest and ablu¬
tion had refreshed from heat and dust the delicate bloom of
his complexion. Theie was no doubt about it that he was an
exceedingly pretty boy, and if he lived to be a man would
make many a lady's heart ache. It was with a certain air of
gracious superiority such as is seldom warranted by superior
rank if it be less than royal, and chiefly becomes a marked
seniority in years, that this young gentleman, approaching the
solemn heir of the Chillinglys, held out his hand and said :
" Sir, you have behaved extremely well, and I thank you
very much."
" Your Royal Highness is condescending to say so," replied
Kenelm Chillingly, bowing low; "but have you ordered
KENELM CHII.LINGL r.
95
dinner? and rrhat are they going to give ns? No one seems
to answer the bell here. As it is a Temperance Hotel, proba.-
bly all the servants are drunk."
" Why should they be drunk at a Temperance Hotel ?"
" Why ! because, as a general rule, people who flagrantly
pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they
pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a
sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to
have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about
him which is enough to make him a humbug. Masculine
honesty, whether it be saint-like or sinner-like, does not label
itself either saint or sinner. Fancy St. Augustin labeling
himself saint, or Robert Burns sinner ; and therefore, though,
little boy, you have probably not read the Poems of Robert
Burns, and have certainly not read the Confessions of St,
Augustin, take my word for it, that both those personages
were very good fellows ; and with a little diflerence of train¬
ing and experience. Burns might have written the Confes¬
sions, and Augustin the Poems. Powers above 1 I am starving.
What did you order for dinner, and when is it to appear ?"
The boy, who had opened to an enormous width a naturally
large pair of hazel eyes, while his tall companion in fustian
trousers and Belcher neckcloth spoke thus patronizingly of
Robert Burns and St. Augustin, now replied with rather
a deprecatory and shame-faeed aspect, " I am sorry I was not
thinking of dinner. I was not so mindful of you as I ought
to have been. The landlady asked me what we would have.
I said, 'What you like;' and the landlady muttered some¬
thing about" (here the boy hesitated)
96
KENELM CHILLINOLY.
" Yea. About what ? Mutton-chops ?"
" No. Cauliflowers and rice-pudding."
Kenelm Chillingly never swore, never raged. Where ruder
beings of human mould swore or raged, he vented displeasure
in an expression of countenance so pathetically melancholic
and lugubrious that it would have melted the heart of an
Ilyrcanian tiger. He turned his countenance now on the
boy, and murmuring " Cauliflower I—Starvation I" sank into
one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and added quietly, "so
much for human gratitude !"
The boy was evidently smitten to the heart by the bitter
sweetness of this reproach. There were almost tears in his
voice, as he said, falteringly, " Pray forgive me, I was un¬
grateful. I'll run down and see what there is ;" and, sr«iting
the action to the word, he disappeared.
Kenelm remained motionless ; in fact he was plunged into
one of those reveries, or rather absorptions of inward and
spiritual being, into which it is said that the consciousness
of the Indian Dervish can be, by prolonged fasting, pre-
tematurally resolved. The appetite of all men of powerful
muscular development is of a nature far exceeding the prop¬
erties of any reasonable number of cauliflowers and rice-pud¬
dings to satisfy. Witness Hercules himself, whose cravings
for substantial nourishment were the standing joke of the
classic poets. I don't know that Kenelm Chillingly would
have beaten the Theban Hercules either in fighting or in
eating ; but when he wanted to fight or when he wanted to
eat, Hercules would have had to put forth all his strength
not to be beaten.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
97
After ten minutes' absence, the boy came back radiant. He
tapped Kenelm on the shoulder, and said playfully, " I made
them cut a whole loin into chops, besides the cauliflower, and
such a big rice-pudding, and eggs and bacon too. Cheer up !
it will be served in a minute."
" A—h 1" said Kenelm.
" They are good people ; they did not mean to stint you;
but most of their customers, it seems, live upon vegetables
and farinaceous food. There is a society here formed upon
that principle ; the landlady says they are philosophers 1"
At the word " philosophers" Kenelm's crest rose as that of
a practiced hunter at the cry of " Yoiks ! Tally-ho !" " Phi¬
losophers 1" said he—" philosophers indeed I 0 ignoramuses
who do not even know the structure of the human tooth !
Look you, little boy, if nothing were left on this earth of the
present race of man, as we are assured upon great authority
will be the case one of these days—and a mighty good rid¬
dance it will be—^if nothing, I say, of man were left except
fossils of his teeth and his thumbs, a philosopher of that
superior race which will succeed to man would at once see in
those relics all his characteristics and all his history ; would
say, comparing his thumb with the talons of an eagle, the
claws of a tiger, the hoof of a horse, the owner of that thumb
must have been lord over creatures with talons and claws and
hoofs. You may say the monkey tribe has thumbs. True ; but
compare an ape's thumb with a man's,—could the biggest ape's
thumb have built Westminster Abbey ? But even thumbs are
tiivial evidence of man as compared with his teeth. Look at
his teeth !"—here Kenelm expanded his jaws from ear to ear and
E 7
98
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
displayed semicircles of ivory, so perfect for the purposes of
mastication that the most artistic dentist might have despaired
of his power to imitate them—" look, I say, at his teeth !"
The boy involuntarily recoiled. "Are the teeth those of a
miserable cauliflower-eater ? or is it purely by farinaceous food
that the proprietor of teeth like man's obtains the rank of the
sovereign destroyer of creation? No, little boy, no," con¬
tinued Kenelm, closing his jaws, but advancing upon the in¬
fant, who at each stride receded towards the aquarium—" no ;
man is the master of the world, because of all created beings
he devours the greatest variety and the greatest number of
created things. His teeth evince that man can live upon
every soil from the torrid to the frozen zone, because man can
eat everything that other creatures cannot eat. And the format
tion of his teeth proves it. A tiger can eat a deer—so can
man ; but a tiger can't eat an eel—^man can. An elephant
can eat cauliflowers and rice-pudding—so can man ; but an
elephant can't eat a beefsteak—man can. In sum, man can
live everywhere, because he can eat anything, thanks to his
dental formation 1" concluded Kenelm, making a prodigious
stride towards the boy. " Man, when everything else fails
him, eats his own species."
" Don't ; you frighten me," said the boy. " Aha !" clap¬
ping his hands with a sensation of gleeful relief, " here come
the mutton-chops !"
A wonderfully clean, well-washed, indeed well-washed-out,
middle-aged parlor-maid now appeared, dish in hand. Putting
the dish on the table and taking off the cover, the handmaiden
said civilly, though frigidly, like one who lived upon salad
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
99
and cold water, " Mistress is sorry to have kept you waiting,
but she thought you were Vegetarians."
After helping his young friend to a mutton-chop, Kenelm
helped himself, and replied, gravely, " Tell your mistress that
if she had only given us vegetables, I should have eaten you.
Tell her that though man is partially graminivorous, ho is
prineipally carnivorous. Tell her that though a swine eats
cabbages and suchlike, yet where a swine can get a baby, it
eats the baby. Tell her," continued Kenelm (now at his
third chop), "that there is no animal that in digestive organs
more resembles man than a swine. Ask her if there is any
baby in the house ; if so, it would be safe for the baby to send
up some more chops."
As the acutest observer could rarely be quite sure when
Kenelm Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlor-maid
paused a moment and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted
his dark eyes, unspeakably sad and profound, and said, mourn¬
fully, " I should be so sorry for the baby. Bring the chops !"
The parlor-maid vanished. The boy laid down his knife and
fork, and looked fixedly and inquisitively on Kenelm. Kenelm,
unheeding the look, placed the last chop on the boy's plate.
" No more," cried the boy, impulsively, and returned the
chop to the dish. " I have dined—I have had enough."
" Little boy, you lie," said Kenelm ; " you have not had
enough to keep body and soul together. Eat that chop, or I
shall thrash you ; whatever I say, I do."
Somehow or other the boy felt quelled ; he ate the chop in
silence, again looked at Kenelm's face, and said to himself,
" I am afraid."
100
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Tlie parlor-maid here entered with a fresh supply of chops
and a dish of bacon and eggs, soon followed by a rice-pudding
baked in a tin dish, and of size sufficient to have nourished a
charity school. When the repast was finished, Kenelm seemed
to forget the dangerous properties of the carnivorous auimal ;
and stretching himself indolently out, appeared to be as inno¬
cently ruminative as the most domestic of animals graminivo¬
rous.
Then said the boy, rather timidly, " May I ask you another
favor ?"
" Is it to knock down another uncle, or to steal another gig
and cob?"
" No, it is very simple : it is merely to find out the ad¬
dress of a friend here ; and when found to give him a note
from me."
" Does the commission press ? ' After dinner rest awhile,*
saith the proverb ; and proverbs are so wise that no one can
guess the author of them. They are supposed to be fragments
of the philosophy of the antediluvians—came to us packed up
in the ark."
" Really, indeed," said the boy, seriously. "How interest¬
ing 1 No, my commission does not press for an hour or so.
Do you think, sir, they had any drama before the Deluge ?"
" Drama I not a doubt of it. Men who lived one or two
thousand years had time to invent and improve everything ;
and a play could have had its natural length then. It would
not have been necessary to crowd the whole history of Mac¬
beth, from his youth to his old age, into an absurd epitome
of three hours One cannot trace a touch of real human
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
101
nature in any actor's delineation of that very interesting
Scotchman, because the actor always comes on the stage as if
he were the same age when he murdered Duncan, and when,
in his sere and yellow leaf, he was lopped off by Macduff."
" Do you think Macbeth was young when he murdered
Duncan ?"
" Cei-tainly. No man ever commits a first crime of violent
nature, such as murder, after thirty; if he begins before, he
may go on up to any age. But youth is the season for com¬
mencing those wrong calculations which belong to irrational
hope and the sense of physical power. You thus read in the
newspapers that the persons who murder their sweethearts are
generally from two to six and twenty ; and persons who murder
from other motives than love—that is, from revenge, avarice,
or ambition—are generally about twenty-eight—^lago's age.
Twenty-eight is the usual close of the active season for get¬
ting rid of one's fellow-creatures—a prize-fighter falls off after
that age. I take it that Macbeth was about twenty-eight
when he murdered Duncan, and from about fifty-four to sixty
when he began to whine about missing the comforts of old
age. But can any audience understand that difference of
years in seeing a three-hours' play; or does any actor ever
pretend to impress it on the audience, and appear as twenty-
eight in the first act and a sexagenarian in the fifth ?"
" I never thought of that," said the hoy, evidently inter¬
ested. " But I never saw Macbeth. I have seen Richard III.
—is not that nice? Don't you dote on the Play? I do.
What a glorious life an actor's must be 1"
Kenelm, who had been hitherto rather talking to himself
102
KENELM CniLLINQLY.
than to his youthful companion, here roused his attention,
looked on the boy intently, and said :
" I see you are stage-stricken. You have run away from
home in order to turn player, and I should not wonder if this
note you want me to give is for the manager of the theatre or
one of his company."
The young face that encountered Kenelm's dark eye be¬
came very flushed, but set and défiant in its expression.
" And what if it were—^would not you give it ?"
" What 1 help a child of your age, run away from his home,
to go upon the stage against the consent of his relations—
certainly not."
" I am not a child ; hut that has nothing to do with it. I
don't want to go on the stage, at all events without the consent
of the person who has a right to dictate my actions. My
note is not to the manager of the theatre, nor to one of his
company, hut it is to a gentleman who condescends to act
here for a few nights—a thorough gentleman—a great actor
—my friend, the only friend I have in the world. I say
frankly I have run away from home so that he may have
that note, and if you will not give it some one else will !"
The hoy had risen while he spoke, and he stood erect
beside the recumbent Kenelm, his lips quivering, his eyes
sufifused with suppressed tears, but his whole aspect resolute
and determined. Evidently, if he did not get his own way in
this world, it would not be for want of will.
" I will take your note," said Kenelm.
" There it is ; give it into the hands of the person it is
addressed to,—Mr. Herbert Compton."
kenelm chillingly.
103
CHAPTER IV.
KenIií.m took his way to the theatre, and inquired of the
doorkeep*f for Mr. Herbert Compton. That functionary
replied, " Mr. Compton does not act to-night, and is not in the
house."
" "Where dios he lodge ?"
The doorkeeper pointed to a grocer's shop on the other side
of the way, and said, tersely, " There, private door—knock
and ring."
Kenelm did as he was directed. A slatternly maid-servant
opened the door, and, in answer to his interrogatory, said
that Mr. Compton was at home, but at supper.
" I am sorry to disturb him," said Kenclm, raising his
voice, for he heard a clatter of knives and plates within a
room hard by at his left, " but my business requires to see
him forthwith and, pushing the maid aside, he entered at
once the adjoining banquet-hall.
Before a savory stew smelling strongly of onions sat a man
very much at his ease, without coat or neckcloth, a decidedly
handsome man—^his hair cut short and his face closely shaven,
as befits an actor who has wigs and beards of all hues and
forms at his command. The man was not alone ; opposite to
him sat a lady, who might be a few years younger, of a some¬
what faded complexion, but still pretty, with good stage features
and a profusion of blonde ringlets.
104
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Mr. Compton, I presume," said Kenelm, with a solemn
bow.
" My name is Compton : any message from the theatre ? or
what do you want with me ?"
" I ?—nothing 1" rephed Kenelm ; and then, deepening his
naturally mournful voice into tones ominous and tragic, con¬
tinued—" By whom you are wanted let this explain there¬
with he placed in Mr. Compton's hand the letter with which
he was charged, and stretching his arms and interlacing his
fingers in the j>ose of Talma as Julius Caesar, added, " ' Qu'en
dis-tu, Brute ?' "
Whether it was from the sombre aspect and awe-inspiring
delivery, or ôizôxptatç, of the messenger, or the sight of the
handwriting on the address of the missive, Mr. Compton's
countenance suddenly fell, and his hand rested irresolute, as
if not daring to open the letter.
" Never mind me, dear," said the lady with blonde ringlets,
in a tone of stinging affability; " read your hiUet-doux ; don't
keep the young man waiting, love 1"
" Nonsense, Matilda, nonsense ! bidet-doux, indeed 1 more
likely a bill from Duke the tailor. Excuse me for a moment,
my dear. Follow me, sir," and rising, still with shirt-sleeves
uncovered, he quitted the room, closing the door after him,
motioned Kenelm into a small parlor on the opposite side
of the passage, and by the light of a suspended gas-lamp ran
his eye hastily over the letter, which, though it seemed very
short, drew from him sundry exclamations. " Good heavens I
how very absurd 1 what's to be done ?" Then, thrusting the
letter into his trousers-pocket, he fixed upon Kenelm a very
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
105
brilliant pair of dark eyes, which soon dropped before the
steadfast look of that saturnine adventurer.
" Are you in the confidence of the writer of this letter ?"
asked Mr. Compton, rather confusedly.
" I am not the confidant of the writer," answered Kenelm,
" but for the time being I am the protector."
" Protector?"
" Protector."
M#. Compton again eyed the messenger, and, this time fully
realizing the gladiatorial development of that dark stranger's
physical form, he grew many shades paler, and involuntarily
retreated towards the hell-pull.
After a short pause, he said, " I am requested to call on the
writer. If I do so, may I understand that the interview will
be strictly private ?"
" So far as I am concerned, yes—on the condition that no
attempt be made to withdraw the writer froir. the house."
" Certainly not—certainly not ; quite the contrary," ex¬
claimed Mr. Compton, with genuine animation. " Say I will
call in half an hour."
" I will give your message," said Kenelm, with a polite
inclination of his head ; " and pray pardon me if I remind
you that I styled myself the protector of your correspondent,
and if the slightest advantage be taken of that correspondent's
youth and inexperience, or the smallest encouragement be
given to plans of abduction from home and friends, the stage
will lose an ornament, and Herbert Compton vanish from
lh.e scene."
With those words Kenelm left the player standing agh.ist
E*
lOÖ
KENELM OniLLlNGLY.
G-aining the street-door, a lad with a handbox ran against
him and was nearly upset.
" Stupid," cried the lad, " can't you see where you are
going ? Give this to Mrs. Compton."
" I should deserve the title you give if I did for nothing
the business for which you are paid," replied Kenelm, senten-
(iously, and striding on.
CHAPTER V.
" I HAVE fulfilled my mission," said Kenelm, on rejoining
his traveling companion. " Mr. Compton said he would he
here in half an hour."
" You saw him ?"
'' Of course ; I promised to give your letter into his own
hands.''
" Wf.i he alone?"
" No ; at supper with his wife."
" Hia wife ? what do you mean, sir ?—wife ! he has no
wife."
" Appearances are deceitful. At least he was with a lady
who called him ' dear' and ' love' in as spiteful a tone of voice
as if she had been his wife ; and as I was coming out of his
street-door a lad who ran against me asked me to give a band¬
box to Mrs. Compton."
The boy turned as white as death, staggered back a few
steps, and dropped into a chair.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
107
A suspicion whicli, during his absence, had suggested
itself to Kenelm's inquiring mind, now took strong confinnür
tion. He approached softly, drew a chair close to the com¬
panion whom fate had forced upon him, and said, in a gentle
whisper ;
" This is no hoy's agitation. H you have been deceived or
misled, and I can in any way advise or aid you, count on me
as women under the circumstances count on men and gentle¬
men."
The boy started to his feet, and paced the room with dis¬
ordered steps, and a countenance working with passions which
he attempted vainly to suppress. Suddenly arresting his
steps, he seized Kenelm's hand, pressed it convulsively, and
said, in a voice struggling against a sob :
" I thank you—I bless you. Leave me now—I would he
alone. Alone, too, I must face this man. There may he
some mistake yet ;—go."
" You will promise not to leave the house till I return?
" Yes, I promise that."
" And if it he as I fear, you will then let me counsel with
and advise you ?"
" Heaven help me, if so I Whom else should I trust to 7
Go—go !"
Kenelm once more found himself in the streets, beneath
the mingled light of gas-lamps and the midsummer moon.
He walked on mechanically till he reached the extremity of
the town. There he halted, and, seating himself on a mile¬
stone, indulged in these meditations :
" Kenelm, my friend, you are in a still worse scrape than I
108
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
thought you were an hour ago. You have evidently now got
a woman on your hands. What on earth are you to do with
her? A runaway woman, who, meaning to run ofiF with
somebody else—such are the crosses and contradictions in
human destiny—has run ofiF with you instead. What mortal
can hope to be safe ? The last thing I thought could befall
me when I got up this morning was that I should have any
trouble about the other sex before the day was over. If
I were of an amatory temperament, the Fates might have
some justification for leading me into this snare, but, as it is,
those meddling old maids have none. Kenelm, my friend,
do you think you ever can be in love ? and, if you were in,
love, do you think you could be a greater fool than you are
now ?"
Kenelm had not decided this knotty question in tht
conference held with himself, when a light and soft strain
of music came upon his ear. It was but from a stringed
instrument, and might have sounded thin and tinkling, but
for the stillness of the night, and that peculiar addition of
fullness which music acquires when it is borne along a
tranquil air. Presently a voice in song was heard from
the distance accompanying the instrument. It was a man's
voice, a mellow and a rich -voice, but Kenelm's ear could
not catch the words. Mechanically he moved on towards the
quarter from which the sounds came, for Kenelm Chillingly
had music in his soul, though he was not quite aware of
it himself. He saw before him a patch of greensward, on
which grew a solitary elm with a seat for wayfarers beneath
it. From this sward the ground receded in a wide semi-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
109
circle bordered partly by sbops, partly by the tea-gardens
of a pretty cottage-like tavern. Round the tables scattered
throughout the gardens were grouped quiet customers, evi¬
dently belonging to the class of small tradespeople or superior
artisans. They had an appearance of decorous respectability,
and were listening intently to the music. So were many per¬
sons at the shop-doors, and at the windows of upper rooms.
On the sward, a little in advance of the tree, but beneath
its siadow, stood the musician, and in that musician Kenelm
recognized the wanderer from whose talk he had conceived
the idea of the pedestrian excursion which had already
brought him into a very awkward position. The instrument
on which the singer accompanied himself was a guitar, and
his song was evidently a love-song, though, as it was now
drawing near to its close, Kenelm could but imperfectly guess
at its general meaning. He heard enough to perceive that
its words were at least free from the vulgarity which gen¬
erally characterizes street-ballads, and were yet simple enough
to please a very homely audience.
When the singer ended there was no applause ; but there
was evident sensation among the audience—a feeling as if
something that had given a common enjoyment had ceased.
Presently the white Pomeranian dog, who had hitherto kept
Limself out of sight under the seat of the elm-tree, advanced,
with a small metal tray between his teeth, and, after looking
round him deliberately as if to select whom of the audience
should be honored with the commencement of a general sub¬
scription, gravely approached Kenelm, stood on his hind-legs,
stared at him, and presented the tray.
110
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelm dropped a shilling into that depository, and the
dog, looking gratiñed, took his way towards the tea-gardens.
Lifting his hat, for he was, in his way, a very polite man,
Kenelm approached the singer, and, trusting to the alteration
in his dress for not being recognized by a stranger who had
only once before encountered him, he said :
" Judging by the little I heard, you sing very well, sir.
May I ask who composed the words ?"
" They are mine," replied the stranger.
" And the air ?"
" Mine too."
"Accept my compliments. I hope you find these mani¬
festations of genius lucrative ?"
The singer, who had not hitherto vouchsafed more than
a careless glance at the rustic garb of the questioner, now
fixed his eyes full upon Kenelm, and said, with a smile,
" Your voice betrays you, sir. We have met before."
" True ; but I did not then notice your guitar, nor, though
acquainted with your poetical gifts, suppose that you selected
this primitive method of making them publicly known."
" Nor did I anticipate the pleasure of meeting you again in
the character of Hobnail. Histl let us keep each other's
secret. I am known hereabouts by no other designation than
that of the ' Wandering Minstrel.' "
" It is in the capacity of minstrel that I address you. If it
be not an impertinent question, do you know any songs which
take the other side of the case?"
" What case ? I don't understand you, sir."
" The song I heard seemed in praise of that sham called
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Ill
love. Don't you think you could say something more new
and more true, treating that aberration from reason with the
contempt it deserves?"
" Not if I am to get my traveling expenses paid."
" What ! the folly is so popular ?"
" Does not your own heart tell you so ?"
"Not a bit of it—^rather the contrary. Your audience
at present seem folks who live by work, and can have little
time lor such idle phantasies—for, as it is well observed by
Ovid, a poet who wrote much on that subject, and pro¬
fessed the most intimate acquaintance with it, ' Idleness is
the parent of love.' Can't you sing something in praise of a
good dinner? Everybody who works hard has an appetite for
food."
The singer again fixed on Kenelm his inquiring eye, but,
not detecting a vestige of humor in the grave face he contem¬
plated, was rather puzzled how to reply, and therefore remained
silent.
" I perceive," resumed Kenelm, " that my observations sur¬
prise you : the surprise will vanish on reflection. It has been
said by another poet, more reflective than Ovid, 'that the
world is governed by love and hunger.' But hunger certainly
ha^ the lion's share of the government ; and if a poet is really
to do what he pretends to do—viz., represent nature—^the
greater part of his lays should be addressed to the stomach."
Here, warming with his subject, Kenelm familiarly laid his
hand on the musician's shoulder, and his voice took a tone
bordering on enthusiasm. "You will allow that a man, in
the normal condition of health, does not fall in love every day.
112
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
But in the normal condition of health he is hungry every
day. Nay, in those early years when you poets say he is
most prone to love, he is so especially disposed to hunger that
less than three meals a day can scarcely satisfy his appetite.
You may imprison a man for months, for years, nay, for his
whole life—from infancy to any age which Sir Cornewall
Lewis may allow him to attain—without letting him be in
love at all. But if you shut him up for a week without
putting something into his stomach, you will find him at the
end of it as dead as a door-nail."
Here the singer, who had gradually retreated before the
energetie advance of the orator, sank into the seat by the elm-
tree, and said, pathetically, " Sir, you have fairly argued me
down. Wi'.l you please to come to the conclusion which you
deduce from your premises?"
" Simply this, that where you find one human being who
cares about love, you will find a thousand susceptible to the
charms of a dinner ; and if you wish to be the popular minne¬
singer or troubadour of the age, appeal to nature, sir-
appeal to nature ; drop all hackneyed rhapsodies about a rosy
cheek, and strike your lyre to the theme of a beefsteak."
The dog had for some minutes regained his master's side,
standing on his hind-legs, with the tray, tolerably well filled
with copper coins, between his teeth; and now, justly ag¬
grieved by the inattention which detained him in that artificial
attitude, dropped the tray and growled at Kenelm.
At the same time there came an impatient sound from the
audienee in the tea-garden. They wanted another song for
their money.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
The singer rose, obedient to the summons. " Excuse me,
sir ; but I am called upon to "
" To sing again ?"
"Yes."
" And on the subject I suggest ?"
" No, indeed."
" What ! love, again ?"
" I am afraid so."
" I wish you good-evening, then. You seem a well-educated
man—more shame to you. Perhaps we may meet once more
in our rambles, when the question can be properly argued
out."
Kenelm lifted his hat, and turned on his heel. Before he
reached the street, the sweet voice of the singer again smote
his ears; but the only word distinguishable in the distance,
ringing out at the close of the refrain, was " love."
" Fiddle-de-dee," said Kenelm.
CHAPTER VI.
As Kenelm regained the street dignified by the edifice of
the Temperance Hotel, a figure, dressed picturesquely in a
Spanish cloak, brushed hurriedly by him, but not so fast as to
be unrecognized as the tragedian. " Hem 1" muttered Ken-
elm—" I don't think there is much triumph in that face. I
suspect he has been scolded."
8
114
KENfiLM CHILLINQLT.
The boy—if Kenelm's traveling companion is still to be so
designated—^was leaning against the mantelpiece as Kenelm
re-entered the dining-room. There was an air of profound
dejection about the boy's listless attitude and in the drooping
tearless eyes.
" My dear child," said Kenelm, in the softest tones of his
plaintive voice, " do not honor me with any confidence that
may be painful. But let me hope that you have dismissed
forever all thoughts of going on the stage."
" Yes," was the scarce audible answer.
" And now only remains the question, ' What is to be
done?' "
" I am sure I don't know, and I don't care."
" Then you leave it to me to know and to care, and assum¬
ing for the moment as a fact, that which is one of the greatest
lies in this mendacious world—^namely, that all men are
brothers, you will consider me as an elder brother, who will
counsel and control you as he would—an imprudent young
sister. I see very well how it is. Somehow or other
you, having first admired Mr. Compton as Romeo or Richard
III., made his acquaintance as Mr. Compton. He allowed
you to believe him a single man. In a romantic moment you
escaped from your home, with the design of adopting the p ro
fcssion of the stage and of becoming Mrs. Compton."
" Oh," broke out the girl, since her sex must now be declared
—" oh," she exclaimed, with a passionate sob, " what a fool I
have been 1 Only do not think worse of me than I deserve.
The man did deceive me ; he did not think I should take him
at his word, and follow him here, or his wife would not hava
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
115
appeared. I should not have known he had one ; and—
and " here her voice was choked under her passion.
" But, now you have discovered the truth, let us thank
heaven that you are saved from shame and misery. I must
dispatch a telegram to your uncle—give me his address."
" No, no."
" There is not a ' No' possible in this case, my child. Your
reputation and your future must he saved. Leave me to ex¬
plain aîl to your uncle. He is your guardian. I must send
for him; nay, nay, there is no option. Hate me now for
enforcing your will, you will thank me hereafter. And listen,
young lady ; if it does pain you to see your uncle and en¬
counter his reproaches, every fault must undergo its punish¬
ment. A brave nature undergoes it cheerfully, as a part of
atonement. You are brave. Submit, and in submitting re-
* *
joice 1
There was something in Kenelm's voice and manner at
once so kindly and so commanding, that the wayward nature
he addressed fairly succumbed. She gave him her uncle's
address, " John Bovill, Esq., Oakdale, near Westmere," and,
after giving it, fixed her eyes mournfully upon her young
adviser, and said, with a simple, dreary pathos, " Now, will
you esteem me more, or rather despise me less ?"
She looked so young, nay, so childlike, as she thus spc ke,
that Kenelm felt a parental inclination to draw her on his lap
and kiss away her tears. But he prudently conquered that
impulse, and said, with a melancholy half-smile :
" If human beings despise each other for being young and
foolish, the sooner we are exterminated by that superior race
116
kenelm chillingly.
which is to succeed us on earth the better it will be. Adieu
till your uncle comes."
" What ! you leave me here—alone ?"
" Nay, if your uncle found me under the same roof, new
that I know you are his niece, don't you think he would have
a right to throw me out of the window ? Allow me to prac¬
tice for myself the prudence I preach to you. Send for the
landlady to show you your room, shut yourself in there, go to
bed, and don't cry more than you can help."
Kenelm shouldered the knapsack he had deposited in a
comer of the room, inquired for the telegraph of&ce, dis¬
patched a telegram to Mr. Bovill, obtained a bedroom at the
Commercial Hotel, and fell asleep muttering these sensible
words :
" Kochefoucauld was perfectly right when he said, ' Very
few people would fall in love if they had not heard it so
much talked about.' "
CHAPTER VII.
Kenelm Chillingly rose with the sun, according to his
usual custom, and took his way to the Temperance Hotel.
All in that sober building seemed still in the arms of Mor¬
pheus. He turned towards the stables in which he had left
the gray coh, and had the pleasure to see that ill-used animal
in the healthful process of rubbing down.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
117
" That's right," said he to the ostler. " I am glad to sea
you are so early a riser."
" Why," quoth the ostler, " the gentleman as owns the
pony knocked me up at two o'elock in the morning, and
pleased enough he was to see the ereature again lying don n
in the clean straw."
" Oh, he has arrived at the hotel. I presume ?—a stout
gentleman ?"
" Yes, stout enough ; and a passionate gentleman too.
Came in a yellow and two posters, knocked up the Temper¬
ance, and then knocked up me to see for the pony, and was
much put out as he could not get any grog at the Temper¬
ance."
" I daresay he was. I wish he had got his grog ; it might
have put him in better humor. Poor little thing !" muttered
Kenelm, turning away ; " I am afraid she is in for a regular
vituperation. My turn next, I suppose. But he must be a
good fellow to have come at once for his niece in the dead of
the night."
About nine o'clock Kenelm presented himself again at the
Temperance Hotel, inquired for Mr. Bovill, and was shown
by the prim maid-servant into the drawing-room, where he
found Mr. Bovill seated amicably at breakfast with his niece,
who, of course, was still in boy's clothing, having no other
costume at hand. To Kenelm's great relief, Mr. BovUl rose
from the table with a beaming countenance, and, extending
his hand to Kenelm, said ;
" Sir, you are a gentleman j sit down, sit down, and take
Oicakfast."
118
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
Then, as soon as the maid was out of the room, the uncle
continued :
" I have heard all your good conduct from this young sim¬
pleton. Things might have been worse, sir."
Kenelm bowed his head, and drew the loaf towards him in
silence. Then, considering that some apology was due to his
entertainer, he said :
"I hope you forgive me for that unfortunate mistake
when "
" You knocked me down, or rather tripped me up. All
right now. Elsie, give the gentleman a cup of tea. Pretty
little rogue, is not she ? and a good girl, in spite of her non¬
sense. It was all my fault letting her go to the play and be
intimate with Miss Lockit, a stage-stricken, foolish old maid,
who ought to have known better than lead her into all this
trouble."
"No, uncle," cried the girl, resolutely; "don't blame her,
nor any one but me."
Kenelm turned his dark eyes approvingly towards the girl,
and saw that her lips were firmly set ; there was an expression,
not of grief nor shame, but compressed resolution in her
countenance. But when her eyes met his they fell softly,
and a blush mantled over her cheeks up to her very fore¬
head.
"Ah!" said the uncle, "just like you, Elsie; always ready
to take everybody's fault on your own shoulders. Well, well,
say no more about that. Now, my young friend, what brings
you across the country tramping it on foot, eh ? a young man's
whim ?" As he spoke he eyed Kenelm very closely, and hia
KENELM CHILLINGLY.,
119
look Wíns that of an intelligent man not unaccustomed to ob¬
serve the faces of those he conversed with. In fact, a more
shrewd man of business than Mr. Bovill is seldom met with on
'Change or in market.
" I travel on foot to please myself, sir," answered Kenelm^
curtly, and unconsciously set on his guard.
" Of course you do," cried Mr. Bovill, with a jovial laugh.
" But it seems you don't object to a chaise and pony when¬
ever you can get them for nothing—^ha, ha t—excuse me—a
joke."
Herewith Mr. Bovill, still in excellent good-humor, abruptly
changed the conversation to general matters—agricultural
prospects—chance of a good harvest—corn trade—money
market in general—politics—state of the nation. Kenelm
felt there was an attempt to draw him out, to sound, to pump
him, and replied only by monosyllables, generally significant
of ignorance on the questions broached ; and at the close,
if the philosophical heir of the Ghillinglys was in the habit of
allowing himself to be surprised he would certainly have been
startled when Mr. Bovill rose, slapped him on the shoulder,
and said, in a tone of great satisfaction, " Just as I thought,
sir ; you know nothing of these matters—you are a gentleman
born and bred—your clothes can't disguise you, sir. Elsie
was right. My dear, just leave us for a few minutes ; I have
something to say to our young friend. You can get ready
meanwhile to go with me."
Elsie left the table and walked obediently towards the
doorway. There she halted a moment, turned round, and
looked timidly towards Kenelm. He had naturally rise»
120
KENELM CniLLINGLY.
from his seat as she rose, and advanced some paces as if t<
open the door for her. Thus their looks encountered. He
could not interpret that shy gaze of hers ; it was tender, it
was deprecating, it was humble, it was pleading; a man
accustomed to female conquests might have thought it was
something more, something in which was the key to alL
But that something more was an imknown tongue to Kenelm
Chillingly.
When the two men were alone, Mr. BoviU reseated him¬
self, and motioned to Kenelm to do the same. " Now, young
sir," said the former, " you and I can talk at our ease. That
adventure of yours yesterday may be the luckiest thing that
could happen to you."
"It is sufficiently lucky if I have been of any service to
your niece. But her own good sense would have been her
safeguard if she had been alone, and discovered, as she would
have done, that Mr. Compton had, knowingly or not, misled
her to believe that he was a single man."
" Hang Mr. Compton ! we have done with him. I am a
plain man, and I come to the point. It is you who have car¬
ried off my niece ; it is with you that she came to this hotel.
Now, when Elsie told me how well you had behaved, and that
your language and manners were those of a real gentleman,
my mind was made up. I guess pretty well what you are ;
you are a gentleman's son—^probably a college youth—not
overburdened with cash—^had a quarrel with your governor,
and he keeps you short. Don't interrupt me. Well, Elsie
is a good girl and a pretty girl, and will make a good wife, as
wives go ; and, hark ye, she has £20,000. So just confide
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
121
in me—and if you don't like your parents to know about it
till the thing's done, and they he only got to forgive and
bless you, why, you shall marry Elsie before you can say
Jack Robinson."
For the first time in his life Kenelm Chillingly was seized
with terror—terror and consternation. His jaw dropped—•
his tongue was palsied. If hair ever stands on end, his hair
did. At last, with superhuman effort, he gasped out the
word, " Marry !"
" Yes—marry. If you are a gentleman you are bound to
it. You have compromised my niece—a respectable, virtuous
girl, sir—an orphan, but not unprotected. I repeat, it is you
who have plucked her from my very arms, and with violence
and assault ; eloped with her ; and what would the world say
if it knew? Would it believe in your prudent conduct?—
conduct only to be explained by the respect you felt due to
your future wife. And where will you find a better ? Where
will you find an uncle who will part with his ward and
£20,000 without asking if you have a sixpence? and the
girl has taken a fancy to you—I see it; would she have
given up that player so easily if you had not stolen her
heart? Would you break that heart? No, young man—
you are not a villain. Shake hands on it 1"
" Mr. Bovill," said Kenelm, recovering his wonted equa¬
nimity, " I am inexpressibly flattered by the honor you propose
to me, and I do not deny that Miss Elsie is worthy of a much
better man than myself. But I have inconceivable prejudices
against the connubial state. If it be permitted to a member
of the Established Church to cavil at any sentence written by
p
122
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
St. Paul—and I think that liberty may be permitted to a
eimple layman, since eminent members of the clergy criticise
the whole Bible as freely as if it were the history of Queen
Elizabeth by Mr. Froude—I should demur at the doctrine
that it is better to marry than to burn ; I myself should pre¬
fer burning. With these sentiments it would ill become any
one entitled to that distinction of ' gentleman' which you con¬
fer on me to lead a fellow-victim to the sacrificial altar. As
for any reproach attached to Miss Elsie, since in my telegram
I directed you to ask for a young gentleman at this hotel, her
very sex is not known in this place unless you divulge it.
And "
Here Kenelm was interrupted by a violent explosion of
rage from the uncle. He stamped his feet ; he almost framed
at the mouth ; he doubled his fist, and shook it in Kenelm's
face.
" Sir, you are mocking me ; John Bovill is not a man to
be jeered in this way. You shall marry the girl. I'll not
have her thrust hack upon me to be the plague of my life
with her whims and tantrums. You have taken her, and you
shall keep her, or I'll break every bone in your skin."
" Break them," said Kenelm, resignedly, but at the same
time falling hack into a formidable attitude of defense, which
cooled the pugnacity of his accuser. îlr. Bovill sank into
his chair, and wiped his forehead. Kenelm craftily pursued
the advantage he had gained, and in mild accents proceeded
to reason :
" When you recover your habitual serenity of humor, Mr.
Bovill, you will see how much your very excusable desire to
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
123
secure your niece's happiness, and, I may add, to reward what
you allow to have been forbearing and well-bred conduct on
my part, has hurried you into an error of judgment. You
know nothing of me. I may be, for what you know, an im¬
postor or swindler ; I may have every bad quality, and yet
you are to be contented with my assurance, or rather your
own assumption, that I am bom a gentleman, in order to g¡7e
me your niece and her £20,000. This is temporary insanity
on your part. Allow me to leave you to recover from your
excitement."
" Stop, sir," said Mr. Bovill, in a changed and sullen tone ;
"I am not quite the madman you think me. But I daresay
I have been too hasty and too rough. Nevertheless the facts
are as I have stated them, and I do not see how, as a man of
honor, you can get off marrying my niece. The mistake you
made in running away with her was, no doubt, innocent on
your part ; but still there it is ; and supposing the case came
before a jury, it would be an ugly one for you and your
family. Marriage alone could mend it. Come, come, I own
I was too business-like in rushing to the point at once, and I
no longer say, ' Marry my niece off-hand.' You have only
seen her disguised and in a false position. Pay me a visit at
Oakdale—stay with me a month—and if, at the end of that
time, you do not like her well enough to propose, I'll let you
off and say no more about it."
While Mr. Bovill thus spoke, and Kenelm listened, neither
saw that the door had been noiselessly opened, and that Elsie
Stood at the threshold. Now, before Kenelm could reply, she
advanced into the middle of the room, and, her small figuro
121
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
drawn up to its fullest height, her cheeks glowing, her lips
quivering, exclaimed :
" Uncle, for shame 1" Then, addressing Kenelm in a sharp
tone of anguish, " Oh, do not believe I knew anything of
this 1" she covered her face with both hands, and stood mute.
All of chivalry that Kenelm had received with his bap¬
tismal appellation was aroused. He sprang up, and, bending
his knee as he drew one of her hands into his own, he said :
" I am as convinced that your uncle's words are abhorrent
to you as I am that you are a pure-hearted and high-spirited
woman, of whose friendship I shall be proud. We meet
again." Then releasing her hand, he addressed Mr. Bovill :
" Sir, you are unworthy the charge of your niece. Had you
not been so, she would have committed no imprudence. If
she have any female relation, to that relation transfer youi
charge."
" I have 1 I have 1" cried Elsie ; " my lost mother's sister
—^let me go to her."
" The woman who keeps a school 1" said Mr. Bovill, sneer
ingly.
" Why not ?" asked Kenelm.
" She never would go there. I proposed it to her a year
ago. The minx would not go into a school."
" I will now, uncle."
" Well, then, you shall at once ; and I hope you'll be put
on bread and water. Fool 1 fool 1 you have spoilt your own
game. Mr. Chillingly, now that Miss Elsie has turned her
back on herself, I can convince you that I am not the madman
you thought me. I was at the festive meeting held when you
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
125
came of age—my brother is one of your father's tenants. I
did not recognize your face immediately in the excitement of
our encounter and in your change of dress ; but in walking
home it struck me that I had seen it before, and I knew it at
once when you entered the room to-day. It has been a tussle
between us which should beat the other. You have beat me ;
and thanks to that idiot 1 If she had not put her spoke into
my wheel, she should have lived to be ' my lady.' Now
good-day, sir."
" Mr. Bovill, you offered to shake hands : shake hands now,
and promise me, with the good faith of one honorable com¬
batant to another, that Miss Elsie shall go to her aunt the
schoolmistress at once if she wishes it. Hark ye, my friend"
(this in Mr. Bovill's ear) ; " A man can never manage a
woman. Till a woman marries, a prudent man leaves her to
women ; when she does marry, she manages her husband, and
there's an end of it."
Kenelm was gone.
" Oh, wise young man !" murmured the uncle. " Elsie,
dear, how can we go to your aunt's while you are in that
dress ?"
Elsie started as from a trance, her eyes directed towards
the doorway through which Kenelm had vanished. " This
dress," she said, contemptuously—"this dress—is not that
easily altered with shops in the town ?"
" Gad I" muttered Mr. Bovill, " that youngster is a second
Solomon ; and if I can't manage Elsie, she'll manage a husband
—^whenever she gets one."
126
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
CHAPTER VIH.
"Br the powers that guard innocence and celibacy," solilo¬
quized Kenelm Chillingly, " but I have had a narrow escape 1
and had that amphibious creature been in girl's clothes instead
of boy's, when she intervened like the deity of the ancient
drama, I might have plunged my armorial Fishes into hot
water. Though, indeed, it is hard to suppose that a young
lady head-over-eai-s in love with Mr. Compton yesterday could
have consigned her affections to me to-day. Still she looked
as if she could, which proves either that one is never to trust
a woman's heart, or never to trust a woman's looks. Decimus
Roach is right. Man must never relax his flight from the
women, if he strives to achieve an ' Approach to the Angels.' "
These reflections were made by Kenelm Chillingly as,
having turned his back upon the town in which such tempta¬
tions and trials had befallen him, he took his solitary way
along a footpath that wound through meads and corn-fields,
and shortened by three miles the distance to a cathedral town
at which he proposed to rest for the night.
He had traveled for some hours, and the sun was beginning
to slope towards a range of blue hills in the west, when he
came to the margin of a fresh rivulet, overshadowed by
feathery willows and the quivering leaves of silvery Italian
poplars. Tempted by the quiet and cool of this pleasant spot,
he flung himself down on the banks, drew from his knapsack
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
127
Borne crusts of bread with which he had wisely provided him¬
self, and, dipping them into the pure lymph as it rippled over
its pebbly bed, enjoyed one of those luxurious repasts for
which epicures would exchange their banquets in return for
the appetite of youth. Then, reclined along the bank, and
crushing the wild thyme which grows best and sweetest in
wooded coverts, provided they be neighbored by water, no
matter whether in pool or rill, he resigned himself to that
intermediate state between thought and dream-land which we
call " reverie." At a little distance he heard the low still
sound of the mower's scythe, and the air came to his brow
sweet with the fragrance of new-mown hay.
He was roused by a gentle tap on the shoulder, and, turn¬
ing lazily round, saw a good-humored jovial face upon a pair
of massive shoulders, and heard a hearty and winning voico
say;
" Young man, if you are not too tired, will you lend a hand
to get in my hay? We are very short of hands, and I am
afraid we shall have rain pretty soon."
Kenelm rose and shook himself, gravely contemplated the
stranger, and replied, in his customary sententious fashion :
'' Man is born to help his fellow-man—especially to get in hay
«hile the sun shines. I am at your service."
" That's a good fellow, and I'm greatly obliged to you.
You see I had counted on a gang of roving haymakers, but
they were bought up by another farmer. This way." And,
leading on through a gap in the brushwood, he emerged, fol¬
lowed by Kenelm, into a large meadow, one-third of which
was still under the scythe, the rest being occupied with per-
128
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
Bons of both sexes, tossing and spreading the cut grass.
Among the latter, Kenelm, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, soon
found himself tossing and spreading like the rest, with his
usual melancholy resignation of mien and aspect. Though a
little awkward at first in the use of his unfamiliar implements,
his practice in all athletic accomplishments bestowed on him
that invaluable quality which is termed " handiness," and he
soon distinguished himself by the superior activity and neat¬
ness with which he performed his work. Something—^it
might be in his countenance or in the charm of his being a
stranger—attracted th. attention of the feminine section of
haymakers, and one very pretty girl, who was nearer to him
than the rest, attempted tc commence conversation.
" This is new to you," she said, smiling.
" Nothing is new to me," answered Kenelm, mournfully.
" But allow me to observe that to do things well you should
only do one thing at a time. I am here to make hay, and
not conversation."
" My 1" said the girl, in amazed ejaculation, and turned off
with a toss of her pretty head.
"I wonder if that jade has got an uncle," thought
Kenelm.
The farmer, who took his share of work with the men,
halting now and then to look round, noticed Kenelm's vigor¬
ous application with much approval, and at the close of the
day's work shook him heartily by the hand, leaving a two-
shilling piece in his palm. The heir of the Chillinglys gazed
on that honorarium, and turned it over with the finger and
thumb of the left hand.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
129
" Ben't it eno' ?" said the fanner, nettled.
" Pardon me," answered Kenelm. " But, to tell you the
truth, it is the first money I ever earned by my own bodily
labor ; and I regard it with equal curiosity and respect. But,
if it would not offend you, I would rather that, instead of
the money, you had offered me some supper ; for I have tasted
nothing but bread and water since the morning."
" You shall have the money and supper both, my lad," said
the farmer, cheerily. " And if you will stay and help till I
have got in the hay, I daresay my good woman can find you
a better bed than you'll get at the village inn—if, indeed, you
can get one there at all."
" You are very kind. But, before I accept your hos¬
pitality, excuse one question—^have you any nieces about
you ?"
" Nieces !" echoed the farmer, mechanically thrusting his
hands into his breeches-pockets, as if in search of something
there—" nieces about me ! what do you mean ? Be that a
new-fangled word for coppers ?"
" Not for coppers, though perhaps for brass. But I spoke
without metaphor. I object to nieces upon abstract principle,
confirmed by the test of experience."
The farmer stared, and thought his new friend not quite so
Pound in his mental as he evidently was in his physical con¬
fuí matlon, but replied, with a laugh, " Make yourself easy,
then. I have only one niece, and she is married to an iron¬
monger and lives in Exeter."
On entering the farmhouse, Kenelm's host conducted him
straight into the kitchen, and cried out, in a hearty voice, to
V* 9
130
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
a comely middle-aged dame, who, with a stout girl, was intent
on culinary operations, " Holloa I old woman, I have brought
you a guest who has well earned his supper, for he has dona
the work of two, and I have promised him a bed "
The farmer's wife turned sharply round. " He is heartily
welcome to supper. As to a bed," she said, doubtfully, " I
don't know." But here her eyes settled on Kenelm; and
there was something in his aspect so unlike what she expected
to see in an itinerant haymaker, that she involuntarily dropped
a curtsy, and resumed, with a change of tone, " The gentle¬
man shall have the guest-room ; but it will take a little time
to get ready—^you know, John, all the furniture is covered
up."
" Well, wife, there will be leisure eno' for that. He don't
want to go to roost till he has supped."
" Certainly not," said Kenelm, sniffing a very agreeable
odor.
" Where are the girls ?" asked the farmer.
" They have been in these five minutes, and gone-up stairs
to tidy themselves."
"What girls?" faltered Kenehn, retreating towards the
door. " I thought you said you had no nieces."
" But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you aro
Dot afraid of them, are you ?"
" Sir," replied Kenelm, with a polite and politic evasion of
that question, " if your daughters are like their mother, you
can't say that they are not dangerous."
" Come," cried the farmer, looking very much pleased,
while bis dame smiled and blushed—" come, that's as nicely
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
131
Baid as if jou were canvassing the county. 'Tis not among
haymakers that you learned manners, I guess ; and perhaps I
have been making too free with my betters."
" What !" quoth the courteous Kenelm, " do you mean to
imply that you were too free with your shillings ? Apologize
for that, if you like, but I don't think you'll get back the
shillings. I have not seen so much of this life as you have,
but, according to my experience, when a man once parts with
his money, whether to his better" or his worsers, the chances
are that he'll never see it again."
At this apnorism the farmer laughed ready to kill himself,
his wife chuckled, and even the maid-of-all-work grinned.
Kenelm, preserving his unalterable gravity, said to himself :
"Wit consists in the epigrammatic expression of a com¬
monplace truth, and the dullest remark on the worth of
money is almost as sure of successful appreciation as the
dullest remark on the worthlessness of women. Certainly I
am a wit without knowing it."
Here the farmer touched him on the shoulder—touched it,
did not slap it, as he would have done ten minutes before—
and said :
" We must not disturb the Missis, or we shall get no
supper. I'll just go and give a look into the cow-sheds. Do
you know much about cows?"
"Yes, cows pioduce cream and butter. The best cow»
ai e those which produce at the least cost the best cream and
butter. But how the best cream and butter can be produced
at a price which will place them free of expense on a poor
man's breakfast-table, is a question to be settled by a Re-
132
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
formed Parliament and a Liberal Administration. In tha
meanwhile let us not delay the supper."
The farmer and his guest quitted the kitchen and entered
the farmyard.
" You are quite a stranger in these parts ?"
« Quite."
" You don't even know my name?"
"No, except that I heard your wife call you John."
" My name is John Saunderson."
" Ah ! you come from the north, then ? That's why you
are so sensible and shrewd. Names that end in 'son' are
chiefly borne by the descendants of the Danes, to whom King
Alfred, heaven bless him, peacefully assigned no less than
sixteen English counties. And when a Dane was called
somebody's son, it is a sign that he was the son of a some¬
body."
" By gosh ! I never heard that before."
" If I thought you had, I should not have said it."
" Now I have told you my name, what is yours ?"
" A wise man asks questions and a fool answers them.
Suppose for a moment that I am not a fool."
Farmer Saunderson scratched his head, and looked mora
puzzled than became the descendant of a Dane settled by
King Alfred in the north of England.
" Dash it," said he at last, " but I think you are Yorkshire
too."
" Man, who is the most conceited of all animals, says that
he alone has the prerogative of thought, and condemns the
other animals to the meaner mechanical operation which b
KENELM CIIILLINGLT.
133
sails instinct. But as instincts are unerring and thouglits
generally go wrong, man has not much to boast of according
to his own definition. When you say you think, and take it
for granted, that I am Yorkshire, you err. I am not York¬
shire. Confining yourself to instinct, can you divine when
we shall sup ? The cows you are about to visit divine to a
moment when they shall be fed."
Said the farmer, recovering his sense of superiority to the
guest whom he obliged with a supper, " In ten minutes."
Then, after a pause, and in a tone of deprecation, as if he
feared he might be thought fine, he continued: "We don't
sup in the kitchen. My father did, and so did I till I
married ; but my Bess, though she's as good a farmer's wife
as ever wore shoe-leather, was a tradesman's daughter, and
had been brought up different. You see, she was not without
a good bit of money ; but even if she had been, I should not
have liked her folks to say I had lowered her—so we sup in
the parlor."
Quoth Kenelm, " The first consideration is to sup at all.
Supper conceded, every man is more likely to get on in life
who would rather sup in his parlor than his kitchen. Mean¬
while, I see a pump ; while you go to the cows I will stay
here and wash my hands of them."
" Hold ; you seem a sharp fellow, and certainly no fool.
I have a son, a good smart chap, but stuck up ; crows it over
us all ; thinks no small beer of himself. You'd do me a
service, and him too, if you'd let him down a peg or two."
Kcnelm, who was now hard at work at the pump-handle,
only replied by a gracious nod. But, as he seldom lost an
134
kenelm chillingly.
opportunity for .r<íflection, lie said to himself, while he laved
his faee in the stream from the spout, "One can't wonder
why every small man thinks it so pleasant to let down a big
one, when a father asks a stranger to let down his own son for
even fancying that he is not small beer. It is upon that
principle in human nature that criticism wisely relinquishes
its pretensions as an analytical science and becomes a lucrative
profession. It relies on the pleasure its readers find in letting
a man down."
CHAPTER IX.
It was a pretty, quaint farmhouse, such as might go well
with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably
well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he
did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs, nor dabble
in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his
land, and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest.
The supper was laid out in a good-sized, though low-pitched
parlor with a glazed door, now wide open, as were all the
latticed windows, looking into a small garden, rich in those
Straggling old English flowers which are nowadays banished
from gardens more pretentious and infinitely less fragrant.
At one corner was an arbor covered with honeysuckle, and,
opposite to it, a row of beehives. The room itself had an air
of comfort, and that sort of elegance which indicates the pre¬
siding genius of feminine taste. There were shelves sus-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
135
pended to the wall by blue ribbons, and filled with small
books neatly bound ; there were flower-pots in all the window-
sills ; there was a small cottage piano ; the walls were graced
partly with engraved portraits of county magnates and prize
oxen, partly with samplers in worsted-work, comprising verses
of moral character and the names and birthdays of the
farmer's grandmother, mother, wife, and daughters. Over
the chimney-piece was a small mirror, and above that the
trophy of a fox's brush ; while niched into an angle in the
room was a glazed cupboard, rich with specimens of old china,
Indian and English.
The party consisted of the farmer, his wife, three buxom
daughters, and a pale-faced slender lad of about twenty, the
only son, who did not take willingly to farming : he had been
educated at a superior grammar school, and had high notions
about the March of Intellect and the Progress of the Age.
Kenelm, though among the gravest of mortals, was one of
the least shy. In fact shyness is the usual symptom of a
keen amour-propre; and of that quality the youthful Chil¬
lingly scarcely possessed more than did the three Fishes of
his hereditary scutcheon. He felt himself perfectly at home
with his entertainers ; taking care, however, that his atten¬
tions were so equally divided between the three daughtei-s as
to prevent all suspicion of a particular preference. " There
is safety in numbers," thought he, "especially in odd num¬
bers. The three Graces never married, neither did the nine
Muses."
"1 presume, young ladies, that you are fond of music,"
said Kenelm, glancing at the piano.
136
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Yes, I love it dearly," said the eldest girl, speaking foi
the others.
Quoth the farmer, as he heaped the stranger's plate with
boiled beef and carrots, " Things are not what they were
when I was a hoy; then it was only great tenant-farmers
Fho had their girls taught the piano, and sent, their boys
to a good school. Now we small folks are for helping our
children a step or two higher than our own place on the
ladder."
" The schoolmaster is abroad," said the son, with the em¬
phasis of a sage adding an original aphorism to the stores of
philosophy.
"There is, no doubt, a greater equality of culture than
there was in the last generation," said Kenelm. " People of
all ranks utter the same commonplace ideas in very much the
same arrangements of syntax. And in proportion as the
democracy of intelligence extends—a friend of mine, who is
a doctor, teUs me that complaints formerly reserved to what
is called the aristocracy (though what that word means in
plain English I don't know) are equally shared by the com¬
monalty—tic-douloureux and other neuralgic maladies abound.
And the human race, in England at least, is becoming more
slight and delicate. There is a fable of a man who, when
he became exceedingly old, was turned into a grasshopper.
England is very old, and is evidently approaching the grass¬
hopper state of development. Perhaps we don't eat as much
beef as our forefathers did. May I ask you for another
slice?"
Kenelm's remarks were somewhat over the heads of h'«
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
137
audience. But the son, taking them as a slur upon the en¬
lightened spirit of the age, colored up and said, with a knitted
brow, " I hope, sir, that you are not an enemy to progress."
" That depends : for instanee, I prefer staying here, where
I am well off, to going farther and faring worse."
' Well said 1" cried the farmer.
Not deigning to notice that interruption, the son took up
Kenelm's reply with a sneer : " I suppose you mean that it is
to fare worse, if you march with the time."
" I am afraid we have no option hut to march with the time;
but when we reach that stage when to march any farther is
to march into old age, we should not be sorry if time would
be kind enough to stand still ; and all good doctors concur in
advising us to do nothing to hurry him."
" There is no sign of old age in this country, sir ; and thank
heaven we are not standing still !"
" Grasshoppers never do ; they are always hopping and
jumping, and making what they think ' progress,' till (unless
they hop into the water and are swallowed up prematurely
by a carp or a frog) they die of the exhaustion which hops
and jumps unremitting naturally produce. May I ask you,
Mrs. Saunderson, for some of that rice-pudding?"
The farmer, who, though he did not quite comprehend
Kenelm's metaphorical mode of arguing, saw delightedly that
his wise son looked more posed than himself, cried with great
glee, " Bob my boy,—Bob ! our visitor is a little too much
for you I"
" Oh, no," said Kenelm, modestly. " But I honestly think
Mr. Bob would he a wiser man, and a weightier man, and
138
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
mora removed from the grasshopper state, if he would thinh.
less and eat more pudding."
When the supper was over, the farmer oifered Kenelm r
clay pipe filled with shag, which that adventurer accepted
with his habitual resignation to the ills of life ; and the whole
party, excepting Mrs. Saunderson, strolled into the garden
Kenelm and Mr. Saunderson seated themselves in the honey¬
suckle arbor: the girls and the advocate of progress stood
without among the garden fiowers. It was a still and lovely
night, the moon at her full. The farmer, seated facing hi?
hay-fields, smoked on placidly. Kenelm, at the third whifi
laid aside his pipe, and glanced furtively at the three Graces.
They formed a pretty group, all clustered together near the
sUenced beehives, the two younger seated on the grass strip
that bordered the flower-beds, their arms over each other's
shoulders, the elder one standing behind them, with the
moonlight shining soft on her auburn hair.
Young Saunderson walked restlessly by himself to and fro
the path of gravel.
" It is a strange thing," ruminated Kenelm, " that gii-ls are
not unpleasant to look at if you take them collectively—two
or three bound up together ; but if you detach any one of
them from the bunch, the odds are that she is as plain as a
pike-staff. I wonder whether that bucolical grasshopper, who
is so enamored of the hop and jump that he calls ' progress,'
classes the society of the Mormons among the evidences of
civilized advancement. There is a good deal to be said in
favor of taking a whole lot of wives as one may buy a whole
lot of cheap razors. For it is not impossible that out of a
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
139
dozen a good one may be found. And tben, too, a whole
nosegay of variegated blooms, with a faded leaf here and there,
must be more agreeable to the eye than the same monoto¬
nous solitary lady's smock. But I fear these reflections aro
naughty ; let us change them. Farmer," he said aloud, " I
suppose your handsome daughters are too flue to assist jou
much. I did not see them among the haymakers."
" Oh, they were there, but by themselves, in the back part
of the field. I did not want them to mix with all the girls,
many of whom are strangers from other places. I don't know
anything against them; but as I don't know anything for
them, I thought it as well to keep my lasses apart."
" But I should have supposed it wiser to keep your son
apart from them. I saw him in the thick of those nymphs."
"Well," said the farmer, musingly, and withdrawing his
pipe from his lips, " I don't think lasses not quite well brought
up, poor things ! do as much harm to the lads as they can do
to proper-behaved lasses—^leastways my wife does not think so.
' Keep good girls from bad girls,' says she, ' and good girls
will ncYcr go wrong.' And you will find there is something
in that when you have girls of your own to take care of."
" Without waiting for that time—which I trust may never
oceur—can recognize the wisdom of your excellent wife's
observation. My own opinion is, that a woman can more
easily do mischief to her own sex than to ours,—since, of
course, she cannot exist withox.t doing mischief to somebody
or other."
" And good, too," said the jovial farmer, thumping his fist
on the table. " What should we be without the women ?"
140
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
"Very much better, I take it, sir. Adam was as good as
gold, and never had a qualm of conscience or stomach, till Eve
seduced him into eating raw apples."
" Young man, thou'st been crossed in love. I see it now.
That's why thou look'st so sorrowful."
" Sorrowful ! Did you ever know a man crossed in lovt
who looked less sorrowful when he came across a pudding?"
" Hey ! but thou canst ply a good knife and fork—that I
will say for thee." Here the farmer turned round, and gazed
on Kenelm with deliberate scrutiny. That scrutiny accom¬
plished, his voice took a somewhat more respectful tone, as ho
resumed, " Do you know that you puzzle me somewhat ?"
" Very likely. I am sure that I puzzle myself. Say on."
" Looking at your dress and—and "
" The two shillings you gave me ? Yes "
" I took you for the son of some small farmer like myself.
But now I judge from your talk that you are a college chap—
anyhow, a gentleman. Ben't it so ?"
" My dear Mr. Saunderson, I set out on my travels, which
is not long ago, with a strong dislike to telling lies. But I
doubt if a man can get long through this world without finding
that the faculty of lying was bestowed on him by nature as a
necessary means of self-preservation. If you are going to ask
me any questions about myself, I am sure that I shall tell you
lies. Perhaps, therefore, it may be best for both if I decline
the bed you profiered me, and take my night's rest under a
hedge."
" Pooh ! I don't want to know more of a man's affairs than
he thinks fit to tell me. Stay and finish the haymaking.
KENELM OniLLINQLT.
Ill
And I say, lad, I'm glad you don't seem to care for the
girls ; for I saw a very pretty one trying to flirt with you—■
and if you don't mind she'll bring you into trouble."
" How ? Does she want to run away from her uncle ?"
" Uncle I Bless you, she don't live with him 1 She lives
with her father ; and I never knew that she wants to run
away. In fact, Jessie Wiles—that's her name—is, I believe,
a very good girl, and everybody likes her—^perhaps a little too
much ; but then she knows she's a beauty, and does not object
to admiration."
" No woman ever does, whether she's a beauty or not. But
I don't yet understand why Jessie Wiles should bring me
into trouble."
" Because there is à big hulking fellow who has gone half
out of his wits for her ; and when he fancies he sees any other
chap too sweet on her he thrashes him into a jelly. So,
youngster, you just keep your skin out of that trap."
" Hem ! And what does the girl say to those proofs of
affection? Does she like the man the better for thrashing
other admirers into jelly?"
" Poor child ! No ; she hates the very sight of him. But
he swears she shall marry nobody else, if he hangs for it.
And to tell you the truth, I suspect that if Jessie does seem
to trifle with others a little too lightly, it is to draw away
this bully's suspicion from the only man I think she does care
for—a poor sickly young fellow who was crippled by an acci¬
dent, and whom Tom Bowles could brain with his little
finger."
" This is really interesting," cried Kenelm, showing some-
142
KENELM CUILLINGLT.
thing like excitement. " I should like to know this terrible
suitor."
" That's easy eno'," said the farmer, dryly. " You have
only to take a stroll with Jessie Wiles after sunset, and you'll
know more of Tom Bowles than you arc likely to forget in
a month."
" Thank you very much for your information," said
Kenelm, in a soft tone, grateful but pensive. "I hope to
profit by it."
" Do. I should be sorry if any harm came to thee ; and
Tom Bowles in one of his furies is as bad to cross as a mad
bull. So now, as we must be up early, I'll just take a look
round the stables, and then off to bed ; and I advise you
to do the same."
"Thank you for the hint. I see the young ladies have
already gone in. Good-night."
Passing through the garden, Kenelm encountered the
junior Saunderson.
"I fear," said the Votary of Progress, "that you have
found the governor awful slow. What have you been talking
about ?"
" Girls," said Kenelm, " a subject always awful, but no»
necessarily slow."
" Girls—the governor been talking about girls 1 Yon
joke."
" I wish I did joke, but that is a thing I could never
do since I came upon earth. Even in the cradle, I felt
that life was a very serious matter and did not allow
of jokes. I remember too well my first dose of castor-oik
KENELM CniLLlNGLT.
143
Y wu too, Mr. Bob,, have doubtless imbibed that initiatory
preparation to the sweets of existence. The corners of
your mouth have not recovered from the downward curves
into which it so rigidly dragged them. Like myself, you
are of grave temperament, and not easily moved to jocu¬
larity—nay, an enthusiast for Progress is of necessity a man
eminently dissatisfied with the present state of affairs. And
chronic dissatisfaction resents the momentary relief of a joke."
" Give off chaffing, if you please," said Bob, lowering the
didascalar intonations of his voice, " and just tell me plainly,
did not my father say anything particular about me ?"
" Not a word. The only person of the male sex of whom
he said anything particular was Tom Bowles."
" What, fighting Tom I the terror of the whole neighbor
hood I Ah, I guess the old gentleman is afraid lest Tom
may fall ford upon me. But Jessie Wiles is not worth a
quarrel with that brute. It is a crying shame in the Gov¬
ernment "
" What 1 has the Government failed to appreciate the
heroism of Tom Bowles, or rather to restrain the excesses
of its ardor ?"
" Stuff 1 it is a shame in the Government not to have
compelled his father to put him to school. If education
were universal "
" You think there would be no brutes in particular. It
may be so ; but education is universal in China, and so
is the bastinado. I thought, however, that you said the
schoolmaster was abroad, and that the age of enlightenment
was in full progress."
144
kenelm chillingly.
" Yes, in the towns, but not in these obsolete rural dis¬
tricts ; and that brings me to the point. I feel lost—thrown
away here. I have something in me, sir, and it can only
come out by collision with equal minds. So do me a favor,
will you ?"
" With the greatest pleasure."
■' Give the governor a hint that he can't expect me, after
the education I have had, to follow the plough and fatten
pigs ; and that Manchester is the place for me."
" Why Manchester ?"
" Because I have a relation in business there who will give
me a clerkship if the governor will consent. And Man¬
chester rules England."
" Mr. Bob Saunderson, I will do my best to promote your
wishes. This is a land of liberty, and every man should
choose his own walk in it, so that, at the last, if he goes
to the dogs, he goes to them without that disturbance of
temper which is naturally occasioned by the sense of being
diivexi to their jaws by another man against his own will.
He has then no one to blame but himself. And that, Mr.
Bob, is a great comfort. When, having got into a scrape,
we blame others, we unconsciously become unjust, spiteful,
uncharitable, malignant, perhaps revengeful. We indulge
in feelings which tend to demoralize the whole character.
But when we only blame ourselves, we become modest and
penitent. We make allowances for others. And, indeed, self-
blame is a salutary exercise of conscience, which a really good
man performs every day of his life. And now, wUl you
show me the room in which I am to sleep, and forget for
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
145
a few hours that I am alive at all—the best thing that can
happen to us in this world, my dear Mr. Bob ! There's
never much amiss with our days, so long as we can forget
all about them the moment we lay our heads on the pillow."
The two young men entered the house amicably, arm in
arm. The girls had already retired, but Mrs. Saunderson was
still up to conduct her visitor to the guest's chamber—a
pretty room, which had been furnished twenty-two years ago,
on the occasion of the farmer's marriage, at the expense of
Mrs. Saunderson's mother, for her own occupation whenever
she paid them a visit. And with its dimity curtains and
trellised paper it still looked as fresh and new as if decorated
and furnished yesterday.
Left alone, Kenelm undressed, and, before he got into bed,
bared his right arm, and doubling it, gravely contemplated its
muscular development, passing his left hand over that promi¬
nence in the upper part which is vulgarly called the ball. Sat¬
isfied apparently with the size and the firmness of that pugi¬
listic protuberance, he gently sighed forth, " I fear I shall
have to lick Thomas Bowles." In five minutes more he was
asleep.
G
10
146
K£N£LM CHILLINGLT.
CHAPTER X.
Th£ next day the hay-mowing was completed, and a large
portion of the hay already made carted away to he stacked.
Kenelm acquitted himself with a credit not less praiseworthy
than had previously won Mr. Saunderson's approbation. But
instead of rejecting as before the acquaintance of Miss Jessie
Wiles, he contrived towards noon to place himself near to
that dangerous beauty, and commenced conversation. " I am
afraid I was rather rude to you yesterday, and I want to beg
pardon."
" Oh," answered the girl, in that simple intelligible English
which is more frequent among our village folks nowadays
than many popular novelists would lead us into supposing—
" oh, I ought to ask pardon for taking a liberty in speaking
to you. But I thought you'd feel strange, and I intended it
kindly."
" I'm sure you did," returned Kenelm, chivalrously raking
her portion of hay as well as his own, while he spoke. " And
I want to be good friends with you. It is very near the time
when we shall leave off for dinner, and Mrs. Saunderson has
filled my pockets with some excellent beef-sandwiches, which
I shall be happy to share with you, if you do not object to
dine with me here, instead of going home for your dinner."
The girl hesitated, and then shook her head in dissent irom
the proposition.
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
147
"Are you afraid that your neighbors will think it
wrong?"
Jessie curled up her lip with a pretty scorn, and said, " I
don't much care what other folks say ; but isn't it wrong ?"
" Not in the least. Let me make your mind easy. I am
her 3 but for a day or two, we are not likely ever to meet
again ; but, before I go, I should be glad if I could do you
some little service." As he spoke he had paused from his
work, and, leaning on his rake, fixed his eyes, for the first
time attentively, on the fair haymaker.
Yes, she was decidedly pretty—^pretty to a rare degree—•
luxuriant brown hair neatly tied up, under a straw hat doubt¬
less of her own plaiting ; for, as a general rule, nothing more
educates the village maid for the destinies of flirt than the
accomplishment of straw-plaiting. She had large, soft blue
eyes, delicate small features, and a complexion more clear in its
healthful bloom than rural beauties generally retain against
the influences of wind and sun. She smiled and slightly
colored as he gazed on her, and, lifting her eyes, gave him
one gentle, trustful glance, which might have bewitched a
philosopher and deceived a remé. And yet Kenelm, by that
intuitive knowledge of character which is often truthfulest
where it is least disturbed by the doubts and cavils of acquired
knowledge, felt at once that in that girl's mind coquetry, per¬
haps unconscious, was conjoined with an innocence of any-
thing worse than coquetry as complete as a child's. He
bowed his head, in withdrawing his gaze, and took her into
his heart as tenderly as if she had been a child appealing to it
for protection.
148
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
"Certainly," lie said inly—"certainly I must lick Tom
Bowles ; yet stay, perhaps after all she likes him."
" But," he continued aloud, " you do not see how I can he
of any service to you. Before I explain, let me ask which
of the men in the field is Tom Bowles ?"
" Tom Bowles !" exclaimed Jessie, in a tone of surprise and
alarm, and turning pale as she looked hastily round ; " you
frightened me, sir, but he is not here ; he does not work in
the fields. But how came you to hear of Tom Bowles ?"
" Dine with me and I'll tell you. Look, there is a quiet
place in yon corner under the thom-trees by that piece of
water. See, they are leaving off work : I will go for a can
of beer, and then, pray, let me join you there."
Jessie paused for a moment as if doubtful stiU ; then again
glancing at Kenelm, and assured by the grave kindness of his
countenance, uttered a scarce audible assent, and moved away
towards the thorn-trees.
As the sun now stood perpendicularly over their heads, and
the hand of the clock in the village church tower, soaring
over the hedgerows, reached the first hour after noon, all work
ceased in a sudden silence ; some of the girls went back to
their homes ; those who stayed grouped together, apart from
the men, who took their way to the shadows of a large oak-
tree in the hedgerow, where beer-kegs and cans awaited them.
kenelm chillingly.
149
CHAPTER XL
"And now," said Kenelm, as the two young persons,
haTing finished their simple repast, sat under the thorn-trees
and by the side of the water, fringed at that part with tall
reeds through which the light summer breeze stirred with a
pleasant murmur,—"now I will talk to you about Tom
Bowles. Is it true that you don't like that brave young
fellow ?—I say young, as I take his youth for granted."
" Like him 1 I hate the sight of him."
"Did you always hate the sight of him? You must
surely at one time have allowed him to think that you did
not?"
The girl winced, and made no answer, hut plucked a
dafibdil from the soil and tore it ruthlessly to pieces.
" I am afraid you like to serve your admirers as you do that
ill-fated flower," said Kenelm, with some severity of tone.
"But concealed in the flower you may sometimes find the
sting of a bee. I see by your countenance that you did not
tell Tom Bowles that you hated him till it was too late to pre¬
vent his losing his wits for you."
"No; I wasn't so had as that,' said Jessie,looking, never¬
theless, rather ashamed of herself ; " hut I was silly and giddy-
like, I own; and, when he first took notice of me, I was
pleased, without thinking much of it, because, you see, Mr.
Bowles [emphasis on J/r.] is higher up than a poor girl like
150
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
me. He is a tradesman, and I am only a shepterd's daughtei
—thougli, indeed, father is more like Mr. Saundcrson's fore¬
man than a mere shepherd. But I never thought anything
serious of it, and did not suppose he did—that is, at first."
" So Tom Bowles is a tradesman. What trade ?"
" A farrier, sir."
" And, I am told, a very fine young man."
" I don't know as to that : he is very big."
" And what made you hate him ?"
" The first thing that made me hate him was, that he in¬
sulted father, who is a very quiet, timid man, and threatened,
I don't know what, if father did not make me keep company
with him. Make me, indeed 1 But Mr. Bowles is a danger¬
ous, bad-hearted, violent man, and—don't laugh at me, sir—
but I dreamed one night he was murdering me. And I think
he will too, if he stays here ; and so does his poor mother, who
is a very nice woman, and wants him to go away ; but he'll
not."
" Je-ssie," said Kenelm, softly, " I said I wanted to make
friends with you. Do you think you can make a friend of
me ? I can never be more than friend. But I should like
to be that. Can you trust me as one ?"
" Yes," answered the girl firmly, and, as she lifted her eyes
to him, their look was pure from all vestige of coquetry—
guileless, frank, grateful.
"Is there not another young man who courts you more
civilly than Tom Bowles does, and whom you really could find
it in your heart to like ?"
Jessie looked round for another daffodil, and, not finding
KENELM CHILLINGLY
151
one, contented herself with a blue-hell, which she did not tear
to pieces, but caressed with a tender hand. Kenelm bent his
eyes down on her charming face with something in their gaze
rarely seen there—something of that unreasoning, inexpressi¬
ble human fondness, for whieh philosophers of his school have
no excuse. Had ordinary mortals, like you or myself, for in¬
stance, peered through the leaves of the thorn-trees, we should
have sighed or frowned, aecording to our several tempera¬
ments, hut we should all have said, whether spitefully or
envyingly, " Happy young lovers I" and should all have blun¬
dered lamentably in so saying.
Still, there is no denying the fact that a pretty face has a
very unfair advantage over a plain one. And, much to the
discredit of Kenelm's philanthropy, it may he reasonably
doubted whether, had Jessie Wiles been endowed by nature
with a snub nose and a squint, Kenelm would have volun¬
teered his friendly services, or meditated battle with Tom
Bowles on her behalf.
But there was no touch of envy or jealousy in the tone
with whieh he said :
" I see there is some one you would like well enough to
marry, and that you make a great difference in the way yoa
treat a daffodil and a blue-hell. Who and what is the young
man whom the hlue-bell represents ? Come, confide."
" We were much brought up together," said Jessie, still
looking down, and still smoothing the leaves of the blue-bell.
" His mother lived in the next eottagc ; and my mother was
very fond of him, and so was father too ; and, before I was
ten years old, they used to laugh when poor Will called me
152
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
his little wife." Here the tears which had started to Jessie's
eyes began to fall over the flower. " But now father would
not hear of it ; and it can't be. And I've tried to care for
some one else, and I can't, and that's the truth."
"But why? Has he turned out ill?—taken to poaching
or (irink ?"
" No—no—no,—^he's as steady and good a lad as ever lived.
But—^but "
"Yes; but "
" He's a cripple now—and I love him all the better for it."
Here Jessie fairly sobbed.
Kenelm was greatly moved, and prudently held his peace
till she had a little recovered herself ; then, in answer to his
gentle questionings, he learned that Will Somers—till then a
healthy and strong lad—^had fallen from the height of a scaf¬
folding, at the age of sixteen, and been so seriously injured
that he was moved at once to the hospital. When he came
out of it—^what with the fall, and what with the long illness
which had followed the eflects of the accident—he was not
only crippled for life, but of health so delicate and weakly
that he was no longer fit for out-door labor and the hard life
of a peasant. He was an only son of a widowed mother, and
his sole mode of assisting her was a very precarious one. He
had taught himself basket-making; and though, Jessie said,
his work was very ingenious and clever, still there were but
few customers for it in that neighborhood. And, alas ! even
if Jessie's father would consent to give his daughter to the
poor eripple, how could the poor cripple earn enough to maiu-
tain a wife ?
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
153
"And," áaid Jessie, "still I was happy, walking out with
him on Sunday evenings, or going to sit with him and his
mother—for we are both young and can wait. But I daren't
do it any more now—^for Tom Bowles has sworn that if I do
he will beat him before my eyes ; and Will has a high spirit,
and I should break my heart if any harm happened to him on
my account."
"As for Mr. Bowles, we'll not think of him at present.
But if Will could maintain himself and you, your father
would not object, nor you either, to a marriage with the poor
cripple ?"
" Father would not ; and as for me, if it weren't for dis¬
obeying father, I'd marry him to-morrow. I can work."
" They are going back to the hay now ; but after that task
is over, let me walk home with you, and show me Will's cot¬
tage and Mr. Bowles's shop or forge."
" But you'll not say anything to Mr. Bowles. He wouldn't
mind your being a gentleman, as I now see you are, sir;
and he's dangerous—oh, so dangerous !—and so strong."
" Never fear," answered Kenelm, with the nearest approach
to a laugh he had ever made since childhood ; " but when we
are relieved, wait for me a few minutes at yon gate."
G*
kenelm chillingly.
CHAPTEK XII.
Kenelm spoke no more to his new friend in the hay-fields;
but when the day's work was over he looked round for tha
farmer to make an excuse for not immediately joining the
family supper. However, he did not see either Mr. Saunder-
son or his son. Both were busied in the stackyard. "Well
pleased to escape excuse and the questions it might provoke,
Kenelm therefore put on the coat he had laid aside and joined
Jessie, who had waited for him at the gate. They entered
the lane side by side, following the stream of villagers who
were slowly wending their homeward way. It was a primitive
English village, not adorned on the one hand with fancy or
model cottages, nor on the other hand indicating penury and
squalor. The church rose before them gray and Gothic,
backed by the red clouds in which the sun had set, and bor¬
dered by the glebe-land of the half-seen parsonage. Then
came the village green, with a pretty schoolhouse ; and to this
succeeded a long street of scattered whitewashed cottages, in
the midst of their own little gardens.
As they walked, the moon rose in full splendor, silvering
the road before them.
" Who is the squire here ?" asked Kenelm. " I should
guess him to be a good sort of man, and well off."
" Yes,—Squire Travers ; he is a great gentleman, and they
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
155
pay very ricli. But his place is a good way from this village
You can see it if you stay, for he gives a harvest.-home sup¬
per on Saturday, and Mr. Saundcrson and all his tenants are
going. It is a beautiful park, and Miss Travel's is a sight to
look at. Oh, she is lovely 1" continued Jessie, with an un¬
affected burst of admiration ; for women are more sensible of
the charm of each other's beauty than men give them credit
for.
" Xs pretty as yourself?"
" Oh, pretty is not the word. She is a thousand times
handsomer 1"
" Humph 1" said Kenelm, incredulously.
There was a pause, broken by a quick sigh from Jessie.
" What are you sighing for?—tell me."
" I was thinking that a very little can make folks happy,
but that somehow or other that very little is as hard to get as
if one set one's heart on a great deal."
" That's very wisely said. Everybody covets a little some¬
thing for which, perhaps, nobody else would give a straw.
But what's the very little thing for which you are sighing ?"
" Mrs. Bawtrey wants to sell that shop of hers. She is
getting old, and has had fits ; and she can get nobody to buy ;
and if Will had that shop and I could keep it—^but 'tis no
use thinking of that."
" What shop do you mean ?"
" There 1"
" Where ? I see no shop."
" But it is tlie shop of the village—the only one, where the
post-office is."
15o
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
" Ah ! I see something at the windows like a red cloak.
What do they sell ?"
" Everything—tea and sugar, and candles, and shawls, and
gowns, and cloaks, and mouse-traps, and letter-paper; and
Mrs. Bawtrey buys poor Will's baskets, and sells them for a
good deal more than she pays."
'• It seems a nice cottage, with a field and orchard at the
back."
" Yes. Mrs. Bawtrey pays £8 a year for it ; but the shop
can well afibrd it."
Kenelm made no reply. They both walked on in silence,
and had now reached the centre of the village street, when
Jessie, looking up, uttered an abrupt exclamation, gave an
affrighted start, and then came to a dead stop.
Kenelm's eye followed the direction of hers, and saw, a
few yards distant, at the other side of the way, a small red
brick house, with thatched sheds adjoining it, the whole
standing in a wide yard, over the gate of which leaned a man
smoking a small cutty-pipe. " It is Tom Bowles," whispered
Jessie, and instinctively she twined her arm into Kenelm's—•
then, as if on second thoughts, withdrew it, and said, still in
a whisper, " Go back now, sir—do."
" Not I. It is Tom Bowles whom I want to know. Hush !'
For here Tom Bowles had thrown down his pipe and wa.i
coming slowly across the road towards them.
Kenelm eyed him with attention. A singularly powerful
man, not so tall as Kenelm by some inches, but still above
the middle height, herculean shoulders and chest, the lower
Ibabs not in equal proportion—a sort of slouching, shambling
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
157
gait. As he advanced, the moonlight fell on his face,—it was
a handsome one. He wore no hat, and his hair, of a light
brown, curled close. His face was fresh-colored, with aquiline
features ; his age apparently about six- or seven-and-twenty.
Coming nearer and nearer, whatever favorable impression the
first glance at his physiognomy might have made on Kenelm
was dispelled, for the expression of his face changed and be¬
came fierce and lowering.
Kènelm was still walking on, Jessie by his side, when
Bowles rudely thrust himself between them, and seizing the
girl's arm with one hand, he turned his face full on Kenelm,
with a menacing wave of the other hand, and said, in a deep
burly voice :
" Who be you ?"
" Let go that young woman before I tell you."
" If you weren't a stranger," answered Bowles, seeming as
if he tried to suppress a rising fit of wrath, " you'd be in the
kennel for those words. But I s'pose you don't know that
I'm Tom Bowles, and I don't choose the girl as I'm after to
keep company with any other man. So you be off."
" And I don't choose any other man to lay violent hands
on any girl walking by my side without telling him that he's
a brute, and that I only wait till he has both his hands at
liberty to let him know that he has not a poor cripple to deal
with."
Tom Bowles could scarcely believe his ears. Amaze swal<
lowed up for the moment every other sentiment. Mechanic¬
ally he loosened his hold of Jessie, who fled off like a bird
released. But evidently she thought of her new friend's
158
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
danger more than her own escape ; for, instead of sheltering
herself in her father's cottage, she ran towards a grcip of
laborers, who, near at hand, had stopped loitering before the
public-house, and returned with those allies towards the spot
in which she had left the two men. She was very popular
with the villagers, who, strong in the sense of numbers, ovei-
came their awe of Tom Bowles, and arrived at the place half
running, half striding, in time, they hoped, to interpose be¬
tween his terrible arm and the bones of the unoffending
stranger.
Meanwhile Bowles, having recovered his first astonishment,
and scarcely noticing Jessie's escape, still left his right arm
extended towards the place she had vacated, and with a quick
back-stroke of the left leveled at Kenelm's face, growled
contemptuously, " Thou'lt find one hand enough for thee."
But quick as was his aim, Kenelm caught the lifted arm just
above the elbow, causing the blow to waste itself on air, and
with a simultaneous advance of his right knee and foot dex¬
terously tripped up his bulky antagonist, and laid him
sprawling on his back. The movement was so sudden, and
the stun it occasioned so utter, morally as well as physically,
that a minute or more elapsed before Tom Bowles picked
himself up. And he then stood another minute glowering at
his antagonist with a vague sentiment of awe almost like a
superstitious panic. For it is noticeable that, however fierce
and fearless a man or even a wild beast may be, yet if either
has hitherto been only familiar with victory and triumph,
never yet having met with a foe that could cope with its
force, the first effect of a defeat, especially from a despised
KENELM CIIILUNGLT.
159
adversary, unhinges and half paralyzes the whole nervous
system. But as fighting Tom gradually recovered to the
consciousness of his own strength, and the recollection that it
had been only foiled by the skillful trick of a wrestler, not the
hand-to-hand might of a pugilist, the panic vanished, and
Tom Bowles was himself again. " Oh, that's your sort, is
it?" said he. "We don't fight with our heels hereabouts,
like Cornishers and donkeys ; we fight with our fists, young¬
ster ; and since you will have a bout at that, why you must."
"Providence," answered Kenelm, solemnly, "sent me to
this village for the express purpose of licking Tom Bowles.
It is a signal mercy vouchsafed to yourself, as you will one
day acknowledge."
Again a thrill of awe, something like that which the
demagogue in Aristophanes might have felt when braved by
the sausage-maker, shot through the valiant heart of Tom
Bowles. He did not like those ominous words, and still less
the lugubrious tone of voice in which they were uttered.
But resolved, at least, to proceed to battle with more prepara¬
tion than he had at firet designed, he now deliberately disen¬
cumbered himself of his heavy fustian jacket and vest, rolled
up his shirt-sleeves, and then slowly advanced towards the foe.
Kenelm had also, with still greater deliberation, taken off
his coat—which he folded up with care, as being both a new
and an only one, and deposited by the hedge-side—and bared
arms, lean indeed, and almost slight, as compared with the
vast muscle of his adversary, but firm in sinew as the hind-
leg of a stag.
By this time the laborers, led by Jessie, had arrived at the
160
CENELM CHILLINQLT.
spot, and wero about to crowd in between tbe combatan ts,
when Kenelm yaved tbem back, and said in a calm and im¬
pressive voice :
" Stand round, my good friends, make a ring, and see that
it is fair play on my side. I am sure it will be fair on Mr.
Bowles's. H :'s big enough to scorn what is little. And now,
Mr. Bowk ^ just a word with you in the presence of your
neighbors I am not going to say anything uncivil. If you
are rathei rough and hasty, a man is not always master of him¬
self—at least so I am told—when he thinks more than he
ought to do about a pretty girl. But I can't look at your face
iven by this moonlight, and though its expression at this
moment is rather cross, without being sure that you are a fine
fellow at bottom. And that if you give a promise as man to
man you will keep it. Is that so ?"
One or two of the bystanders murmured assent; the others
pres 'ed round in silent wonder.
" "Vhat's all that soft-sawder about ?" said Tom Bowles,
somowhat falteringly.
" Simply this : if in the fight between us I beat you, I ask
you to promise before your neighbors that you will not by
word or deed molest or interfere again with Miss Jessie
Wiles."
" Eh !" roared Tom. - " Is it that i/ou are after her ?"
" Suppose I am, if that pleases you ; and, on my side, 1
promise that, if you beat me, I quit this place as soon as you
leave me well enough to do so, and will never visit it again.
What ! do you hesitate to promise ? Are you really afraid I
shall lick you ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
IGl
" You ! I'd smash a dozen of you to powder."
" In that case, you are safe to promise. Come, 'tis a fair
bargain. Isn't it, neighbors ?"
Won over by Kenelm's easy show of good temper, and by
the sense of justice, the bystanders joined in a common excla¬
mation of assent.
"Come, Tom," said an old fellow, "the gentleman can't
speak fairer ; and we shall all think you be afeard if you hold
back.^
Tom's face worked; but at last he growled, "Well, I
promise—that is, if he beats me."
"All right," said Kenelm. "You hear, neighbors; and
Tom Bowles could not show that handsome face of his among
you if he broke his word. Shake hands on it."
Fighting Tom sulkily shook hands.
" Well, now, that's what I call English," said Kenelm,—
" all pluck and no malice. Fall back, friends, and leave a
clear space for us."
The men all receded; and as Kenelm took his ground,
there was a supple ease in his posture which at once brought
out into clearer evidence the nervous strength of his build, and,
contrasted with Tom's bulk of chest, made the latter look
clumsy and top-heavy.
The two men faced each other a minute, the eyes of both
vigilant and steadfast. Tom's blood began to fire up as he
gazed—nor, with all his outward calm, was Kenelm insensible
of that proud beat of the heart which is aroused by the fierce
joy of combat. Tom struck out first, and a blow was parried,
but not returned ; another and another blow—still parried—
11
162
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
BtDl unietomed. Kenelm, acting evidently on the defensive,
took all the advantages for that strategy which he derived
from superior length of arm and lighter agility of frame.
Verhaps he wished to ascertain the extent of his adversary's
skill, or to try the endurance of his wind, before he ventured
on the hazards of attack. Tom, galled to the quick that
blows which might have felled an ox were thus warded off
from their mark, and dimly aware that he was encountering
some mysterious skill which turned his brute strength into
waste force and might overmaster him in the long-run, came
to a rapid conclusion that the sooner he brought that brute
strength to bear, the better it would be for him. Accord¬
ingly, after three rounds, in which, without once breaking the
guard of his antagonist, he had received a few playful taps
on the nose and mouth, he drew back, and made a bull-like
rush at his foe—^bull-like, for it butted full at him with the
powerful down-bent head, and the two fists doing duty as
horns. The rush spent, he found himself in the position of a
man milled. I take it for granted that every Englishman
who can call himself a man—that is, every man who has been
an English boy, and, as such, been compelled to the use of his
fists—^knows what " a mill" is. But I sing not only " pueiis"
but " virginibus." Ladies, "a mill"—using, with reluctanco
and contempt for myself, that slang in which lady-writers in¬
dulge, and Girls of the Period know much better than they
do their Murray—"a mill"—speaking not to lady-writers, not
to Girls of the Period, but to innocent damsels, and in expla¬
nation to those foreigners who only understand the English
language as taught by Addison and Macaulay—"a mill,"
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
163
perîplirastically, means this: your adversary, in the noble
encounter between fist and fist, has so plunged his head that
it gets caught, as in a vice, between the side and doubled
left arm of the adversary, exposing that head, unprotected and
helpless, to he pounded out of recognizable shape by the right
fist of the opponent. It is a situation in which raw superiority
of force sometimes finds itself, and is seldom spared by dis
ciplined superiority of skill. Kenelm, his right fist raised,
paused for a moment, then, loosening the left arm, releasing
the prisoner, and giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder,
he turned around to the spectators, and said, apologetically,
" He has a handsome face—it would be a shame to spoil it."
Tom's position of peril was so obvious to all, and that good-
humored abnegation of the advantage which the position gave
to the adversary seemed so generous, that the laborers actually
hurrahed. Tom himself felt as if treated like a child ; and
alas, and alas for him 1 in wheeling round, and regathering
himself up, his eye rested on Jessie's face. Her lips were
apart with breathless terror ; he fancied they were apart with
a smile of contempt. And now he became formidable. He
fought as fights the bull in presence of the heifer, who, as he
knows too well, will go with the conqueror.
If Tom had never yet fought with a man taught by a prize¬
fighter, so never yet had Kenelm encountered a strength
which, but for the lack of that teaching, would have con¬
quered his own. He could act no longer on the defensive ;
he could no longer play, like a dexterous fencer, with the
sledge-hammers of those mighty arms. They broke through
his guard—they sounded on his chest as on an anvil. He
164
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
felt that did they alight on his head he was a lost man. II»
felt also that the blows spent on the chest of his adversary
were idle as the stroke of a cane on the hide of a rhinoceros.
But now his nostrils dilated, his eyes flashed fire—Kenelm
Chillingly had ceased to be a philosopher. Crash came his
blow—^how unlike the swinging roundabout hits of Tom
Bowles !—^straight to its aim as the rifle-ball of a Tyrolese, or
a British marksman at Aldershot—all the strength of nerve,
sinew, purpose, and mind concentred in its vigor,—crash just
at that part of the front where the eyes meet, and followed up
with the rapidity of lightning, flash upon flash, by a more re¬
strained but more disabling blow with the left hand just where
the left ear meets throat and jaw-bone.
At the first blow Tom Bowles had reeled and staggered, at
the second he threw up his hands, made a jump in the air as
if shot through the heart, and then heavily fell forwards, an
inert mass.
The spectators pressed round him in terror. They thought
he was dead. Kenelm knelt, passed quickly his hand over
Tom's lips, pulse, and heart, and then rising, said, humbly and
with an air of apology :
" If he had been a less magnificent creature, I assure you
on my honor that I should never have ventured that second
blow. The first would have done for any man less splendidly
endowed by nature. Lift him gently ; take him home. Tell
his mother, with my kind regards, that I'll call and see her
and him to-morrow. And, stop, does he ever drink too much
beer?"
" "Well," said one of the villagers, " Tom ca?i drink."
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
ICS
'' I thought so. Too much flesh for that muscle. Go for the
nearest doctor. You, my lad?—good—off with you—quick 1
No danger ; but perhaps it may be a case for the lancet."
Tom Bowles was lifted tenderly by four of the stoutest men
p lisent and borne into his home, evincing no sign of con¬
sciousness, but his face, where not clouted with blood, veiy
pale, vory calm, with a slight froth at the lips.
Kanelm pulled down his shirt-sleeves, put on his coat, and
turned to Jessie :
" Now, my young friend, show me Will's cottage."
The girl came to him white and trembling. She did not
dare to speak. The stranger had become a new man in her
eyes. Perhaps he frightened her as much as Tom Bowles
had done. But she quickened her pace, leaving the public-
house behind, till she came to the farther end of the village.
Kenelm walked beside her, muttering to himself ; and though
Jessie caught his words, happily she did not understand, for
they repeated one of those bitter reproaches on her sex, as the
main cause of all strife, bloodshed, and mischief in general,
with which the classic authors abound. His spleen soothed by
that recourse to the lessons of the ancients, Kenelm turned at
last to his silent companion, and said, kindly hut gravely :
" Mr. Bowles has given me his promise, and it is fair that I
should now ask a promise from you. It is this—just con¬
sider how easily a girl so pretty as you can be the cause of a
man's death. Had Bowles struck me where I struck him, T
should have been past the help of a surgeon."
" Oh 1" groaned Jessie, shuddering, and covering her face
with both hands.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" And, putting aside that danger, consider that a man may
be hit mortally on the heart as well as on the head, and that
a woman has much to answer for who, no matter what her
excuse, forgets what misery and what guilt can be inflicted
by a word from her lip and a glance from her eye. Consider
this, and promise that, whether you marry "Will Somers or
not, you will never again give a man fair cause to think you
can like him unless your own heart tells you that you can.
Will you promise that ?"
" I will, indeed—indeed." Poor Jessie's voice died in sobs.
" There, my child, I don't ask you not to cry, because I
know how much women like crying, and in this instance it
does you a great deal of good. But we are just at the end of
the village. "Which is Will's cottage ?"
Jessie lifted her head, and pointed to a solitary, small
thatched cottage.
" I would ask you to come in and introduce me ; but that
might look too much like crowing over poor Tom Bowles. Sc
good-night to you, Jessie, and forgive me for preaching."
kenelm chillingly.
167
CHAPTER XII)
Kenelm knocked at the cottage door: '»oiee said faintly,
" Come in."
He stooped his head, and stepped over the threshold.
Since his eneounter with Tom Bowles his sympathies had
gone with that unfortunate lover—it is natural to like a man
after you have beaten him ; and he was by no means predis¬
posed to favor Jessie's preference for a sickly cripple.
Yet, when two bright, soft, dark eyes, and a pale intellectual
countenance, with that nameless aspect oí refinement which
delicate health so often gives, especially to the young, greeted
his quiet gaze, his heart was at onee won over to the side of
the rival. Will Somers was seated by the hearth, on which
a few live embers, despite the warmth of the summer evening,
still burned; a rude little table was by his side, on which
were laid osier twigs and white peeled chips, together with an
open book. His hands, pale and slender, were at work on a
small basket half finished. His mother was just clearing
away the tea-things from another table that stood by the
window. Will rose, with the good breeding that belongs to
the rural peasant, as the stranger entered ; the widow looked
round with surprise, and dropped her simple curtsy—a little
thin woman, with a mild patient face.
The cottage was very tidily kept, as it is in most village
168
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
homes where the woman has it her own way. The deal
dresser opposite the door had its display of humble crockery.
The whitewashed walls were relieved with colored prints,
chiefly Scriptural subjects from the New Testament, such as
the return of the Prodigal Son, in a blue coat and yellow inex¬
pressibles, with his stockings about his heels.
At one corner there were piled up baskets of various sizes,
and at another corner was an open cupboard containing books
—an article of decorative furniture found in cottages much
more rarely than colored prints and gleaming crockery.
All this, of course, Kenelm could not at a glance compre¬
hend in detail. But as the mind of a man accustomed to gen¬
eralization is marvelously quick in forming a sound judgment,
whereas a mind accustomed to dwell only on detail is wonder¬
fully slow at arriving at any judgment at all, and when it
does, the probability is that it will arrive at a wrong one,
Kenelm judged correctly when he came to this conclusion :
" I am among simple English peasants ; but, for some reason
or other, not to be explained by the relative amount of wages,
it is a favorable specimen of that class."
" I beg your pardon for intruding at this hour, Mrs. Som¬
era," said Kenelm, who had been too familiar with peasants
from his earliest childhood not to know how quickly, when in
the presence of their household gods, they appreciate respect,
and how acutely they feel the want of it. " But my stay in
the village is very short, and I should not like to leave without
seeing your son's basket-work, of which I have heard much."
" You are very good, sir," said Will, with a pleased smile
that wonderfully brightened up his face. "It is only just a
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
161»
few common things that I keep by me. Any finer sort of
work I mostly do by order."
" You see, sir," said Mrs. Somers, " it takes so much moro
time for pretty work-baskets, and suchlike ; and unless done
to order, it might be a chance if he could get it sold. But
pray be seated, sir," and Mrs. Somers placed a chair for her
visitor, " while I just run up-stairs for the work-basket which
my son has made for Miss Travers. It is to go home to¬
morrow, and I put it away for fear of accidents."
Kenelm seated himself, and, drawing his chair near to
"Will's, took up the half-finished basket which the young man
had laid down on the table.
" This seems to me very nice and delicate workmanship,"
said Kenelm ; " and the shape, when you have finished it,
will be elegant enough to please the taste of a lady."
" It is for Mrs. Lethbridge," said Will ; " she wanted some¬
thing to hold cards and letters ; and I took the shape from a
book of drawings which Mr. Lethbridge kindly lent me. You
know Mr. Lethbridge, sir ? He is a very good gentleman."
"No, I don't know him. Who is he?"
" Our clergyman, sir. This is the book."
To Kenelm's surprise, it was a work on Pompeii, and con¬
tained woodcuts of the implements and ornaments, mosaics
and frescoes, found in that memorable little city.
" I see this is your model," said Kenelm ; " what they call
patera, and rather a famous one. You are copying it much
more truthfully than I should have supposed it possible to do
in substituting basket-work for bronze. But you observe that
much of the beauty of this shallow bowl depends on the two
H
170
KENELiI CfllLLINGLT.
doves perched on the brim. You can't manage that orna¬
mental addition."
" Mrs. Lethbridge thought of putting there two little
stuffed canary-birds."
" Did she ? Good heavens 1" exclaimed Kenelm,
" But somehow," continued Will, " I did not like that, and
I made hold to say so."
" Why did not you like it ?"
" Well, I don't know ; but I did not think it would be the
right thing."
" It would have been very had taste, and spoilt the effect
of your basket-work ; and I'll endeavor to explain why. You
see here, in the next page, a drawing of a very beautiful
statue. Of course this statue is intended to he a representa¬
tion of nature—but nature idealized. You don't know the
meaning of that hard word, idealized, and very few people do.
But it means the performance of a something in art according
to the idea which a man's mind forms to itself out of a some¬
thing in nature. That something in natuae must, of course,
have been carefully studied before the man can work out
anything in art by which it is faithfully represented. The
aa-tist, for instance, who made that statue, must have known
the proportions of the human frame. He must have made
studies of various parts of it—^heads and hands, and arms and
legs, and so forth—and, having done so, he then puts together
all his various studies of details, so as to form a new whole,
which is intended to personate an idea formed in his own
mind. Do you go with me ?"
" Partly, sir ; but I'm puzzled a little still."
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
171
"Of course you are; but you'll puzzle yourself right if
you think over what I say. Now if, in order to make this
statue, which is composed of metal or stone, more natural,
I stuck on it a wig of real hair, would not you feel at once
that I had spoilt the work—that, as you clearly express it,
' it would not be the right thing' ?—and, instead of making
the work of art more natural, I should have made it laugh¬
ably unnatural, by forcing insensibly upon the mind of him
who looked at it the contrast between the real life, repre¬
sented by a wig of actual hair, and the artistic life, repre¬
sented by an idea embodied in stone or metal. The higher
the work of art (that is, the higher the idea it represents as a
new combination of details taken from nature), the more it is
degraded or spoilt by an attempt to give it a kind of reality
which is out of keeping with the materials employed. But
the same rule applies to everything in art, however humble.
And a couple of stuffed canary-birds at the brim of a basket-
work imitation of a Greek drinking-cup would be as bad taste
as a wig from the barber's on the head of a marble statue of
Apollo."
" I see,' said Will, his head downcast, like a man ponder¬
ing—" at least I think I see ; and I'm very much obliged to
you, sir."
Mrs. Somers had long since returned with the work-basket,
but stood with it in her hands, not daring to interrupt
the gentleman, and listening to bis discourse with as much
patience and as little comprehension as if it had been one
of the controversial sermons upon Ritualism with which on
great occasions Mr. Lethbridge favored his congregation.
172
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelm having now exhausted his critical lecture—from
which certain poets and novelists, who contrive to caricature
the ideal by their attempt to put wigs of real hair upon the
heads of stone statues, might borrow a useful hint or two it
they would condescend to do so, which is not likely—^pcr
ceived Mrs. Somers standing by him, took from her the
basket, which was really very pretty and elegant, subdivided
into various compartments for the implements in use among
ladies, and bestowed on it a well-merited eulogium.
" The young lady means to finish it herself with ribbons,
and line it with satin," said Mrs. Somers, proudly.
"The ribbons will not be amiss, sir?" said Will, inter¬
rogatively.
" Not at all. Your natural sense of the fitness of things
tells you that ribbons go well with straw and light straw-like
work such as this; though you would not put ribbons on
those rude hampers and game-baskets in the corner. Like to
like ; a stout cord goes suitably with them ; just as a poet
who understands his art employs pretty expressions for poems
intended to be pretty and suit a fashionable drawing-room,
and carefully shuns them to substitute a simple cord for
poems intended to be strong and travel far, despite of rough
usage by the way. But you really ought to make much
more money by this fancy-work than you could as a day-
laborer."
Will sighed. "Not in this neighborhood, sir. I might
in a town."
" Why not move to a town, then ?"
The young man colored, and shook his head.
KENELM CUILLINGLY.
173
Kenelm turned appealingly to Mrs. Somers. "I'll be
willing to go wherever it would be best for my boy, sir.
But " and here she cbecked herself, and a tear trickled
silently down her cheeks.
IVill resumed, in a more cheerful tone, " I am getting a
li.tle known now, and work wUl come if one waits for it."
Kenelm did not deem it courteous or discreet to intrude
further on Will's confidence in the first interview ; and he
began to feel, more than he had done at first, not only the
dull pain of the bruises he had received in the recent combat,
but also somewhat more than the weariness which follows
a long summer-day's work in the open air. He therefore,
rather abruptly, now took his leave, saying that he should bo
very glad of a few specimens of Will's ingenuity and skill, and
would call or write to give directions about them.
Just as he came in sight of Tom Bowles's house on his
way back to Mr. Saunderson's, Kenelm saw a man mounting
a pony that stood tied up at the gate, and exchanging a few
words with a respectable-looking woman before he rode on.
He was passing by Kenelm without notice, when that philo¬
sophical vagi'ant stopped him, saying, " If I am not mistaken,
sir, you are the doctor. There is not much the matter with
Mr. Bowles ?"
The doctor shook his head. " I can't say yet. He has
Lad a very ugly blow somewhere."
" It was just under the left ear. I did not aim at that
exact spot ; but Bowles unluckily swerved a little aside at the
moment, perhaps in surprise at a tap between his eyes imme¬
diately preceding it ; and so, as you say, it was an ugly blow
174
KENELM CHILLINOLY,
that he received. But if it cures him of the hahit of giving
ugly hlows to other people who can bear them less safely,
perhaps it may be all for his good, as, no doubt, sir, your
schoolmaster said when be flogged you."
" Bless my soul ! are you the man who fought with him—
you ? I can't believe it."
" Why not ?"
" Why not I So far as I can judge by this light, though
you are a tall fellow, Tom Bowles must be a much heavier
weight than you are."
•' Tom Spring was the champion of England ; and accord¬
ing to the records of his weight, which History has preserved
in her archives, Tom Spring was a lighter weight than I am."
•' But are you a prize-fighter?"
" I am as much that as I am anything else. But to return
to Mr. Bowles : was it necessary to bleed him ?"
"Yes ; he was unconscious, or nearly so, when I came. I
took away a few ounces, and I am happy to say he is now
sensible, but must be kept very quiet."
"No doubt ; but I hope he will be well enough to see me
to-morrow."
" I hope so too ; hut I can't say yet. Quarrel about a
girl—eh?"
" It was not about money. And I suppose if there were no
money and no women in the world, there would be no quar¬
rels, and very few doctors. Good-night, sir."
"It is a strange thing to me," said Kenelm, as he now
opened the garden-gate of Mr. Saunderson's homestead, " that
though I've had nothing to eat all day, except a few pitifiU
kenelm chillingly.
175
Baudwiches, I don't feel the least hungry. Such arrest of the
lawful duties of the digestive organs never happened to me
before. There must be something weird and ominous in it."
On entering the parlor, the family party, though they had
long since finished supper, were still seated round the table.
They all rose at sight of Kenelm. The fame of his achieve¬
ments had preceded him. He checked the congratulations,
the compliments, and the questions which the hearty farmer
rapidly heaped upon him, with a melancholic exclamation,
" But I have lost my appetite ! No honors can compensate
for that. Let me go to bed peaceably, and perhaps in the
magic land of sleep Nature may restore me by a dream of
Bupper."
CHAPTER XIV.
Kenelm rose betimes the next morning, somewhat stiff and
uneasy, hut sufficiently recovered to feel ravenous. Fortu¬
nately, one of the young ladies who attended specially to the
dairy was already up, and supplied the starv'ng hero with a
vast bowl of bread and milk. He then strolled into the hay-
field, in which there was now very little left to do, and but
few hands besides his own were employed. Jessie was not
there. Kenelm was glad of that. By nine o'clock his work
was over, and the farmer and his men were in the yard com¬
pleting the ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a
round of visits. He called first at the village shop kept by
176
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie had pointed out to him, on pr»'
tense of buying a gaudy neckerchief, and soon, thanks to his
habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shop-
woman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as
with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, ren¬
dered mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharp¬
ness. She became very communicative, spoke freely of her
desire to give up the shop and pass the rest of her days with
a sister, widowed like herself, in a neighboring town. Since
she had lost her husband, the field and orchard attached to
the shop had ceased to be profitable, and become a great care
and trouble ; and the attention the shop required was weari¬
some. But she had twelve years unexpired of the lease
granted for twenty-one years to her husband on low terms,
and she wanted a premium for its transfer, and a purchaser
for the stock of the shop. Kenelm soon drew from her the
amount of the sum she required for all—£45.
" You ben't thinking of it for yourself?" she asked, putting
on her spectacles and examining him with care.
" Perhaps so, if one could get a decent living out of it.
Do you keep a book of your losses and gains ?"
" In course, sir," she said, proudly. " I kept the books in
my goodman's time, and he was one who could find out if
there was a farthing wrong, for he had been in a lawyer's
oflice when a lad."
" Why did he leave a lawyer's ofiBce to keep a little shop ?"
" W^ell, he was born a farmer's son in this neighborhood,
and he always had a hankering after the country, and—and
besides that "
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
177
« Yes."
" I'll tell you the truth ; he had got into a way of drinking
epeerrits, and he was a good young man, and wanted to break
himself of it, and he took the temperance oath ; but it wa.«
too hard on him, for he could not break himself of the com¬
pany that led him into liquor. And so, one time when he
came into the neighborhood to see his parents for the Christmas
holiday, he took a bit of liking to me ; and my father, who
was Squire Travers's bailiff, had just died, and left me a little
money. And so, somehow or other, we came together, and
got this house and the land from the Squire on lease very
reasonable ; and my goodman, being well eddycated, and much
thought of, and never being tempted to drink, now that he
had a missus to keep him in order, had a many little things
put into his way He could help to measure timber, and
knew about draining, and he got some book-keeping from the
farmers about ; and we kept cows and pigs and poultry, and
so we did very well, specially as the Lord was merciful, and
sent us no children."
" And what does the shop bring in a year since your hus¬
band died?"
" You had best judge for yourself. Will you look at the
book, and take a peep at the land and apple-trees ? But they's
been neglected since my goodman died."
In another minute the heir of the Chillinglys was seated
in a neat little back parlor, with a pretty, though eonfined,
view of the orchard and grass slope behind it, and bending
over Mrs. Bawtrey's ledger.
Some customers for cheese and bacon coming now into the
n* 12
178
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
shop, the old woman left him to his studies. Though they
were not of a nature familiar to him, he brought to them, at
least, that general clearness of head and quick seizure of im¬
portant points which are common to most men who have gone
through some disciplined training of intellect and been ac¬
customed to extract the pith and marrow out of many books
on many subjects. The result of his examination was satis¬
factory ; there appeared to him a clear balance of gain from
the shop alone of somewhat over £40 a year, taking the
average of the last three years. Closing the book, he then
let himself out of the window into the orchard, and thence
into the neighboring grass field. Both were, indeed, much
neglected ; the trees wanted pruning, the field manure. But
the soil was evidently of rich loam, and the fruiWrees were
abundant and of ripe age, generally looking healthy in spite
of neglect. With the quick intuition of a man born and bred
in the country and picking up scraps of rural knowledge un¬
consciously, Kenelm convinced himself that the land, properly
managed, would far more than cover the rent, rates, tithes,
and all incidental outgoings, leaving the profits of the shop as
the clear income of the occupiers. And no doubt, with clever
young people to manage the shop, its profits might be in¬
creased.
Not thinking it necessary to return at present to Mrs. Baw
trey's, Kenelm now bent his way to Tom Bowles's.
The house-door was closed. At the summons of his knock
it was quickly opened by a tall, stout, remarkably fine-looking
woman, who might have told fifty years and carried them off
lightly on her ample shoulders. She was dressed very re-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
179
epectably in black, her brown hair braided simply under a
neat tigbt-fitting cap. Her features were aquiline and very
regular—altogether, there was something about her majestin
and Cornelia-like. She might have sat for the model of that
Roman matron, except for the fairness of her Anglo-Saxon
complexion.
"What's your pleasure?" she asked, in a cold and some¬
what stern voice.
" Ma'am," answered Kenelm, uncovering, " I have called
tc see Mr. Bowles, and I sincerely hope he is well enough to
let me do so."
" No, sir, he is not well enough for that ; he is lying down
in his own room, and must he kept quiet."
" May I then ask you the favor to let me in ? I would say
a few words to you, who are his mother, if I mistake not."
Mrs. Bowles paused a moment, as if in doubt ; hut she was
at no loss to detect in Kenelm's manner something superior
to the fashion of his dress, and, supposing the visit might
refer to her son's professional business, she opened the door
wider, drew aside to let him pass first, and when he stood
midway in the parlor, reque.sted him to take a seat, and, to
set him the example, seated herself.
" Ma'am," said Kenelm, " do not regret to have admitted
me, and do not think hardly of me, when I inform you that I
am the unfortunate cause of your son's accident."
Mrs. Bowles rose with a start.
" You're the man who heat my hoy ?"
"No, ma'am, do not say I heat him. He is not beaten.
He is so brave and so strong that he would easily have beaten
180
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
me if 1 had not, by good luck, knocked him down before ha
had lime to do so. Pray, ma'am, retain your seat, and listen
to me patiently for a few moments."
Mrs. Bowles, with an indignant heave of her Juno-lika
bosom, and with a superbly haughty expression of counte¬
nance, which suited well with its aquiline formation, tacitly
obeyed.
"You will allow, ma'am," recommenced Kenelm, "that
this is not the first time by many that Mr. Bowles has come
to blows with another man. Am I not right in that assump¬
tion?"
" My son is of a hasty temper," replied Mrs. Bowles, re¬
luctantly, " and people should not aggravate him."
" You grant the fact, then ?" said Kenehn, imperturbably,
but with a polite inclination of head. " Mr. Bowles has often
been engaged in these encounters, and in all of them it is
quite clear that he provoked the battle; for you must be
aware that he is not the sort of man to whom any other
would be disposed to give the first blow. Yet, after these
little incidents had occurred, and Mr. Bowles had, say, half
killed the person who aggravated him, you did not feel any
resentment against that person, did you? Nay, if he had
wanted nursing, you would have gone and nursed him."
" I don't know as to nursing," said Mrs. Bowles, beginning
to lose her dignity of mien ; " but certainly I should have
been very sorry for him. And as for Tom—though I say it
who should not say it—he has no more malice than a baby—
he'd go and make it up with any man, however badly he had
beaten him."
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
181
"Just as I supposed; and if the man had sulked and
would not make it up, Tom would have called him a bad
fellow, and felt inclined to beat him again."
Mrs. Bowles's face relaxed into a stately smile.
" Well, then," pursued Kcnelm, " I do but humbly imitate
Mr. Bowles, and I come to make it up and shake hands with
him."
" No, sir—no," exclaimed Mrs. Bowles, though in a low
voice, and turning pale. " Don't think of it. 'Tis not the
blows—^he'll get over those fast enough ; 'tis his pride that's
hurt; and if he saw you there might be mischief. But you're
a stranger, and going away ;—do go soon—do keep out of his
way—do 1" And the mother clasped her hands.
" Mrs. Bowles," said Kenelm, with a change of voice and
aspect—a voice and aspect so earnest and impressive that
they stilled and awed her—"will you not help me to save
your son from the dangers into which that hasty temper and
that mischievous pride may at any moment hurry him ? Does
it never occur to you that these are the causes of terrible
crime, bringing terrible punishment ; and that against brute
force, impelled by savage passions, society protects itself by
the hulks and the gallows ?"
" Sir, how dare you "
" Hush ! If one man kill another in a moment of ungov¬
ernable wrath, that is a crime which, though heavily punished
by the conscience, is gently dealt with by the law, which calls
it only manslaughter ; but if a motive to the violence—such
as jealousy or revenge—can be assigned, and there should bo
no witness by to prove that the violence was not premeditated,
182
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
then the law does not call it manslaughter, but murder. Was
it not that thought which made you so imploringly exclaim,
' Go soon ; keep out of his way' ? "
The woman made no answer, but, sinking back in her chair,
gasped for breath.
"Nay, madam," resumed Kenelm, mildly; "banish your
fxirs. If you wUl help me I feel sure that I can save youi
son from such perils, and I only ask you to let me save him.
I am convinced that he has a good and a noble nature, and ha
is worth saving." As he thus said he took her hand. She
resigned it to him and returned the pressure, all her pride
softening as she began to weep.
At length, when she recovered voice, she said :
" It is all along of that girl. He was not so till she crossed
him, and made him half mad. He is not the same man since
then—my poor Tom !"
" Do you know that he has given me his word, and before
his fellow-villagers, that if he had the worst of the fight he
would never molest Jessie Wiles again ?"
" Yes, he told me so himself; and it is that which weighs
on him now. He broods, and broods, and mutters, and will
not be comforted ; and—and I do fear that he means revenge.
And, again, I implore you keep out of his way."
" It is not revenge on me that he thinks of. Suppose I go
and am seen no more, do you think in your own heart that
that girl's life is safe?"
" What I My Tom kill a woman !"
" Do you never read in your newspaper of a man who kills
his sweetheart, or the girl wh i refuses to be his sweetheart ?
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
183
At all events, you yourself do not approve this frantic suit of
his. If I have heard rightly, you have wished to get Tom
out of the village for some time, till Jessie Wiles is—we'll
say, married, or gone elsewhere for good."
" Yes, indeed, I have wished and prayed for it many's tho
time, both for her sake and for his. And I am sure I don't
know what we shall do if he stays, for he has been losing
custom fast. The Squire has taken away his, and so have
many of the farmers ; and such a trade as it was in his good
father's time ! And if he would go, his uncle, the Veterinary
at Luseombe, would take him into partnership ; for he has no
son of his own, and he knows how clever Tom is ;—^there
ben't a man who knows more about horses ; and cows too,
for the matter of that."
" And if Luseombe is a large place, the business there must
be more profitable than it can be here, even if Tom got back
his custom ?"
" Oh, yes ! five times as good—if he would but go ; but
he'll not hear of it."
" Mrs. Bowles, I am very much obliged to you for your
confidence, and I feel sure that all will end happily, now we
have had this talk. I'll not press farther on you at present.
Tom will not stir out, I suppose, till the evening."
"Ah, sir, he seems as if he had no heart to stir out again,
unless for something dreadful."
" Cour.age ! I will call again in the evening, and then you
just take me up to Tom's room, and leave me there to make
friends with him, as I have with you. Don't, say a word
about me in the meanwhile."
184
kenelm chillingly.
« But "
" ' But,' Mrs. Bowles, is a word tliat cools many a warm
impulse, stifles many a kindly tkought, puts a dead stop to
many a brotherly deed. Nobody would ever love his neighbor
as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be eaid on
the other side of the question."
CHAPTER XV.
Kenelm now bent his way towards the parsonage, but just
as he neared its glebe-lands he met a gentleman whose dress
was so evidently clerical that he stopped and said :
" Have I the honor to address Mr. Lethbridge ?"
" That is my name," said the clergyman, smiling pleasantly.
" Anything I can do for you?"
" Yes, a great deal, if you will let me talk to you about a
few of your parishioners."
" My parishioners ! I beg your pardon, but you are quit«
a stranger to me, and, I should think, to the parish."
" To the parish—no, I am quite at home in it ; and I
honestly believe that it has never known a more officious
busybody thrusting himself into its most private aflPairs."
Mr. Lethbridge stared, and, after a short pause, said, " 1
have heard of a young man who has been staying at Mr.
Saunderson's, and is indeed at this moment the talk of thn
village. You are "
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
185
" That young man. Alas I yes."
" Nay," said Mr. Lethbridge, kindly, " I cannot myself, as
a minister of the gospel, approve of your profession, and, if
I might take the liberty, I would try and dissuade you from
it ; but still, as for the one act of freeing a poor girl from the
most scandalous persiîcution, and administering, though in a
rough way, a lesson to a savage brute who has long been the
disgrace and terror of the neighborhood, I cannot honestly
say that it has my condemnation. The moral sense of a com¬
munity is generally a right one—you have won the praise of
the village. Under all the circumstances, I do not withhold
mine. You woke this morning and found yourself famous.
Do not sigh ' Alas.' "
" Lord Byron woke one morning and found himself famous,
and the result was that he sighed ' Alas' for the rest of his
life. If there be two things which a wise man should avoid,
they are fame and love. Heaven defend me from both 1"
Again the parson stared ; but being of compassionate nature,
and inclined to take mild views of everything that belongs to
humanity, he said, with a slight inclination of his head :
" I have always heard that the Americans in general enjoy
the advantage of a better education than we do in England,
and their reading public is infinitely larger than ours ; still,
when I hear one of a calling not highly considered in this
country for intellectual cultivation or ethical philosophy cite
Lord Byron, and utter a sentiment at variance with the im¬
petuosity of inexperienced youth, but which has much to
commend it in the eyes of a reflective Christian impressed
with the nothingness of the objects mostly coveted by the
186
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
human heart, I am surprised, and—Oh, my dear young friend,
surely your education might fit you for something better 1"
It was among the maxims of Kenelm Chillingly's creed
that a sensible man should never allow himself to be surprised ;
but here he was, to use a popular idiom, " taken aback," and
lowered himself to the rank of ordinary minds by saying
simply, " I don't understand."
" I see," resumed the clergyman, shaking his head gently,
" as I always suspected, that in the vaunted education be¬
stowed on Americans the elementary principles of Christian
right and wrong are more neglected than they are among our
own humble classes. Yes, my young friend, you may quote
poets, you may startle me by remarks on the nothingness of
human fame and human love, derived from the precepts of
heathen poets, and yet not understand with what compassion,
and, in the judgment of most sober-minded persons, with what
contempt, a human being who practices your vocation is
regarded."
" Have I a vocation ?" said Kenelm. " I am very glad to
hear it. What is my vocation? and why must I be an
American ?"
"Why — surely I am not misinformed. You are the
American—I forget his name—who has come over to contest
the belt of prize-fighting with the champion of England. You
are silent ; you hang your head. By your appearance, your
length of limb, your gravity of countenance, your evident
education, you confirm the impression of your birth. Your
prowess has proved your profession."
" lleverend sir," said Kenelm, with his unutterable serious-
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
18T
ness of aspect, " I am on my travels in search of truth and in
flight from shams, but so great a take-in as myself I have not
yet encountered. Remember me in your prayers. I am not
an American ; I am not a prize-fighter. I honor the first a*
the citizen of a grand republic trying bis best to accomplish
an experiment in government in which he will find the very
prosperity he tends to create will sooner or later destroy his
experiment. I honor the last because strength, courage, and
sobriety are essential to the prize-fighter and are among the
chiefest ornaments of kings and heroes. But I am neither
one nor the other. And all I can say for myself is, that I
belong to that very vague class commonly called English gen¬
tlemen, and that, by birth and education, I have a right to ask
you to shake hands with me as such."
Mr. Lethbridge stared again, raised his hat, bowed, and
shook hands.
"You will allow me now to speak to you about your
parishioners. You take an interest in Will Somers—so do I.
He is clever and ingenious. But it seems there is not suf¬
ficient demand here for his baskets, and he would, no doubt,
do better in some neighboring town. Why does he object to
move ?"
" I fear that poor Will would pine away to death if he lost
sight of that pretty girl for whom you did such chivalrous
battle with Tom Bowles."
"The unhappy man, then, is really in love with Jessio
Wiles ? And do you think she no less really cares for him ?"
" I am sure of it."
" And would make him a good wife—that is, as wives go?"
188
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
"A good daughter generally makes a good wife. And
there is not a father in the place who has a better child than
Jessie is to hers. She really is a girl of a superior nature.
She was the cleverest pupil at our school, and my wife is
much attached to her. But she has something better than
mere cleverness ; she has an excellent heart."
" What you say confirms my own impressions. And the
girl's father has no other objection to Will Somers than his
fear that Will could not support a wife and family com¬
fortably ?"
" He can have no other objection save that which would
apply equally to all suitors. I mean his fear lest Tom
Bowles might do her some mischief if he knew she was
about to marry any one else."
" You think, then, that Mr. Bowles is a thoroughly bad
and dangerous person ?"
" Thoroughly bad and dangerous, and worse since he has
taken to drinking."
" I suppose he did not take to drinking till he lost his wits
for Jessie Wiles?"
" No, I don't think he did."
" But, Mr. Lethbridge, have you never used your influence
over this dangerous man ?"
" Of course I did try, but I only got insulted. He is a
godless animal, and has not been inside a church for years.
He seems to have got a smattering of such vile learning as
may be found in infidel publications, and I doubt if he has
any religion at all."
" Poor Polyphemus ! no wonder his Galatea shuns him
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
189
" Old Wiles is terribly frightened, and asked my wife to
find Jessie a place as servant at a distance. But Jessie can't
bear the thoughts of leaving."
" For the same reason which attaches Will Somers to the
native soil ?"
" My wife thinks so."
" Do you believe that if Tom Bowles were out of the way,
and Jessie and Will were man and wife, they could earn a
sufficient livelihood as successors to Mrs. Bawtrey. Will
adding the profits of his basket-work to those of the shop and
land ?"
" A sufficient livelihood 1 of course. They would be quite
rich. I know the shop used to turn a great deal of money.
The old woman, to be sure, is no longer up to business, bat
still she retains a good custom."
" Will Somers seems in delicate health. Perhaps if he
had less weary struggle for a livelihood, and no fear of losing
Jessie, his health would improve."
" His life would be saved, sir."
" Then," said Kenelm, with a heavy sigh and a face as
long as an undertaker's, "though I myself entertain a profound
compassion for that disturbance to our mental equilibrium
which goes by the name of ' love,' and I am the last person
who ought to add to the cares and sorrows which marriage
entails upon its victims—I say nothing of the woes destined
to those whom marriage usually adds to a population already
overcrowded—I fear that I must be the means of bringing these
two love-birds into the same cage. I am ready to purchase
the shop and its appurtenances on their behalf, on the con-
190
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
dition that you will kindly obtain the consent of Jessie's
father to their union. As for my brave friend Tom Bowles,
I undertake to deliver them and the village from that ex¬
uberant nature, which requires a larger field for its energies.
Pardon me for not letting you interrupt me. I have not
yet finished what I have to say. Allow me to ask if Mrs.
Grundy resides in this village."
" Mrs. Grundy 1 Oh, I understand. Of course ; wherever
a woman has a tongue, there Mrs. Grundy has a home."
" And seeing that Jessie is very pretty, and that in walking
with her I encountered Mr. Bowles, might not Mrs. Grundy
say, with a toss of her head, ' that it was not out of pure
charity that the stranger had been so liberal to Jessie Wiles' ?
But if the money for the shop be paid through you to Mrs.
Bawtrey, and you kindly undertake all the contingent ar¬
rangements, Mrs. Grundy will have nothing to say against
any one."
Mr. Lcthbridge gazed with amaze at the solemn counte¬
nance before him.
" Sir," he said, after a long pause, " I scarcely know how
to express my admiration of a generosity so noble, so thought¬
ful, and accompanied with a delicacy, and, indeed, with a
wisdom, which—which "
" Pray, my dear sir, do not make me still more ashamed of
myself than I am at present, for an interference in love-mat¬
ters quite alien to my own convictions as to the best mode of
making an 'Approach to the Angels.' To conclude this
business, I think it better to deposit in your hands the sum
of £45, for which Mrs. Bawtrey has agreed to sell the re
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
101
mainder of her lease and stoek-in-hand ; but of course you
will not make anything publie till I am gone, and Tom
Bowles too. I hope I may get him away to-morrow ; but I
shall know to-night when I can depend on his departure—and
till he goes I must stay."
As he spoke, Kenelm transferred from his pocket-book to
Mr. Lethbridge's hand bank-notes to the amount specified.
" May I at least ask the name of the gentleman who
honors me with his confidence, and has bestowed so much
happiness on members of my fiock ?"
" There is no great reason why I should not tell you my
name, but I see no reason why I should. You remember
Talleyrand's advice—' If you are in doubt whether to write a
letter or not—don't.' The advice applies to many doubts in
life besides that of letter-writing. Farewell, sir 1"
" A most extraordinary young man," muttered the parson,
gazing at the receding form of the tall stranger ; then gently
shaking his head, he added, "Quite an original." He was
contented with that solution of the difficulties which had
puzzled him. May the reader be the same.
192
kenelm chillingly.
CHAPTER XVI.
After the family dinner, at whicli the farmer's guest dis¬
played more than his usual powers of appetite, Kenelm fol¬
lowed his host towards the stackyard, and said :
" My dear Mr. Saunderson, though you have no longer any
work for me to do, and I ought not to trespass further on
your hospitality, yet if I might stay with you another day
or so I should be very grateful."
"My dear lad," cried the farmer, in whose estimation
Kenelm had risen prodigiously since the victory over Tom
Bowles, " you are welcome to stay as long as you like, and we
shall be all sorry when you go. Indeed, at all events, you
must stay over Saturday, for you shall go with us to the
Squire's harvest-supper. It will be a pretty sight, and my
girls are already counting on you for a dance."
" Saturday—^the day after to-morrow. You are very kind ;
but merry-makings are not much in my way, and I think I
shall be on my road before you set off to the Squire's supper."
" Pooh ! you shall stay ; and, I say, young un, if you want
more to do, I have a job for you quite in your line."
" What is it?"
" Thrash my ploughman. He has been insolent this
morning, and he is the biggest fellow in the county, next to
Tom Bowles."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
193
Here the farmer laughed heartily, enjoying his own joke.
"Thank you for nothing," said Kenelm, rubbing his
bruises. "A burnt child dreads the fire."
The young man wandered alone into the fields. The day
was becoming overcast, and the clouds threatened rain. The
air was exceedingly still ; the landscape, missing the sunshine,
wore an aspect of gloomy solitude. Kenelm came to the
banjis of the rivulet not far from the spot on which the
farmer had first found him. There he sat down, and leant
his cheek on his hand, with eyes fixed on the still and dark¬
ened stream lapsing mournfully away; sorrow entered into his
heart and tinged its musings.
"Is it then true," said he, soliloquizing, "that I am born
to pass through life utterly alone; asking, indeed, for no
sister-half of myself, disbelieving its possibility, shrinking
from the thought of it—^half scorning, half pitying those
who sigh for it?—thing unattainable—^better sigh for the
moon!
" Yet, if other men sigh for it, why do I stand apart from
them ? H the world be a stage, and all the men and women
in it merely players, am I to be the solitary spectator, with no
part in the drama and no interest in the vicissitudes of its
plot ? Many there are, no doubt, who covet as little as I do
the part of 'Lover,' 'with a woeful ballad made to his mis¬
tress' eyebrow ;' but then they covet some other part in the
drama, such as that of Soldier ' bearded as a pard,' or that of
Justice ' in fair round belly with fat capon lined.' But me
no ambition fires—I have no longing either to rise or to shine.
I don't desire to be a colonel, nor an admiral, nor a member
I 13
194
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
of Parliament, nor an alderman ; I do not yearn for the fame
of a wit, or a poet, or a philosopher, or a diner-out, or a crack
shot at a rifle-match or a hattue. Decidedly I am the one
looker-on, the one bystander, and have no more concern with
the active world than a stone has. It is a horrible phan¬
tasmal crotchet of Goethe's, that originally we were all monads,
little segregated atoms adrift in the atmosphere, and carried
hither and thither by forces over which we had no control,
especially by the attraction of other monads, so that one
monad, compelled by porcine monads, crystallizes into a pig ;
another, hurried along by heroic monads, becomes a lion or
an Alexander. Now it is quite clear," continued Kenelm,
shifting his position and crossing the right leg over the left,
" that a monad intended or fitted for some other planet may,
on its way to that destination, be encountered by a current of
other monads blowing earthward, and be caught up in the
stream and whirled on, till, to the marring of its whole
proper purpose and scene of action, it settles here—conglom¬
erated into a baby. Probably that lot has befallen me : my
monad, meant for another region in space, has been dropped
into this, where it can never be at home, never amalgamate
with other monads nor comprehend why they are in such a
perpetual fidget. I declare I know no more why the minds
of human beings should be so restlessly agitated about things
which, as most of them own, give more pain than pleasure,
than I understand why that swarm of gnats, which has such
a very short time to live, does not give itself a moment's
repose, but goes up and down, rising and falling as if it
were on a seesaw, and making as much noise about its im
KKNELM CHILLINGLY.
195
significant alternations of ascent and descent as if it were
the hum of men. And yet, perhaps, in another planet my
monad would have frisked, and jumped, and danced, and
seesawed with congenial monads, as contentedly and as
sillily as do the monads of men and gnats in this alien Yale
of Tears."
Kenelm had just arrived at that conjectural solution of his
perplexities, when a voice was heard singing, or rather modu¬
lated to that kind of chant between recitative and song
which is so pleasingly eflFective where the intonations are pure
and musical. They were so in this instance, and Kenelm's
ear caught eveiy word in the following song :
CONTENT.
There are times when the troubles of life are still ;
The bees wandered lost in the depths of June,
And I paused where the chime of a silver rill
Sang the linnet and lark to their rest at noon.
Said my soul, " See how calmly the wavelets glide.
Though so narrow their way to their ocean-vent :
And the world that I traverse is wide, is wide.
And yet is too narrow to hold content."
" 0 my soul, never say that the world is wide—
The rill in its banks is less closely pent;
It is thou who art shoreless on every side.
And thy width will not let thee inclose content."
As tlie verse ceased, Kenelm lifted bis head. But th*»
banks of the brook were so curving and so clothed with
brushwood that for some minutes the singer was invisible.
At last the boughs before him were put aside, and within a
few paces of himself paused the man to whom he had com*
196
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
mended tlie praises of a beefsteak, instead of those whicL
minstrelsy, in its immemorial error, dedicates to love.
"Sir," said Kenelm, half rising, "well met once morel
Have you ever listened to the cuckoo?"
"Sir," answered the minstrel, "have you ever felt the
presence of the summer ?"
" Permit me to shake hands with you. I admire the ques¬
tion by which you have countermet and rebuked my own. If
you are not in a hurry, will you sit down and let us talk?"
The minstrel inclined his head and seated himself. His
dog—now emerged from the brushwood—gravely approached
Kenelm, who with greater gravity regarded him ; then, wag¬
ging his tail, reposed on his haunches, intent with ear erect
on a stir in the neighboring reeds, evidently considering
whether it was caused by a fish or a water-rat.
" I asked you, sir, if you had ever listened to the cuckoo—
frrm no irrelevant curiosity;—for often on summer days,
when one is talking with one's self, and, of course, puzzling
one's self, a voice breaks out, as it were, from the heart of
Nature, so far is it and yet so near ; and it says something
very quieting, very musical, so that one is tempted incon¬
siderately and foolishly to exclaim, 'Nature replies to me.'
The cuckoo has served me that trick pretty often. Your song
is a better answer to a man's self-questionings than he can ever
get from a cuckoo."
"I doubt that," said the minstrel. "Song, at the best, is
but the echo of some voice from the heart of Nature. And
if the cuckoo's note seemed to you such a voice, it was an
answer to your questionings perhaps more simply truthful
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
197
than man can utter, if you had rightly construed th«
language."
" My good friend," answered Kenelm, " what you say
sounds very prettily ; and it contains a sentiment which has
been amplified by certain critics into that measureless domain
of dunderheads which is vulgarly called BosH. But though
Nature is never silent, though she abuses the privilege of her
age in being tediously gossiping and garrulous—Nature never
replies to our questions—she can't understand an argument—
she has never read Mr. Mill's work on Logic. In fact, as it
is truly said by a great philosopher, ' Nature has no mind.'
Every man who addresses her is compelled to force upon her
for a moment the loan of his own mind. And if she answers
a question which his own mind puts to her, it is only by such
a reply as his own mind teaches to her parrot-like lips. And
as every man has a different mind, so every man gets a differ¬
ent answer. Nature is a lying old humbug."
The minstrel laughed merrily ; and his laugh was as sweet
as his chant.
" Poets would have a great deal to unlearn if they are to
look upon Nature in that light."
" Bad poets would, and so much the better for them and
their readers."
" Are not good poets students of Nature ?"
" Students of Nature, certainly—as surgeons study anatomy
by dissecting a dead body. But the good poet, like the good
Burgeon, is the man who considers that study merely as the
necessary ABC and not as the all-in-all essential to skill in
his practice. I do not give the fame of a good surgeon to a
198
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
man who tills a book with details, more or less accurate, of
fibres, and nerves, and muscles ; and I don't give the fame of
a good poet to a man who makes an inventory of the Rhino
or the Vale of Gloucester. The good surgeon and the good
poet are they who understand the living man. What is that
poetry of drama which Aristotle justly ranks as the highest ?
Is it not a poetry in which description of inanimate Nature
must of necessity be very brief and general ; in which even
the external form of man is so indifferent a consideration that
it will vary with each actor who performs the part ? A
Hamlet may be fair or dark. A Macbeth may be short or
tall. The merit of dramatic poetry consists in the substituting
for what is commonly called Nature (viz., external and
material Nature) creatures intellectual, emotional, but so
purely immaterial that they may be said to be all mind and
soul, accepting the temporary loans of any such bodies at
hand as actors may offer, in order to be made palpable and
visible to the audience, but needing no such bodies to be pal¬
pable and visible to readers. The highest kind of poetry is
therefore that which has least to do with external Nature.
But every grade has its merit more or less genuinely great,
according as it instills into Nature that which is not there—
the reason and the soul of man."
"I am not much disposed," said the minstrel, "to ac¬
knowledge any one form of poetry to be practically higher
than another—that is, so far as to elevate the poet who culti¬
vates what you call the highest with some success, above the
rank of the poet who cultivates what you call a very inferior
school with a success much more triumphant. In theory
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
199
dramatic poetry may be higher than lyric, and ' Venice Pre¬
served' is a very successful drama; hut I think Burns a
greater poet than Otway."
" Possibly he may be ; but I know of no lyrical poet, at
least among the moderns, who treats less of Nature as the
mere outward form of things, or more passionately animates
her framework with his own human heart, than does Robert
Burns. Do you suppose when a Greek, in some perplexity
of reason or conscience, addressed a question to the oracular
oak-leaves of Dodona, that the oak-leaves answered him?
Don't you rather believe that the question suggested by his
mind was answered by the mind of his fellow-man the priest,
who made the oak-leaves the mere vehicle of communication,
as you and I might make such vehicle in a sheet of writing-
paper ? Is not the history of superstition a chronicle of the
follies of man in attempting to get answers from external
Nature?"
"But," said the minstrel, "have I not somewhere heard
or read that the experiments of Science are the answers made
by Nature to the questions put to her by man?"
" They are the answers which his own mind suggests to
her, nothing more. His mind studies the laws of matter, and
in that study makes experiments on matter ; out of those c*-
l>eriments his mind, according to its previous knowledge or
natural acuteness, arrives at its own deductions, and hence
arise the sciences of mechanics and chemistry, etc. But the
matter itself gives no answer; the answer varies according to
the mind that puts the question, and the progress of science
consists in the perpetual correction of the errors and false-
200
kenelm chillingly.
hoods which preceding minds conceived to he the eorrect
answers they received from Nature. It is the supernatuml
within us—viz., Mind—which can alone guess at the mechan¬
ism of the natural—^viz., Matter. A stone cannot question a
stone."
The minstrel made no reply. And there was a long silence,
broken but by the hum of the insects, the ripple of onward
waves, and the sigh of the wind through reeds.
CHAPTER XVII.
Said Kenelm, at last breaking silence :
" Eapiamus, amici,
Occasionem de die, dumqae virent genua.
Et decet, obduota solvatur fronte seneetus !"
" Is not that quotation from Horace ?" asked the minstrel.
"Yes; and I made it insidiously, in order to see if you
had not acquired what is called a classical education."
" I might have received such education, if my tastes and
my destinies had not withdrawn me in boyhood from studies
of which I did not then comprehend the full value. But I
did pick up a smattering of Latin at school ; and from time
to time since I left school, I have endeavored to gain somo
little knowledge of the most popular Latin poets—chiefly, I
own to my shame, by the help of literal English translations."
" As a poet yourself, I am not sure that it would be an ad-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
201
vantage to know a dead language so well that its forms and
modes of thought ran, though perhaps unconsciously, into
those of the living one in which you compose. Horace
might have been a still better poet if he had not known
Greek better than you know Latin."
" It is at least courteous in you to say so," answered the
singer, with a pleased smile.
"You would be still more courteous," said Kenelm, " if
you would pardon an impertinent question, and tell me
whether it is for a wager that you wander through the land,
Homer-like, as a wandering minstrel, and allow that intel¬
ligent quadruped, your companion, to carry a tray in his
mouth for the reception of pennies ?' '
" No, it is not for a wager ; it is a whim of mine, which I
fancy, from the tone of your conversation, you could under¬
stand—^being, apparently, somewhat whimsical yourself."
" So far as whim goes, be assured of my sympathy."
" Well, then, though I follow a calling by the exercise of
which I secure a modest income—my passion is verse. If
the seasons were always summer, and life were always youth,
I should like to pass through the world singing. But I have
never ventured to publish any verses of mine. If they fell
still-born, it would give me more pain than such wounds to
vanity ought to give to a bearded man ; and if they wcro
assailed or ridiculed, it might seriously injure me in my
practical vocation. That last consideration, were I (juite
alone in the world, might not much weigh on me ; but there
are others for whose sake I should like to make fortune and
preserve station. Many years ago—it was in Germany—I
I*
202
KENELM CniLLINÜLT.
fell in with a German student who was very poor, and who
did make money by wandering about the country with lute
and song. He has since become a poet of no mean popular¬
ity, and he has told me that he is sure he found the secret of
that popularity in habitually consulting popular tastes during
his roving apprenticeship to song. His example strongly
impressed me. So I began this experiment ; and for several
years my summers have been all partly spent in this way. 1
am only known, as I think I told you before, in the rounds I
take as ' The Wandering Minstrel.' I receive the trifling
moneys that are bestowed on me as proofs of a certain merit.
I should not be paid by poor people if I did not please ; and
the songs which please them best are generally those I love
best myself. For the rest, my time is not thrown away—not
only as regards bodily health, but healthfulness of mind—all
the current of one's ideas becomes so freshened by months of
playful exercise and varied adventure."
"Yes, the adventure is varied enough," said Kenelm,
somewhat ruefully; for he felt, in shifting his posture, a
sharp twinge of his bruised muscles. " But don't you find
those mischief-makers, the women, always mix themselves up
with adventure?"
" Bless them ! of course," said the minstrel, with a ringing
laugh. "In life, as on the stage, the petticoat interest is
always the strongest."
"I don't agree with you there," said Kenelm, dryly.
" And you seem to me to utter a claptrap beneath the rank
of your understanding. However, this warm weather indis¬
poses one to disputation ; and I own that a petticoat, pro-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
203
vided it be red, is not without the interest of color in a
picture."
" Well, young gentleman," said the minstrel, rising, " the
day is wearing on, and I must wish you good-bye ; probably,
if you were to ramble about the country as I do, you would
see too many pretty girls not to teach you the strength of
petticoat interest—not in pictures alone ; and should I meet
you again, I may find you writing love-verses yourself."
" After a conjecture so unwarrantable, I part company with
you less reluctantly than I otherwise might do. But I hope
we shall meet again."
" Your wish flatters me much, but, if we do, pray respect
the confidence I have placed in you, and regard my wander¬
ing minstrelsy and my dog's tray as sacred secrets. Should
we not so meet, it is but a prudent reserve on my part if I do
not give you my right name and address."
" There you show the cautious common-sense which belongs
rarely to lovers of verse and petticoat interest. What have
you done with your guitar ?"
" I do not pace the roads with that instrument : it is for¬
warded to me from town to town under a borrowed name,
together with other raiment than this, should I have cause to
drop my character of wandering minstrel."
The two men here exchanged a cordial shake of the hand.
And as the minstrel went his way along the river-side, his
voice in chanting seemed to lend to the wavelets a livelier
murmur, to the reeds a less plaintive sigh.
204
kenelm chillingly.
CHAPTER XVIIL
In his room, solitary and brooding, sat the defeated hero
of a hundred fights. It was now twilight ; but the shutters
had been partially closed all day, in order to exclude the sun,
which had never before been unwelcome to Tom Bowles, and
they still remained so, making the twilight doubly twilight,
till the harvest moon, rising early, shot its ray through the
crevice, and forced a silvery track amid the shadows of the
floor.
The man's head drooped on his breast, his strong hands
rested listlessly on his knees ; his attitude was that of utter
despondency and prostration. But in the expression of his
face there were the signs of some dangerous and restless
thought which belied, not the gloom but, the stillness of the
posture. His brow, which was habitually open and frank, in
its defying aggressive boldness, was now contracted into deep
furrows, and lowered darkly over his downcast, half-closed
eyes. His lips were so tightly compressed that the face lost
its roundness, and the massive bone of the jaw stood out hard
and salient. Now and then, indeed, the lips opened, giving
vent to a deep, impatient sigh, but they reclosed as quickly
as they had parted. It was one of those crises in life which
find all the elements that make up a man's former self in law¬
less anarchy ; in which the Evil One seems tp enter and direct .
kenelm chillingly.
20.^1
the storm; in which a rude untutored mind, never before
harboring a thought of crime, sees the crime start up from an
abyss, feels it to be an enemy, yet yields to it as a fate. So
that when, at the last, some wretch, sentenced to the gibbet,
shudderingly .ooks back to the moment " that tremoled be¬
tween two worlds"—the world of the man guiltless, the world
of the man guilty—^he says to the holy, highly educated,
rational, passionless priest who confesses him and calls him
" brother," " The devil put it into my head."
At that moment the door opened ; at its threshold there
stood the man's mother—whom he had never allowed to
influence his conduct, though he loved her well in his rough
way—and the hated fellow-man whom he longed to see dead
at his feet. The door reclosed, the mother was gone, without
a word, for her tears choked her ; the fellow-man was alone
with him. Tom Bowles looked up, recognized his visitor,
cleared his brow, and rubbed his mighty hands.
CHAPTEB, XIX.
Kenelm Chillingly drew a chair close to his antago¬
nist's, and silently laid a hand on his.
Tom Bowles took up the hand in both his own, turned it
curiously towards the moonlight, gazed at it, poised it, then
with a sound between groan and laugh tossed it away as a
thing hostile but trivial, rose and locked the door, came back
to his seat, and said bluffly :
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" What do you want with me now ?"
" I want to ask you a favor."
" Favor I"
" The greatest which man can ask from man—^friendship
You see, my dear Tom," continued Kcnelm, making himself
quite at home—throwing his arm over the back of Tom's
chair, and stretching his legs comfortably as one does by one's
own fireside ; " you see, my dear Tom, that men like us—
young, single, not on the whole bad-looking as men go—can
find sweethearts in plenty. If one does not like us, another
will ; sweethearts are sown everywhere like nettles and this¬
tles. But the rarest thing in life is a friend. Now, tell me
frankly, in the course of your wanderings did you ever come
into a village where you could not have got a sweetheart if
you had asked for one ; and if, having got a sweetheart, you
had lost her, do you think you would have had any difiiculty
in finding another ? But have you such a thing in the world,
beyond the pale of your own family, as a true friend—a man
friend ? and supposing that you had such a friend—a friend
who would stand by you through thick and thin—who would
tell you your faults to your face, and praise you for your
good qualities behind your back—^who would do all he could
to save you from a danger, and all he could to get you out of
one,—supposing you had such a friend, and lost him, do you
believe that if you lived to the age of Methuselah you could
find another? You don't answer me; you are silent. Well,
Tom, I ask you to be such a friend to me, and I will he such
a friend to you."
Tom was so thoroughly " taken aback" by this address that
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
207
he remained dumfounded. But he feit as if the clouds in
his soul were breaking, and a ray of sunlight were forcing its
way through the sullen darkness. At length, however, the
receding rage within him returned, though with vacillating
step, and he growled between his teeth :
" A pretty friend indeed ! robbing me of my girl ! Go
along with you !"
" She was not your girl any more than she was or ever can
be mine."
" What, you ben't after her?"
" Certainly not ; I am going to Luscombc, and I ask you
to come with me. Do you think I am going to leave you
here ?"
" What is it to you ?"
" Everything. Providence has permitted me to save you
from the most lifelong of all sorrows. For—think ! Can any
sorrow be more lasting than had been yours if you had
attained your wish ; if you had forced or frightened a woman
to be your partner till death do part—^you loving her, she
loathing you ; you conscious, night and day, that your very
love had insured her misery, and that misery haunting you
like a ghost?—from that sorrow I have saved you. May
Providence permit me to complete my work, and save you
also from the most irredeemable of all crimes ! Look into
your soul, then recall the thoughts which all day long, and
not least at the moment I crossed this threshold, were rising
up, making reason dumb and conscience blind, and then lay
your hand on your heart and say, ' I am guiltless of a dream
of murder.' "
208
kenelm chillingly.
The wretched man sprang up erect, menacing, and, meeting
Kenelm's calm, steadfast, pitying gaze, dropped no less sud¬
denly—dropped on the floor, covered his face with his hands,
and a great cry came forth between sob and howl.
" Brother," said Kenelm, kneeling beside him, and twining
his arm round the man's heaving breast, " it is over now ;
with that cry the demon that maddened you has fled for¬
ever."
CHAPTER XX.
When, some time after, Kenelm quitted the room and
joined Mrs. Bowles below, he said cheerily, " All right ; Tom
and I are sworn friends. We are going together to Lus-
combe the day after to-morrow—Sunday ; just write a line to
his uncle to prepare him for Tom's visit, and send thither his
clothes, as we shall walk, and steal forth unobserved betimes
in the morning. Now go up and talk to him ; he wants a
mother's soothing and petting. He is a noble fellow at heart,
and we shall be all proud of him some day or other."
As he walked back towards the farmhouse, Kenelm en¬
countered Mr. Lethbridge, who said, " I have come from Mr.
Saunderson's, where I went in search of you. There is an
unexpected hitch in the negotiation for Mrs. Bawtrey's shop.
After seeing you this morning I fell in with Mr. Travers's
bailiff, and he tells me that her lease does not give her the
power to sublet without the Squire's consent; and that as *he
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
209
premises were originally let on very low terms to a favored
and responsible tenant, Mr. Travers cannot be expected to
sanction tbe transfer of the lease to a poor basket-maker : in
fact, though he will accept Mrs. Bawtrey's resignation, it must
be in favor of an applicant whom he desires to oblige. On
hearing this, I rode over to the Park and saw Mr. Travels
himself. But he was obdurate to my pleadings. All I could
get him to say was, ' Let the stranger who interests himself
in the matter come and talk to me. I should like to see the
man who thrashed that brute Tom Bowles; if he got the
better of him perhaps he may get the better of me. Bring
him with you to my harvest-supper to-morrow evening.'
Now, will you come?"
"Nay," said Kenelm, reluctantly, "but if he only asks
me in order to gratify a very vulgar curiosity, I don't think
I have much chance of serving Will Somers. What do you
say?"
" The Squire is a good man of business, and though no
one can call him unjust or grasping, still he is very little
touched by sentiment; and we must own that a sickly cripple
like poor Will is not a very eligible tenant. If, therefore, it
depended only on your chance with the Squire, I should not
be very sanguine. But we have an ally in his daughter.
She is very fond of Jessie Wiles, and she has shown great
kindness to Will. In fact, a sweeter, more benevolent, sym¬
pathizing nature than that of Cecilia Travers does not exist.
She has great influence with her father, and through her you
may win him."
" I particularly dislike having anything to do with women,"
14
210
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
eaid Kenelm, churlishly. "Parsons are accustomed to get
round them. Surely, my dear sir, you are more fit for that
work than I am."
" Permit me humbly to doubt that proposition ; one don't
get very quickly round the women when one can-ies the
weight of years on one's hack. But whenever you want
the aid of a parson to bring your own wooing to a happy
conclusion, I shall be happy, in my special capacity of parson,
to perform the ceremony required."
"DU meliora !" said Kenelm, gravely. " Some ills are too
serious to he approached even in joke. As for Miss Travers,
the moment you call her benevolent you inspire me with
horror. I know too well what a benevolent girl is—officious,
restless, fidgety, with a snub-nose, and her pocket full of
tracts. I will not go to the harvest-supper."
" Hist !" said the parson, softly. They were now passing
the cottage of Mrs. Somers; and while Kenelm was ha¬
ranguing against benevolent girls, Mr. Lethbridge had paused
before it, and was furtively looking in at the window. " Hist I
and come here,—^gently."
Kenelm obeyed, and looked in through the window. Will
was seated—Jessie Wiles had nestled herself at his feet,
and was holding his hand in both hers, looking up into his
face. Her profile alone was seen, but its expression was un¬
utterably soft and tender. His face, bent downwards towards
her, wore a mournful expression ; nay, the tears were rolling
silently down his cheeks. Kenelm listened, and heard her
say, " Don't talk so. Will ! you break my heart ; it is I who
am not worthy of you."
kenelm chillingly.
211
" Parson," said Kenelm, as they walked on, " I must go to
that confounded harvest-supper. I begin to think there is
something true in the venerable platitude about love in a
cottage. And Will Somers must be married in haste, in
order to repent at leisure."
'■I don't see why a man should repent having married a
good girl whom he loves."
" You don't? Answer me candidly. Did you never meet
a man who repented having married ?"
" Of course I have ; very often."
" Well, think again, and answer as candidly. Did you
ever meet a man who repented not having married?"
The parson mused, and was silent.
" Sir," said Kenelm, "your reticence proves your honesty,
and I respect it." So saying, he bounded off, and left the
parson crying out wildly, " But—^but "
CHAPTER XXI.
Mr. Saunderson and Kenelm sat in the arbor ; the
former sipping his grog, and smoking his pipe—^the latter
looking forth into the summer night skies with an earnest
yet abstracted gaze, as if he were trying to count the stars
in the Milky Way.
" Ha !" said Mr. Saunderson, who was concluding an argu¬
ment ; " you see it now, don't you ?'
212
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
" I—^not a bit of it. You tell me that your grandfather
was a farmer, and your father was a farmer, and that you
have been a farmer for thirty years ; and from these promises
you deduce the illogical and irrational conclusion that there¬
fore your son must be a farmer."
" Young man, you may think yourself very knowing,
cause you have been at the 'Varsity and swept away a
headful of book-learning."
" Stop," quoth Kenelm. " You grant that a university is
learned."
" Well, I suppose so."
" But how could it be learned if those who quitted it
brought the learning away? We leave it all behind us in the
care of the tutors. But I know what you were going to say
—that it is not because I had read more books than you have
that I was to give myself airs and pretend to have more
knowledge of life than a man of your years and experience.
Agreed, as a general rule. But does not every doctor, how¬
ever wise and skillful, prefer taking another doctor's opinion
about himself, even though that other doctor has ;ust started
in practice? And, seeing that doctors, taking them as a
body, are monstrous clever fellows, is not the example they
set us worth following? Does it not prove that no man,
however wise, is a good judge of his own case? Now, your
son's case is really your case—you see it through the medium
of your likings and dislikings—and insist upon forcing a
square peg into a round hole, because in a round hole you,
being a round peg, feel tight and comfortable. Now, I call
that irrational."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
213
" I don't see why my son has any right to fancy himself a
square peg," said the farmer, doggedly, "when his father,
and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, have been
round pegs; and it is agin' nature for any creature not to
take after its own kind. A dog is a pointer or a sheep-dog
according as its forebears were pointers or sheep-dogs. There,"
cried the farmer, triumphantly, shaking the ashes out of his
pipOj " I think I have posed you, young master !"
"No ; for you have taken it for granted that the breeds
have not been crossed. But suppose that a sheep-dog has
married a pointer, are you sure that his son will not be more
of a pointer than a sheep-dog?"
Mr. Saunderson arrested himself in the task of refilling his
pipe, and scratched his head.
" You see," continued Kenelm, " that you have crossed the
breed. You married a tradesman's daughter, and I daresay
her grandfather and great-grandfather were tradesmen too.
Now, most sons take after their mothers, and therefore Mr.
Saunderson, junior, takes after his kind on the distaff side,
and comes into the world a square peg, which can only be
tight and comfortable in a square hole. It is no use arguing,
farmer : your boy must go to his uncle ; and there's an end
of the matter."
" By goles !" said the farmer, " you seem to think you can
talk me out of my senses."
" No ; but I think if you had your own way you would talk
your son into the workhouse."
" What ! by sticking to the land like his father before him?
Let a man stick by the land, and the land will stick by him."
214
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
"Let a man stick in the mud, and the mud will stick to
him. You put your heart in your farm, and your son would
only put his foot into it. Courage ! Don't you see that Time
is a whirligig, and all things come round? Every day some¬
body leaves the land and goes off into trade. By-and-by he
grows rich, and then his great desire is to get back to the land
again. He left it the son of a farmer : he returns to it as a
squire. Your son, when he gets to be fifty, will invest his
savings in acres, and have tenants of his own. Lord, how ho
will lay down the law to them ! I would not advise you to
take a farm under him."
" Catch me at it !" said the farmer. " He would turn all
the contents of the 'pothecaiy's shop into my fallows, and call
it ' progress.' "
" Let him physic the fallows when he has farms of his own :
keep yours out of his chemical clutches. Come, I shall tell
him to pack up and be off to his uncle's next week."
" Well, well," said the farmer, in a resigned tone, " a
willful man must e'en have his way."
" And the best thing a sensible man can do is not to cross
it. Mr. Saunderson, give me your honest hand. You aro
one of those men who put the sons of good fathers in mind
of their own ; and I think of mine when I say, ' God bless
ycul' "
Quitting the farmer, Kenelm re-entered the house, and
sought Mr. Saunderson, junior, in his own room. He found
that young gentleman still up, and reading an eloquent tract
on the Emancipation of the Human Race from all Tyrannical
Control—Political, Social, Ecclesiastical, and Domestic.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
215
The lad looked up sulkily, and said, on encountering Ken-
elm's melancholic visage, " Ah ! I see you have talked with
the old governor, and he'll not hear of it."
" In the ñrst place," answered Kenelm, " since you value
yourself on a superior education, allow me to advise you to
study the English language as the forms of it are maintaiucd
by the elder authors—whom, in spite of an Age of Progress,
men of superior education esteem. No one who has gone
through that study—no one, indeed, who has studied the Ten
Commandments in the vernacular—commits the mistake of
supposing that ' the old governor' is a synonymous expression
for ' father.' In the second place, since you pretend to the
superior enlightenment which results from a superior educa^
tion, learn to know better your own self before you set up as
a teacher of mankind. Excuse the liberty I take, as your
sincere well-wisher, when I tell you that you are at present
a conceited fool—in short, that which makes one boy call
another ' an ass.' But when one has a poor head he may
redeem the average balance of humanity by increasing the
wealth of the heart. Try and increase yours. Your father
consents to your choice of your lot at the sacrifice of all his
own inclinations. This is a sore trial to a father's pride, a
father's afiFection ; and few fathers make such sacrifices with a
good grace. I have thus kept my promise to you, and en¬
forced your wishes on Mr. Saunderson's judgment, because I
am sure you would have been a very bad farmer. It now re¬
mains for you to show that you can be a very good tradesman.
You are bound in honor to me and to your father to try your
best to be BO ; and meanwhile leave the task of upsetting th»
216
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
world to those who have no shop in it, which would go crash
in the general tumble. And so good-night to you."
To these admonitory words, sacro digna silentio, Saunder-
Bon junior listened with a dropping jaw and fascinated staring
eyes. He felt like an infant to whom the nurse has given a
hasty shake, and who is too stupefied by that operation to
know whether he is hurt or not.
A minute after Kenelm had quitted the room he reap
peared at the door, and said, in a conciliatory whisper, " Don't
take it to heart that 1 called you a conceited fool and an ass.
These terms are no doubt just as applicable to myself. But
there is a more conceited fool and a greater ass than either of
us, and that is, the Age in which we have the misfortune to
be born—an Age of Progress, Mr. Saunderson, junior—an
Age of Prigs!"
book; III.
CHAPTER 1.
Ir there were a woman in the world who might be formed
ind fitted to reconcile Kenelm Chillingly to the sweet troubles
of love and the pleasant bickerings of wedded life, one might
reasonably suppose that that woman could be found in Cecilia
Travers. An only daughter, and losing her mother in child¬
hood, she had been raised to the mistress-ship of a household
at an age in which most girls are still putting their dolls to
bed ; and thus had early acquired that sense of responsibility,
accompanied with the habits of self-reliance, which seldom
fails to give a certain nobility to character ; though almost as
often, in the case of women, it steals away the tender gentle¬
ness which constitutes the charm of their sex.
It had not done so in the instance of Cecilia Travers,
because she was so womanlike that even the exercise of power
could not make her manlike. There was in the depth of her
nature such an instinct of sweetness, that wherever her mind
toiled and wandered it gathered and hoarded honey.
She had one advantage over most girls in the same rank ol
life—she had not been taught to fritter away such capacities
for culture as Providence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses
which are called feminine accomplishments. She did not paint
figures out of drawing in meagre water-colors ; she had not
devoted years of her life to the inflicting on polite audiences
K (217)
218
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
tlie boredom of Italian bravuras, which they could hear better
sung by a third-rate professional singer in a metropolitan
music-hall. I am afraid she had no other female accomplish¬
ments than those by vhich the seamstress or embroideress
earns her daily bread. That sort of work she loved, and she
did it deftly.
But, if she had not been profitlessly plagued by masters,
Cecilia Travers had been singularly favored by her father's
choice of a teacher,—no great merit in him either. He had a
prejudice against professional governesses, and it chanced that
among his own family connections was a certain Mrs. Cam¬
pion, a lady of some literary distinction, whose husband had
held a high situation in one of our public offices, and living,
much to his satisfaction, up to a very handsome income, had
died, much to the astonishment of others, without leaving
a farthing behind him.
Fortunately, there were no children to provide for. A
small government pension was allotted to the widow ; and as
her husband's house had been made by her one of the pleas-
antest in London, she was popular enough to be invited by
numerous friepds to their country seats—among others, by
Mr. Travers. She came intending to stay a fortnight. At
the end of that time she had grown so attached to Cecilia,
a ad Cecilia to her, and her presence had become so pleasant
and so useful to her host, that the Squire entreated her to
stay and undertake the education of his daughter. Mrs.
Campion, after some hesitation, gratefully consented; and
thus Cecilia, from the age of eight to her present age of
nineteen, had the inestimable advantage of living in constant
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
219
companionsliip witli a woman of richly-cultivated mind, ac¬
customed to hear the best criticisms on the best books, and
adding to no small accomplishment in literature the refine¬
ment of manners and that sort of prudent judgment which
result from habitual intercourse with an intelleetual and
graeefully world-wise circle of society ; so that Cecilia herself,
without being at all blue or pedantic, became one of those
rare young women with whom a well-educated man can con¬
verse on equal terms—from whom he gains as much as be
can impart to her ; while a man who, not earing much about
books, is still gentleman enough to value good breeding, felt
a relief in exchanging the forms of his native language with¬
out the shoek of hearing that a bishop was " a swell," or a
croquet-party " awfully jolly."
In a word, Cecilia was one of those women whom heaven
forms for man's helpmate—who, if he were born to rank and
wealth, would, as his partner, reflect on them a new dignity,
and add to their enjoyment by bringing forth their duties—■
who, not less if the husband she chose were poor and strug¬
gling, would encourage, sustain, and soothe him, take her own
share of his burdens, and temper the bitterness of life with
the all-reeompensing sweetness of her smile.
Little, indeed, as yet had she ever thought of love or of
lovers. She had not eveu formed to herself any of those
ideals which float before the eyes of most girls when they
enter their teens. But of two things she felt inly con¬
vinced—first, that she could never wed where she did not
love ; and, secondly, that where she did love it would be for
life.
220
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
And now I close this sketch with a picture of the girl her¬
self. She has just come into her room from inspecting the
preparations for the evening entertainment which her father
is to give to his tenants and rural neighbors.
She has thrown aside her straw hat, and put down the large
basket which she has emptied of flowers. She pauses before
the glass, smoothing back the ruffled bands of her hair—hair
of a dark, soft chestnut, silky and luxuriant—never polluted,
and never, so long as she lives, to be polluted, by auricomous
cosmetics :—^far from that delicate darkness, every tint of the
colors traditionally dedicated to the locks of Judas.
Her complexion, usually of that soft bloom which inclines
to paleness, is now heightened into glow by exercise and sun¬
light. The features are small and feminine, the eyes dark
with long lashes, the mouth singularly beautiful, with a dimple
on either side, and parted now in a half-smile at some pleasant
recollection, giving a glimpse of small teeth glistening as
pearls. But the peculiar charm of her face is in an expres¬
sion of serene happiness, that sort of happiness which seems
as if it had never been interrupted by a sorrow, had never
been troubled by a sin—that holy kind of happiness which
belongs to innocence, the light reflected from a heart and
conscience alike at peace.
kenelm chillingly.
221
CHAPTER IL
It was a lovely summer evening for the Squire's rural
entertainment. Mr. Travers had some guests staying with
hiqi : they had dined early for the occasion, and were now
grouped with their host, a little before six o'clock, on the
lawn. The house was of irregular architecture, altered or
added to at various periods from the reign of Elizabeth to that
of Victoria : at one end, the oldest part, a gable with mullion-
windows ; at the other, the newest part, a flat-roofed wing,
with modem sashes opening to the ground, the intermediate
part much hidden by a veranda covered with creepers in full
bloom. The lawn was a spacious table-land facing the west,
and backed by a green and gentle hill, crowned with the
mins of an ancient priory. On one side of the lawn stretched
a flower-garden and pleasure-ground, originally planned by
Repton ; on the opposite angles of the sward were placed two
large marquees—one for dancing, the other for supper.
Towards the south the view was left open, and commanded
the prospect of an old English park, not of the stateliest char¬
acter,—not intersected with ancient avenues, nor clothed with
profltless fern as lairs for deer—^but the park of a tareful
agriculturist, uniting profit with show, the sward duly drained
and nourished, fit to fatten bullocks in an incredibly short
time, and somewhat spoilt to the eye by subdivisions of wire-
fence. Mr. Travers was renowned for skillful husbandry, and
222
KEXELM CHILLINQLT.
tlie general management of land to the best advantage. He
had come into the estate while still in childhood, and thus
enjoyed the accumulations of a long minority. He had
'entered the Guards at the age of eighteen, and having more
command of money than most of his contemporaries, though
they might be of higher rank and the sons of richer men, he
had been much courted and much plundered. At the age of
twenty-five he found himself one of the leaders of fashion,
renowned chiefly for reckless daring wherever honor could be
plucked out of the nettle danger; a steeple-chaser, whose
exploits made a quiet man's hair stand on end ; a rider across
country, taking leaps which a more cautious huntsman care¬
fully avoided. Known at Paris as well as in London, he had
been admired by ladies whose smiles had cost him duels, the
marks of which stiU remained in glorious scars on his person.
No man ever seemed more likely to come to direst grief before
attaining the age of thirty, for at twenty-seven all, the accumu¬
lations of his minority were gone, and his estate, which, when
he came of age, was scarcely three thousand a year, hut
entirely at his own disposal, was mortgaged up to its eyes.
His friends began to shake their heads and call him " poor
fellow hut, with all his wild faults. Leopold Travers had
been wholly pure from the two vices out of which a man doe«
not often redeem himself. He had never drunk and he had
never gambled. His nerves were not broken, his brain was not
besotted. There was plenty of health in him yet, mind and
body. At the critical period of his life he married for love,
and his choice was a most felicitous one. The lady had no
fortune ; hut, though handsome and high-born, she had no
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
22H
Uiste for extravagance, and no desire for other aociety than
that of the man she loved. So when he said, " Let us settle
in the country and try our best to live on a few hundreds, lay
by, and keep the old place out of the market," she consented
with a joyful heart : and marvel it was to all how this wild
Leopold Travers did settle down ; did take to cultivating his
home farm with his men from sunrise to sunset, like a com¬
mon tenant-farmer ; did contrive to pay the interest on the
mortgages, and keep his head above water. After some years
of pupilage in this school of thrift, during which his habits
became formed and his whole character braced, Leopold
Travers suddenly found himself again rich, through the wife
whom he had so prudently married without other dower than
her love and her virtues. Her only brother. Lord Eagleton,
a Scotch peer, had been engaged in marriage to a young lady
considered to be a rare prize in the lottery of wedlock. The
marriage was broken off under very disastrous circumstances ;
but the young lord, good-looking and agreeable, was naturally
expected to seek speedy consolation in some other alliance.
Nevertheless he did not do so ;—^he became a confirmed in¬
valid, and died single, leaving to his sister all in his power to
save from the distant kinsman who succeeded to his lands and
tille,—a goodly sum, which not only sufiBced to pay off the
inortgages on Neesdale Park, but bestowed on its owner a
surplus which the practical knowledge of country life that he
had acquired enabled him to devote with extraordinary profit
to the general improvement of his estate. He replaced tumble¬
down old farm-buildings with new constructions on the most
approved principles ; bonght or pensioned off certain slovenly
224
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
incompetent tenants ; threw sundry petty holdings into large
farms suited to the buildings he constructed ; purchased here
and there small bits of land, commodious to the farms they
adjoined, and completing the integrity of his ring-fence;
stubbed up profitless woods which diminished the value of
neighboring arables by obstructing sun and air and harbor¬
ing legions of rabbits ; and then, seeking tenants of enterprise
and capital, more than doubled his original yearly rental, and
perhaps more than tripled the market value of his property.
Simultaneously with this acquisition of fortune, he emerged
from the inhospitable and unsocial obscurity which his pre¬
vious poverty had compelled, took an active part in county
business, proved himself an excellent speaker at public meet¬
ings, subscribed liberally to the Hunt, and occasionally joined
in it—a less bold but a wiser rider than of yore. In short, as
Theniistocles boasted that he could make a small state great,
so Leopold Travers might boast with equal truth that, by his
euergies, his judgment, and the weight of his personal charac¬
ter, he had made the owner of a property which had been at
his succession to it of third-rate rank in the county, a per¬
sonage so considerable that no knight of the shire against
whom he declared could have been elected, and if he had de¬
termined to stand himself he would have been chosen free cf
expense.
But he said, on being solicited to become a candidate,
" When a man once gives himself up to the care and improve¬
ment of a landed estate, he has no time and no heart for any¬
thing else. An estate is an income or a kingdom, according
as the owner chooses to take it. I take it as a kingdom, and
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
225
I cannot be roi fainéant, with a steward for maire du palais.
A king does not go into the House of Gommons."
Three years after this rise in the social ladder, Mrs. Travers
was seized with congestion of the lungs, followed by pleuiisy,
and died after less than a week's illness. Leopold never wholly
recovered her loss. Though still young, and always handsome,
the idea of another wife, the love of another woman, were no¬
tions which he dismissed from his mind with a quiet scorn.
He was too masculine a creature to parade grief. For some
weeks, indeed, he shut himself up in his own room, so rigidly
secluded that he would not see even his daughter. But one
morning he appeared in his fields as usual, and from that day
resumed his old habits, and gradually renewed that cordial
interchange of hospitalities which had popularly distinguished
him since his accession to wealth. Still, people felt that the
man was changed; he was more taciturn, more grave: if
always just in his dealings, he took the harder side of justice,
where in his wife's time he had taken the gentler. Perhaps,
to a man of strong will, the habitual intercourse with an
amiable woman is essential for those occasions in which Will
best proves the fineness of its temper by the facility with
which it can be bent.
It may be said that Leopold Travers might have found such
intercourse in the intimate companionship of his own daughter.
But she was a mere child when his wife died, and she grew up
to womanhood too insensibly for him to note the change.
Besides, where a man has found a wife his all-in-all, a
daughter can never supply her place. The very reverence due
to children precludes unrestrained confidence ; and there is
K* 15
226
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
uot that sense of permanent fellowship in a daughter which a
man has in a wife,—any day a stranger may appear and carry
her off from him. At all events Leopold did not own in
Cecilia the softening influence to which he had yielded in her
mother. He was fond of her, proud of her, indulgent to her;
but the indulgence had its set limits. Whatever she asked
solely for herself he granted ; whatever she wished for matters
under feminine control—the domestic household, the parish
school, the alms-receiving poor—obtained his gentlest con¬
sideration. But when she had been solicited by some offend¬
ing out-of-door dependent or some petty defaulting tenant
to use her good oflices in favor of the culprit, Mr. Travers
checked her interference by a firm " No," though uttered in a
mild accent, and accompanied with a masculine aphorism to
the effect " that there would be no such things as strict jus¬
tice and disciplined order in the world if a man yielded to a
woman's pleadings in any matter of business between man and
man." From this it will be seen that Mr. Lethbridge had
overrated the value of Cecilia's alliance in the negotiation
respecting Mrs. Bawtrey's premium and shop.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
227
CHAPTER III.
If, having just perused what has thus been written on the
biographical antecedents and mental characteristics of Leopold
Travers, you, my dear reader, were to he personally presented
to that gentleman as he now stands, the central figure of the
group gathered round him, on his terrace, you would probably
be surprised,—nay, I have no doubt you would say to your¬
self, " Not at all the sort of man I expected." In that slender
form, somewhat below the middle height ; in that fair coun¬
tenance which still, at the age of forty-eight, retains a delicacy
of feature and of coloring which is of almost woman-like
beauty, and, from the quiet placidity of its expression, con¬
veys at first glance the notion of almost woman-like mildness,
—it would be dif&cult to recognize a man who in youth had
been renowned for reckless daring, in maturer years more
honorably distinguished for steadfast prudence and deter¬
mined purpose, and, who, alike in faults or in merits, was as
emphatically masculine as a biped in trousers can possibly he.
3Ir. Travers is listening to a young man of about two-and-
twenty, the eldest son of the richest nobleman of the county,
and who intends to start for the representation of the shire at
the next general election, which is close at hand. The Hon.
George Belvoir is tall, inclined to be stout, and will look well
on the hustings. He has had those pains taken with his
education which an English peer generally does take with the
228
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
son intended to succeed to the representation of an honorable
name and the responsibilities of high station. If eldest sons
do not often make as great a figure in the world as their
youngei brothers, it is not because their minds are less culti¬
vai ed, but because they have less motive power for action.
George Belvoir was well read, especially in that sort of read¬
ing which befits a future senator—history, statistics, political
economy, so far as that dismal science is compatible with the
agricultural interest. He was also well-principled, had a
strong sense of discipline and duty, was prepared in politics
firmly to uphold as right whatever was proposed by his own
party, and to reject as wrong whatever was proposed by the
other. At present he was rather loud and noisy in the asser¬
tion of his opinions,—^young men fresh from the university
generally are. It was the secret wish of Mr. Travers that
George Belvoir should become his son-in-law—less because of
his rank and wealth (though such advantages were not of a
nature to be despised by a practical man like Leopold Travers)
than on account of those qualities in his personal character
which were likely to render him an excellent husband.
Seated on wire benches, just without the veranda, but
shaded by its fragrant festoons, were Mrs. Campion and three
ladies, the wives of neighboring squires. Cecilia stood a
little apart from them, bending over a long-backed Skye ter¬
rier, whom she was teaching to stand on his hind-legs.
But see, the company are arriving ! How suddenly that
green space, ten minutes ago so solitary, has become animated
and populous !
Indeed, the Park now presented a very lively appearance :
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
229
vans, cai'ts, and fanners' chaises were seen in crowded pro¬
cession along the winding road ; foot-passengers were swarm¬
ing towards the house in all directions. The herds and flocLs
in the various inclosures stopped grazing to stare at the un¬
wonted invaders of their pasture ; yet the orderly nature of
the host imparted a respect for order to his ruder visitors ;
not even a turbulent boy attempted to scale the fences or
creep through their wires ; all threaded the narrow turnstiles
which gave egress from one subdivision of the sward to
another.
Mr. Travers turned to George Bclvoir : " I see old farmer
Steen's yellow gig. Mind how you talk to him, George. He
is full of whims and crotchets, and if you once brush his
feathers the wrong way he will be as vindictive as a parrot.
But he is the man who must second you at the nomination.
No other tenant-farmer carries the same weight with his
class."
"I suppose," said George, "that if Mr. Steen is the best
man to second me at the hustings, he is a good speaker."
" A good speaker ?—in one sense he is. He never says a
word too much. The last time he seconded the nomination
of the man you are to succeed, this was his speech ; ' Brother
Electors, for twenty years I have been one of the judges at
our county cattle-show. I know one animal from another.
Looking at the specimens before us to-day, none of them are
as good of their kind as I've seen elsewhere. But if you
choose Sir John Hogg you'll not get the wrong sow by the
earl' "
"At least," said George, after a laugh at this sample cf
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
eloquence unadorned, "Mr. Steen does not err on the sido
of flattery in his commendations of a candidate. But what
makes him such an authority with the farmers? Is he a
first-rate agriculturist ?"
" In thrift, yes 1—in spirit, no ! He says that all expensive
experiments should be left to gentlemen farmers. He is an
authority with other tenants—Istly, Because he is a very
keen censor of their landlords ; 2dly, Because he holds him¬
self thoroughly independent of his own ; 3dly, Because he is
supposed to have studied the political hearings of questions
that afiect the landed interest, and has more than once been
summoned to give his opinion on such subjects to Committees
of both Houses of Parliament. Here he comes. Observe,
when I leave you to talk to him, Istly, that you confess utter
ignorance of practical farming,—nothing enrages him like
the presumption of a gentleman farmer like myself ; 2dly,
that you ask his opinion on the publication of Agricultural
Statistics, just modestly intimating that you, as at present
advised, think that inquisitorial researches into a man's busi¬
ness involve principles opposed to the British Constitution.
And on all that he may say as to the shortcomings of land¬
lords in general, and of your father in particular, make no
reply, but listen with an air of melancholy conviction. How
do you do, Mr. Steen, and how's the Mistress ? Why have
you not brought her with you ?"
" My good woman is in the straw again, Squire. Who is
that youngster ?"
" Hist ! let me introduce Mr. Belvoir."
Mr Belvoir offers his hand.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
231
" No, sir 1" vociferates Steen, putting both his own hands
beliind him. "No offense, young gentleman. But I don't
give my hand at first sight to a man who wants to shake a
vote out of it. Not that I know anything against you. But,
if you be a farmer's friend, rabbits are not, and my lord your
father is a great one for rabbits."
" Indeed you are mistaken there 1" cries George, with
vehement earnestness. Mr. Travers gave him a nudge, as
mucti as to say, " Hold your tongue." George understood
the hint, and is carried off meekly by Mr. Steen down the
solitude of the plantations.
The guests now arrived fast and thick. They consisted
chiefly not only of Mr. Travers's tenants, but of farmers and
their families within the range of eight or ten miles from the
Park, with a few of the neighboring gentry and clergy.
It was not a supper intended to include the laboring class.
For Mr. Travers had an especial dislike to the custom of ex¬
hibiting peasants at feeding-time, as if they were so many
tamed animals of an inferior species. When he entertained
work-people, he made them comfortable in their own way;
and peasants feel more comfortable when not invited to be
stared out of countenance.
"Well, Lethbridge," said Mr. Travers, "where is the
young gladiator you promised to bring?"
" I did bring him, and he was by my side not a minute
ago. He has suddenly given me the slip—-ahiit, evasit, erupit.
I was looking round for him in vain when you acco.sted me."
"I hope he has not seen some guest of mine whom he
Wants to fight."
232
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" I hope not," answered the Parson, doubtfully. He ; i.
strange fellow. But I think you will be pleased with him—
that is, if he can be found. Oh, Mr. Saunderson, how do
you do ? Have you seen your visitor ?"
" No, sir, I have just come. My Mistress, Squire, and my
three girls ;—and this is my son."
" A hearty welcome to all," said the graceful Squire ; (turn^
ing to Saunderson junior) " I suppose you are fond of dancing.
Gret yourself a partner. We may as well open the ball."
" Thank you, sir, but I never dance," said Saunderson
junior, with an air of austere superiority to an amusement
which the March of Intellect had left behind.
" Then you'll have less to regret when you are grown old.
But the band is striking up ; we must adjourn to the marquee.
George" (Mr. Belvoir, escaped from Mr. Steen, had just made
his reappearance), "will you give your arm to Cecilia, to
whom I think you are engaged for the first quadrille ?"
"I hope," said George to Cecilia, as they walked towards
the marquee, " that Mr. Steen is not an average specimen of
the electors I shall have to canvass. Whether he has been
brought up to honor his own father and mother I can't pre¬
tend to say, but he seems bent upon teaching me not to honor
mine. Having taken away my father's moral character upon
(be unfounded allegation that he loved rabbits better than
mankind, he then assailed my innocent mother on the score
of religion, and inquired when she was going over to the
Church of Rome—basing that inquiry on the assertion that
she had taken away her custom from a Protestant grocer and
eonferred it on a Papist."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
233
" Those are favorable signs, Mr. Belvoir. Mr. Steen always
prefaces a kindness by a great deal of incivility. I asked bim
once to lend me a pony, my own being suddenly taken lame,
and be seized that opportunity x) tell me that my father was
an impostor in pretending to be a judge of cattle ; that be was
a tyrant, screwing bis tenants in order to indulge extravagant
habits of hospitality; and implied that it would be a great
mercy if we did not live to apply to bim, not for a pony, but
for parochial relief. I went away indignant. But be sent me
the pony. I am sure be will give you bis vote."
" Meanwhile," said George, with a timid attempt at gal¬
lantry, as they now commenced the quadrille, " I take
encouragement from the belief that I have the good wishes
of Miss Travers. If ladies bad votes, as Mr. Mill recom¬
mends, why, then "
"Why, then, I should vote as papa does," said Miss
Travers, simply. " And if women bad votes, I suspect there
would be very little peace in any household where they did not
vote as the man at the bead of it wished them."
" But I believe, after all," said the aspirant to Parliament,
seriously, " that the advocates for female suffrage would limit
it to women independent of masculine control—widows and
spinsters voting in right of their own independent tene¬
ments."
" In that case," said Cecilia, " I suppose they would still
generally go by the opinion of some man they relied on, or
make a very silly choice if they did not."
"You underrate the good sense of your sex."
" I hope not. Do you underrate the good sense of yours, if,
234
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
in far more than half the things appertaining to daily life, the
wisest men say, ' better leave them to the women! ? But you're
forgetting the figure—cavalier seul."
" By the way," said George, in another interval of the
dance, " do you know a Mr. Chillingly, the son of Sir Peter,
cf Exmundham, in Westshire?"
" No ; why do you ask?"
" Because I thought I caught a glimpse of his face : it
was just as Mr. Steen was hearing me away down the planta¬
tion. From what you say, I must suppose I was mistaken."
" Chillingly ! But surely some persons were talking yes¬
terday at dinner about a young gentleman of that name as
being likely to stand for Westshire at the next election, but
who had made a very unpopular and eccentric speech on the
occasion of his coming of age."
" The same man—I was at college with him—a very singular
character. He was thought clever—won a prize or two—
took a good degree, but it was generally said that he would
have deserved a much higher one if some of his papers had not
contained covert jests either on the subjects or the examiners.
It is a dangerous thing to set up as a humorist in practical
life—especially public life. They say Mr. Pitt had naturally
a great deal of wit and humor, but he wisely suppressed any
evidence of those qualities in his Parliamentary speeches.
Just like Chillingly, to turn into ridicule the important event
of festivities in honor of his coming of age—an occasion that
can never occur again in the whole course of his life."
" It was bad taste," said Cecilia, " if intentional. But
perhaps he was misunderstood, or taken by surprise."
KENELM CniLLINGLY,
"Misunderstood—possibly; but taken by suri)rise—no.
The coolest fellow I ever met. Not that I have met him very
often. Latterly, indeed, at Cambridge ho lived much alone.
It was said that he read hard. I doubt that, for my rooms
were just over his, and I know that he was much more
frequently out of doors than in. He rambled a good deal
about the country on foot. I have seen him in by-lanes a
dozen miles distant from the town when I have been riding
baek from the Hunt. He was fond of the water, and pulled
a mighty strong oar, but declined to belong to our University
crew ; yet if ever there was a fight between undergraduates
and bargemen, he was sure to be in the midst of it. Yes, a
very great oddity indeed, full of contradictions, for a milder,
quieter fellow in general intercourse you could not see ; and
as for the jests of which he was accused in his Examination
Papers, his very face should have acquitted him of the charge
before any impartial jury of his countrymen."
" You sketch quite an interesting picture of him," said
Cecilia. " I wish we did know him ; he would be worth
Seeing."
" And, once seen, you would not easily forget him—a dark,
handsome faee, with large melancholy eyes, and with one of
those spare, slender figures which enable a man to disguise
his strength, as a fraudulent billiard-player disguises his play."
The dance had ceased during this conversation, and the
speakers were now walking slowly to and fro the lawn amid
the general crowd.
" How well your father plays the part of host to these rural
folks !" said George, with a secret envy. " Do observe how
236
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
quietly he puts that shy young fanner at his ease, and now
how kindly he deposits that lame old lady on the bench and
places the stool under her feet. What a canvasser he would
be 1 and how young he still looks, and how monstrous hand¬
some I"
This last compliment was uttered as Travers, having made
the old lady comfortable, had joined the three Miss Saunder-
sons, dividing his pleasant smile equally between them, and
seemingly unconscious of the admiring glances which many
another rural beauty directed towards him as he passed along.
About the man there was a certain indescribable elegance, a
natural suavity free from all that affectation, whether of forced
heartiness or condescending civility, which too often charac¬
terizes the well-meant efforts of provincial magnates to accom¬
modate themselves to persons of inferior station and breeding.
It is a great advantage to a man to have passed his early
youth in that most equal and most polished of all democracies—
the best society of large capitals. And to such acquired advan¬
tage Leopold Travers added the inborn qualities that please.
Later in the evening. Travers, again accosting Mr. Leth
bridge, said, " I have been talking much to the Saundersons
about that young man who did us the inestimable service of
punishing your ferocious parishioner, Tom Bowles ; and all I
hear so confirms the interest your own account inspired me
with, that I should really like much to make his acquaintance.
Has not he turned up yet ?"
"No; I fear he must have gone. But in that case I hope
you will take his generous desire to serve my poor basket-
maker into benevolent consideration."
kenelm chillingly.
237
•' Do not press me ; I feel so reluctant to refuse any request
cf yours. But I have my own theory as to the management
of an estate, and my system does not allow of favor. I should
wish to explain that to the young stranger himself. For I
hold courage in such honor that I do not like a brave man to
leave these parts with an impression that Leopold Travers is
an ungracious churl. However, he may not have gone. I
will go and look for him myself. Just tell Cecilia that she
has danced enough with the gentry, and that I have told
farmer Turby's son, a fine young fellow, and a capital rider
across country, that I expect him to show my daughter that
he can dance as well as he rides."
CHAPTER IV.
Quitting Mr. Lethbridge, Travers turned with quick step
towards the more solitary part of the grounds. He did not
find the object of his search in the walks of the plantation ;
and, on taking the circuit of his demesne, wound his way back
towards the lawn through a sequestered rocky hollow in the
rear of the marquee, which had been devoted to a fernery.
Here he came to a sudden pause ; for, seated a few yards be¬
fore him on a gray crag, and the moonlight full on his
£"^0, he saw a solitary man, looking upwards with a still
and mournful gaze, evidently absorbed in abstract contem¬
plation.
238
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Recalling the description of the stranger which he had
heard from Mr. Lethbridge and the Saundersons, Mr. Travers
felt sure that he had come on him at last. He approached
gently ; and being much concealed by the tall ferns, Kenelm
(foi that itinerant it was) did not see him advance, until ha
felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning round, boheld a
winning smile and heard a pleasant voice.
" I think I am not mistaken," said Leopold Travers, " in
assuming you to be the gentleman whom Mr. Lethbridge
promised to introduce to me, and who is staying with my
tenant Mr. Saunderson?"
Kenelm rose and bowed. Travers saw at once that it was
the bow of a man in his own world, and not in keeping with
the Sunday costume of a petty farmer. " Nay," said he, " let
us talk seated and, placing himself on the crag, he made
room for Kenelm beside him.
" In the first place," resumed Travers, " I must thank you
for having done a public service in putting down the brute
force which has long tyrannized over the neighborhood.
Often in my young days I have felt the disadvantage of height
and sinews, whenever it would have been a great convenience
to terminate dispute or chastise insolence by a resort to man's
primitive weapons ; but I never more lamented my physical
inferiority than on certain occasions when I would have given
my ears to be able to thrash Tom Bowles myself. It has been
as great a disgrace to my estate that that bully should so long
have infested it, as it is to the King of Italy not to be able
with all his armies to put down a brigand in Calabria."
" Pardon me, Mr. Travers, but I am one of those rare
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
238
persons who do not like to hear ill of their friends. Mr.
Thomas Eowles is a particular friend of mine."
" Eh !" cried Travers, aghast. "'Friend'! You are jok¬
ing."
" You would not accuse me of joking if you knew me
better. But surely you have felt that there are few friends
one likes more cordially, and ought to respect more heedfully,
than the enemy with whom one has just made it up."
" You say well, and I accept the rebuke," said Travers,
more and more surprised. " And I certainly have less right
to abuse Mr. Bowles than you have, since I had not the
courage to fight him. To turn to another subject less provo¬
cative. Mr. Lethbridge has told me of your amiable desire
to serve two of his young parishioners—Will Somers and
Jessie Wiles—and of your generous offer to pay the money
Mrs. Bawtrey demands for the transfer of her lease. To that
negotiation my consent is necessary, and that consent I cannot
give. Shall I tell you why ?"
" Pray do. Your reasons may admit of argument."
" Every reason admits of argument," said Mr. Travers,
amused at the calm assurance of a youthful stranger in anti¬
cipating argument with a skillful proprietor on the manage¬
ment of his own property. " I do not, however, tell you my
reasons for the sake of argument, but in vindication of my
Deeming want of courtesy towards yourself. I have had a
very hard and a very difficult task to perform in bringing the
rental of my estate up to its proper value. In doing so, I
have been compelled to adopt one uniform system, equally
applied to my largest and my pettiest holdings. That system
240
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
consists in securing the best and safest tenants I can, at the
rents computed by a valuer in whom I have confidence. To
this system, universally adopted on my estate, though it in¬
curred much unpopularity at first, I have at length succeeded
in reconciling the public opinion of my neighborhood. People
began by saying I was hard ; they now acknowledge I am
just. If I once give way to favor or sentiment, I unhinge
my whole system. Every day I am subjected to moving
solicitations. Lord Twostars—a keen politician—begs me to
give a vacant farm to a tenant because he is t. excellent can¬
vasser and has always voted straight with the Party, Mrs.
Fourstars, a most benevolent woman, entreats me not to dis¬
miss another tenant, because he is in distressed circumstances
and has a large family—verj good reasons perhaps for my
excusing him an arrear or allowing him a retiring pension,
but the worst reasons in the world for letting him continue
to ruin himself and my land. Now, Mrs. Bawtrey has a
small holding on lease at the inadequate rent of £8 a year.
She asks £45 for its transfer, but she can't transfer the lease
without my consent ; and I can get £12 a year as a moderate
rental from a large choice of competent tenants. It will
better answer to me to pay her the £45 myself, which I have
no doubt the incoming tenant would pay me back, at least in
part ; and if he did not, the additional rent would be good
interest for my expenditure. Now, you happen to take a
sentimental interest, as you pass through the village, in the
loves of a needy cripple, whose utmost industry has but
served to save himself from parish relief, and a giddy girl
without a sixpence, and you ask me to accept these very
KENELM CUIL'LINQLY.
241
equivocal tenants instead of substantial ones, and at a rent
one-tbird less than the market value. Suppose that I yielded
to your request, what becomes of my reputation for practical,
business-like justice? I shall have made an inroad into the
system by which my whole estate is managed, and have in
vited all manner of solicitations on the part of friends and
neighbors, which I could no longer consistently refuse, having
shown how easily I can be persuaded into compliance by a
stranger whom I may never see again. And are you sure,
after all, that, if you did prevail on me, you would do the
individual good you aim at? It is, no doubt, very pleasant
to think one has made a young couple happy. But if that
young couple fail in keeping the little shop to which you
would transplant them (and nothing more likely—peasants
seldom become good shop-keepers), and find themselves, with
a family of children, dependent solely, not on the arm of a
strong laborer, but the ten fingers of a sickly cripple, who makes
clever baskets, for which there is but slight and precarious
demand in the neighborhood, may you not have insured the
misery of the couple you wished to render happy ?'"
"I withdraw all argument," said Kenelm, with an aspect
so humiliated and dejected that it would have softened a
Greenland bear, or a Counsel for the Prosecution. " I am
more and more convinced that of all the shams in the world,
that of benevolence is the greatest. It seems so easy to do
good, and it is so difiicult to do it. Everywhere, in this
hateful civilized life, one runs one's head against a system.
A system, Mr. Travers, is man's servile imitation of the blind
tyranny of what in our ignorance we call ' Natural Laws,' a
L 16
242
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
mechanical something through which the world is ruled hy
the cruelty of General Principles, to the utter disregard of
individual welfare. By Natural Laws creatures prey on each
other, and big fishes eat little ones upon system. It is, never¬
theless, a hard thing for the little fish. Every nation, every
town, every hamlet, every occupation, has a system, by which,
somehow or other, the pond swarms with fishes, of which
a great many inferiors contribute to increase the size of a
superior. It is an idle benevolence to keep one solitaiy
gudgeon out of the jaws of a pike. Here am I doing what
I thought the simplest thing in the world, asking a gentle¬
man, evidently as good-natured as myself, to allow an old
woman to let her premises to a deserving young couple, and
paying what she asks for it out of my own money. And
I find that I am running against a system, and invading
all the laws by which a rental is increased and an estate
improved. Mr. Travers, you have no cause for regret in
not having beaten Tom Bowles. You have beaten his victor,
and I now give up all dream of further interference with the
Natural Laws that govern the village which I have visited
in vain. I had meant to remove Tom Bowles from that
quiet community. I shall now leave him to return to his
former habits—to marry Jessie Wiles—which he certainly
will do, and "
" Hold 1" cried Mr. Travers. " Do you mean to say that
you can induce Tom Bowles to leave the village ?"
" I had induced him to do it, provided Jessie Wiles
married the basket-maker ; but, as that is out of the question,
I am bound to tell him so, and he will stay."
KENELS^ CHILLINGLY.
243
" But if he lef.., what would become of his business? His
mother could not keep it on ; his little place is a freehold,
the only house in the village that does not belong to me, or I
should have ejected him long ago. Would he sell the premises
to me?"
"Not if he stays and marries Jessie Wiles. But if ho
goes with me to Luscombe and settles in that town as a
partner to his uncle, I suppose he would be too glad to sell a
house of which he can have no pleasant recollection. But
what then ? You cannot violate your system for the sake of
a miserable forge."
" It would not violate my system if, instead of yielding
to a sentiment, I gained an advantage ; and, to say truth,
I should be very glad to buy that forge and the fields that go
with it."
" 'Tis your aflair now, not mine, Mr. Travers. I no longer
presume to interfere. I leave the neighborhood to-morrow :
see if y<m can negotiate with Mr. Bowles. I have the honor
to wish you a good-evening."
" Nay, young gentleman, I cannot allow you to quit me
thus. You have declined apparently to join the dancers, but
you will at least join the supper. Come !"
" Thank you sincerely, no. I came here merely on the
business which your system has settled."
" But I am not sure that it is settled." Here Mr. Travers
wound his arm within Kenelm's, and, looking him full in the
face, said, " I know that I am speaking to a gentleman at least
equal in rank to myself, but as I enjoy the melancholy privi¬
lege of being the older man, do not think I take an unwat
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
rantable liberty in asking if you object to tell me your name.
I should like, to introduce you to my daughter, who is very
partial to Jessie Wiles and to Will Somers. But I can't
venture to inflame her imagination by desiguating you as
A prince in disguise."
" Mr. Travers, you express yourself with exquisite delicacy.
But I am just starting in life, and I shrink from mortifying
my father by associating my name with a signal failure. Sup¬
pose I were an anonymous contributor, say, to 'The Lon¬
doner,' and I had just brought that highly intellectual journal
into discredit by a feeble attempt at a good-natured criticism
or a generous sentiment, would that be the fitting occasion to
throw off the mask and parade myself to a mocking world as
the imbecile violator of an established system ? Should I not,
in a moment so untoward, more than ever desire to merge my
insignificant unit in the mysterious importance which the
smallest Singular obtains when he makes himself a Plural,
and speaks not as ' I,' but as ' We' ? We are insensible to the
charm of young ladies ; We are not bribed by suppers ; We,
like the witches of Macbeth, have no name on earth ; We are
the greatest wisdom of the greatest number ; Be are so upon
system; We salute you, Mr. Travers, and depart unassail¬
able."
Here Kenelm rose, defied and replaced his hat in majestic
salutation, turned towards the entrance of the fernery, and
found himself suddenly face to face with George Belvoir,
behind whom followed, with a throng of guests, the fair form
of Cecilia. George Belvoir caught Kenelm by the hand, and
jxclaimod, " Chillingly ! I thought I could not be mistaken."
KENELM CHILLINOLT,
215
" Chillingly !" echoed Leopold Travers from behind. "Arn
you the son of my old friend Sir Peter?"
Thus discovered and environed, Kenelm did not lose his
wonted presence of mind ; he turned round to Leopold Trav¬
ers, wh ) was now close in his rear, and whispered, " If my
father was your friend, do not disgrace his son. Do not say
I am a failure. Deviate from your system, and let Will
Somers succeed Mrs. Bawtrey." Then reverting his face to
Mr. Belvoir, he said, tranquilly, " Yes ; we have met before."
" Cecilia," said Travers, now interposing, " I am happy to
introduce to you as Mr. Chillingly, not only the son of an
old friend of mine, not only the knight-errant of whose gal¬
lant conduct on behalf of -jova protégée Jessie Wiles we have
heard so much, hut the eloquent arguer who has conquered
my better judgment in a matter on which I thought myself
infallible. Tell Mr. Lethhridge that I accept Will Somers as
a tenant for Mrs. Bawtrey's premises."
Kenelm grasped the Squire's hand cordially. " May it be
in my power to do a kind thing to you, in spite of any system
to the contraiy 1"
" 3Ir. Chillingly, give your arm to my daughter. You will
not now object to join the dancers?"
246
kenelm chillinqlt.
CHAPTER V.
Cecilia stole a shy glance at Kenelm as the two emerged
from the fernery into the open space of the lawn. His
countenance pleased her. She thought she discovered much
latent gentleness under the cold and mournful gravity of its
expression ; and attributing the silence he maintained to some
painful sense of an awkward position in the abrupt betrayal
of his incognito, sought with womanly tact to dispel his sup¬
posed embarrassment.
" You have chosen a delightful mode of seeing the country
this lovely summer weather, Mr. Chillingly. I believe such
pedestrian exercises are very common with University Students
during the Long Vacation."
"Very common, though they generally wander in packs
like wild dogs or Australian dingoes. It is only a tame dog
that one finds on the road traveling by hinaself ; and then,
unless he behaves very quietly, it is ten to one that he is
stoned as a mad dog."
" But I am afraid, from what I hear, that you have not
been traveling very quietly."
" You are quite right. Miss Travers, and I am a sad dog
if not a mad one. But pardon me, we are nearing the
marquee; the band is striking up, and, alas! I am not a
dancing dog."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
217
He released Cecilia's arm, and bowed.
"Let us sit here awhile, then," said she, motioning to a
garden-bench. " I have no engagement for the next dance,
and, as I am a little tired, I shall be glad of a reprieve."
Kenelm sighed, and, with the air of a martyr stretching
himself on the rack, took his place beside the fairest girl in
the county.
" You were at college with Mr. Belvoir?"
" I was."
" He was thought clever there ?"
" I have not a doubt of it."
" You know he is canvassing our county for the next elec¬
tion. My father takes a warm interest in his success, and
thinks l e will be a useful member of Parliament."
" Of that I am certain. For the first five years he will be
called pushing, noisy, and conceited, much sneered at by men
of his own age, and coughed down on great occasions ; for the
five fo'lowing years he will be considered a sensible man in
commi 'tees, and a necessaiy feature in debate ; at the end of
those years he will be an under-secretary; in five years more
he will be a Cabinet Minister, and the representative of an
important section of opinions : he will he an irreproachable
private character, and his wife will be seen wearing the family
diamonds at all the great parties. She will take an interest
in politics and theology ; and if she die before him, her hus¬
band will show his sense of wedded happiness by choosing
another lady, equally fitted to wear the family diamonds and
to maintain the family consequence."
In spite of her laughter, Cecilia felt a certain awe at the
248
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
solemnity of voice and manner with which Kenclm dolr erod
these oracular sentences, and the whole prediction s* imed
strangely in unison with her own impressions of the cha-acter
whose fate was thus shadowed out.
"Are you a fortune-teller, Mr. Chillingly?" she asked,
falteringly, and after a pause.
" As good a one as any whose hand you could crost with a
shilling."
" Will you tell me my fortune ?"
"No; I never tell the fortunes of ladies, becausw your sex
is credulous, and a lady might believe what I tell V er. And
when we believe such and such is to be our fate, we are too
apt to work out our life into the verification of the belief.
If Lady Macbeth had disbelieved in the witches, she would
never have persuaded her lord to murder Duncan."
" But can you not predict me a more cheerful fortune than
that tragical illustration of yours seems to threaten ?"
" The future is never cheerful to those who look on the
dark side of the question. Mr. Gray is too good a poet for
people to read nowadays, otherwise I should refer you to his
lines in the Ode to Eton College—
' See how all around us wait
The ministers of human fate,
.And black Misfortune's baleful train.'
Meanwhile it is something to enjoy the present. Wo are
young—^we are listening to music—there is no cloud over
the summer stars—our conscience is clear—our hearts un¬
troubled : why look forward in search of happine.ss ?—shall
we ever be happier than we are at this moment ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
219
Here Mr. Travers came up. " We are going to supper in
a few minutes," said he ; " and before we lose sight of each
other, Mr. Chillingly, I wish to impress on you the moral fact
that one good turn deserves another. I have yielded to your
wish, and now you must yield to mine. Come and stay a few
days with me, and see your benevolent intentions carried out."
Kenelm paused. Now that he was discovered, why should
he n;i pass a few days among his equals ? Realities or shams
might be studied with squires no less than with farmers ; be¬
sides, he had taken a liking to Travers. That graceful ci-
devant Wildair, with the slight form and the delicate face,
was unlike rural squires in general. Kenclm paused, and
then said, frankly :
" I accept your invitation. Would the middle of next week
suit you ?"
" The sooner the better. Why not to-morrow ?"
" To-morrow I am pre-engaged to an excursion with Mr.
Bowles. That may occupy two or three days, and meanwhile
I must write home for other garments than those in which I
am a sham."
" Come any day you like."
" Agreed."
" Agi-eed ; and, hark ! the supper-bell."
" Supper," said Kenelm, offering his arm to Miss Travers,
—" sujiper is a word truly interesting, truly poetical. It as¬
sociates itself with the entertainments of the ancients—with
^ho Augustan age—with Horace and Maecenas ;—with the
only elegant but too fleeting period of the modem world—■
with the nobles and wits of Paris, when Paris had wits and
L*
250
kenelm chillingly.
DOUles;—with Molière and the warm-hearted Duke who is
Raid to have been the original of Molière's Misanthrope ;—
with Madame de Sévigné and the Racine whom that inimitar
ble letter-writer denied to be a poet ;—with Swift and Boling-
broke—^with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Garrick. Epochs are
signalized by their eatings. I honor him who revives the
Golden Age of suppers." So saying, his face brightened.
CHAPTER VI.
kenelm chillingly, esq., to sir peter chillingly,
bart., etc. etc.
" My dear Father,—am alive and unmarried. Provi¬
dence has watched over me in these respects ; but I have had
narrow escapes. Hitherto I have not acquired much worldly
wisdom in my travels. It is true that I have been paid two
shillings as a day-laborer, and, in fact, have fairly earned at
least six shillings more ; but against that additional claim I
generously set off, as an equivalent, my board and lodging.
On the other hand, I have spent forty-five pounds out of the
fifty which I devoted to the purchase of experience. But I
hope you will be a gainer by that investment. Send an order
to Mr. William Somers, basket-maker, Graveleigh, shire,
for the hampers and game-baskets you require, and I under¬
take to say that you will save twenty per cent, on that article
(all expenses of carriage deducted), and do a good action into
the bargain. You know, from long habit, what a good action
ia worth better than I do. I daresay you will be more pleased
kenelm chillingly.
251
to learn, than I am to record, the fact that I have been again
decoyed into the society of ladies and gentlemen, and have
accepted an invitation to pass a few days at Neesdale Park with
Mr. Travers—christened Leopold—who calls you ' his old
friend'—a term which T take for granted belongs to that class
of poetic exaggeration in which the ' dears' and ' darlings' of
conjugal intercourse may be categorized. Having for that
visit no suitable garments in my knapsack, kindly tell Jenkes
to forward me a portmanteauful of those which I habitually
wore as Kenelm Chillingly, directed to me at ' Neesdale Park,
near Beaverston.' Let me find it there on Wednesday.
" I leave this place to-morrow morning in company with a
friend of the name of Bowles—no relation to the reverend
gentleman of that name who held the doctrine that a poet
should bore us to death with fiddle-faddle minutiae of natural
objects in preference to that study of the insignificant creature
Man, in his relations to his species, to which Mr. Pope limited
the range of his inferior muse ; and who, practicing as he
preached, wrote some very nice verses, to which the Lake
schof 1 and its successors are largely indebted. My Mr. Bowles
has exercised his faculty upon Man, and has a powerful inborn
gift in that line which only requires cultivation to render him
a match for any one. His more masculine nature is at present
much obscured by that passing cloud which, in conventional
language, is called ' a Hopeless Attachment.' But I trust, in
the course of our excursion, which is to be taken on foot, that
this vapor may consolidate by motion, as some old-fashioned
astronomers held that the nebula does consolidate into a mat¬
ter-of-fact world. Is it Rochefoi icauld who says that a man
is never more likely to form a hopeful attachment for one
than when his heart is softened by a hopeless attachment to
another ? May it be long, my dear father, before you condole
with me on the first or congratulate nee on the second.—Your
afiectionate son, " Kenelm.
252
kenelm chillingly.
" Direct to me at Mr. Travers's. Kindest love to my
mother."
The answer to this letter is here subjoined as the most
convenient place for its insertion, though of course it was not
received till some days after the date of my nezt chapter.
sir peter chillingly, bart., to kenelm chillingly,
esq.
" My dear Boy,—With this I dispatch the portmanteau
you require to the address that you give. I remember well
Leopold Travers when he was in the Guards—a very hand¬
some and a very wild young fellow. But he had much more
sense than people gave him credit for, and frequented intel¬
lectual society ; at least I met him very often at my friend
Campion's, whose house was then the favorite rendezvous of
distinguished persons. He had very winning manners, and
one could not help taking an interest in him. I was very
glad when I heard he had married and reformed. Here I
beg to obseive that a man who contracts a taste for low com¬
pany may indeed often marry, hut he seldom reforms when
he does so. And, on the whole, I should be much pleased
to hear that the experience which has cost you forty-five
pounds had convinced you that you might he better employed
than earning two, or even six shillings, as a day-laborer.
" I have not given your love to your mother, as you ro-
((uested. In fact, you have placed me in a very false position
towards that other author of your eccentric being. I could
only guard you from the inquisition of the police and the
notoriety of descriptive hand-bills by allowing my lady to
suppose that you had gone abroad with the Duke of Clair-
ville and his family. It is easy to tell a fib, but it is very
difficult to untell it. However, as gooq as you have made up
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
253
your mind to resume your normal position among ladies and
gentlemen, I should be greatly obliged if you would apprise
me. I don't wish to keep a fib on my conscience a day
longer than may be necessary to prevent the necessity of
telling another.
" From what you say of Mr. Bowles's study of Man, and
bis inborn talent for that scientific investigation, I suppose
that he is a professed Metaphysician, and I should be glad of
his candid opinion upon the Primary Basis of Morals, a sub¬
ject upon which I have for three years meditated the consid¬
eration of a critical paper. But having lately read a contro¬
versy thereon between two eminent philosophers, in which
each accuses the other of not understanding him, I have
resolved for the present to leave the Basis in its unsettled
condition.
"You rather alarm me when you say you have had a nar¬
row escape from marriage. Should you, in order to increase
the experience you set out to acquire, decide on trying the
effect of a Mrs. Chillingly upon your nervous system, it would
be well to let me know a little beforehand, so that I might
prepare your mother's mind for that event. Such household
trifles are within her special province ; and she would be
mueh put out if a Mrs. Chillingly dropped on her unawares.
" This subject, however, is too serious to admit of a jest even
between two persons who understand, so well as you and I do,
the secret cipher by which each other's outward style of jest
IS to be gravely interpreted into the irony which says one
thing and means another. My dear boy, you are very young
—you are wandering about in a very strange manner—and
may, no doubt, meet with many a pretty face by the way,
with which you may fancy that you fall in love. You cannot
think me a barbarous tyrant if I ask you to promise me, on
your honor, that you will not propose to any young lady be¬
fore you come first to me and submit the case to my examina-
254
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
tion and approval. You know me too well to suppofe tliat 1
should unreasonably withhold my consent if convinced that
your happiness was at stake. But while what a young man
may fancy to be love is often a trivial incident in his life, mar¬
riage is the greatest event in it ; if on one side it may involve
his happiness, on the other side it may insure his misery'.
Dearest, best, and oddest of sons, give me the promise I ask,
and you will free my breast from a terribly anxious thought
which now sits on it like a nightmare.
" Your recommendation of a basket-maker comes oppor¬
tunely. All such matters go through the bailiff's hands, and
it was but the other day that Green was complaining of the
high prices of the man he employed for hampers and game-
baskets. Green shall write to yo\xTprotégé.
" Keep me informed of your proceedings as much as your
anomalous character will permit; so that nothing may di¬
minish my confidence that the man who had the honor to be
christened Kenelm wUl not disgrace his name, hut acquire
the distinction denied to a Peter.—Your affectionate father."
CHAPTEK VII.
ViLLA3ERS lie abed on Sundays later than on work-days,
and no shutter was unclosed in a window of the rural street
through which Kenelm Chillingly and Tom Bowles went, side
by side, in the still soft air of the Sabbath morn. Side by
side they went on, crossing the pastoral glebe-lands, where the
kine still drowsily reclined under the bowery shade of glint¬
ing chestnut-leaves ; and diving thence into a narrow lane or
KENELM CniLLINaLT.
255
by road, winding deep between lofty banks all tangled wilb
convolvulus and wild-rose and honeysuckle.
They walked in silence, for Kenelm, after one or two vain
attempts at conversation, had the tact to discover that his
companion was in no mood for talk ; and being himself one
of th Dse creatures whose minds glide easily into the dreamy
monologue of reverie, he was not displeased to muse on undis¬
turbed, drinking quietly into his heart the subdued joy of the
summer morn, with the freshness of its sparkling dews, the
wayward carol of its earliest birds, the serene quietude ot its
limpid breezy air. Only when they came to fresh turnings in
the road that led towards the town to which they were bound,
Tom Bowles stepped before his companion, indicating the way
by a monosyllable or a gesture. Thus they journeyed for
hours, till the sun attained power, and a little wayside inn
near a hamlet invited Kenelm to the thought of rest and
food.
" Tom," said he then, rousing from his reverie, " what do
you say to breakfast ?"
Answered Tom sullenly, " I am not hungry—^but as you
like."
" Thank you, then we will stop here awhile. I find it
difficult to believe that you are not hungry, for you are very
strong, and there are two things which generally accompany
great physical strength : the one is a keen appetite ; the other
is-—though you may not suppose it, and it is not commonly
known—a melancholic temperament."
Eh !—^a what ?"
" A tendency to melancholy. Of course you have heard
256
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
of Hercules—^you know the saying ' as strong as Her¬
cules' ?"
"Yes—of course."
" Well, I was first led to the connection between strength,
appetite, and melancholy, by reading in an old author, named
Plutarch, that Hercules was among the most notable instances
of melancholy temperament which the author was enabled to
quote. That must have been the traditional notion of the
Herculean constitution; and as for appetite, the appetite of
Hercules was a standard joke of the comic writers. When I
read that observation it set me thinking, being myself melan¬
cholic, and having an exceedingly good appetite. Sure
enough, when I began to collect evidence, I found that the
strongest men with whom I made acquaintance, including
prize-fighters and Irish draymen, were disposed to look upon
life more on the shady than the sunny side of the way ; in
short, they were melancholic. But the kindness of Provi¬
dence allowed them to enjoy their meals, as you and I are
about to do."
In the utterance of this extraordinary crotchet Kenelm had
halted his steps ; but now, striding briskly forward, he entered
the little inn, and, after a glance at its larder, ordered the
whole contents to be brought out and placed within a honey¬
suckle arbor which he spied in the angle of a bowling-green
at the rear of the house.
In addition to the ordinary condiments of loaf, and butter,
and eggs, and milk, and tea, the board soon groaned beneath
the weight of pigeon-pie, cold ribs of beef and shoulder of
mutton, remains of a feast which the members of a monthly
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
257
rustic club bad held there the day before. Tom ate little at
first ; but example is contagious, and gradually he vied wit í
his companion in the diminution of the solid viands before
him. Then he called for brandy.
" No," said Kenelm. " No, Tom ; you have promised me
friendship, and that is not compatible with brandy. Brandy
is the worst enemy a man like you can have, and would
make you quarrel even with me. If you want a stimulus I
allow you a pipe ; I don't smoke myself, as a rule, but there
have been times in my life when I required soothing, and
then I have felt that a whifF of tobacco stills and softens
one like the kiss of a little child. Bring this gentleman a
pipe."
Tom grunted, but took to the pipe kindly, and in a few
minutes, during which Kenelm left him in silence, a lowering
furrow between his brows smoothed itself away.
Gradually he felt the sweetening influences of the day and
the place, of the merry sunbeams at play amid the leaves of
the arbor, of the frank perfume of the honeysuckle, of the
warble of the birds before they sank into the taciturn repose
of a summer noon.
It was with a reluctant sigh that he rose at last, when
Kcnelm said, " We have yet far to go : we must push on."
The landlady, indeed, had already given them a hint that
she and the family wanted to go to church, and to shut up
the house in their absence. Kenelm drew out his purse, but
Tom did the same with a return of cloud on his brow, and
Kenelm saw that he would be mortally oflended if suflfered to
be treated as an inferior ; so each paid his due share, and the
17
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
two men resumed their wandering. This time it was along a
by-path amid fields, which was a shorter cut than the lane they
had previously followed, to the main road to Luscombe.
They walked slowly till they came to a rustic foot-bridge
which spanned a gloomy trout-stream, not noisy, but with a
low, sweet murmur, doubtless the same stream beside which,
many miles away, Kenelm had conversed with the minstrel.
Just as they came to this bridge there floated to their ears
the distant sound of the hamlet church bell.
" Now let us sit here awhile and listen," said Kenelm, seat¬
ing himself on the baluster of the bridge. " I see that you
brought away your pipe from the inn, and provided yourself
with tobacco : refill the pipe, and listen."
Tom half smiled, and obeyed.
" 0 friend," said Kenelm, earnestly, and after a long pause
of thought, " do you not feel what a blessed thing it is in this
mortal life to be ever and anon reminded that you have a
soul?"
Tom, startled, withdrew the pipe from his lips, and mut¬
tered :
" Eh !"
Kenelm continued :
•' You and I, Tom, are not so good as we ought to be—of
that there is no doubt ; and good people would say justly that
wc should now be within yon church itself rather than listen¬
ing to its bell. Granted, my friend, granted ; but still it is
something to hear that bell, and to feel by the train of thought
which began in our innocent childhood, when we said oui
prayers at the knees of a mother, that we were lifted beyond
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
259
this visible Nature, beyond these fields, and woods, and waters,
in which, fair though they be, you and I miss something, in
which neither you nor I are as happy as the kine in the fields,
as the birds on the bough, as the fishes in the water—^lifted
to a consciousness of a sense vouchsafed to you and to me,
not vouchsafed to the kine, to the bird, and the fish—a sense
to comprehend that Nature has a God, and Man has a life
hereafter. The bell says that to you and to me. Were that
bell a thousand times more musical, it could not say that to
beast, bird, and fish. Do you understand me, Tom ?'
Tom remains silent for a minute, and then replies ;
" I never thought of it before ; but as you put it, I under¬
stand."
" Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not prac¬
tically meant for its benefit and use. If Nature gives to us
capacities to believe that we have a Creator whom we never
saw, of whom we have no direct proof, who is kind and good
and tender beyond all that we know of kind and good and
tender on earth, it is because the endowment of capacities to
conceive such a Being must be for our benefit and use; it
would not be for our benefit and use if it were a lie. Again,
if Nature has given to us a capacity to receive the notion that
WS live again, no matter whether some of us refuse so to
believe, and argue against it,—^why, the very capacity to
receive the idea (for unless we received it we could not argue
against it) proves that it is for our benefit and use ; and if
there were no such life hereafter, we should be governed and
influenced, arrange our modes of life, and mature our civiliza¬
tion, by obedience to a lie, which Nature falsified herself in
260
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
giving us the capacity to believe. You still understand
me?"
" Yes ; it bothers me a little, for you see I am uot a parson's
man ; but I do understand."
" Then, my friend, study to apply—for it requires constant
study—study to apply that which you understand to your own
case. You are something more than Tom Bowles the smith
and doctor of horses ; something more than the magnificent
animal who rages for his mate and fights every rival : the bull
does that. You are a soul endowed with the capacity to
receive the idea of a Creator so divinely wise and great and
good that, though acting by the agency of general laws, Ho
can accommodate them to all individual cases, so that—^taking
into account the life hereafter, which He grants to you the
capacity to believe—all that troubles you now will be proved
to you wise and great and good either in this life or the other.
Lay that truth to your heart, friend, now—^before the bell
stops ringing ; recall it every time you hear the church bell
ring again. And oh, Tom, you have such a noble na¬
ture "
" I—I ! don't jeer me—don't."
" Such a noble nature ; for you can love so passionately, you
can war so fiercely, and yet, when convinced that your love
would be misery to her you love, can resign it ; and yet, when
beaten in your war, can so forgive your victor that you are
walking in this solitude with him as a friend, knowing that
you have but to drop a foot behind him in order to take his
life in an unguarded moment ; and rather than take his life
you would defend it against an army Do you think I am
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
261
BO dull as not to see all that? and is not all that a noble
nature?"
Tom Bowles covered his face with his hands, and his broad
breast heaved.
" Well, then, to that noble nature I now trust. I myself
have done little good in life. I may never do much ; but let
me think that I have not crossed your life in vain for you and
for those whom your life can color for good or for bad. As
you are strong, be gentle ; as you can love one, be kind to all ;
as you have so much that is grand as Man—that is, the
highest of God's works on earth,—^let all your acts attach your
manhood to the idea of Him to whom the voice of the bell
appeals. Ah 1 the bell is hushed ; but not your heart, Tom,
-^that speaks still."
Tom was weeping like a child.
CHAPTER VIII.
Now when our two travelers resumed their journey the
relationship between them had undergone a change ; nay, you
might have said that their characters were also changed.
For Tom found himself pouring out his turbulent heart to
Kenelm, confiding to this philosophical scofier at love all the
passionate humanities of love—its hope, its anguish, its jeal¬
ousy, its wrath—the all that links the gentlest of emotions to
tragedy and terror. And Kenelm, listening tenderly, with
262
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Boñened eyes, uttered not one cynic word—nay, not one play¬
ful jest. He felt that the gravity of all he heard was too
solemn for mockery, too deep even for comfort. True lovo
of this sort was a thing he had never known, never wished
to know, never thought he could know, hut he sympathized
in it not the less. Strange, indeed, how much we do sym¬
pathize, on the stage, for instance, or in a hook, with passions
that have never agitated ourselves. Had Kenelm jested, or
reasoned, or preached, Tom would have shrunk at once into
dreary sUence ; hut Kenelm said nothing, save now and then,
as he rested his arm, brother-like, on the strong man's
shoulder, he murmured, " poor fellow 1" So, then, when Tom
had finished his confessions, he felt wondrously relieved and
comforted. He had cleansed his bosom of the perilous stuff
that weighed upon the heart.
Was this good result effected by Kenelm's artiul diplomacy,
or by that insight into human passions vouchsafed, uncon¬
sciously to himself, by gleams or in flashes, to this strange
man who surveyed the objects and pursuits of his fellows
with a yearning desire to share them, murmuring to him.self,
" I cannot—I do not stand in this world ; like a ghost I glide
beside it, and look on" ?
Thus the two men continued their way slowly, amid soft
pastures and yellowing corn-fields, out at length into the dusty
thoroughfares of the main road. That gained, their talk
insensibly changed its tone—it became more commonplace,
and Kenelm permitted himself the license of those crotchets
by which he extracted a sort of quaint pleasantry oat of
commonplace itself; so that from time to time Tom Nas
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
263
Btai-tled into the mirth of laughter. This big fellow had one
very agreeable gift, whieh is only granted, I think, to men of
genuine character and afieetionate dispositions— a spontaneou.s
and sweet laugh, manly and frank, but not boisterous, as you
might have supposed it would be. But that sort of laugh
had not before come from his lips, since the da y on which his
live for Jessie Wiles had made him at war with himself and
the world.
The sun was setting when from the brow of a hill they
beheld the spires of Luscombe, imbedded amid the level
meadows that stretched below, watered by the same stream
that had wound along their more rural pathway, but which
now expanded into stately width, and needi.d, to span it, a
mighty bridge fit for the convenience of civilized tmfiBc.
The town seemed near, but it was full two miles off by road.
" There is a short cut across the fields beyond that stile,
which leads straight to my uncle's house," said Tom ; " and I
daresay, sir, that you will be glad to escape the dirty suburb
by which the road passes before we get into the town."
" A good thought, Tom. It is very odd that fine towns
always are approached by dirty suburbs—a covert symbolical
satire, perhaps, on the ways to success in fine towns. Avarice
or ambition go through very mean little streets before they
gain the place which they jostle the crowd to win—in the
Townhall or on 'Change. Happy the man who, like you,
Tom, finds that there is a shorter and a cleaner and a
pleasanter way to goal or to resting-place than that through
the dirty suburbs !"
They met but few passengers on their path through the
2G4
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
fields—a respectable, staid, elderly couple, who Lad the air of
a Dissenting minister and his wife ; a girl of fourteen leading
a little boy seven years younger by the hand ; a pair of lovers,
evidently lovers at least to the eye of Tom Bowles—for, on
regarding them as they passed uni ceding him, he winced,
and his face changed. Even after they had passed, Kcnelm
saw on the face that pain lingered there ; the lips weie tight/ 7
compressed, and their corners gloomily drawn down.
Just at this moment a dog rushed towards them with, a
short quick bark—a Pomeranian dog with pointed nose and
pricked ears. It hushed its bark as it neared Kenelm, sniffed
his trousers, and wagged its tail.
" By the sacred Nine," cried Kenelm, " thou art the dog
with the tin tray 1 where is thy master ?"
The dog seemed to understand the question, for it turned
its head significantly, and Kenelm saw, seated under a lime-
tree, at a good distance from the path, a man, with book in
hand, evidently employed in sketching.
" Come this way," he said to Tom ; " I recogniw an ao
quaintance. You will like him." Tom desired no new ao
quaintance at that moment, but he followed Kenelm submis
sively.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
26t>
CHAPTER IX.
" Yoc see we are fated to meet again," said Kenelm,
stretching himself at his ease beside the Wandering Minstrel,
and motioning Tom to do the same. " But you seem to add
the accomplishment of drawing to that of verse-making I You
sketch from what you call Nature?"
" From what I call Nature ! yes, sometimes."
" And do you not find in drawing, as in verse-making, the
truth that I have before sought to din into your reluctant
ears—viz., that Nature has no voice except that which man
breathes into her out of his mind ? I would lay a wager that
the sketch you are now taking is rather an attempt to make
her embody some thought of your own, than to present her
outlines as they appear to any other observer. Permit me to
judge for myself." And he bent over the sketch-book. It is
often difficult for one who is not himself an artist nor a :«n-
noisseur, to judge whether the penciled jottings in an im¬
promptu sketch are by the hand of a professed master or a
mere amateur. Kenelm was neither artist nor connoisseur,
but the mere pencil-work seemed to him much what might ha
expected from any man with an accurate eye, who had taken
a certain number of lessons from a good drawing-master. It
was enough for him, however, that it furnished an illustration
of his own theory. " I was right," he cried, triumphantly.
M
266
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" From this height there is a beautiful view, as it presents itself
to me ; a beautiful view of the town, its meadows, its river, har¬
monized by the sunset ; for sunset, like gilding, unites eonfliet-
ing colors, and softens them in uniting. But I see nothing of
that view in your sketch. What I do see is to me mysterious."
" The view you suggest," said the minstrel, " is no doubt
very fine, but it is for a Turner or a Claude to treat it. My
grasp is not wide enough for such a landscape."
" I see indeed in your sketch but one figure, a ehUd."
" Hist I there she stands. Hist 1 while I put in this last
touch."
Kenelm strained his sight, and saw far off a solitary little
girl, who was tossing something in the air (he could not dis¬
tinguish what), and catching it as it fell. She seemed stand¬
ing on the very verge of the upland, backed by rose-clouds
gathered round the setting sun ; below lay in conftised outlines
the great town. In the sketch those outlines seemed infi¬
nitely more confused, being only indicated by a few bold
strokes; but the figure and face of the child were distinct
and lovely. There was an ineffable sentiment in her solitude,
there was a depth of quiet enjoyment in her mirthful play,
and in her upturned eyes.
" But at that distance," asked Kenelm, when the wanderer
had finished his last touch, and, after contemplating it, silently
closed his book, and turned round with a genial smile—" but¬
ât that distance, how can you distinguish the girl's face?
How can you discover that the dim object she has just
thrown up and recaught is a ball made of flowers ? Do you
know the child ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
267
" I never saw her before this evening ; but as I was seated
here she was straying around me alone, weaving into chains
some wild-flowers whieh she had gathered by the hedgerows
yonder, next the high-road ; and as she strung them she was
chanting to herself some pretty nursery rhymes. You can
well understand that when I heard her thus chanting I he-
came interested, and as she came near me I spoke to her, and
wo §oon made fiiends. She told me she was an orphan, and
brought up by a very old man distantly related to her, who
had been in some small trade, and now lived in a crowded
lane in the heart of the town. He was very kind to her, and,
being confined himself to the house by age or ailment, he sent
her out to play in the fields on summer Sundays. She had
no companions of her own age. She said she did not like the
other little girls in the lane ; and the only little girl she liked
at school had a grander station in life, and was not allowed to
play with her, so she came out to play alone ; and as long as
the sun shines and the flowers bloom, she says she never
wants other society."
"Tom, do you hear that? As you will be residing in
Luscombe, find out this strange little girl, and be kind to her,
Tom, for my sake."
Tom put his large hand upon Kenelm's, making no other
answer ; but he looked hard at the minstrel, recognized the
genial charm of his voice and face, and slid along the grass
nearer to him.
The minsti'el continued : " While the child was talking to
me I mechanically took the flower-chains from her hand, and,
not thinking what I was about, gathered them up into a ball.
268
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Suddenly slie saw what I had done, and instead of scolding
me for spoiling her pretty chains, which I richly deserved,
was delighted to find I had twisted them into a new play¬
thing. She ran off with the hall, tossing it about till, excited
with her own joy, she got to the brow of the hill, and I began
my sketch."
" Is that charming face you have drawn like hers ?"
" No ; only in part. I was thinking of another face while
I sketched, but it is not like that either ; in fact, it is one of
those patchworks which we call ' fancy heads,' and I meant it
to be another version of a thought that I had just put into
rhyme, when the child came across me."
" May we hear the rhyme ?"
" I fear that if it did not bore yourself it would bore your
friend."
" I am sure not. Tom, do you sing ?"
" Well, I have sung," said Tom, hanging his head sheep¬
ishly, " and I should like to hear this gentleman."
" But I do not know these verses, just made, well enough
to sing them ; it is enough if I can recall them well enough to
recite." Here the minstrel paused a minute or so as if for
recollection, and then, in the sweet clear tones, and the rare
purity of enunciation which characterized his utterance,
whether in recital or song, gave to the following verses a
touching and a varied expression which no one could discover
in merely reading them.
THE FLOWER-GIRL BY THE CROSSING.
By the muddy crossing in the crowded streets
Stands a little maid with her basket full of posies,
kenelm chillingly.
269
Proffering all who pass her choice of knitted sweets,
Tempting Age with heart's-ease, courting Youth with rosea.
Age disdains the heart's-ease.
Love rejects the roses ;
London life is busy—
Who can stop for posies ?
One man is too grave, another is too gay—
This man has his hothouse, that man not a penny;
Flowerets too are common in the month of May,
And the things most common least attract the many.
HI on London crossings
Fares the sale of posies ;
Age disdains the heart's-ease.
Youth rejects the roses.
When the verse-maker had done, he did not pause for ap¬
probation, nor look modestly down, as do most people who
recite their own verses, hut, unafiectedly thinking much more
of his art than his audience, hurried on somewhat disconso¬
lately :
" I see with great grief that I am better at sketching than
rhyming. Can you" (appealing to Kenelm) " even compre¬
hend what I mean by the verses ?"
Kenelm.—" Do you comprehend, Tom ?"
Tom (in a whisper).—" No."
Kenelm.—" I presume that by his flower-girl our friend
means to represent not only Poetry, but a poetry like his own,
which is not at all the sort of poetry now in fashion. I, how¬
ever, expand his meaning, and by his flower-girl I understand
any image of natural truth or beauty for which, when we are
living the artificial life of crowded streets, we are too busy to
give a penny."
23»
270
kenelm chillingly.
" Take it as you please," said the minstrel, smiling and
sighing at the same time; " but I have not expressed in words
that which I did mean half so well as I have expressed it in
my sketch-book."
" Ah ! and how?" asked Kenelm.
" The Image of my thought in the sketch, he it Poetry or
whatever you prefer to call it, does not stand forlorn in the
crowded streets—the child stands on the brow of the green
hill, with the city stretched in confused fragments below, and,
thoughtless of pennies and passers-by, she is playing with the
flowers she has gathered—^but in play casting them heaven¬
ward, and following them with heavenward eyes."
" Good 1" muttered Kenelm—" good 1" and then, after a
long pause, he added, in a still lower mutter, " Pardon me
that remark of mine the other day about a beef-steak. But
own that I am right—what you call a sketch from Nature
is but a sketch of your own thought."
CHAPTER X.
The child with the flower-ball had vanished from the brow
of the hill ; sinking down amid the streets below, the rose-
clouds had faded from the horizon; and night was closing
round, as the three men entered the thick of the town. Tom
pressed Kenelm to accompany him to his uncle's, promising
him a hearty welcome and bed and board, but Konelm declined.
He entertained a strong persuasion that it would be bettei
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
271
for the desired effect on Tom's mind that he should be left
alone with his relations that night, but proposed that they
should spend the next day together, and agreed to call at the
Teterinary surgeon's in the morning.
When Tom quitted them at his uncle's door, Kenelm said
to the minstrel, " I suppose you are going to some inn—may
I accompany you? We can sup together, and I should liko
to hear you talk upon poetry and Nature."
" You flatter me much ; but I have friends in the town,
with whom I lodge, and they are expecting me. Do you not
observe that I have changed my dress ? I am not known here
as the ' Wandering Minstrel.' "
Kenelm glanced at the man's attire, and for the flrst time
observed the change. It was still picturesque in its way, but
it was such as gentlemen of the highest rank frequently wear
in the country—^the knickerbocker costume—^very neat, very
new, and complete, to the square-toed shoes with their latchets
and buckles.
" I fear," said Kenelm, gravely, " that your change of dress
betokens the neighborhood of those pretty girls of whom you
spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian
doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the
preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that
fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is
rather unfair to rivals when you unite both attractions."
The minstrel laughed. " There is but one girl in my friend's
house—^his niece ; she is very plain, and only thirteen. But
to me the society of women, whether ugly or pretty, is an ab¬
solute necessity; and I have been trudging without it for so
272
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
many days that I can scarcely tell you how my thoughts
seemed to shake oflf the dust of travel when I found myself
again in the presence of "
" Petticoat interest," interrupted Kenelm. " Take care of
yourself. My poor friend with whom you found me is a grave
warning against petticoat interest, from which I hope to profit,
lie is passing through a great sorrow ; it might have been
worse than sorrow. My friend is going to stay in this town.
If you are staying here too, pray let him see something of
you. It will do him a wondrous good if you can beguile him
from this real life into the gardens of poet-land ; but do not
sing nor talk of love to him."
" I honor all lovers," said the minstrel, with real tenderness
in his tone, " and would willingly serve to cheer or comfort
your friend, if I could ; but I am bound elsewhere, and must
leave Luscombe, which I visit on business—^money business—
the day after to-morrow."
" So, too, must I. At least give us both some hours of
your time to-morrow."
" Certainly ; from twelve to sunset I shall be roving about—
a mere idler. If you will both come with me, it will be a great
pleasure to myself. Agreed ! Well, then, I will call at your
inn to-morrow at twelve; and I recommend for your inn tl:e
one facing us—The Golden Lamb. I have heard it recom¬
mended for the attributes of civil people and good fare."
Kenelm felt that he here received his congé^ and well com¬
prehended the fact that the minstrel, desiring to preserve the
secret of his name, did not give the address of the family with
whom he was a guest.
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
273
"But one •word more," said Kenelm. "Your liost or
hostess, if resident here, can, no doubt, from your description
of the little girl and the old man her protector, leam the
child's address. If so, I should like my companion to mako
friends with her. Petticoat interest there at least will he in¬
nocent and safe. And I know nothing so likely to keep a hig,
passionate heart like Tom's, now aching with a horrible void,
occupied and softened, and turned to directions pure and
g< ntle, as an affectionate interest in a little child."
The minstrel changed color—^he even started.
"Sir, are you a wizard, that you say that to me?"
" I am not a wizard, hut I guess from your question that
you have a little child of your own. So much the better;
the child may keep you out of much mischief. Remember
the little child. Good-evening."
Kenelm crossed the threshold of the Golden Lamb, en¬
gaged his room, made his ablutions, ordered, and, with his
usual zest, partook of, his evening meal; and then, feeling
the pressure of that melancholic temperament which he so
strangely associated with Herculean constitutions, roused him¬
self up, and, seeking a distraction from thought, sauntered
forth into the gas-lit streets.
It was a large, handsome town—^handsomer than Tor-Had-
ham, on account of its site in a valley surrounded by wooded
hills and watered by the fair stream whose windings we have
seen as a brook—handsomer, also, because it boasted a fair
cathedral, well cleared to the sight, and surrounded by vener¬
able old houses, the residences of the clergy, or of the quiet
lay gentry with mediaeval taste. The main street was
M* 18
27-t
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
thronged with passengers—some soherly returning home frcm
the evening service—some, the younger, lingering in pleasant
prom made with their sweethearts or families, or arm in arm
with each other and having the air of bachelors or maidens
unattached. Through this street Kenelm passed with inatten¬
tive eye. A turn to the right took him towards the cathedral
and its surroundings. There all was solitary. The solitude
pleased him, and he lingered long, gazing on the noble church
lifting its spires and turrets into the deep-blue starry air.
Musingly, then, he strayed on, entering a labyrinth of
gloomy lanes, in which, though the shops were closed, many
a door stood open, with men of the working class lolling
against the threshold, idly smoking their pipes, or women
seated on the door-steps gossiping, while noisy children were
playing or quarreling in the kennel. The whole did not
present the indolent side of an English Sabbath in the pleas-
antest and rosiest point of view. Somewhat quickening his
steps, he entered a broader street, attracted to it involuntarily
by a bright light in the centre. On nearing the light he
found that it shone forth from a gin-palace, of which the
mahogany doors opened and shut momently, as customers
went in and out. It was the handsomest building he had
seen in his walk, next to that of the cathedral. " The new
civilization versus the old," murmured Kenelm. As he so
murmured, a hand was laid on his arm with a sort of timid
impudence. He looked down, and saw a young face, but it
had survived the look of youth ; it was worn and hard, and
the bloom on it was not that of Nature's giving. " Are you
kind to-night?" asked a husky voice.
kenelm chillingly.
275
" Kind !" said Kenelm, with mournful tones and softened
eyes—"kind! Alas, my poor sister mortal! if pity be
kindness, who can see you and not be kind?"
Tbe girl released bis arm, and be walked on. Sbe stood
some moments gazing after bim till out of sigbt, tben sbe
drew her band suddenly across her eyes, and, retracing her
steps, was, in her turn, caught bold of by a rougher band
than hers, as sbe passed tbe gin-palace. Sbe shook off tbe
grasp with a passionate scorn, and went straight home.
Home ! is that tbe right word ? Poor sister mortal !
CHAPTER XL
And now Kenelm found himself at tbe extremity of tbe
town, and on tbe banks of tbe river. Small squalid bouses
stUI lined tbe bank for some way, till, nearing tbe bridge,
they abruptly ceased, and be passed through a broad square
again into tbe main street. On tbe other side of tbe street
there was a row of villa-like mansions, with gardens stretching
towards tbe river.
All around in tbe thoroughfare was silent and deserted
Ry this time tbe passengers bad gone home. Tbe scent
of night-flowers from tbe villa gardens came sweet on tbe
starlit air. Kenelm paused to inhale it, and tben lifting bis
eyes, hitherto downcast, as are tbe eyes of men m meditar
tive moods, be beheld, on tbe balcony of tbe nearest villa, a
276
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
group of well-dressed persons. The balcony was unusually
wide and spacious. On it was a small round table, on which
were placed wine and fruits. Three ladies were seated round
the table on wire-work chairs, and, on the side nearest to
Ken elm, one man. In that man, now slightly turning his
profile, as if to look towards the river, Kenelm recognized the
minstrel. He was still in his picturesque knickerbocker dress,
and his clear-cut features, with the clustering curls of hair,
and Rubens-like hue and shape of beard, had more than their
usual beauty, softened in the light of skies to which the moon,
just risen, added deeper and fuller radiance. The ladies were
in evening dress, but Kenelm could not distinguish their faces,
hidden behind the minstrel. He moved softly across the street,
and took his stand behind a buttress in the low wall of the
garden, from which he could have full view of the balcony,
unseen himself. In this watch he had no other object than
that of a vague pleasure. The whole grouping had in it a
kind of scenic romance, and he stopped as one stops before «
picture.
He then saw that of the three ladies one was old ; another
was a slight girl, of the age of twelve or thirteen ; the third
appeared to be somewhere about seven- or eight^and-twenty.
She was dressed with more elegance than the others. On her
neck, only partially veiled by a thin scarf, there was the glitter
of jewels ; and, as she now turned her full face towards the
moon, Kenelm saw that she was very handsome—^a striking
kind of beauty, calculated to fascinate a poet or an artist—
not unlike Rafiaele's Fornarina, dark, with warm tints.
Now there appeared at the open window a stout, burly,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
277
middle-aged gentleman, looking every inch of him a family
man, a moneyed man, sleek and prosperous. He was bald,
fresh-colored, and with light whiskera.
" Holloa," he said, in an accent very slightly foreign, and
with a loud clear voice, which Kenelm heard distinctly, " is
it net time for you to come in ?"
"Don't be so tiresome, Fritz," said the handsome lady,
half petulantly, half playfully, in the way ladies address the
tiresome spouses whom they lord it over. " Your friend has
been sulking the whole evening, and is only just beginning to
he pleasant as the moon rises."
" The moon has a good effect on poets and other mad folks,
I daresay," said the bald man, with a good-humored laugh.
" But I can't have my little niece laid up again just as she is
on the mend. Annie, come in."
The girl obeyed reluctantly. The old lady rose too.
"Ah, mother, you are wise," said the bald man; "and a
game at euchre is safer than poetizing in night air." He
wound his arm round the old lady with a careful fondness,
for she moved with some difficulty, as if rather lame. " As
for you two sentimentalists and moon-gazers, I give you ten
minutes' law—not more, mind."
" Tyrant 1" said the minstrel.
The balcony now only held two forms—the minstrel and
the handsome lady. The window was closed, and partially
veiled by muslin draperies, but Kenelm caught glimpses of
the room within. He could see that the room, lit by a lamp
on the centre-table, and candles elsewhere, was decorated and
6tted up with cost, and in a taste not English. He could
278
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
see, for instance, that the ceiling was painted, and the walls
were not papered, but painted in panels between arabesque
pilasters.
" They are foreigners," thought Kenelm, " though the
man does speak English so well. That accounts for playing
fAizhre of a Sunday evening, as if there were no harm in it.
Euchre is an American game. The man is called Fritz. Ah !
I guess—Germans who have lived a good deal in America ;
and the verse-maker said he was at Luscomhe on pecuniary
business. Doubtless his host is a merchant, and the verse-
maker in some commercial firm. That accounts for his con¬
cealment of name, and fear of its being known that he was
addicted, in his holiday, to tastes and habits so opposed to his
calling."
While he was thus thinking, the lady had drawn her chair
close to the minstrel, and was speaking to him with evident
earnestness, but in tones too low for Kenelm to hear. Still it
seemed to him, by her manner and by the man's look, as if
she were speaking in some sort of reproach, which he sought
to deprecate. Then he spoke, also in a whisper, and she
averted her face for a moment—then she held out her hand,
and the minstrel kissed it. Certainly, thus seen, the two
might well be taken for lovers ; and the soft night, the
fragrance of the flowers, silence and solitude, stars and moon¬
light, all girt them as with an atmosphere of love. Presently
the man rose and leaned over the balcony, propping his cheek
on his hand, and gazing on the river. The lady rose too, and
also leaned over the balustrade, her dark hair almost touching
tlie auburn locks of her companion.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
279
Kenelm sighed. Was it from envy, from pity, from fear?
I know not ; but he sighed.
After a brief pause, the lady said, still in low tones, but not
too low this time to escape Kenelm's fine sense of hearing :
" Tell me those verses again. I must remember every
word of them when you are gone."
The man shook his head gently, and answered, but in-
audibly.
"*Do," said the lady, " set them to music later ; and the
next time you come I will sing them. I have thought of a
title for them."
" What ?" asked the minstrel.
" Love's Quarrel."
The minstrel turned his head, and their eyes met, and, in
meeting, lingered long. Then he moved away, and with face
turned from her and towards the river, gave the melody of
his wondrous voice to the following lines :
LOVE'S QUARREL.
Standing by the river, g.azing on the river.
See it paved with starheams ; heaven is at our feet.
Now the wave is troubled, now the rushes quiver;
Vanished is the starlight—it was a deceit.
Comes a little cloudlet 'twixt ourselves and heaven.
And from all the river fades the silver track ;
Put thine arms around me, whisper low, " Forgiven !"—
See how on the river starlight settles hack.
When he had finished, still with face turned aside, the lady
did not, indeed, whisper " forgiven," nor put her arms around
280
kenelm chillingly.
him; but, as if by irresistible impulse, she laid her hand
lightly on his shoulder.
The minstrel started.
There came to his ear—^he knew not from whence, from
whom—
" Mischief—mischief! Remember the little child !"
" Hush !" he said, staring round. " Hid you not hear a
voice ?"
" Only yours," said the lady.
" It was our guardian angel's, Amalie. It came in time.
We will go within."
CHAPTER XII.
The next morning betimes, Kenelm visited Tom at his
uncle's home. A comfortable and respectable home it was,
like that of an owner in easy circumstances. The veterinary
surgeon himself was intelligent, and apparently educated
beyond the range of his calling; a childless widower, be¬
tween sixty and seventy, living with a sister, an old maid.
They were evidently much attached to Tom, and delighted
by the hope of keeping him with them. Tom himself lo( ked
rather sad, but not sullen, and his face brightened wonder¬
fully at first sight of Kenelm. That oddity made himself as
pleasant and as much like other people as he eould in con¬
versing with the old widower and the old maid, and took
leave, engaging Tom to be at his inn at half-past twelve and
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
281
spend the day with him and the minstrel. He then returned
to the Golden Lamb, and waited there for his first visitant,
the minstrel.
That votary of the muse arrived punctually at twelve
o'clock. His countenance was less cheerful and sunny than
usual. Kenelm made no allusion to the scene he had wit¬
nessed, nor did his visitor seem to suspect that Kenelm had
witnessed it or been the utterer of that warning voice.
Kenelm.—" I have asked my friend Tom Bowles to come
a little later, because I wished you to be of use to him, and, in
order to be so, I should suggest how : "
The Minstrel.—" Pray do."
Kenelm.—" You know that I am not a poet, and I do not
have much reverence for verse-making, merely as a crafl."
The Minstrel.—" Neither have I."
Kenelm.—" But I have a great reverence for poetry as a
priesthood. I felt that reverence for you when you sketched
and talked priesthood last evening, and placed in my heart—
I hope forever while it beats—the image of the child on the
sunlit hill, high above the abodes of men, tossing her flower-
ball heavenward, and with heavenward eyes."
The singer's cheek colored high, and his lip quivered ; he
was very sensitive to praise—^most singers are.
Kenelm resumed : " I have been educated in the Eealistio
school, and with realism I am discontented, because in realism
as a school there is no truth. It contains but a bit of truth,
and that the coldest and hardest bit of it, and he who utters a
bit of truth and suppresses the rest of it, tells a lie."
The Minstrel (slyly).—" Does the critic who says to me,
282
kenelm CniLLINGLT.
'Sing of becf-steak, because the appetite for food is a real
want of daily life, and don't sing of art and glory and love,
because in daily life a man may do without such ideas,'—tell
alie?"
Kenelm.—" Thank you for that rebuke. I submit to it.
No doubt I did tell a lie—^that is, if I were quite in earnest
in my recommendation ; and if not in earnest, why "
The Minstkel.—"You belied yourself."
Kenelm.—"Very likely. I set out on my travels to
escape from shams, and begin to discover that I am a sham
par excellence. But I suddenly come across you, as a boy
dulled by his syntax and his vulgar fractions suddenly comes
across a pleasant poem or a picture-book and feels his wits
brighten up. I owe you much ; you have done me a world
of good."
" I cannot guess how."
" Possibly not, but you have shown me how the realism of
Nature herself takes color and life and soul when seen on the
ideal or poetic side of it. It is not exactly the words that you
say or sing that do me the good, but they awaken within me
new trains of thought, which I seek to follow out. The best
teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and
inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself. There¬
fore, 0 singer 1 whatever be the worth in critical eyes of your
songs, I am glad to remember that you would like to go
through the world always singing."
" Pardon me ; you forget that I added, ' if life were always
young, and the seasons were always summer.' "
" I do not forget. But if youth and summer fade for you,
kenelm chillingly.
283
you leave youtli and summer behind you as you pass along—
behind in hearts which mere realism would make always old,
and counting their slothful beats under the gray of a sky
without sun or stars ; wherefore I pray you to consider how
magnißcent a mission the singer's is—to harmonize your life
with your song, and toss your flowers, as your child does,
heavenward, with heavenward eyes. Think only of this when
you talk with my sorrowing friend, and you will do him good,
as you have done me, without being able to guess how a seeker
after the Beautiful, such as you, carries us along with him on
his way ; so that we, too, look out for beauty, and see it in
the wild-flowers to which we had been blind before."
Here Tom entered the little sanded parlor where this dia¬
logue had been held, and the three men sallied forth, taking
the shortest cut from the town into the flelds and woodlands.
CHAPTER XIII.
Whether or not his spirits were raised by Ken elm's praise
and exhortations, the minstrel that day talked with a charm
that spell-bound Tom, and Kenelm was satisfled with brief
remarks on his side tending to draw out the principal per¬
former.
The talk was drawn from outward things, from natural
objects—objects that interest children, and men who, like
Tom Bowles, have been accustomed to view surroundings more
284
KENÏLM CniLLINQLT.
with the heart's eye than the mind's eye. This rover about
the country knew much of the habits of birds and beasts
and insects, and told anecdotes of them with a mixture of
humor and pathos, which fascinated Tom's attention, made
him laugh heartily, and sometimes brought tears into his
big blue eyes.
They dined at an inn by the wayside, and the dinner was
mirthful ; then they wended their way slowly back. By the
declining daylight their talk grew somewhat graver, and
Kenelm took more part in it. Tom listened mute—still
fascinated. At length, as the town came in sight, they agreed
to halt awhile, in a bosky nook soft with mosses and sweet
with wild thyme.
There, as they lay stretched at their ease, the birds hymn¬
ing vesper songs amid the boughs above, or dropping, noiseless
and fearless, for their evening food on the swards around
them, the wanderer said to Kenelm, "You tell me that you
are no poet, yet I am sure you have a poet's perception ; you
must have written poetiy?"
" Not I ; as I before told you, only school verses in dead
languages ; but I found in my knapsack this morning a copy
of some rhymes, made by a fellow-eollegian, which I put into
my pocket, meaning to read them to you both. They are not
verses like yours, which evidently burst from you sponta¬
neously and are not imitated from any other poets. These
verses were written by a Scotchman, and smack of imitation
from the old ballad style. There is little to admire in the
words themselves, but there is something in the idea which
struck me as original, and impressed me sufficiently to keep a
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
285
copy, and somehow or other it got into the leaves of one of
the two books I carried with me from home."
" What are those books ? Books of poetry both, I will
venture to wager "
"Wrong! Both metaphysical, and dry as a bone. Tom,
light your pipe, and you, sir, lean more at ease on your elbow ;
[ should warn you that the ballad is long. Patience !"
"^Attention !" said the minstrel.
" Fire !" added Tom.
Kenelm began to read—and he read well :
LOED EONALD'S BEIDE.
Pakt I.
" Why gathers the crowd in the Market-plaoa
Ere the stars have yet left the sky ?"
" For a holiday show and an act of grace—
At the sunrise a witch shall die."
" What deed has she done to deserve that doom-
Has she blighted the standing corn,
Or rifled for philters a dead man's tomb.
Or rid mothers of babes new-born ?"
" Her pact with the Fiend was not thus revealed.
She taught sinners the Word to hear;
The hungry she fed, and the sick she healed.
And was held as a Saint last year.
" But a holy man, who at Eome had been.
Had discovered, by book and bell.
That the marvels she wrought were through arts unclean.
And the lies of the Prince of Hell.
" And our Mother the Church, for the dame was rich.
And her husband was Lord of Clyde,
Would fain have been mild to this saint-like witch
If her sins she had not denied.
286
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" But hush, and come nearer to see the sight,
Sheriff, halberds, and torchmen,—look !
That's the witch, standing mute in her garb of whit«^
By the priest with his bell and book."
So the witch was consumed on the sacred pyre.
And the priest grew in power and pride.
And the witch left a son to succeed his sire
In the halls and the lands of Clyde.
And the infant waxed comely and strong and hraT«^
But his manhood had scarce begun,
IThen his vessel was launched on the northern wave.
To the shores which are near the sun.
Part II.
Lord Ronald has come to his halls in Clyde
With a bride of some unknown race :
Compared with the man who would kiss that bride
Wallace wight were a coward base.
Her eyes had the glare of the mountain-cat
When it springs on the hunter's spear;
At the head of the hoard when that lady sat
Hungry men could not eat for fear.
And the tones of her voice had the deadly growl
Of the bloodhoundthat scents its prey ;
No storm was so dark as that lady's scowl
Under tresses of wintry gray.
" Lord Ronald ! men marry for love or gold,
Mickle rich must have been thy bride !"
" Man's heart may be bought, woman's hand be sol<^
On the banks of our northern Clyde.
" My bride is, in sooth, mickle rich to me.
Though she brought not a groat in dower.
For her face, couldst thou see it as I do see.
Is the fairest in hall or bower !"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
287
Quoth the bishop one day to our lord the king,
" Satan reigns on the Clyde alway,
And the taint in the blood of the witch doth cling
To the child that she brought to day.
" Lord Ronald hath come from the Paynim land
With a bride that appalls the sight;
Like his dam she hath moles on her dread right hand.
And she turns to a snake at night.
" It IS plain that a Scot who can blindly dote
• On the face of an Eastern ghoul.
And a ghoul who was worth not a silrer groat,
Is a Scot who has lost his soul.
" It were wise to have done with this demon tree
Which has teemed with such cankered fruit :
Add the soil where it stands to my holy See,
And consign to the flames its root."
" Holy man !" quoth King James, and he laughed, " we knew
That thy tongue never wags in vain.
But the Church cist is full, and the king's is low.
And the Clyde is a fair domain.
" Yet a knight that's bewitched by a laidly fere
Needs not much to dissolve the spell ;
We will summon the bride and tbe bridegroom her«.
Be at hand with thy book and bell."
Part III.
Lord Ronald stood up in King James's court.
And his dame by his dauntless side;
The barons who came in the hopes of sport
Shook with fright when they saw the bride.
The bishop, though armed with his bell and book.
Grew as white as if turned to stone.
It was only our king who could face that look.
But he spoke with a trembling tone:
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
*' Lord Ronald, the knights of thy race and mine
Shonld have mates in their own degree ;
What parentage, say, hath that bride of thine
Who hath come from the far countree ?
" And what was her dowry in gold or land.
Or what was the charm, I pray.
That a comely yonng gallant should woo the hand
Of the ladye we see to-day ?"
And the lords would have laughed, but that awful dame
Struck them dumb with her thunder-frown :
" Saucy king, did I utter my father's name.
Thou wouldst kneel as his liegeman down.
" Though I brought to Lord Ronald nor lands nor gold.
Nor the bloom of a fading eheek ;
Yet, were I a widow, both young and old
Would my hand and my dowry seek.
" For the wish that he covets the most below.
And would hide from the saints above.
Which he dares not to pray for in weal or woo.
Is the dowry I bring my love.
« Let every man look in his heart and see
What the wish he most lusts to win.
And then let him fasten his eyes on me
While he thinks of his darling sin."
And every man—^bishop, and lord, and king-
Thought of that he most wished to win.
And, fixing his eye on that gruesome thing.
He beheld his own darling sin.
No longer a ghoul in that face he saw,
It was fair as a boy's first love ;
The voice which had curdled his veins with awe
Was the coo of the woodland dove.
Each heart was on fiame for the peerless dame
At the price of the husband's life ;
Bright claymores flash out, and loud voices shont.
" In thy widow shall be my wife:"
KENELM CniLLINQLY.
289
Then darkness fell over the palace hall,
More dark and more dark it fell,
And a death-groan boomed hoarse underneath the pall.
And was drowned amid roar and yell.
When light through the lattiee-pane stole onee more.
It was gray as a wintry dawn.
And the bishop lay cold on the regal floor.
With a stain on his robes of lawn.
Lord Ronald was standing beside the dead.
In the scabbard he plunged his sword,
And with visage as wan as the corpse, he smd,
" Lo ! my ladye hath kept her word.
"Now I leave her to others-to woo and win.
For no longer I find her fair;
Could I look on the face of my darling sin,
I should see but a dead man's there.
" And the dowry she brought me is here returned.
For the wish of my heart has died.
It is quenched in the blood of the priest who burned
My sweet mother, the Saint of Clyde."
Lord Ronald strode over the stony floor.
Not a hand was outstretched to stay;
Lord Ronald has passed through the gaping door,
Not an eye ever traced his way.
And the ladye, left widowed, was prized above
All the maidens in hall and bower.
Many bartered their lives for that ladye's love.
And their souls for that ladye's dower.
God grant that the wish which I dare not pray
Be not that which I lust to win,
And that ever I look with my first dismay
On the face of my darling sin !
As he ceased, Kenelm's eye fell on Tom's face up-turned
to his own, with open lips, and intent stare, and paled cheeks,
N 19
290
KEí>ELM CHILLINGLY,
and a look of that higher sort of terror which belongs to awe.
The man, then recovering himself, tried to speak, and at¬
tempted a sickly smile, but neither would do. He rose
abruptly and walked away, crept under the shadow of a dark
beech-tree, and stood there leaning against the trunk.
" What say you to the ballad ?" asked Kenelm of the
singer.
" It is not without power," answered he.
"Ay, of a certain kind."
The minstrel looked hard at Kenelm, and dropped his eyes,
with a heightened glow on hiff cheek.
" The Scotch are a thoughtful race. The Scot who wrote
this thing may have thought of a day when he saw beauty in
the face of a darling sin ; but if so, it is evident that his
sight recovered from that glamoury. Shall we walk on?
Come, Tom."
The minstrel left them at the entrance of the town, saying,
" I regret that I cannot see more of either of you, as I quit
Luscombe at daybreak. Here, by the by, I forgot to give it
before, is the address you wanted."
Kenelm.—" Of the little child. I am glad you reraem
bered her."
The minstrel again looked hard at Kenelm, this time with¬
out dropping his eyes. Kenelm's expression of face was £o
simply quiet that it might be almost called vacant.
Kenelm and Tom continued to walk on towards the veteri¬
nary surgeon's house, for some minutes silently. Then Tom
said in a whisper, " Did not you mean those rhymes to hit me
here—here?" and he struck his breast.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
291
" The rhymes were written long before I saw you, Tom ;
but it is well if their meaning strike us all. Of you, my
friend, I have no fear now. Are you not already a changed
man ?"
"I feel as if I were going through a change," answered
Tom, in slow, dreary accents. " In hearing you and that gen¬
tleman talk so much of things that I never thought of, I felt
something in me—^you will laugh when I tell you—something
like a bird."
" Like a bird—good 1—a bird has wings."
" Just so."
" And you felt wings that you were unconscious of before,
fluttering and beating themselves as against the wires of a
cage. You were true to your instincts then, my dear fellow-
man—instincts of space and heaven. Courage!—the cage-
door will open soon. And now, practically speaking, I give
you this advice in parting : you have a quick and sensitive
mind which you have allowed that strong body of yours to
incarcerate and suppress. Give that mind fair play. Attend
to the business of your calling diligently: the craving for
regular work is the healthful appetite of mind ; but in your
spare hours cultivate the new ideas which your talk with men
who have been accustomed to cultivate the mind more than
the body, has sown within you. Belong to a book-club, and
interest yourself in books. A wise man has said, ' Books
widen the present by adding to it the past and the future.*
Seek the company of educated men, and educated women too ;
and when you are angry with another, reason with him—
don't knock him down ; and don't be knocked down yourself
292
kenelm chillingly.
by an enemy much stronger than yourself—^Drink. Do all
this, and when I see you again you will be "
" Stop, sir—^you will see me again ?"
" Yes, if we both live, I promise it."
"When?"
" You see, Tom, we have both of us something in our old
selves which we must work off. You will work off your
something by repose, and I must work off mine, if I can, by
moving about. So I am on my travels. May we both have
new selves better than the old selves, when we again shake
hands. For your part try your best, dear Tom, and heaven
prosper you."
" And heaven bless you 1" cried Tom, fervently, with tears
rolling unheeded from his bold blue eyes.
CHAPTER XIV.
Though Kenelm left Luscombe on Tuesday morning, he
did not appear at Neesdale Park till the Wednesday, a little
before the dressing-bell for dinner. His adventures in the
interia are not worth repeating. He had hoped he might
fall in again with the minstrel, but he did not.
His portmanteau had arrived, and he heaved a sigh as he
cased himself in a gentleman's evening dress, " Alas ! I have
soon got back again into my own skin."
There were several other guests in the house, though not a
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
293
large party. They had been asked with an eye to the ap¬
proaching election, consisting of squires and clergy from
remoter parts of the county. Chief among the guests in rank
and importance, and rendered by the occasion the central
object of interest, was George Belvoir.
Kenelm bore bis part in this society with a resignation thai
partook of repentance.
The first day he spoke very little, and was considered a
very dull young man by the lady he took in to dinner. Mr.
Travers in vain tried to draw him out. He had anticipated
much amusement from the eccentricities of his guest, who
had talked volubly enough in the fernery, and was sadly dis¬
appointed. " I feel," he whispered to Mrs. Campion, " like
poor Lord Pomfret, who, charmed with Punch's lively con¬
versation, bought him, and was greatly surprised that, when
he had once brought him home. Punch would not talk."
" But your Punch listens," said Mrs. Campion, " and he
observes."
George Belvoir, on the other hand, was universally declared
to be very agreeable. Though not naturally jovial, he forced
himself to appear so—laughing loud with the squires, and
entering heartily with their wives and daughters into such
topics as county-balls and croquet-parties; and when after
dinner he had, Cato-like, " warmed his virtue with wine," the
virtue came out very lustily in praise of good men—viz., men
of his own party—and anathema on bad men—^viz., men of
the other party.
blow and then he appealed to Kenelm, and Kenelm always
returned the same answer, " There is much in what you say."
294
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
The firat evening closed in the usual way in country-houses.
There was some lounging under moonlight on the terrace
before the house ; then there was some singing by young lady
amateurs, and a rubber of whist for the elders ; then wine-
and-water, hand-candlesticks, a smoking-room for those who
smoked, and bed for those who did not.
In the course of the evening, Cecilia, partly in obedience
to the duties of hostess, and partly from that compassion for
shyness which kindly and high-bred persons entertain, had
gone a little out of her way to allure Kenelm forth from the
estranged solitude he had contrived to weave around him ; in
vain for the daughter as for the father. He replied to her
with the quiet self-possession which should have convinced
her that no man on earth was less entitled to indulgence for
the gentlemanlike infirmity of shyness, and no man less
needed the duties of any hostess for the augmentation of his
comforts, or rather for his diminished sense of discomfort;
but his replies were in monosyUahles, and made with the air
of a man who says in his heart, " If this creature would hut
leave me alone !"
Cecilia, for the first time in her life, was piqued, and,
strange to say, began to feel more interest about this indif¬
ferent stranger than about the popular, animated, pleasant
Geirge Belvoir, who she knew by womanly instinct was as
much in love with her as he could be.
Cecilia Travers that night on retiring to rest told her maid,
smilingly, that she was too tired to have her hair done ; and
yet, when the maid was dismissed, she looked at herself in
the glass more gravely and more discontentedly than she had
kenelm cnillinglt.
295
erer looked there before, and tired though she was, stood at
the window gazing into the moonlit night for a good hour
after the maid had left her.
CHAPTER XV.
Kenelm Chillingly has now been several days a guest
at Neesdale Park. He has recovered speech ; the other guests
have gone, including George Belvoir. Leopold Travers has
taken a great fancy to Kenelm. Leopold was one of those
men, not uncommon perhaps in England, who, with great
mental energies, have little book-knowledge, and when they
come in contact with a hook-reader who is not a pedant, feel
a pleasant excitement in his society, a source of interest in
comparing notes with him, a constant surprise in finding by
what venerable authorities the deductions which their own
mother-wit has drawn from life are supported, or by what
cogent arguments, derived from books, those deductions are
contravened or upset. Leopold Travers had in him that sense
of humor which generally accompanies a strong practical un¬
derstanding (no man, for instance, has more practical under¬
standing than a Scot, and no man has a keener susceptibility
to humor), and not only enjoyed Kenelm's odd way of ex¬
pressing himself, but very often mistook Kenelm's irony for
opinion spoken in earnest.
Since his early removal from the capital and his devotion.
29G
KENELM ^niLLINGLT.
to agricultural pursuits, it was so seldom that Leopold Travcra
met a man by whose conversation his mind was diverted to other
subjects than those which were incidental to the commonplace
routine of his life, that he found in Kenelm's views of men and
things a source of novel amusement, and a stirring appeal to
such metaphysical creeds of his own as had been formed uncon¬
sciously, and had long reposed unexamined in the recesses of
an intellect shrewd and strong, but more accustomed to dictate
than to argue. Kenelm, on his side, saw much in his host to
like and to admire ; hut, reversing their relative positions in
point of years, he conversed with Travers as with a mind
younger than his own. Indeed, it was one of his crotchety
theories that each generation is in substance mentally older
than the generation preceding it, especially in all that relates
to science ; and, as he would say, " The study of life is a
science, and not an art."
But Cecilia,—what impression did she create upon the
young visitor? Was he alive to the charms of her rare
beauty, to the grace of a mind sufficiently stored for commune
with those who love to think and to imagine, and yet suffi¬
ciently feminine and playful to seize the sportive side of reali¬
ties and allow their proper place to the trifles which make the
sum of human things ? An impression she did make, and
that impression was new to him and pleasing. Nay, some¬
times in her presence, and sometimes when alone, he fell into
abstracted consultations with himself, saying, " Kenelm Chil¬
lingly, now that thou hast got back into thy proper skin, dost
thou not think that thou hadst better remain there ? Couldst
thou not be contented with thy lot as erring descendant of
keneiim chillingly.
Adam, if tliou couldst •win for thy mate so faultless a de«
Bcendant of Eve as now flits before thee ?" But he could not
extract from himself any satisfactory answer to the questioas
he had addressed to himself.
Once he said abruptly to Travers, as, on their return fiom
their rambles, they caught a glimpse of Cecilia's light form
bending over the flower-beds on the lawn, " Do you admire
Virgil ?"
" To say truth, I have not read Virgil since I was a boy ;
and, between you and me, I then thought him rather monoto¬
nous."
" Perhaps because his verse is so smooth in its beauty ?"
" Probably. When one is very young one's taste is faulty ;
and if a poet is not faulty, we are apt to think he wants
vivacity and flre."
" Thank you for your lucid explanation," answered Kenelm,
adding musingly to himself, " I am afraid I should yawn very
often if I were married to a Miss Virgil."
CHAPTER XVI.
The house of Mr. Travers contained a considerable collec¬
tion of family portraits, few of them well painted, hut the
Squire was evidently proud of such evidences of ancestry.
They not only occupied a considerable space on the walls of
the reception-rooms, hut swarmed into the principal sleeping-
n*
298
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
chambers, and smiled or frowned on the beholder from dark
passages and remote lobbies. One morning Cecilia, on her
way to the China Closet, found Kenelm gazing very intently
upon a female portrait consigned to one of these obscure
receptacles by which through a back staircase he gained the
only approach from the hall to his chamber.
" I don't pretend to be a good judge of paintings," said
Kenehn, as Cecilia paused beside him ; " but it strikes me
that this picture is very much better than most of those to
which ] laces of honor are assigned in your collection. And
the face itself is so lovely that it would add an embellishment
to the princeliest galleries."
" Yes," said Cecilia, with a half-sigh. " The face is lovely,
and the portrait is considered one of Lely's rarest master¬
pieces. It used to hang over the chimney-piece in the draw¬
ing-room. My father had it placed here many years ago."
" Perhaps because he discovered it was not a family por¬
trait ?"
" On the contrary—^because it grieves him to think it is a
family portrait. Hush ! I hear his footstep ; don't speak of
it to him ; don't let him see you looking at it. The subject
is very painful to him."
Here Cecilia vanished into the China Closet, and Kenelm
turned off to his own room.
What sin committed by the original in the time of Charles
II., but only discovered in the reign of Victoria, could have
justified Leopold Travers in removing the most pleasing por¬
trait in the house from the honored place it had occupied,
and banishing it to so obscure a recess? Kenelm said no
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
299
more on the subject, and indeed an hour after yards had dis¬
missed it from his thoughts. The next day he rode out with
Travers and Cecilia. Their way passed through quiet shady
lanes without any purposed direction, when suddenly, at the
spot where three of those lanes met on an angle of common
ground, a lonely gray tower, in the midst of a wide space of
grass land which looked as if it had once been a park, with
huge boles of pollarded oak dotting the space here and there,
rosS before them.
" Cissy 1" cried Travers, angrily reining in his horse and
stopping short in a political discussion which he had forced
upon Kenelm—" Cissy I How comes this? We have taken
the wrong turn ! No matter : I see there," pointing to the
right, "the chimney-pots of old Mondell's homestead. He
has not yet promised his vote to George Belvoir. I'll go and
have a talk with him. Turn back, you and Mr. Chillingly—
meet me at Turner's Green, and wait for me there till I come.
I need not excuse myself to you. Chillingly. A vote is a
vote." So saying, the Squire, whose ordinary riding-horse
was an old hunter, halted, turned, and, no gate being visible,
put the horse over a stiff fence and vanished in the direction
of old Mondell's chimney-pots. Kenelm, scarcely hearing his
host's instructions to Cecilia and excuses to himself, remained
still and gazing on the old gray tower thus abruptly obtruded
on his view.
Though no learned antiquarian like his father, Konelm had
a strange fascinating interest in all relics of the past ; and old
gray towers, where they are not church towers, are very rarely
fo be seen in England. All around the old gray tower spoko
300
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
with an unutterable mournfulness of a past in ruins: jou
could see remains of some large Gothic building once attached
to it, rising here and there in fragments of deeply-buttressed
walls ; you could see in a dry ditch, between high ridges,
where there had been a fortified moat ; nay, you could even
see where once had been the bailey hill from which a baron-
of old had dispensed justice. Seldom indeed does the most
acute of antiquarians discover that remnant of Norman times
on lands still held by the oldest of Anglo-Norman families.
Then, the wild nature of the demesne around ; those ranges
of sward, with those old giant oak-trunks, hollowed within
and pollarded at top ; all spoke, in unison with the gray tower,
of a past as remote from the reign of Victoria as the Pyramids
are from the sway of the Viceroy of Egypt.
" Let us turn back," said Miss Travers ; " my father would
not like me to stay here."
" Pardon me a moment. I wish my father were here ; he
would stay till sunset. But what is the history of that old
tower ?—a history it must have."
" Every home has a history—even a peasant's hut," said
Cecilia. " But do pardon me if I ask you to comply with my
Dither's request. I at least must turn back."
Thus commanded, Kenelm reluctantly withdrew his gaze
from the ruin and regained Cecilia, who was already somo
paces in return down the lane.
" T am far from a very inquisitive man by temperament,"
said Kenelm, " so far as the affairs of the living are coneerncd.
But I should not care to open a book if I had no interest in
the past. Pray indulge my curiosity to learn something about
KENELM OIIÍLLINGLT.
301
tliat old tower. It could not look more melancholy and soli¬
tary if I had built it myself."
" Its most melancholy associations are with a very recent
past," answered Cecilia. " The tower, in remote times, formed
the keep of a castle belonging to the most ancient and once
tlie most powerful family in these parts. The owners were
barons who took active share in the Wars of the Roses. The
last of them sided with Richard III., and after the battle of
Bosworth the title was attainted, and the larger portion of the
lands were confiscated. Loyalty to a Plantagenet was of
course treason to a Tudor. But the regeneration of the
family rested with their direct descendants, who had saved
from the general wreck of their fortunes what may be called
a good squire's estate—about, perhaps, the same rental as my
father's, but of much larger acreage. These squires, how¬
ever, were more looked up to in the county than the wealthiest
peer. They were still by far the oldest family in the county ;
and traced in their pedigree alliances with the most illustrious
houses in English history. In themselves too, for many gen¬
erations, they were a high-spirited, hospitable, popular race,
living unostentatiously on their income, and contented with
their rank of squires. The castle—ruined by time and siege
—they did not attempt to restore. They dwelt in a house
near to it, built about Elizabeth's time, which you could not
see, for it lies in a hollow behind the tower—a moderate-sized,
picturesque, country gentleman's house. Our family inter¬
married with them. The portrait you saw was a daughter of
their house. And very proud was any squire in the county
UÏ intermarriage with the Fletwodcs."
Sü2
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Fletwode—thafc was their name? I have a vague recol¬
lection of having heard the name connected with some dis¬
astrous—oh, but it can't be the same family—pray go on."
" I fear it is the same family. But I will finish the story
as I have heard it. The property descended at last to one
Bertram Fletwode, who, unfortunately, obtained the reputa¬
tion of being a very clever man of business. There was some
mining company in which, with other gentlemen in the county,
he took great interest ; invested largely in shares ; became the
head of the direction "
" I see ; and was, of course, ruined."
" No ; worse than that, he became very rich ; and, unhap¬
pily, became desirous of being richer stUl. I have heard that
there was a great mania for speculations just about that time.
He embarked in these, and prospered, tiU at last he was in¬
duced to invest a large share of the fortune thus acquired in
the partnership of a bank, which enjoyed a high character.
Up tc that time he had retained popularity and esteem in the
county ; but the squiios who shared in the adventures of the
mining company, and knew little or nothing about other
speculations in which his name did not appear, professed to
be shocked at the idea of a Fletwode, of Fletwode, being
ostensibly joined in partnership with a Jones, of Clapham, in
a London bank."
" Slow folks, those country squires,—^behind the progress
cf the age. Well?"
" I have heard that Bertram Fletwode was himself veiy
reluctant to take this step, but was persuaded to do so by his
son. This son, Alfred, was said to have still greater talents
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
303
for business than the father, and had been not only associated
with but consulted by him in all the later speculations
which had proved so fortunate. Mrs. Campion knew Alfred
Fletwode very well. She describes him as handsome, with
quick, eager eyes; showy and imposing in his talk; im¬
mensely ambitious—more ambitious than avaricious,—collects
ing money less for its own sake than for that which it could
give—rank and power. According to her it was the dearest
wish of his heart to claim the old barony, but not before there
could go with the barony a fortune adequate to the lustre of
a title so ancient, and equal to the wealth of modem peers
with higher nominal rank."
" A poor ambition at the best ; of the two I should prefer
that of a poet in a garret. But I am no judge. Thank
heaven I have no ambition. Still, all ambition, all desire to
rise, is interesting to him who is ignominiously contented if
he does not fall. So the son had his way, and Fletwode
joined company with Jones on the road to wealth and the
peerage?—meanwhile, did the son marry? if so, of course
the daughter of a duke or a millionaire. Tuft-hunting, or
money-making, at the risk of degradation and the workhouse.
Progress of the age !"
" No," replied Cecilia, smiling at this outburst, but smiling
iadly, " Fletwode did not marry the daughter of a duke or a
millionaire ; but still his wife belonged to a noble family—
very poor, but very proud. Perhaps he married from motives
of ambition, though not of gain. Her father was of much
political influence that might perhaps assist his claim to the
barony. The mother, a woman of the world ; enjoying a
304
RENELM CHILLINGLY.
high social position and nearly related to a connection of ours
—Lady Glenalvon."
" Lady Glenalvon, the dearest of my lady friends I You
arc connected with her?"
"Yes; Lord Glenalvon was my mother's uncle. But X
wish to finish my story before my father joins us. Alfred
Fletwode did not marry till long after the partnership in the
bank. His father, at his desire, had bought up the whole
business,—Mr. Jones having died. The bank was carried on
in the names of Fletwode and Son. But the father had be¬
come merely a nominal or what I believe is called a ' sleeping'
partner. He had long ceased to reside in the county. The
old house was not grand enough for him. He had purchased
a palatial residence in one of the home counties ; lived there
in great splendor; was a munificent patron of science and art;
and in spite of his earlier addiction to business-like specula^
tions he appears to have been a singularly accomplished, high¬
bred gentleman. Some years before his son's marriage, Mr.
Fletwode had been afilicted with partial paralysis, and his
medical attendant enjoined rigid abstention from business.
From that time he never interfered with his son's manage¬
ment of the bank. He had an only daughter, much younger
than Alfred. Lord Eagleton, my mother's brother, was en¬
gaged to be married to her. The wedding-day was fixed—■
when the world was startled by the news that the great firm
of Fletwode and Son had stopped payment,—is that the right
phrase ?"
" I believe so."
" A great many people were ruined in that failure. The
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
305
public indignation was very great. Of course all the Flet-
wode property went to the creditors. Old Mr. Fletwode was
legally acquitted of all other offense than that of over-confi¬
dence in his son. Alfred was convicted of fraud—of forgery.
I don t, of course, know the particulars,—they are very com¬
plicated. He was sentenced to a long term of servitude, hut
died the day he was condemned—apparently hy poison, which
he had long secreted about his person. Now you can under¬
stand why my father, who is almost gratuitously sensitive on
the point of honor, removed into a dark corner the portrait
of Arabella Fletwode,—^his own ancestress, hut also the ances¬
tress of a convicted felon,—^you can understand why the whole
subject is so painful to him. His wife's brother was to have
married the felon's sister ; and though, of course, that mar¬
riage was tacitly broken off by the terrible disgrace that had
befallen the Fletwodes, yet I don't think my poor uncle ever
recovered the blow to his hopes. He went abroad, and died
in Madeira, of a slow decline."
" And the felon's sister, did she die too ?"
" No ; not that I know of. Mrs. Campion says that sha
saw in a newspaper the announcement of old Mr. Fletwode'a
death, and a paragraph to the effect that after that event Miss
Jiletwode had sailed from Liverpool for New York."
"Alfred Fletwode's wife went back, of course, to her
family ?"
" Alas I no,—poor thing I She had not been many months
married when the bank broke; and among his friends her
wretched husband appears to have forged the names of the
trustees to her marriage settlement, and sold oat the sums
20
306
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
which would otherwise have served her as competence. Her
father, too, was a great sufíerer by the bankruptcy, having by
his son-in-law's advice placed a considerable portion of his
moderate fortune in Alfred's hands for investment, all of
which was involved in the general wreck. I am afraid he
was a very hard-hearted man ; at all events, his poor daughter
never returned to him. She died, I think, even before the
death of Bertram Fletwode. The whole story is very dismal."
" Dismal indeed, but pregnant with salutary warnings to
those who live in an age of progress. Here you see a family
of fair fortune, living hospitably, beloved, revered, more looked
up to by their neighbors than the wealthiest nobles—no
family not proud to boast alliance with it. All at once,
in the tranquil records of this happy race, appears that
darling of the age, that hero of progress—^a clever man
of business. He be contented to live as his fathers ! He be
contented with such trifles as competence, respect, and love !
Much too clever for that. The age is money-making—go
with the age 1 He goes with the age. Born a gentleman
only, he exalts himself into a trader. But at least he, it
seems, if greedy, was not dishonest. He was born a gentle¬
man, but his son was born a trader. The son is a still
cleverer man of business ; the son is consulted and trusted.
Aha ! He too goes with the age ; to greed he links ambition.
The trader's son wishes to return—what? to the rank of
gentleman?—gentleman! nonsense! everybody is a gentle¬
man nowadays—to the title of Lord. How ends it all?
Could I sit but for twelve houra in the innermost heart of
that Alfred Fletwode—could I see how, step by step from
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
807
his childhood, the dishonest son was avaricio asly led on by
the honest father to depart from the old vestigia of Fletwodea
of Fletwode—scorning The Enough to covet The More-
gaining The More to sigh it is not The Enough—I think
I might show that the age lives in a house of glass, and had
better not for its own sake throw stones on the felon !"
" Ah, but, Mr. Chillingly, surely this is a very rare ex¬
ception in the general "
" Rare !" interrupted Kcnelm, who was excited to a warmth
of passion which would have startled his most intimate friend
—if indeed an intimate friend had ever been vouchsafed to
him—" rare ! nay, how common—I don't say to the extent
of forgery and fraud, bu' to the extent of degradation and
ruin—is the gveed of a Little More to those who have The
Enough ; is the discont<;nt with competence, respect, and love,
when catching sight of a money-bag ! How many well-de¬
scended county families, cursed with an heir who is called a
clever man of business, have vanished from the soil ! A com¬
pany starts—^the clever man joins it—one bright day. Pouf !
the old estates and the old name are powder. Ascend higher.
Take nobles whose ancestral titles ought to be to English ears
iike the sound of clarions, awakening the most slothful to the
scorn of money-bags and the passion for renown. Lo ! in that
mocking dance of death called the Progress of the Age, one
who did not find Enough in a sovereign's revenue, and seeks
The Little More as a gambler on the turf by the advice of
blacklegs ! Lo ! another, with lands wider than his greatest
ancestors ever possessed, must still go in for The Little More,
adding acre to acre, heaping debt upon debt ! Lo 1 a third,
208
KENELM CUILLIFGLT.
whose name, borne by his ancestors, was once the terror of
England's foes—the landlord of a hotel ! A fourth—^but why
go on through the list ? Another and another still succeeds
—each on the Koad to Ruin, each in the Age of Progress.
Ah, Miss Travers ! in the old time it was through the Temple
of Honor that one passed to the Temple of Fortune. In
this wise age the process is reversed. But here comes your
father."
"A thousand pardons!" said Leopold Travers. "That
numskull Mondell kept me so long with his old-fashioned
Tory doubts whether liberal politics are favorabk to apicul¬
tura! prospects. But as he owes a round sum to a Whig
lawyer I had to talk with his wife, a prudent womaii ; con¬
vinced her that his own agricultural prospects were safest on
the Whig side of the question ; and, after kissing his baby
and shaking his hand, booked his vote for George Be^woir- -
a plumper."
" I suppose," said Kenelm to himself, and with that o»ndor
which characterized him whenever he talked to himself, " *.hat
Travers has taken the right road to the Temple, not of Hopor,
but of honors, in every country, ancient or modern, which ba*
adojded the system of popular suffrage."
kenelm chillingly.
30U
CHAPTER XVIL
The next day Mrs. Campion and Cecilia were seated under
the veranda. They were both ostensibly employed on two sev¬
eral pieces of embroidery, one intended for a screen, the other
for a sofarcushion. But the mind of neither was on her work.
Mrs. Campion.—" Has Mr. Chillingly said when he means
to take leave?"
Cecilia.—" Not to me. How much my dear father en¬
joys his conversation !"
Mrs. Campion.—" Cynicism and mockery were not so
much the fashion among young men in your father's day as 1
suppose they are now, and therefore they seem new to Mr.
Travers. To me they are not new, because I saw more of the
old than the young when I lived in London, and cynicism and
mockery are more natural to men who are leaving the world
than to those who are entering it,"
Cecilia.—" Dear Mrs. Campion, how bitter you are, and
how unjust I You take much too literally the jesting way in
which Mr. Chillingly expresses himself. There can be no cyni¬
cism in one who goes out of his way to make others happy."
Mrs. Campion.—" You mean in the whim of making an
ill-assorted marriage between a pretty village flii-t and a sickly
cripple, and settling a couple of peasants in a business for which
they are wholly unfitted."
310
eenelm chillingly.
Cecilia.—" Jessie Wiles is not a flirt, and I am convinced
that she will make Will Somers a very good wife, and that the
shop will be a great success."
Mrs. Campion.—" We shall see. Still, if Mr. Chillingly's
talk belies his actions, he may he a good man, but he is a veiyr
afiected one."
Cecilia.—" Have I not heard you say that there are per¬
sons so natural that they seem afiected to those who do not
understand them ?"
Mrs. Campion raised her eyes to Cecilia's face, dropped
them again over her work, and said, in grave undertones.
" Take care, Cecilia."
" Take care of what ?"
" My dearest child, forgive me ; but I do not like the
warmth with which you defend Mr. Chillingly."
" Would not my father defend him still more warmly if he
had heard you ?"
" Men judge of men in their relations to men. I am a
woman, and judge of men in their relations to women. I
should tremble for the happiness of any woman who joined
her fate with that of Kenelm Chillingly."
" My dear friend, I do not understand you to-day."
" Nay, I did not mean to be so solemn, my love. After
all, it is nothing to us whom Mr. Chillingly may or may not
marry. He is but a passing visitor, and, once gone, the
chances are that we may not see him again for years."
Thus speaking, Mrs. Campion again raised her eyes from
her work, stealing a sidelong glance at Cecilia ; and her
mother-like heart sank within her, on noticing how suddenly
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
311
pale the girl had heeome, and how her lips quivered. Mrs,
Campion had enough knowledge of life to feel aware that she
had committed a grievous blunder. In that earliest stage of
virgin affection when a girl is unconscious of more than a
certain vague interest in one man which distinguishes him
from others in her thoughts,—if she hears him unjustly dis¬
paraged, if some warning against him is implied, if the
probability that he will never be more to her than a passing
acquaintance is forcibly obtruded on her,—suddenly that
vague interest, which might otherwise have faded away with
many another girlish fancy, becomes arrested, consolidated;
the quick pang it occasions makes her involuntarily, and for
the first time, question herself, and ask, " Do I love ?" But
when a girl of a nature so delicate as that of Cecilia Travers
can ask herself the question, " Do I love ?" her very modesty,
her very shrinking from acknowledging that any power over
her thoughts for weal or for woe can be acquired by a man,
except through the sanction of that love which only becomes
divine in her eyes when it is earnest and pure and self de¬
voted, makes her prematurely disposed to answer " yes." And
when a girl of such a nature in her own heart answers " yes"
to such a question, even if she deceive herself at the moment,
she begins to cherish the deceit till the belief in her love be¬
comes a reality. She has adopted a religion, false or true, and
she would despise herself if she could be easily converted.
Mrs. Campion had so contrived that she had forced that
question upon Cecilia, and she feared, by the girl's change of
countenance, that the girl's heart had answered " yes."
312
KSNELM CHILLINQLT.
CHAPTEK XVIII.
While the conyersation just narrated took place, Keneliu
hai walked forth to pay a visit to Will Somers. All obstacles
to Will's marriage were now cleared away; the transfer of lease
for the shop had been signed, and the banns were to be pub
lished for the first time on the following Sunday. We need
not say that Will was very happy. Kenelm then paid a visit
to Mrs. Bowles, with whom he stayed on hour. On re-enter¬
ing the Park, he saw Travers, walking slowly, with downcast
eyes, and his hands clasped behind him (his habit when in
thought). He did not observe Kenelm's approach tUl within
a few feet of him, and he then greeted his guest in listless
accents, unlike his usual cheerful tones.
" I have been visiting the man you have made so happy,"
said Kenelm.
" Who can that be ?"
" Will Somers. Do you make so many people happy that
your reminiscence of them is lost in their number ?"
Travers smiled faintly, and shook his head.
Kenelm went on. " I have also seen Mrs. Bowles, and you
will be pleased to hear that Tom is satisfied with his change
of abode ; there is no chance of his returning to Graveleigh ;
and Mrs. Bowles took very kindly to my suggestion that the
little property you wish for should be sold to you, and, in
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
313
that case, she would remove to Luscombe to be near her
son."
" I thank you much for your thought of me," said Tra¬
vers, " and the affair shall be seen to at once, though the pur¬
chase is no longer important to me. 1 ought to have told you
three days ago, but it slipped my memory, that a neighboring
squire, a young fellow just come into his property, has offered
to exchange a capital farm, much nearer to my residence, for
the lands I hold in Graveleigh, including Saunderson's farm
and the cottages : they are quite at the outskirts of my estate,
but run into his, and the exchange will be advantageous to
both. Still I am glad that the neighborhood should be
thoroughly rid of a brute like Tom Bowles."
" You would not call him brute if you knew him ; but I am
sorry to hear that Will Somers will he under another land¬
lord."
" Tt does not matter, since his tenure is secured for four¬
teen years."
" What sort of man is the new landlord ?"
" I don't know much of him. He was in the army till his
father died, and has only just made his appearance in the
county. He has, however, already earned the character of
being too fond of the other sex, and it is well that pretty
Jessie is to be safely married."
Travers then relapsed into a moody silence from which
Kenelm found it difficult to rouse him. At length the lattei
said, kindly :
" dear Mr. Travers, do not think I take a liberty if I
venture to guess that something has happened this morning
O
314
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
which troubles or vexes you. When that is the case, it is
often a relief to say what it is, even to a confidant so unable
to advise or to comfort as myself."
" You are a good fellow. Chillingly, and I know not, at least
in these parts, a man to whom I would unburden myself
more freely. I am put out, I confess ; disappointed unrea¬
sonably, in a cherished wish, and," he added, with a slight
laugh, "it always annoys me when I don't havs my own
way."
" So it does me."
" Don't you think that George Belvoir is a vetj fine young
man ?"
" Certainly."
" I call him handsome ; he is steadier, too, than most men
of his age and of his command of money ; and yet he does
not want spirit nor knowledge of life. To every advantage
of rank and fortune he adds the industry and the ambition
which attain distinction in public life."
" Quite true. Is he going to withdraw from the election
after all ?"
" Good heavens, no 1"
" Then how does he not let you have your own way ?"
" It is not he," said Travers, peevishly ; " it is Cecilia.
Don't you understand that George is precisely the husband I
would choose for her ? and this morning came a very well
written manly letter from him, asking my permission lo pay
his addresses to her."
" But that is your own way so far."
" Yes, and here comes the balk. Of course I had to refei
RBNELM CHILLINGLY.
315
it to Cecilia, and she positively declines, and has no reasons to
give; does not deny that George is good-looking and sensible,
that he is a man of whose preference any girl might be proud ;
but she chooses to say she cannot love him, and when T ask
why she cannot love him, has no other answer than that ' she
cannot say.' It is too pravoking."
" It is provoking," answered Kenelm ; " but then Love is
ihe piost dunderheaded of all the passions ; it never will listen
to reason. The very rudiments of logic are unknown to it.
' Love has no wherefore,' says one of those Latin poets who
wrote love-verses called elegies—a name which we moderns
appropriate to funeral dirges. For my own part, I can't un¬
derstand how any one can be expected voluntarily to make up
his mind to go out of his mind. And if Miss Travers cannot
go out of her mind because George Belvoir does, you could
not argue her into doing so if you talked till doomsday."
Travers smiled in spite of himself, but he answered gravely,
" Certainly I would not wish Cissy to marry any man she
disliked ; but she does not dislike George—^no girl could ; and
where that is the case, a girl so sensible, so afiFectionate, so well
brought up, is sure to love, after marriage, a thoroughly kind
and estimable man, especially when she has no previous
attachment—which, of course. Cissy never had. In fact,
though I do not wish to force my daughter's will, I am not
yet disposed to give up my own. Do you understand ?"
" Perfectly."
" I am the more inclined to a marriage so desirable in every
way, because when Cissy comes out in London—^which she
has not yet done—she is sure to collect around her face and
316
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
her presumptive inheritance all the handsome fortune-hunters
and titled vauriens; and if in love there is no wherefore, how
can I be sure that she may not fall in love with a scamp ?"
" I think you may be sure of that," said Kenelm. " Mi.s.s
Travers has too much mind."
" Yes, at present ; but did you not say that in love peojilo
go out of their mind ?"
" True ! I forgot that."
"I am not then disposed to dismiss poor George's offer
with a decided negative ; and yet it would be unfair to mislead
him by encouragement. In fact, I'll be hanged if I know
how to reply."
" You think Miss Travers does not disUke George Belvoir,
and if she saw more of him may like him better, and it
would be good for her as well as for him not to put an end to
that chance ?"
" Exactly so."
" Why not then write, ' My dear George,—You have m]
best wishes, but my daughter does not seem disposed to marrj
at present. Let me consider your letter not written, and
continue on the same terms as we were before.' Perhaps, as
George knows Virgil, you might find your own schoolboy
lecolleetions of that poet useful here, and add, ' Varium el
mutahile semper femina ;'—^hackneyed, but true."
" My dear Chillingly, your suggestion is capital. Ilow
the deuce at your age have you contrived to know the world
50 well ?"
Kenelm answered in the pathetic tones so natural to his
voice, '' By being only a looker-on ;—^alas !"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
317
Leopold Travers felt mucli relieved after lie had •written his
leply to George. He had not been quite so ingenuous in his
revelation to Chillingly as he may have seemed. Conscious,
like all proud and fond fathers, of his daughter's attracticns^
he was not without some apprehension that Kenelm himself
might entertain an ambition at variance with that of George
Belvoir : if so, he deemed it well to put an end to such ambi¬
tion while yet in time—partly because his interest was already
pledged to George; partly because, in rank and fortune,
George was the better match ; partly because George was of
the same political party as himself—while Sir Peter, and
probably Sir Peter's heir, espoused the opposite side; and
partly also because, with all his personal liking to Kenelm,
Leopold Travers, as a very sensible, practical man of the
world, was not sure that a baronet's heir who tramped the
country on foot in the dress of a petty farmer, and indulged
pugilistic propensities in martial encounters with stalwart
farriers, was likely to make a safe husband and a comfortable
son-in-law. Kenelm's words, and still more his manner, con¬
vinced Travers that any apprehensions of rivalry that he had
jire'dously conceived were utterly groundless.
318
EENELM CHILLINGLr.
CHAPTER XIX.
Tííe same evening, after dinner (during that lovely sum.
mer month they dined at Neesdale Park at an unfashionably
early hour), Kenebn, in company with Travers and Cecilia,
ascended a gentle eminence at the hack of the gardens, on
which there were some picturesque ivy-grown ruins of an
ancient priory, and commanding the best view of a glorious
sunset and a subject landscape of vale and wood, rivulet and
distant hills.
"Is the delight in scenery," said Kenebn, "really an
acquired gift, as some philosophers tell us ? is it true that
young children and rude savages do not feel it—that the eye
must be educated to comprehend its charm, and that the eye
can be only educated through the mind?"
" I should think your philosophers are right," said Travers.
" "When I wa¡i a schoolboy, I thought no scenery was like the
flat of a cricket-ground ; when I hunted at Melton, I thought
that unpicturesque country more beautiful than Devonshire.
It is only of late years that I feel a sensible pleasure in
scenery for its own sake, apart from associations of custom or
the uses to which we apply them."
" And what say you. Miss Travers ?"
" I scarcely know what to say," answered Cecilia, musingly.
" I can remember no time in my childhood when I did not
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
319
Fee deliglit in that ■which seemed to me beautiful in scenery,
but I suspect that I very vaguely distinguished one kind of
beauty from another. A common field with daisies and
buttercups was beautiful to me then, and I doubt if I saw
anything more beautiful in extensive landscapes."
" True,' said Kenelm ; " it is not in early childhood that
we carry the sight into distance : as is the mind so is the eye ;
in early childhood the mind revels in the present, and the eye
rejoices most in the things nearest to it. I don't think in
childhood that we
"'Watched Trith wistful eyes the setting sun.'"
" Ah 1 what a world of thought in that word ' wistfiiC!"
murmured Cecilia, as her gaze riveted itself on the western
heavens, towards which Kenelm had pointed as he spoke,
where the enlarging orb rested half its disk on the rim of
the horizon.
She had seated herself on a fragment of the ruin, backed
by the hollows of a broken arch. The last rays of the sun
lingered on her young face, and then lost themselves in the
gloom of the arch behind. There was a silence for some
minutes, during which the sun had sunk. Rosy clouds in
thin flakes still floated, momently waning ; and the eve-star
Stole forth steadfast, bright, and lonely—^nay, lonely not now;
—that sentinel has aroused a host.
Said a voice, " No sign of rain yet. Squire. What will
become of the turnips ?"
" Real life again I Who can escape it ?" muttered Kenelm,
as his eyes rested on the burly figure of the Squire's baûiï.
320
KENELM CHILLINaLV.
" Ha I Ndrtli," said Travers, " what brings you here ? No
bad news, I hope."
" Indeed, yes. Squire. The Durham bull "
" The Durham bull 1 What of him ? You frighten me.'
" Taken bad. Colic."
"Excuse me. Chillingly," cried Travers; "I must be ofiF.
A most valuable animal, and no one I can trust to doctor him
but myself."
" That's true enough," said the bailifiF, admiringly. " There's
not a veterinary in the county like the Squire."
Travers was already gone, and the panting bailifiF had hard
work to catch him up.
Kenelm seated himself beside Cecilia on the ruined frag¬
ment.
" How I envy your father I" said he.
" Why just at this moment ? Because he knows how to
doctor the bull ?" said Cecilia, with a sweet low laugh.
"Well, that is something to envy. It is a pleasure to
relieve from pain any of God's creatures—even a Durham
bull."
" Indeed, yes. I am justly rebuked."
" On the contrary, you are to be justly praised. Your
question suggested to me an amiable sentiment in place of tho
selfish one which was uppermost in my thoughts. I envied
your father because he creates for himself so many objects of
interest ; because while he can appreciate the mere sensuous
enjoyment of a landscape and a sunset, he can find mental
excitement in turnip crops and bulls. Happy, Miss Travers,
is the Practical Man."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
321
"When my dear father was as young as you, Mr. Chil¬
lingly, I am sure that he had no more interest in turnips and
bulls than you have. I do not doubt that some day you will
be as practical as he is in that respect."
" Do you think so—sincerely?"
Cecilia made no answer.
Kcnelm repeated the question.
"Sincerely, then, I do not know whether you will take
interest in precisely the same things that interest my father ;
but there are other things than turnips and cattle which
belong to what you call ' practical life,' and in these you will
take interest, as you took it in the fortunes of Will Somers and
Jessie Wiles."
" That was no practical interest. I got nothing by it. But
even if that interest were practical,—I mean productive, as
cattle and turnip crops are,—a succession of Somerses and
Wileses is not to be hoped for. History never repeats itself."
" May I answer you, though very humbly ?"
" Miss Travers, the wisest man that ever existed never was
wise enough to know woman ; but I think most men ordina¬
rily wise will agree in this, that woman is by no means a
huuible creature, and that when she says she ' answers vei-y
humbly,' she does not mean what she says. Permit me to
entreat you to answer very loftily."
Cecilia laughed and blushed. The laugh was musical ; the
blush was—^what? Let any man, seated beside a girl like
Cecilia at starry twilight, find the right epithet for that blush.
1 pass it by epithetless. But she answered, firmly though
sweetly :
0* 21
B22
KENKLM CHILLINGLY.
"Arc there not things very practical, and affecting tho
happiness, not of one or two individuals, but of innumerable
thousands, in which a man like Mr. Chillingly cannot fail to
feel interest, long before he is my father's age ?"
" Forgive me ; you do not answer—^you question. I imitate
you, and ask what are those things as applicable to a man like
Mr. Chillingly ?"
Cecilia gathered herself up, as with the desire to express a
great deal in short substance, and then said :
" In the expression of thought, literature ; in the conduct
of action, politics."
Kenelm Chillingly stared, dumfounded. I suppose the
greatest enthusiast for Woman's Rights could not assert more
reverentially than he did the cleverness of women ; but among
the things which the cleverness of women did not achieve, he
had always placed " laconics." " No woman," he was wont to
say., " ever invented an axiom or a proverb."
" Miss Travers," he said at last, " before wc proceed fiu*ther,
vouchsafe to tell me if that very terse reply of yours is spon¬
taneous and original, or whether you have net borrowed it
from some book which I have not chanced to read."
Cecilia pondered honestly, and then said, " I don't think it
is from any book ; but I owe so many of ny thoughts to Mrs.
Campion, and she lived so much among clever men, that "
" I see it all, and accept your definition, no matter whence
it came. You thmk I might become an author or a politician.
Did you ever read an essay by a living author called ' Motive
Power' ?"
"No."
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
323
" That essay is designed to intimate that without motive
power a man, whatever his talents or his culture, does nothing
practical. The mainsprings of motive power are Want and
Ambition. They are absent from my mechanism. By the
accident of birth I do not require bread and cheese ; by the
accident of temperament and of philosophical culture I care
nothing about praise or blame. But without want of bread
and cheese, and with a most stolid indifference to praise and
blame, do you honestly think that a man will do anything
practical in literature or politics ? Ask Mrs. Campion."
" I will not ask her. Is the sense of duty nothing ?'
" Alas ! we interpret duty so variously. Of mere duty, as
we commonly understand the word, I do not think I shall
faU more than other men. But for the fair development of
all the good that is in us, do you believe that we should adopt
some line of conduct against which our whole heart rebels ?
Can you say to the clerk, ' Be a poet' ? Can you say to the
poet, ' Be a clerk' ? It is no more to the happiness of a man's
being to order him to take to one career when his whole heart
is set on another, than it is to order him to marry one woman
when it is to another woman that his heart will turn."
Cecilia here winced and looked away. Kenelm had more
tact than most men of his age—that is, a keener perception
ol' subjects to avoid ; but then Kenelm had a wretched habit
of forgetting the person he talked to and talking to himself.
Utterly oblivious of George Bel voir, he was talking to himself
now. Not then observing the effect his mal^à-propos dogma
had produced on his listener, he went on : " Happiness is a i
word very lightly used. It may mean little—it may mean
324
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
much. By the word happiness I would signify, not the mo¬
mentary joy of a child who gets a plaything, but the lasting
harmony between our inclinations and our objects ; and with¬
out that harmony we are a discord to ourselves, we are in-
completions, we are failures. Yet there are plenty of advisers
who say to us, ' It is a duty to be a discord.' I deny it."
Here Cecilia rose, and said in a low voice, " It is getting
late. We must go homeward."
They descended the green eminence slowly, and at first in
silence. The bats, emerging from the ivied ruins they left
behind, fiitted and skimmed before them, chasing the insects
of the night. A moth, escaping from its pursuer, alighted
on Cecilia's breast, as if for refuge.
" The bats are practical," said Kenelm : " they are hungry,
and their motive power to-night is strong. Their interest is
in the insects they chase. They have no interest in the
stars ; but the stars lure the moth."
Cecilia drew her slight scarf over the moth, so that it might
not fly off and become a prey to the bats. " Yet," said she,
" the moth is practical too."
" Ay, just now, since it has found an asylum from the
danger that threatened it in its course towards the stars."
Cecilia felt the beating of her heart, upon which lay the
moth concealed. Did she think that a deeper and more
tender meaning than they outwardly expressed was couched
in these words? If so, she erred. They now neared the
garden gate, and Kenelm paused as he opened it. " See," he
said, " the moon has just risen over those dark firs, making
the still night stiller. Is it not strange that we mortals,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
325
placed amid perpetual agitation and tumult and strife, as if
our natural element, conceive a sense of holiness in the images
antagonistic to our real life—I mean in images of repose ? I
feel at the moment as if I suddenly were made better, now
that heaven and earth have suddenly become yet more tran¬
quil. I am now conscious of a purer and sweeter moral than
either 1 or you drew from the insect you have sheltered. I
must come to the poets to express it :
»
' The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow ;
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow*
Oh, that something afar ! that something afar 1 never to be
reached on this earth—never, never!"
There was such a wail in that cry from the man's heart
that Cecilia could not resist the impulse of a divine compas¬
sion. She laid her hand on his, and looked on the dark
mildness of his upward face with eyes that heaven meant to
be wells of comfort to grieving man. At the light touch of
that hand Kenelm started, looked down, and met those sooth¬
ing eyes.
"I am happy to tell you that I have saved my Dm ham,"
cried out Mr. Travers from the other side of the gate.
326
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
CHAPTER XX.
As K inelm that night retired to his own room, he paused
on the landing place opposite to the portrait which Mr. Travers
had consigned to that desolate exile. This daughter of a race
dishonored in its extinction might well have been the glory
of the house she had entered as a bride. The countenance
was singularly beautiful, and of a character of beauty emi¬
nently patrician ; there was in its expression a gentleness and
modesty not often found in the female portraits of Sir Peter
Lely; and in the eyes and in the smile a wonderful aspect of
innocent happiness.
" What a speaking homily," soliloquized Kenelm, address¬
ing the picture, " against the ambition thy fair descendant
would awake in me, art thou, 0 lovely image! For genera¬
tions thy beauty lived in this canvas, a thing of joy, the pride
of the race it adorned. Owner after owner said to admiring
guests, 'Yes, a fine portrait, by Lely; she was my ancestress
—a Fletwode of Fletwode.' Now, lest guests should remem-
hci that a Fletwode married a Travers, thou art thrust out
of sight; not even Lely's art can make thee of value, can
redeem thine innocent self from disgrace. And the last of the
Fletwodes, doubtless the most ambitious of all—the most
bent on restoring and regilding the old lordly name—dies a
felon ; the infamy of one living man so large that it can blot
KENELM CHILLINOLY.
327
out the honor of the dead." He turned hia eyes from the
smile of the portrait, entered his own room, and, seating
himself by the writing-table, drew blotting-book and note-
paper towards him, took up the pen, and, instead of writing,
fell into deep reverie. There was a slight frown on hia
brow, on which frowns were rare. He was very angry with
himself.
" Kenelm," he said, entering into his customary dialogue
with that self, " it becomes you forsooth, to moralize about
the honor of races which have no affinity with you. Son of
Sir Peter Chillingly, look at home. Are you quite sure that
you have not said or done or looked a something that may
bring trouble to the hearth on which you are received as
guest ? What right had you to be moaning forth your ego¬
tisms, not remembering that your words fell on compassionate
ears, and that such words, heard at moonlight by a girl whose
heart they move to pity, may have dangers for her peace ?
Shame on you, Kenelm ! shame ! knowing too what her
father's wish is; and knowing too that you have not the
excuse of desiring to win that fair creature for yourself.
What do you mean, Kenelm ? I don't hear you ; speak out.
Oh, 'that I am a vain coxcomb to fancy that she could take
a fancy to me'—well, perhaps I am ; I hope so earnestly; and,
at all events, there has been and shall be no time for much
mischief. We are off to-morrow, Kenelm ; bestir yourself and
pack up, write your letters, and then ' put out the light—put
out the light 1' "
But this converser with himself did not immediately set to
work, as agreed upon by that twofold one. He rose and
328
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
walked restlessly to and fro the floor, stopping ever and anon
to look at the pictures on the walls.
Several of the worst painted of the family portraits had
been consigned to the room tenanted by Kenelm, which,
though both the oldest and largest bed-chamber in the house,
was always appropriated to a bachelor male guest, partly be¬
cause it was without dressing-room, remote, and only ap¬
proached by the small back staircase, to the landing-place
of which Arabella had been banished in disgrace ; and partly
because it had the reputation of being haunted, and ladie?
are more alarmed by that superstition than men are supposed
to be. The portraits on which Kenelm now paused to gaze
were of various dates, from the reign of Elizabeth to that of
George III., none of them by eminent artists, and none of
them the effigies of ancestors who had left names in history
—in short, such portraits as are often seen in the country
houses of well-born squires. One family type of feature or
expression pervaded most of these portraits—features clear-
cut and hardy, expression open and honest. And though not
one of those dead men had been famous, each of them had
contributed his unostentatious share, in his own simple way,
to the movements of his time. That worthy in ruff and
corselet had manned his own ship at his own cost against the
Armada ; never had been repaid by the thrifty Burleigh the
expenses which had harassed him and diminished his patri¬
mony ; never had been even knighted. That gentleman with
short straight hair, which overhung his forehead, leaning on
bis sword with one hand, and a book open in the other hand,
had served as representative of his county town in the Long Par-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
329
liamcnt., fought under Cromwell at Marston Moor, and resisting
the Protector when he removed the " bauble," was one of the
patriots incarcerated in "Hell-hole." He, too, had dimin¬
ished his patrimony, maintaining two troopers and two horses
at his own charge, and " Hell-hole" was all he got in return.
A third, with a sleeker expression of countenance, and a large
wig, flourishing in the quiet times of Charles II., had only
been a justice of the peace, but his alert look showed that he
had been a very active one. He had neither increased nor
diminished his ancestral fortune. A fourth, in the costume
of William III.'s reign, had somewhat added to the patrimony
by becoming a lawyer. He must have been a successful one.
He is inscribed "Seijeant at law." A fifth, a lieutenant
in the army, was killed at Blenheim ; his portrait was that of
a very young and handsome man, taken the year before his
death. His wife's portrait is placed in the drawing-room, be¬
cause it was painted by Kneller. She was handsome too, and
married again a nobleman, whose portrait, of course, was not
in the family collection. Here there was a gap in chrono¬
logical arrangement, the lieutenant's heir being an infant ; but
in the time of George II. another Travers appeared as the
governor of a West India colony. His son took part in a
very different movement of the age. He is represented old,
vanerable, with white hair, and underneath his eflSgy is in¬
scribed, " Follower of Wesley." His successor completes the
collection. He is in naval uniform ; he is in full length, and
one of his legs is a wooden one. He is Captain, R.N. ; and
inscribed, " Fought under Nelson at Trafalgar." That portrait
would have found more dignified place in the reception-rooms
330
kenelm chillingly.
if the face had not been forbiddingly ugly, and the picture
itself a villanous daub.
" I see," said Kenelm, stopping short, " why Cecilia Travers
has been reared to talk of duty as a practical interest in life.
These men of a former time seem to have lived to discharge a
duly, and not to follow the progress of the age in the chase of
a money-bag—except perhaps one, but then to be sure he was
a lawyer. Kenelm, rouse up and listen to me ; whatever we
are, whether active or indolent, is not my favorite maxim a
just and a true one—viz., ' A good man does good by living' ?
But, for that, he must be a harmony, and not a discord.
Kenelm, you lazy dog, we must pack up."
Kenelm then refilled his portmanteau, and labeled and
direeted it to Exmundham, after which he wrote these three
notes:
Note 1.
to the marchioness op glenalvon.
" Mt dear Friend and Monitress,—I have left your
last letter a month unanswered. I could not reply to your
congratulations on the event of my attaining the age of
twenty-one. That event is a conventional sham, and you
know how I abhor shams and conventions. The truth is, that
I am either much younger than twenty-one or much older.
As to all designs on my peace in standing for our county at
the next election, I wished to defeat them, and I have done
so ; and now I have commenced a course of travel. I had in¬
tended on starting to confine it to my native country. Inten¬
tions are mutable. I am going abroad. You shall hear of my
whereabout. I write this from the house of Leopold Travers,
kenelm chillingly.
d31
* Tflio, I understand from his fair daughter, is a connection of
yours ;—a man to be highly esteemed and cordially liked.
" No, in spite of all your flattering predictions, I shall never
be anything in this life more distinguished than what I am
now. Lady Glenalvon allows me to sign myself her grateful
friend, K. C."
Note 2.
""Dear Cousin Mivers,—I am going abroad. 1 may
want money ; for, in order to rouse motive power within me,
I mean to want money if I can. When I was a hoy of six¬
teen you ofiiered me money to write attacks upon veteran au¬
thors for ' The Londoner.' Will you give me money now for
a similar display of that grand New Idea of our generation—
viz., that the less a man knows of a subject the better he un¬
derstands it ? I am about to travel into countries which I
have never seen, and among races I have never known. My
arbitrary judgments on both will be invaluable to ' The Lon¬
doner' from a Special Correspondent who shares your respect
for the anonymous, and whose name is never to be divulged.
Direct your answer by return to me, fosie restante, Calais.—
Yours truly, K. C."
Note 3.
" My dear Father,—found your letter here, whence 1
depart to-morrow. Excuse haste. I go abroad, and shall
write to you from Calais.
"I admire Leopold Travers very much. After all, how
much of self-balance there is in a true English gentleman !
Toss him up and down where you will, and he always alights
on his feet—a gentleman. He has one child, a daughter
named Cecilia—handsome enough to allure into wedlock any
332 KENELM CniLLINGLT.
mortal whom Decimus Koach had not convinced that in celi¬
bacy lay the right ' Approach to the Angels.' Moreover, she
is a girl whom one can talk with. Even you could talk with
her. Travers wishes her to marry a very respectable, good-
looking, promising gentleman, in every way ' suitable,' as they
say. And if she does, she will rival that pink and perfection
of polished womanhood. Lady Glenalvon. I send you back
my portmanteau. I have pretty well exhausted my expe¬
rience-money, but have not yet encroached on my monthly
allowance. I mean still to live upon that, eking it out, if
necessary, by the sweat of my brow—or brains. But if any
case requiring extra funds should occur—a case in which that
extra would do such real good to another that I feel you would
do it—why, I must draw a cheque on your bankers. But un¬
derstand that is your expense, not mine, and it is you who are
to be repaid in heaven. Dear father, how I do love and honor
you every day more and more ! Promise you not to propose
to any young lady till I come first to you for consent !—oh,
my dear father, how could you doubt it ? how doubt tbat I
could not be happy with any wife whom you could not love aa
a daughter ? Accept that promise as sacred. But I wish you
had asked me something in which obedience was not much too
facile to be a test of duty. I could not have obeyed you more
cheerfully if you had asked me to promise never to propose to
any young lady at all. Had you asked me to promise that I
would renounce the dignity of reason for the frenzy of love, or
the freedom of man for the servitude of husband, then I might
have sought to achieve the impossible ; but I should have died
in the effort !—and thou wouldst have known that remorse
which haunts the bed of the tyrant.—Your affectionate son,
K. C."
kenelm chillinqlt.
333
CHAPTER XXL
The n3xt morning Kenelm surprised tlie party at breakfast
l)y appearing in the coarse habiliments in which he had first
made his host's acquaintance. He did not glance towards
Cecilia when he announced his departure ; but, his eye rest¬
ing on Mrs. Campion, he smiled, perhaps a little sadly, at
seeing her countenance brighten up and hearing her give a
short sigh of relief. Travers tried hard to induce him to stay
a few days longer, but Kenelm was firm. " The summer is
wearing away," said he, " and I have far to go before the
flowers fade and the snows fall. On the third night from this
I shall sleep on foreign soil."
"You are going abroad, then?" asked Mrs. Campion.
« Yes."
" A sudden resolution, Mr. Chillingly, The other day you
talked of visiting the Scotch lakes."
" True ; but, on reflection, they will be crowded with holi¬
day tourists, many of whom I shall probably know. Abroad
I shall be free, for I shall be unknown."
" I suppose you will be back for the hunting season," said
Travers.
" I think not. I do not hunt foxes."
"Probably we shall at all events meet in London," said
Travers. " I think, after long rustication, that a season or
334
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
two in the bustling capital may be a salutary change for mind
as well as for body ; and it is time that Cecilia were presented
and her court-dress specially commemorated in the columns
of the ' Morning Post.' "
Cecilia was seemingly too busied behind the tea-urn to heed
this reference to her début,
" I shall miss you terribly," cried Travers, a few momenta
afterwards, and with a hearty emphasis. " I declare that you
have quite unsettled me. Your quaint sayings will be ring¬
ing in my ears long after you are gone."
There was a rustle as of a woman's dress in sudden change
of movement behind the tea-urn.
" Cissy," said Mrs. Campion, " are we ever to have our
tea?"
" I beg pardon," answered a voice behind the urn. " I hear
Pompey" (the Skye terrier) " whining on the lawn. They
have shut him out. I will be back presently."
Cecilia rose and was gone. Mrs. Campion took her place
at the tea-urn.
" It is quite absurd in Cissy to be so fond of that hideous
dog," said Travers, petulantly.
"Its hideousness is its beauty," returned Mrs. Campion,
laughing. " Mr. Belvoir selected it for her as having the
longest back and the shortest legs of any dog he could find in
Scotland."
" Ah, George gave it to her ; I forgot that," said Travers,
laughing pleasantly.
It was some minutes before Miss Travers returned with the
Skye terrier, and she seemed to have recovered her spirits in
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
335
regaining that ornamental accession to the party—talking very
quickly and gayly, and vfith flushed cheeks, like a young per¬
son excited by her own overflow of mirth.
But when, half an hour afterwards, Kenelm took leave of
her and Mrs. Campion at the hall-door, the flush was gone,
her lips were tightly compressed, and her parting words were
not audible. Then, as his figure (side by side with her father,
who accompanied his guest to the lodge) swiftly passed across
the lawn and vanished amid the trees beyond, Mrs. Campion
wound a mother-like arm around her waist and kissed her.
Cecilia shivered and turned her face to her friend smiling ;
but such a smile,—one of those smiles that seem brimful of
tears.
"Thank you, dear," she said, meekly; and, gliding away
towards the flower-garden, lingered awhile by the gate which
Keneim had opened the night before. Then she went with
languid steps up the green slopes towards the ruined prioiy.
book: I V -
CHAPTER 1.
It is somewhat more than a year and a half since Kenelm
Chillingly left England, and the scene now is in London,
during that earlier and more sociable season which precedes
the Easter holidays—season in which the charm of intellectual
companionship is not yet withered away in the heated atmos¬
phere of crowded rooms—season in which parties are small,
and conversation extends beyond the interchange of common¬
place with one's next neighbor at a dinner-table—season in
which you have a fair chance of finding your warmest friends
not absorbed by the superior claims of their chilliest acquaint¬
ances.
There was what is called a conversazione at the house of
one of those Whig noblemen who yet retain the graceful art
of hringing agreeable people together, and collecting round
them the true aristocracy, which combines letters and art and
science with hereditary rank and political distinction—that
art which was the happy secret of the Lansdownes and Hol¬
lands of the last generation. Lord Beaumanoir was himself
a genial, well-read man, a good judge of art, and a pleasant
talker. He had a charming wife, devoted to him and to her
children, but with enough love of general approbation to
make herself as popular in the fashionable world as if she
(336)
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
«ought in its gayeties a refuge from the dullness of domestic
life.
Amongst the guests at the Beaumanoirs' this evening were
two men, seated apart in a small room, and conversing
familiarly. The one might be about fifty-four ; he was tall,
strongly built, but not corpulent, somewhat bald, with black
eyebrows, dark eyes, bright and keen, mobile lips, round
which there played a shrewd and sometimes sarcastic smile.
This gentleman, the Right Hon. Gerard Danvers, was a very
influential Member of Parliament. He had, when young for
English public life, attained to high office ; but—partly from
a great distaste to the drudgery of administration; partly
from a pride of temperament, which unfitted him for the
subordination that a Cabinet owes to its chief ; partly, also,
from a not uncommon kind of epicurean philosophy, at oneo
joyous and cynical, which sought the pleasures of life and
held very cheap its honors—^he had obstinately declined to
re-enter office, and only spoke on rare occasions. On such
occasions he carried great weight, and, by the brief expression
of his opinions, commanded more votes than many an orator
infinitely more eloquent. Despite his want of ambition, he
was fond of power in his own way—power over the people
who had power; and in the love of political intrigue he
found an amusement for an intellect very subtle and very
active. At this moment he was bent on a new combination
among the leaders of different sections in the same party, by
which certain veterans were to retire, and certain younger
men to be admitted into the Administration. It was an ami¬
able feature in his character that he had a sympathy with
p 2Ü
338
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
the young, and had helped to bring into Parliament, as weh
as into office, some of the ablest of a generation later than
his own. He gave them sensible counsel, was pleased when
they succeeded, and encouraged them when they failed—
always provided that they had stuff enough in them to redeem
the failure ; if not, he gently dropped them from his intimacy,
hut maintained sufficiently familiar terms with them to be
pretty sure that he could influence their votes whenever he
so desired.
The gentleman with whom he was now conversing was
young, about five-.and-twcnty—not yet in Parliament, hut
with an intense desire to obtain a seat in it, and with one of
those reputations which a youth carries away from school and
college, justified, not by honors purely academical, hut by an
impression of ability and power created on the minds of his
contemporaries, and indorsed by his elders. He had done
little at the university beyond taking a fair degree—except
acquiring at the Debating Society the fame of an exceedingly
ready and adroit speaker. On quitting college he had written
one or two political articles in a quarterly review which
created a sensation ; and though belonging to no profession,
and having but a small yet independent income, society was
very civU to him, as to a man who would some day or other
attain a position in which he could damage his enemies and
serve his friends. Something in this young man's counte¬
nance and bearing tended to favor the credit given to his
ability and his promise. In his countenance there was no
beauty ; in his bearing no elegance. But in that countenanca
there was vigor—there was energy—there was audacity. A
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
339
forehead wide but low, protuberant in those organs over tha
brow which indicate the qualities fitted for perception and judg¬
ment—qualities for every-day life ; eyes of the clear English
blue, small, somewhat sunken, vigilant, sagacious, penetrating ;
a long straight upper lip, significant of resolute purpose; a
mouth in which a student of physiognomy would have detected
a dangerous charm. The smile was captivating, but it was
artificial, surrounded by dimples, and displaying teeth white,
small, strong, but divided from each other. The expression of
that smile would have been frank and candid to all who failed
to notice that it was not in harmony with the brooding fore¬
head and the steely eye—that it seemed to stand distinct from
the rest of the face, like a feature that had learned its part.
There was that physical power in the back of the head which
belongs to men who make their way in life—combative and
destructive. All gladiators have it; so have great debaters
and great reformers—that is, reformers who destroy, but. not
necessarily reconstruct. So, too, in the bearing of the man
there was a hardy self-confidence, much too simple and un¬
affected for his worst enemy to call it self-conceit. It wan
the bearing of one who knew how to maintain personal
dignity without seeming to care about it. Never servile to
the great, never arrogant to the little ; so little over-refined
that it was nevei vulgar,—a popular bearing.
The room in which those gentlemen were seated was sepa¬
rated from the general suite of apartments by a lobby off the
landing-place, and served for Lady Beaumanoir's boudoir.
Very pretty it was, but simply furnished, with chintz draperies.
The walls were adorned with drawings in water-colors, and
340
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
precious specimens of china on fanciful Parian brackets. At
one corner, by a window that looked southward and opened
on a spacious balcony glazed in and filled with flowers, stood
one of those high trellised screens, first invented, I believe, in
Vienna, and along which ivy is so trained as to form an
arbor.
The recess thus constructed, and which was completely out
of sight from the rest of the room, was the hostess's favorite
writing-nook. The two men I have described were seated
near the screen, and had certainly no suspicion that any one
could be behind it.
"Yes," said Mr. Danvers, from an ottoman niched in
another recess of the room, " I think there will be an opening
at Saxboro' soon. Milroy wants a colonial government ; and
if we can reconstruct the Cabinet as I propose, he would get
one. Saxboro' would thus be vacant. But, my dear fellow,
Saxboro' is a place to be wooed through love and only won
through money. It demands liberalism from a candidate—'
two kinds of liberalism seldom united ; the liberalism in
opinion which is natural enough to a very poor man, and the
liberalism in expenditure which is scarcely to be obtained
except from a very rich one. You may compute the cost of
Saxboro' at £3000 to get in, and about £2000 more to defend
your seat against a petition—the defeated candidate nearly
alwaj's petitions. £5000 is a large sum ; and the worst of it
is, that the extreme opinions to which the member for Sax¬
boro' must pledge himself are a drawback to an official career.
Violent politicians are not the best raw material out of which
lo manufacture fortunate place-men "
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
341
" The opinions do not so much matter ; the expense does.
I cannot afford £5000, or even £3000."
" Would not Sir Peter assist? He has, you say, only one son ;
and if anything happen to that one son, you are the next heir."
" My father quarreled with Sir Peter, and harassed him
by an imprudent and ungracious litigation. I scarcely think
I could apply to him for money to obtain a seat in Parliament
upon the democratic side of the question ; for, though I know
little of his politics, I take it for granted that a country gen¬
tleman of old family and £10,000 a year cannot well be a
democrat."
" Then I presume you would not be a democrat if, by the
death of your cousin, you became heir to the Chillinglys."
" I am not sure what I might be in that case. There are
times when a democrat of ancient lineage and good estates
could take a very high place amongst the aristocracy."
" Humph ! my dear Gordon, vom irez loin."
" I hope to do so. Measuring myself against the men of
my own day, I do not see many who should outstrip me."
" What sort of a fellow is your cousin Kenelm ? I met him
once or twice when he was very young, and reading with
Welby in London. People then said that he was very clever;
he struck me as very odd."
" I never saw him ; but from all I hear, whether he be
clever or whether he be odd, he is not likely to do anything
in life—a dreamer."
" Writes poetry, perhaps?"
" Capable of it, I daresay."
Just then some other guests came into the room, amongst
342
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
them a lady of an appearance at once singularly distinguished
■.nd singularly prepossessing, rather above the common height,
lid with a certain indescribable nobility of air and presence.
Lady GlenaJvon was one of the queens of the London world,
and no queen of that world was ever less worldly or more
queen-like. Side by side with the lady was Mr. Chillingly
Mivers. Gordon and Mivers interchanged friendly nods, and
the former sauntered away and was soon lost amid a crowd
of other young men, with whom, as he could converse well
and lightly on things which interested them, he was rather a
favorite, though he was not an intimate associate. Mr.
Dan vers retired into a comer of the adjoining lobby, where he
favored the French ambassador with his views on the state of
Europe and the reconstruction of Cabinets in general.
" But," said Lady Glenalvon to Chillingly Mivers, " are
you quite sure that my old young friend Kenelm is here ?
Since you told me so, I have looked everywhere for him in
vain, I should so much like to see him again."
" I certainly caught a glimpse of him half an hour ago ;
but before I could escape from a geologist, who was boring
me about the Silurian system, Kenelm had vanished."
" Perhaps it was his ghost !"
" Well, we certainly live in the most credulous and super¬
stitious age upon record ; and so many people tell me that
they converse with the dead under the table, that it seems
impertinent in me to say that I don't believe in ghosts."
" Tell me some of those incomprehensible stories about
table-rapping," said Lady Glenalvon. " There is a charming
snug recess here behind the screen."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
343
Scarcely had she entered the recess than she drew back
with a start and an exclamation of amaze. Seated at the
table within the recess, his chin resting on his hand, and his
face cast down in abstracted reverie, was a young man. So
still was his attitude, so calmly mournful the expression of
his face, so estranged did he seem from all the motley but
brilliant assemblage which circled around the solitude he had
made for himself, that he might well have been deemed one
of those visitants from another world whose secrets the in
truder had wished to learn. Of that intruder's presence he
was evidently unconscious. Recovering her surprise, she
stole up to him, placed her hand on his shoulder, and uttered
his name in a low gentle voice. At that sound Kenelm
Chillingly looted up.
" Do you not remember me ?" asked Lady Glenalvon.
Before he could answer, Mivers, who had followed the
Marchioness into the recess, interposed.
" My dear Kenelm, how are you ? When did you come
to London ? Why have you not called on me ? and what on
earth are you hiding yourself for?"
Kenelm had now recovered the self-possession which he
rarely lost long in the presence of others. He returned
cordially his kiuuman's greeting, and kissed with his wonted
chivalrous grace the fair hand which the lady withdrew from
liLs shoulder and xtcnded to his pressure. " Remember
you !" he said to Lady Glenalvon, with the kindliest ex¬
pression of his soft dark eyes ; "I am not so far advanced
towards the noon of life as to forget the sunshine that bright¬
ened its morning. My dear Mivers, your questions are easily
344
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
answered. I arrived in England two weeks ago, stayed at
Exmundham till this morning, to-day dined with Lord Thet-
ford, whose acquaintance I made abroad, and was persuaded
by him to come here and be introduced to his father and
mother, the Beaumanoirs. After I had undergone that cere¬
mony, the sight of so many strange faces frightened me into
shyness. Entering this room at a moment when it was quite
deserted, I resolved to turn hermit behind the screen."
•' Why, you must have seen your cousin Gordon as you
came into the room."
" But you forget I don't know him by sight. However,
there was no one in the room when I entered ; a little later
some others came in, for I heard a faint buzz, like that of
persons talking in a whisper. However, I was no eaves¬
dropper, as a person behind a screen is on the dramatic
stage."
This was true. Even had Gordon and Danvers talked in
a louder tone, Kenelm had been too absorbed in his own
thoughts to have heard a word of their conversation.
" You ought to know young Gordon ; he is a very clever
fellow, and has an ambition to enter Parliament. I hope no
old family quarrel between his bear of a father and dear Sir
Peter will make you object to meet him."
" Sir Peter is the most forgiving of men, but he would
scarcely forgive me if I declined to meet a cousin who had
never offended him."
" Well said. Come and meet Gordon at breakfast to-morrow
—ten o'clock. I am still in the old rooms."
While the kinsmen thus conversed. Lady Glenalvon had
kenelm chillinglt.
•345
seated herself on the couch beside Kenelm, and was quietly
observing his countenance. Now she spoke : " My dear Mr.
Mivers, you will have many opportunities of talking with
Kenelm ; do not grudge me five minutes' talk with him now."
" I leave your ladyship alone in her hermitage. How all
the men in this assembly will envy the hermit 1"
CHAPTER IL
•' 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 ques¬
tion 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 ex¬
pression. 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
p*
34G
kenelm chillingly.
there are as many eharms in life to be found on the Pense-
roso 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 six¬
teen, with a boy's years and a man's heart, you came to Lon¬
don, 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 sympa¬
thizing, 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 seek¬
ing 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 com¬
pliance 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 I have not succeeded.
I see nothing that I care to strive for, nothing that I care to
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
347
gain. The very times in which we live arc 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 Bias' looked
on his meagre board—spectacles by which chenies appear the
BÍ2C of peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys ! The imagi¬
nation 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 un¬
conscious -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
348
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
girl would make a perfect wife, and, above all, the exact wife
to suit Kenelm Chillingly."
" Kenebn Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young
laly 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."
kenelm chillingly.
340
CHAPTER III.
The rooms were now full—not overerowded, but full—and
it was rarely even in that house that so many distinguished
persons were colleeted together. A young man thus honored
by so grande a dame as Lady Glenalvon, eould not but be
cordially welcomed by all to whom she presented him, Min¬
isters and Parliamentary leaders, ball-givers and beauties in
Vogue—even authors and artists; and there was something
in KenJm Chillingly, in his striking countenance and figure,
in that calm ease of manner natural to his indifierence to
eflfeet, which seemed to justify the favor shown to him hy the
brilliant princess of fashion, and mark him out for general
observation.
That first evening of his réintroduction to the polite world
was a success which few young men of his years achieve. He
produced a sensation. Just as the rooms were thinning. Lady
Glenalvon whispered to Kenelm :
" Come this way—there is one person I must reintroduce
you to—thank me for it hereafter."
Kenelm followed the Marchioness, and found himself face
to face with Cecilia Travers. She was leaning on her father's
arm, looking very handsome, and her beauty was heightened
by the blush which overspread her cheeks as Kenelm Chil¬
lingly approached.
350
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Travers greeted him with great eordiality ; and Lady Glen-
alvon asking him to eseort her to the refreshment-room,
Kenelm had no option but to offer his arm to Cecilia.
Kenclm felt somewhat embarrassed. "Have you been
long in town, Miss Travers?"
" A litth more than a week, but we only settled into oui
house yesterday."
" Ah, indeed I were you then the young lady who "
lie stopped short, and his face grew gentler and graver in its
expression.
" The young lady who—what ?" asked Cecilia, with a
smile.
" Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon ?"
" Yes ; did she tell you ?"
" She did not mention your name, but praised that young
lady so justly that I ought to have guessed it."
Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on entering
the refreshment-room other young men gathered round her,
and Lady Glenalvon and Kenelm remained silent in the midst
of a general small-talk. When Travers, after giving his
address to Kenelm, and, of course, pressing him to call, left
the house with Cecilia, Kenelm said to Lady Glenalvon, mus¬
ingly, " So that is the young lady in whom I was to see my
fate ; you knew that we had met before ?"
" Yes, she told me when and where. Besides, it is not
two years since you wrote to me from her father's house. Do
you forget?"
" Ah," said Kenelm, so abstractedly that he seemed to be
dreaming, " no man with his eyes open rushes on his fate ;
kenelm chillingly.
351
when he does so, his sight is gone. Love is blind. They
say the blind are very happy, yet I never met a blind man
who would not recover his sight if he could."
CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Chillingly Mivers never gave a dinner at his own
rooms. When he did give a dinner, it was at Greenwich or
Richmond. But he gave breakfast^parties pretty often, and
they were considered pleasant. He had handsome bachelor
apartments in Grosvenor Street, daintily furnished, with a
prevalent air of exquisite neatness. A good library stored
with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies
from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the
room served for the study of the professed man of letters, it
had none of the untidy litter which generally characterizes
the study of one whose vocation it is to deal with books and
papers. Even the implements for writing were not apparent,
except when required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder
bureau, French made, and French polished. Within that
bureau were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers, and a
profound weU with a separate patent lock. In the well were
deposited the articles intended for publication in " The Lon¬
doner"—^proof-sheets, etc. ; pigeon-holes were devoted to ordi¬
nary correspondence ; secret drawers to confidential notes, and
outlines of biographies of eminent men now living, but in-
352
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
tended to be completed for publication the day after tbeir
death.
No man wrote such funereal compositions with a livelier
pen than that of Chillingly Mivers ; and the large and mis-
oallaneous circle of his visiting acquaintances allowed him to
a.scertain, whether by authoritative report or by personal ob¬
servation, the signs of mortal disease in the illustrious friends
whose dinners he accepted, and whose failing pulses he iu-
stinctively felt in returning the pressure of their hands, so
that he was often able to put the finishing-stroke to their
obituary memorials, days, weeks, even months, before their
fate took the public by surprise. That cylinder bureau was
in harmony with the secrecy in which this remarkable man
shrouded the productions of his hrain. In his literary life
Mivers had no " I there he was ever the inscrutable, mys¬
terious " We." He was only " I" when you met him in the
world and called him Mivers.
Adjoining the library on one side was a small dining- or
rather breakfast-room, hung with valuable pictures—presei ta
from living painters. Many of these painters had been
severely handled by Mr. Mivers in his existence as " We,"—
not always in " The Londoner." His most pungent criticisms
were often contributed to other intellectual journals, conducted
by members of the same intellectual clique. Painters knew
not how contemptuously "We" had treated them when they
met Mr. Mivers. His " I " was so complimentary that they
sent him a tribute of their gratitude.
On the other side was his drawing-room, also enriched by
many gifts, chiefly from fair hands—embroidered cushions
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
353
and table-covers, bits of Sèvres or old Cbclsea, elegant knick-
knacks of all kinds. Fashionable authoresses paid great court
to Mr. Mivers ; and in the course of his life as a single man
he had other female adorers besides fashionable authoresses.
Mr. Mivers had already returned from his early îonstitu-
tional walk in the Park, and was now seated by the cylinder
iécrétaire with a mild-looking man, who was one of the most
merciless contributors to "The Londoner," and no unimpor¬
tant councillor in the oligarchy of the clique that went by the
name of the " Intellectuals."
" Well," said Mivers, languidly, " I can't even get through
the book ; it is as dull as the country in November. But, as
you justly say, the writer is an ' Intellectual,' and a clique
would be anything but intellectual if it did not support its
members. Review the book yourself—mind and make the
dullness of it the signal proof of its merit. Say—' To the
ordinary class of readers this exquisite work may appear less
brilliant than the flippant smartness of—any other author
you like to name ; ' but to the well-educated and intelligent
every line is pregnant with,' etc. etc. By the way, when we
come by-and-by to review the exhibition at Burlington House,
there is one painter whom we must try our best to crush. I
have not seen his pictures myself, but he is a new man, and
our friend, who has seen him, is terribly jealous of him, and
says that if the good judges do not put him down at once,
the villanous taste of the public will set him up as a prodigy.
A low-lived fellow too, I hear. There is the name of the man
and the subject of the pictures. See to it when the time
comes. Meanwhile, prepare the way for onslaught on the
23
854
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
pictures by occasional sneers at the painter." Mr. Hivers
here took out of his cylinder a confidential note from the
jealous rival, and handed it to his mild-looking confrlre;
then rising, he said, " I fear we must suspend business till to¬
morrow; I expect two young cousins to breakfast."
As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivcrs
sauntered to his drawing-room window, amiably ofiering a
lump of sugar to a canary-bird sent him as a present the day
before, and who, in the gilded cage which made part of the
present, scanned him suspiciously, and refused the sugar.
Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chil¬
lingly Hivers. He scarcely looked a day older than when he
was first presented to the reader on the hirth of his kinsman
Kenelm. He was reaping the fruit of his own sage maxims.
Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was no sign of
gray—no suspicion of dye. Superiority to passion, abnega¬
tion of sorrow, indulgence of amusement, avoidance of excess,
had kept away the crow's-feet, preserved the elasticity of his
frame and the unflushed clearness of his gentlemanlike com¬
plexion. The door opened, and a well-dressed valet, who had
lived long enough with Mivers to grow very much like him,
announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon.
" Good-morning," said Mivers ; " I was much pleased tc
aoe you talking so long and so familiarly with Danvcrs :
others, of course, observed it, and it added a step to your
career. It does you great good to be seen in a drawing-room
talking apart with a Somebody. But may I ask if the talk
itself was satisfactory?"
" Not at all ; Danvers throws cold water on the notion of
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
355
Saxboro', and does not even hint that his party will help me
to any other opening. Party has few openings at its disposal
nowadays for any young man. The schoolmaster being abroad
has swept away the school for statesmen as he has swept away
the school for actors—an evil, and an evil of a far graver con-
sequence to the destinies of the nation than any good likely to
be got from the system that succeeded it."
" But it is of no use railing against things that can't be
helped. If I were you, I would postpone all ambition of Par¬
liament, and read for the bar."
" The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken. I
am resolved to find a seat in the House, and where there is a
will there is a way."
" I am not so sure of that."
« But I am."
" Judging by what your contemporaries at the University
tell me of your speeches at the Debating Society, you were
not then an ultra-Radical. But it is only an ultra^Radical
who has a chance of success at Saxboro'."
" I am no fanatic in politics. There is much to be said on
all sides—cseieris paribus, I prefer the wiuninjj side to the
losing : nothing succeeds like success."
"Ay, but in politics there is always reaction. The win
ning side one day may be the losing side another. The
losing side represents a minority, and a minority is sure to
comprise more intellect than a majority: in the long-run in¬
tellect will force its way, get a majority, and then lose it,
because with a majority it will become stupid."
" Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show
356
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
you that a single individual can upset all theories as to the
comparative wisdom of the few or the many? Take the wisest
few you can find, and one man of genius not a tithe so wise
crushes them into powder. But then that man of genius,
though he despises the many, must make use of them. That
áone, he rules them. Don't you see how in free countries
political destinations resolve themselves into individual imper¬
sonations ? At a general election it is one name around which
electors rally. The candidate may enlarge as much as he
pleases on political principles, hut all his talk will not win
him votes enough for success, unless he says, ' I go with Mr.
A.,' the Minister, or with Mr. Z., the chief of the Opposition.
It was not the Tories who heat the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dis¬
solved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who beat Mr. Fox, with
whom in general politieal principles—slave-trade, Roman Cath¬
olic emancipation. Parliamentary reform—he certainly agreed
much more than he did with any man in his own Cabinet."
" Take care, my young cousin," cried Mivers, in accents of
alarm ; " don't set up for a man of genius. Genius is the
worst quality a public man can have nowadays—nobody heeds
it, and everybody is jealous of it."
" Pardon me, you mistake ; my remark was purely objective,
and intended as a reply to your argument. I prefer at
present to go with the many because it is the winning side.
If we then want a man of genius to keep it the winning side,
by subjugating its partisans to his will, he will be sure fo
come. The few will drive him to us, for the few are always
the enemies of the one man of genius. It is they who dis¬
trust—it is they who are jealous—not the many. You have
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
357
allowed your judgment, usually so clear, to be somewhat
dimmed by your experience as a critic. The critics are the
few. They have infinitely more culture than the many. But
when a man of real genius appears and asserts himself, the
critics are seldom such fair judges of him as the many are.
If he he not one of their oligarchical clique, they either abuse,
or disparage, or affect to ignore him ; though a time at last
com,es when, having gained the many, the critics acknowledge
him. But the difference between the man of action and the
author is this, that the author rarely finds this acknowledg¬
ment till he is dead, and it is necessary to the man of action
to enforce it while he is alive. But enough of this specula^
tion : you asked me to meet Kenelm—is he not coming?"
" Yes, hut I did not ask him till ten o'clock. I asked you
at half-past nine, because I wished to hear about Danvers and
Saxboro', and also to prepare you somewhat for your introduc¬
tion to your cousin. I must be brief as to the last, for it is
only five minutes to the hour, and he is a man likely to be
punctual. Kenelm is in all ways your opposite. I don't
know whether he is cleverer or less clever—there is no scale
of measurement between you ; but he is wholly void of ambi¬
tion, and might possibly assist yours. He can do what he
ükes with Sir Peter ; and considering how your poor father
—a worthy man, but cantankerous—harassed and persecuted
Sir Peter because Kenelm came between the estate and you,
it is probable that Sir Peter bears you a grudge, though
Kenelm declares him incapable of it ; and it would be well
if you could annul that grudge in the father by conciliating
the good will of the son."
358
kenelm chillinqlt.
" I should be glad so to annul it ; but what is Kenelm's
weak side?—tbe turf? the hunting-field? women? poetry?
One can only conciliate a man by getting on his weak side."
" Hist I I see him from the windows. Kenelm's weak side
was, when I knew him some years ago, and I rather fancy it
still is "
" Well, make haste ! I hear his ring at your door-bell."
'' A passionate longing to find ideal truth in real life." -—
11 " Ah I" said Gordon, " as I thought—^a mere dreamer." (
CHAPTER V.
Kenelm entered the room. The young cousins were in¬
troduced, shook hands, receded a step, and gazed at each
other. It is scarcely possible to conceive a greater contrast
outwardly than that between the two Chillingly representatives
of the rising generation. Each was silently impressed by the
sense of that contrast. Each felt that the contrast implied
antagonism, and that if they two met in the same arena it
must be as rival combatants ; still, by some mysterious intui¬
tion, each felt a certain respect for the other, each divined in
the other a power that he could not fairly estimate, but against
which his own power would be strongly tasked to contend.
So might exchange looks a thorough-bred deer-hound and a
half-bred mastiff ; the bystander could scarcely doubt which
was the nobler animal, but he might hesitate which to bet on,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
359
if the two came to deadly quarrel. Meanwhile the thorough¬
bred deer-hound and the half-bred mastiff sniffed at each othei
in polite salutation. Gordon was the first to give tongue.
" I have long wished to know you personally," said he,
throwing into his voice and manner that delicate kind of
deference which a well-born cadet owes to the destined head
of his house. " I cannot conceive how I missed you last
night at Lady Beaumanoir's, where Mivers tells me he mot
you; but I left early."
Here Mivers led the way to the breakfast-room, and, there
seated, the host became the principal talker, running with
lively glibness over the principal topics of the day—the last
scandal, the last new book, the reform of the army, the
reform of the turf, the critical state of Spain, and the déh^it
of an Italian singer. He seemed an embodied Journal, in¬
cluding the Leading Article, the Law Reports, Foreign
Intelligence, the Court Circular, down to the Births, Deaths,
and Marriages. Gordon from time to time interrupted this
flow of soul with brief, trenchant remarks, which evinced his
own knowledge of the subjects treated, and a habit of looking
on all subjects connected with the pursuits and business of
mankind from a high ground appropriated to himself, and
through the medium of that blue glass which conveys a
wintry aspect to summer landscapes. Kenelm said little, hut
listened attentively.
The conversation arrested its discursive nature, to settle
upon a political chief—the highest in fame and station of that
party to which Mivers professed—not to belong, he belonged
to himself alone,—but to appropinquate. Mivers spoke of
¿60
kenelm chillingly.
this chief with the greatest distrust, and in a spirit of general
depreciation. Gordon acquiesced in the distrust and the
depreciation, adding, " But he is master of the position, and
must, of course, be supported through thick and thin for the
present."
" Yes, for the present," said Mivers ; " one has no option
But you will see some clever articles in 'The Londoner'
towards the close of the session, which will damage him
greatly, by praising him in the wrong place, and deepening
the alarm of important followers—an alarm now at work,
though suppressed."
Here Kenelm asked, in humble tones, "Why Gordon
thought that a Minister he considered so untrustworthy and
dangerous must, for the present, be supported through thick
and thin."
" Because at present a member elected so to support him
would lose his seat if he did not : needs must when the devil
drives."
Kenelm.—" When the devil drives, I should have thought
it better to resign one's seat on the coach ; perhaps one might
be of some use, out of it, in helping to put on the drag."
Mivers.—" Cleverly said, Kenelm. But, metaphor apart,
Gordon is right : a young politician must go with his party ;
a veteran journalist like myself is more independent. So long
as the journalist blames everybody, he will have plenty of
readers."
Kenelm made no reply, and Gordon changed the conversa¬
tion from men to measures. He spoke of some Bills before
Parliament with remarkable ability, evincing much knowledge
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
361
of tlie subject, much critical acutenoss, illustrating tbcir
defects, and proving the danger of their ultimate conse¬
quences.
Kenelm was greatly struck with the vigor of this cold,
clear mind, and owned to himself that the House of Commons
was a fitting place for its development.
" But," said Mivers, " would you not be obliged to defend
these Bills if you were member for Saxboro' ?"
" Before I answer your question, answer me this. Dan¬
gerous as the Bills are, is it not necessary that they shall
pass ? Have not the publie so resolved ?"
"There can be no doubt of that."
" Then the member for Saxboro' cannot be strong enough
to go against the publie."
" Progress of the age !" said Kenelm, musingly. " Do you
think the class of gentlemen will long last in England ?"
" What do you call gentlemen ? The aristocracy by birth ?
—the gmtilhommes ?"
"Nay, I suppose no laws can take away a man's ancestors,
and a class of well-born men is not to be exterminated. But
a class of well-born men—without duties, responsibilities,
or sentiment of that which becomes good birth in devotion to
country or individual honor—does no good to a nation. It in
a misfortune which statesmen of democratic creed ought to
recognize, that the class of the well-born cannot be destroyed
—it must remain as it remained in Rome and remains in
France, after all efibrts to extirpate it, as the most dangerous
cla.ss of citizens when you deprive it of the attributes which
made it the most serviceable. I am not speaking of that
Q
362
KENKLM CHILLINOET.
class ; I speak of that unclassified order peculiar to England,
which, no doubt, forming itself originally from the ideal
standard of honor and truth supposed to be maintained by
the ffentilliommcs, or well-bom, no longer requires pedigrees
and acres to confer upon its members the designation of gen¬
tlemen ; and when I hear a ' gentleman' say that he has no
option but to think one thing and say another, at whatever
risk to his country, I feel as if in the progress of the age the
class of gentlemen was about to be superseded by some finer
development of species."
Therewith Kenelm rose, and would have taken his de¬
parture, if Gordon had not seized his hand and detained him.
" My dear cousin, if I may so call you," he said, with the
frank manner which was usual to him, and which suited well
the bold expression of his face and the clear ring of his voice,
" I am one of those who, from an over-dislike to senti¬
mentality and cant, often make those not intimately acquainted
with them think worse of their principles than they deserve.
It may be quite true that a man who goes with his party dis¬
likes the measures he feels bound to support, and says so
openly when among friends and relations, yet that man is not
therefore devoid of loyalty and honor ; and I tmst, when you
know me better, you will not think it likely I should derogate
from that class of gentlemen to which we both belong."
" Pardon me if I seemed rude," answered Kenelm ; " ascribe
it to my ignorance of the necessities of public life. It struck
me that where a politician thought a thing evil he ought not
to'Support it as good. But I daresay I am mistaken."
" Entirely mistaken," said Mivers, " and for this reason :
EE\ELM CHILLINQLT.
363
in politics formerly there was a direct choice between good
and evil. That rarely exists now. Men of high education,
having to choose whether to aceept or reject a measure forced
upon their option by constituent bodies of very low education,
are called upon to weigh evil against evil—the evil of accept¬
ing or the evil of rejecting ; and if they resolve on the first, it
is as the lesser evil of the two."
" Your definition is perfect," said Gordon, " and I am con¬
tented to rest on it my excuse for what my cousin deems in¬
sincerity."
" I suppose that is real life," said Kenelm, with his moui-n-
ful smile.
" Of course it is," said Mivers.
" Every day I live," sighed Kenelm, " still more confirms
my conviction that real life is a phantasmal sham. How
absurd it is in philosophers to deny the existence of appari¬
tions 1 what apparitions we, living men, must seem to the
ghosts I
" ' The spirits of the wise
Sit in the clouds and mock us.' "
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
VOL IL
KENBLM CHILLINGLY
BOOIC IV.
CONTIKVED.
CHAPTEE VI.
Chillingly Gordon did not fail to confirm his acquaint,
ance with Kenelm. He very often looked in upon him of a
morning, sometimes joined him in his afternoon rides, intro¬
duced him to men of his own set, who were mostly busy
members of Parliament, rising barristers, or political journal¬
ists, but not without a proportion of brilliant idlers—club
men, sporting men, men of fashion, rank, and fortune. Ha
did so with a purpose, for these persons spoke well of him,
spoke well not only of his talents, but of his honorable char¬
acter. His general nickname amongst them was " Honest
Gordon." Kenelm at first thought this sobriquet mmst be
ironical ; not a bit of it. It was given to him on account
of the candor and boldness with which he expressed opinions
embodying that sort of cynicism which is vulgarly called " the
absence of humbug." The man was certainly no hypocrite ;
he afiiected no beliefs which he did not entertain. And ha
(5^
6 kenelm chillingly.
had very few beliefs in anything, except the first half of the
adage, " Every man for himself,—and God for us all."
But whatever Chillingly Gordon's theoretical disbeliefs in
things which make the current creed of the virtuous, there
was nothing in his conduet whieh evinced predilection for
vices: he was strictly upright in all his dealings, and in
delicate matters of honor was a favorite umpire amongst his
coevals. Though so frankly ambitious, no one could accuse
him of attempting to climb on the shoulders of patrons.
There was nothing servile in his nature, and, though he was
perfectly prepared to bribe electors if necessary, no money
could have bought himself. His one master-passion was the
desire of power. He sneered at patriotism as a worn-out pre¬
judice, at philanthropy as a sentimental catch-word. He did
not want to serve his country, but to rule it. He did not want
to raise mankind, but to rise himself. He was therefore un¬
scrupulous, unprincipled, as hungerers after power for itself
too often are ; yet still if he got power he would probably use
it well, from the clearness and strength of his mental percep¬
tions. The impression he made on Kenelm may be seen in
the following letter :—
to sir peter chillingly, bart, etc.
" My dear Father,—You and my dear mother will be
pleased to hear that London continues very polite to me : that
' arida nutrix leonum' enrols me among the pet class of lions
which ladies of fashion admit into the society of their lap-
dogs. It is somewhere about six years since I was allowed to
gaze on this peep-show through the loopholes of Mr. Welby's
retreat. It appears to me, perhaps erroneously, that even
KENELM CniLLINGLr.
7
witliiu tLat short space of time the tone of ' society' is per¬
ceptibly changed. That the change is for the better is an
assertion I leave to those who belong to the progressista party.
" I don't think nearly so many young ladies six years ago
painted their eyelids and dyed their hair : a few of them there
might be, imitators of the slang invented by schoolboys and
circulated through the medium of small novelists; they might
use such expressions as 'stunning,' 'cheek,' 'awfully jolly,'
etc. But now I find a great many who have advanced to a
slarig beyond that of verbal expressions,—a slang of mind,
a slang of sentiment, a slang in which very little seems left
of the woman, and nothing at all of the lady.
" Newspaper essayists assert that the young men of the day
are to blame for this ; that the young men like it, and the fair
husband-anglers dress their flies in the colors most likely to
attract a nibble. Whether this excuse be the true one I
cannot pretend to judge. But it strikes me that the men
about my own age who affect to be fast are a more languid
race than the men from ten to twenty years older, whom they
regard as slow. The habit of dram-drinking in the morning
is a very new idea, an idea greatly in fashion at the moment.
Adonis calls for a ' pick-me-up' before he has strength enough
to answer a hillet-doux from Venus. Adonis has not the
strength to get nobly drunk, but his delicate constitution
requires stimulants, and he is always tippling.
" The men of high birth or renown for social success, be¬
longing, my dear father, to your time, are still distinguished
by an air of good-breeding, by a style of conversation more or
less polished and not without evidences of literary culture,
from men of the same rank in my generation, who appear to
pride themselves on respecting nobody and knowing nothing,
not even grammar. Still we are assured that the world goes
on steadily improving. That new idea is in full vigor.
" Society in the concrete has become wonderfully conceited
8
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
as to its own progressive excellences, and the individuals who
form the concrete entertain the same complacent opinion of
themselves. There are, of course, even in my brief and im¬
perfect experience, many exceptions to what appear to me the
prevalent characteristics of the rising generation in ' society.'
Of these exceptions I must content myself with naming the
most remarkable. Place aux dames, the first I name is Ce¬
cilia Travers. She and her father are now in town, and I
meet them frequently. I can conceive no civilized era in the
world Avhich a woman like Cecilia Travers would not grace
and adorn, because she is essentially the type of woman as
man likes to imagine woman—^viz., on the fairest side of the
womanly character. And I say ' woman ' rather than girl,
because among ' Girls of the Period' Cecilia Travers cannot
be classed. You might call her damsel, virgin, maiden, but
you could no more call her girl than you could call a well¬
born French demoiselle '■filled She is handsome enough to
please the eye of any man, however fastidious, but not that
kind of beauty which dazzles all men too much to fascinate
one man ; for—speaking, thank heaven, from mere theory—
I apprehend that the love for woman has in it a strong sense
of property; that one requires to individualize one's pos¬
session as being wholly one's own, and not a possession which
all the public are invited to admire. I can readily understand
how a rich man, who has what is called a show place, in which
the splendid rooms and the stately gardens are open to all in¬
spectors, so that he has no privacy in his own demesnes, rune
away to a pretty cottage which he has all to himself, and of
which he can say, ' This is Home—this is all mine.'
" But there are some kinds of beauty which are eminently
show places—which the public think they have as much a
right to admire as the owner has ; and the show place itself
would be dull, and perhaps fall out of repair, if the public
could be excluded from the sight of it.
KENELil «niEEINGET.
9
" The beauty of Cecilia Travers is not that of a show place.
There is a feeling of safety in her. If Desdemona had been
like her, Othello would not have been jealous. But then
Cecilia would not have deceived her father—nor I think have
told a blackamoor that she wished ' Heaven had made her
such a man.' Her mind harmonizes with her person—it is a
companionable mind. Her talents are not showy, but, take
them altogether, they form a pleasant whole : she has good
sense enough in the practical aflPairs of life, and enough of
that inefiable womanly gift called tact, to counteract the effects
of whimsical natures like mine, and yet enough sense of the
humoristic views of life not to take too literally all that a
whimsical man like myself may say. As to temper, one never
knows what a woman's temper is—till one puts her out of it.
But I imagine hers, in its normal state, to be serene, and dis¬
posed to be cheerful. Now, my dear father, if you were not
one of the cleverest of men you would infer from this eulogistic
mention of Cecilia Travers that I was in love with her. But
you no doubt will detect the truth, that a man in love with a
woman does not weigh her merits with so steady a hand as
that which guides this steel pen. I am not in love with
Cecilia Travers. I wish I were. When Lady Glenalvon,
who remains wonderfully kind to me, says, day after day,
' Cecilia Travers would make you a perfect wife,' I have no
answer to give, but I don't feel the least inclined to ask Ce¬
cilia Travers if she would waste her perfection on one who so
col lly concedes it.
'' I find that she persisted in rejecting the man whom l.ei
father wished her to man-y, and that he has consoled himself
by marrying somebody else. No doubt other suitors as
worthy will soon present themselves.
" Oh, dearest of all my friends—solo friend whom I regard
as a confidant;—shall I ever be in love ? and if not, why not ?
Sometimes I feel as if, with love as with ambition, it is be¬
vor. II.—A*
10
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
cause 1 have some impossible ideal in each, that I must
always remain indifferent to the sort of love and the sort of
ambition which are within my reach. I have an idea that if
I did love, I should love as intensely as Romeo, and that
thought inspires me with vague forebodings of terror ; and if
I did find an object to arouse my ambition, I could be as
earnest in its pursuit as—whom shall I name?—Caesar or
Cato? I like Cato's ambition the better of the two. Rut
people nowadays call ambition an impracticable crotchet, if it
be invested on the losing side. Cato would have saved Rome
from the mob and the dictator ; but Rome could not be saved,
and Cato falls on his own sword. Had we a Cato now, the
verdict at the coroner's inquest would be, ' suicide whde in a
state of unsound mind;' and the verdict would have been
prov(,d by his senseless resistance to a mob and a dictator!
Talking of ambition, I come to the other exception to the
youth of the day—I have named a demoiselle^ I now name a
danwiseati. Imagine a man of about five-and-twenty, and
who is morally about fifty years older than a healthy man of
sixty,—imagine him with the brain of age and the flower of
youth—^with a heart absorbed into the brain, and giving
warm blood to frigid ideas—a man who sneers at everything
I call lofty, yet would do nothing that he thinks mean—to
whom vice and virtue are as indifferent as they were to the
.Esthetics of Goethe—who would never jeopardize his career
as a practical reasoner by an imprudent virtue, and never
sully his reputation by a degrading vice. Imagine this man
with an intellect keen, strong, ready, unscrupulous, dauntless
'—all cleverness and no genius. Imagine this man, and then
do not be astonished when I tell you he is a Chillingly.
" The Chillingly race culminates in him, and becomes
Chillinglyest. In fact, it seems to me that we live in a day
precisely suited to the Chillingly idiosyncrasies. During the
ten centuries or more that our race has held local habitatio t
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
11
and a name, it has been as aiiy nothings. Its representatives
lived in hot-blooded times, and were compelled to skulk in
still water with their emblematic Daces. But the times now,
my dear father, are so cold-blooded that you can't be too cold¬
blooded to prosper. What could Chillingly Mivers have
been in an age when people cared twopence-halfpenny about
their religious creeds, and their political parties deemed their
cause was sacred and their leaders were heroes ? Chillingly
Mivers would not have found five subscribers to ' The Lon¬
doner.' But now ' The Londoner' is the favorite organ
of the intellectual public ; it sneers away all the foundations
of the social system, without an attempt at reconstruction ;
and every new journal set up, if it keep its head above water,
models itself on ' The Londoner.' Chillingly Mivers is a
great man, and the most potent writer of the age, though
nobody knows what he has written. Chillingly Gordon is a
stUl more notable instance of the rise of the Chillingly worth
in the modern market.
" There is a general impression in the most authoritative
circles that Chillingly Gordon will have high rank in the van
of the coming men. His confidence in himself is so thorough
that it infects all with whom he comes into contact—myself
included.
" He said to me the other day, with a sang-froid worthy
of the iciest Chillingly, 'I mean to be Prime Minister of
England—it is only a question of time.' Now, if Chillingly
Gordon is to be Prime Minister, it will be because the in¬
creasing cold of our moral and social atmosphere wiU exactly
suit the development of his talents.
" He is the man above all others to argue down the de-
claimers of old-fashioned sentimentalities, love of country, care
for its position among nations, zeal for its honor, pride in its
renown. (Oh, if you could hear him philosophically and
logically sneer away the word ' prestige '1) Such notions arc
12
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
fast being classified as ' bosb.' And when that classification
is complete,—when England has no colonies to defend, no
navy to pay for, no interest in the afiairs of other nations, and
has attained to the happy condition of Holland,—then Chil¬
lingly Gordon will be her Prime Minister.
" Yet while, if ever I am stung into political action, it will
be by abnegation of the Chillingly attributes, and in opposi¬
tion, however hopeless, to Chillingly Gordon, I feel that this
man cannot be suppressed and ought to have fair play ; his
ambition will be infinitely more dangerous if it become soured
by delay. I propose, my dear father, that you should have
the honor of laying this clever kinsman under an obligation,
and enabling him to enter Parliament. In our last conversa¬
tion at Exmundham, you told me of the frank resentment of
Gordon pere when my coming into the world shut him out
from the Exmundham inheritance ; you confided to me your
intention at that time to lay by yearly a sum that might
ultimately serve as a provision for Gordon fils, and as some
compensation for the loss of his expectations when you realized
your hope of an heir ; you told me also how this generous
intention on your part had been frustrated by a natural indigna¬
tion at the elder Gordon's conduct in his harassing and costly
litigation, and by the addition you had been tempted to make
to the estate in a purchase which added to its acreage, but
at a rate of interest which diminished your own income, and
precluded the possibility of further savings. Now, chancing
to meet your lawyer, Mr. Vining, the other day, I learned
from him that it had been long a wish which your delicacy
prevented your naming to me, that I, to whom the fee-simple
descends, should join with you in cutting ofif the entail and
resettling the estate. He showed me what an advantage this
would be to the property, because it would leave your hands
free for many improvements in which I heartily go with the
progress of the age, for which, as merely tenant for life, you
kenelm cuillinglt.
13
could not raise the money except upon ruinous terms ; new
cottages for laborers, new buildings for tenants,, the consolida¬
tion of some old mortgages and charges on the rent-roll, etc.
And allow me to add that I should like to make a large in¬
crease to the jointure of my dear mother. Vining say.i, too,
that there is a part of the outlying land which, as being near
a town, could be sold to considerable profit if the estate were
resettled.
" Let us hasten to complete the necessary deeds, and so
obtain the £20,000 required for the realization of your noble
and, let me add, your just desire to do something for Chil¬
lingly Gordon. In the new deeds of settlement we ct.uld
insure the power of willing the estate as we pleased ; and 1 am
strongly against devising it to Chillingly Gordon. It may be
a crotchet of mine, but one which I think you share, thai the
owner of English soil should have a son's love for the native
land ; and Gordon will never have that. I think, too, that it
will be best for his own career, and for the establishment of a
frank understanding between us and himself, that he should
be fairly told that he would not be benefited in the event of
our deaths. Twenty thousand pounds given to him now
would be a greater boon to him than ten times the sum
twenty years later. With that at his command, he can enter
Parliament, and have an income, added to what he now pos
Besses, if modest, still sufficient to make him independent of a
Minister's patronage.
" Pray humor me, my dearest father, in the proposition 1
•jcnture to submit to you.—Your affectionate son,
" Kenelm."
from sir peter chii.LINGLY to kenelm cini;lingly.
" My dear Boy,—You are not worthy to be a Chillingly;
you are decidedly warm-blooded : never was a load lifted off a
u
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
man's mind with a gentler hand. Yes, I have wished to oui
off the entail and resettle the property ; but, as it was eminently
to my advantage to do so, I shrank from asking it, though
eventually it would be almost as much to your own advantage.
What with the purchase I made of the Faircleuch lands—
which I could only effect by money borrowed at high interest
on my personal security and paid of by yearly installments, eat¬
ing largely into income—and the old mortgages, etc., I own
I have been pinched of late years. But what rejoices me the
most is the power to make homes for our honest laborers more
comfortable, and nearer to their work, which last is the chief
point, for the old cottages in themselves are not bad ; the mis¬
fortune is, when you build an extra room for the children
the silly people let it out to a lodger.
" My dear boy, I am very much touched by your wish to
increase your mother's jointure—a very proper wish, inde¬
pendently of filial feeling, for she brought to the estate a very
pretty fortune, which the trustees consented to my investing
in land; and though the land completed our ring-fence, it
does not bring in two per cent., and the conditions of the
entail limited the right of jointure to an amount below that
which a widowed Lady Chillingly may fairly expect.
" I care more about the provision on these points than I do
for the interests of old Chillingly Gordon's son. I had meant
to behave very handsomely to the father ; and when the re¬
turn for behaving handsomely is being put into Chancery—
A Worm Will Turn. Nevertheless, I agree with you that a
son should not be punished for his father's faults ; and if the
sacrifice of £2U,000 makes you and myself feel that we are
better Christians and truer gentlemen, we shall buy that feel¬
ing very cheaply."
Sir Peter then proceeded, half jestingly, half seriously, to
combat Kenclm's declaration that he was not in love with
kenelm chillingly.
15
Cecilia Travers ; and, urging the advantages of marriage with
one who Kenelm allowed would be a perfect wife, astutely
remarked that, unless Kenelm had a son of his own, it did not
seem to him quite just to the next of kin to will the property
from him, upon no better plea than the want of love for his
native country. " He wonld love his country fast enough if
he had ten thousand acres in it."
Kenelm shook his head when he came to this sentence
"ïs even, then, love for one's country but cuphoard-lovo
after all ?" said he ; and he postponed finishing the perusal
of his father's letter.
CHAPTER VII.
Kenelm Chillingly did not exaggerate the social posi¬
tion he had acquired when he classed himself amongst the
lions of the fashionable world. I dare not count the munber
of three-cornered notes showered upon him by the fine ladiei
who grow romantic upon any kind of celebrity ; or the caro
fully-sealed envelopes, containing letteis from fair anon^uiius,
who asked if he had a heart, and would be in such a place in
th 3 Park at such an hour. What there was in Kenelm Cl il-
lingly that should make him thus favored, especially by the
fair sex, it would be difiBcult to say, unless it was the twofold
reputation of being unlike other people, and of being unaf¬
fectedly indifferent to the gain of any reputation at all. He
16
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
might, had he so pleased, have easily established a proof that
the prevalent though vague belief in his talents was not alto¬
gether unjustified. For the articles he had sent from abroad
to ' The Londoner,' and by which his traveling expenses were
defrayed, had been stamped by that sort of originality in tone
and treatment which rarely fails to excite curiosity as to tho
author, and meets with more general praise than perhaps it
deserves.
But Mivers was true to his contract to preserve inviolable
the incognito of the author, and Kenelm regarded with pro¬
found contempt the articles themselves, and the readers who
praised them.
Just as misanthropy with some persons grows out of benevo¬
lence disappointed, so there are certain natures—and Kenelm
Chillingly's was perhaps one of them—in which indifferentism
grows out of earnestness baffled.
He had promised himself pleasure in renewing acquaintance
with his old tutor, Mr. Welby—pleasure in refreshing his own
taste for metaphysics and casuistry and criticism. But that
accomplished professor of realism had retired from philosophy
altogether, and was now enjoying a holiday for life in the
business of a public office. A Minister in favor of whom,
when in opposition, Mr. Welby, in a moment of whim, wrote
S(jme very able articles in a leading journal, had, on acceding
to power, presented the realist with one of those few good
tilings still left to Ministerial patronage—a place worth about
£1200 a year. His mornings thus engaged in routine wort,
Mr. Welby enjoyed his evenings in a convivial way.
"/lifent portiim,^' he said to Kenelm; "I plunge into no
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
17
tfCabled waters now. But come and dine with me to-morrow
tête-à-tête. My wife is at St. Leonard's with my youngest
bom for the benefit of sea-air." Kenelm accepted tbe invita¬
tion.
Tl) e dinner would have contented a Brillat-Savarin—it waa
feultl.'«s ; and the claret was that rare nectar, the Lafitte of
1848.
"I never share this," said "Welby, "with more than one
friend at a time."
Kenelm sought to engage his host in discussion on certain
new works in vogue, and which were composed according to
purely realistic canons of criticism. " The more realistic
these books pretend to be, the less real they are," said Ken-
elm. " I am half inclined to think that the whole school
you so systematically sought to build up is a mistake, and
that realism in art is a thing impossible."
" I daresay you are right. I took up that school in earnest
because I was in a passion with pretenders to the Idealistic
school ; and whatever one takes up in earnest is generally a
mistake, especially if one is in a passion. I was not in earnest
and I was not in a passion when I wrote those articles to
which I am indebted for my office." Mr. Welby here luxu¬
riously stretched his limbs, and, lifting his glass to his lips,
Volu])tuously inhaled its hovquet.
" You sadden me," returned Kenelm. " It is a melancholy
thing to find that one's mind was influenced in youth by a
teacher who mocks at his own teachings."
Welby shrugged his shoulders. " Life consists in the alter¬
nate process of learning and unlearning ; but it is often wiser
VOL. II. 2
18
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
to unlearn than to learn. For the rest, as I have ceased to b«
a critic, I care little whether I was wrong ór right when I
played that part I think I am right now as a placeman.
Let the world go its own way, provided the world lets yon
live upon it. I drain my wine to the lees, and cut down hope
to the hrief span of life. Reject realism in art if you please,
and accept realism in conduct. For the first time in my life
I am comfortable : my mind, having worn out its walking-
shoes, is now enjoying the luxury of slippers. "Who can deny
the realism of comfort ?"
" Has a man a right," Kenelm said to himself, as he en¬
tered his brougham, " to employ all the brilliancy of a rare
wit—all the acquisitions of as rare a scholarship—to the
scaring of the young generation out of the safe old roads
which youth left to itself would take—old roads skirted by
romantic rivers and bowery trees—directing them into new
paths on long sandy flats, and then, when they are faint and
■footsore, to tell them that he cares not a pin whether they
have worn out their shoes in right paths or wrong paths, for
that he has attained the summum honum of philosophy in the
comfort of easy slippers ?"
Before he could answer the question he thus put to him¬
self, his brougham stopped at the door of the Minister wh )m
Welby had contributed to bring into power.
That night there was a crowded muster of the fashionanle
world at the great man's house. It happened to be a very
critical moment for the Minister. The fate of his Cabinet
depended on the result of a motion about to be made the fol¬
lowing week in the House of Commons. The great man stood
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
la
at the entrance of the apartments to receive his guests, and
among the guests were the framers of the hostile motion and
the leaders of the Opposition. His smile was not less gracious
to them than to his dearest friends and stanchest supporters.
" I suppose this is realism," said Kenelm to himself ; " but
h is not truth, and it is not comfort." Leaning against the
■wall near the doorway, he contemplated with grave interest
the striking countenance of his distingaiished host. He de¬
tected beneath that courteous smile and that urbane manner
the signs of care. The eye was absent, the cheek pinched,
the brow furrowed. Kenelm turned away his looks, and
glanced over the animated countenances of the idle loungers
along commoner thoroughfares in life. Their eyes were not
absent, their brows were not furrowed ; their minds seemed
quite at home in exchanging nothings. Interest many of
them had in the approaching struggle, but it was much such
an interest as betters of small sums may have on the Derby
day—just enough to give piquancy to the race ; nothing to
make gain a great joy, or loss a keen anguish.
" Our host is looking ill," said Mivers, accosting Kenelm.
" I detect symptoms of suppressed gout. You know my
aphorism, ' nothing so gouty as ambition,' especially Parlia¬
mentary ambition."
" You are not one of those friends who press on my cht ice
of life that source of disease ; allow me to thank you."
" Your thanks are misplaced. I strongly advise you to
devote yourself to a political career."
" Despite the gout ?"
" Despite the gout. If you could take the world as I do,
20
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
my adiice might be different. But your mind is overcrowded
with doubts and fantasies and crotchets, and you have no
choice but to give them venTIn active life."
" You had something to do in making me what I am—an
idler; something to answer for as to my doubts, fantasies,
and crotchets. It was by your recommendation that I was
placed under the tuition of Mr. Welby, and at that critical
ago in which the bent of the twig forms the shape of the tree."
" And I pride myself on that counsel. I repeat the reasons
for which I gave it: it is an incalculable advantage for a
young man to start in life thoroughly initiated into the New
Ideas which will more or less influence his generation. Welby
was the ablest representative of these ideas. It is a wondrous
good fortune when the propagandist of the New Ideas is some¬
thing more than a bookish philosopher—^when he is a thorough
' man of the world,' and is what we emphatically call ' prac¬
tical.' Yes, you owe me much that I secured to you such
tuition, and saved you from twaddle and sentiment, the poetry
of Wordsworth and the muscular Christianity of cousin John."
" What you say that you saved me from might have done
me more good than all you conferred on me. I suspect that
when education succeeds in placing an old head upon young
shoulders the combination is not healthful—it clogs the blood
and slackens the pulse. However, I must not be ungrateful ;
you meant kindly. Yes, I suppose Welby is practical; he
has no belief, and he has got a place. But our host, I pre¬
sume, is also practical ; his place is a much higher one than
Welby's, and yet he surely is not without belief?"
" He was born before the new ideas eame into practical
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
21
force ; but in proportion as tbey bave done so, bis beliefs have
necessarily disappeared. I don't suppose tbat he believes in
much now, except the two propositions : firstly, that if he
accept the new ideas, he will have power and keep it, and if
he does not accept them, power is out of the question ; and
secondly, that if the new ideas are to prevail, he is the best
mac to direct them safely, — beliefs quite enough for a
Minister. No wise Minister should have more."
" Does he not believe that the motion he is to resist next
week is a bad one ?"
" A bad one of course, in its consequences, for if it succeed
it will upset him ; a good one in itself I am sure he must think
it, for he would bring it on himself if he were in opposition."
" I see that Pope's definition is still true, ' Party is the
madness of the many for the gain of the few.' "
" No, it is not true. Madness is a wrong word applied to
the many ; the many are sane enough—they know their own
objects, and they make use of the intellect of the few in
order to gain their objects. In each party it is the many that
control the few who nominally lead them. A man becomes
Prime Minister because he seems to the many of his party the
fittest person to carry out their views. If he presume to
differ from these views, they put him into a moral pillory and
pelt him with their dirtiest stones and their rottenest eggs."
" Then the maxim should be reversed, and party is rather
the madness of the few for the gain of the many ?"
" Of the two, that is the more correct definition."
" Let me keep my senses and decline to be one of the few."
Kcnelm moved away from his cousin's side, and, entering
22
KKXELSl CHILLINGLY.
one of tlie less crowded rooms, saw Cecilia Travers seated
there in a recess with Lady Glenalvon. He joined them, and,
after a brief interchange of a few commonplaces. Lady Glen¬
alvon quitted her post to accost a foreign ambassadress, and
Kenelm sank into the chair she vacated.
It was a relief to his eye to contemplate Cecilia's candid
brow ; to his ear to hearken to the soft; voice that had no
artificial tones and uttered no cynical witticisms.
" Don't you think it strange," said Kenehn, " that we
English should so mould all our habits as to make even what
xe call pleasure as little pleasurable as possible? We are
now in the beginning of June, the fresh outburst of summer,
when every day in the country is a delight to eye and ear, and
we say, ' the season for hot rooms is beginning.' We alone
of civilized races spend our summer in a capital, and cling to
the country when the trees are leafless and the brooks frozen."
" Certainly that is a mistake ; hut I love the country in all
seasons, even in winter."
" Provided the country house is full of London people ?"
"No ; that is rather a drawback. I never want companions
in the country."
" True ; I should have remembered that you differ from
young ladies in general, and make companions of books.
They are always more conversible in the country than they
are in town ; or rather, we listen there to them with less dis¬
tracted attention. Ha ! do I not recognize yonder the fair
whiskers of George Belvoir ? Who is the lady leaning oa
ûis arm ?"
" Don't you know ?—Lady Emily Belvoir, his wife."
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
23
•' Ah ! I was told that he had maiTied. The lady is hand¬
some. She will become the family diamonds. Does she read
Blue-books ?"
" I will ask her if you wish."
" Nay, it is scarcely worth while. During my rambles
abraad, I saw but few English newspapers. I did, however,
learn that George had won his election. Has he yet spoken
in Parliament?"
" Yes ; he moved the answer to the address this session,
and was much complimented on the excellent tone and tasto
of his speech. He spoke again a few weeks afterwards, I
fear not so successfully."
" Coughed down ?"
" Something like it."
" Do him good ; he will recover the cough, and fulfill my
prophecy of his success."
" Have you done with poor George for the present ? If
so, allow me to ask whether you have quite forgotten Will
Somers and Jessie Wiles ?"
" Forgotten them I .no."
" But you have never asked after them ?"
" I took it for granted that they were as happy as could be
expected. Pray assure me that they are."
" I trust so now ; but they have had trouble, and have left
Graveleigh."
" Trouble ! left Graveleigh ! You make me uneasy. Pray
explain."
" They had not been three months married and installed in
the home they owed to you, when poor Will was seized with
24
KENELM CIIILLINGLT.
a rlicumatic fever. He was confined to his bed for many
weeks ; and when at last he could move from it, was so weak
as to be still unable to do any work. During his illness
Jessie had no heart and little leisure to attend to the shop.
Of course I—^that is, my dear father—gave them all necessary
assistance; but "
" I understand ; they were reduced to objects of charity.
Brute that I am, never to have thought of the duties I owed
to the couple I had brought together. But pray go on."
"You are aware that just before you left us my father
received a proposal to exchange his property at Graveleigh
for some lands more desirable to him ?"
" I remember. He closed with that ofiFer ?"
" Yes ; Captain Stavers, the new landlord of Graveleigh,
seems to be a very bad man ; and though he could not turn
the Somerses out of the cottage so long as they paid rent
—^which we took care they did pay—^yet out of a very wicked
spite he set.up a rival shop in one of his other cottages in the
village, and it became impossible for these poor young people
to get a livelihood at Graveleigh."
" What excuse for spite against so harmless a young couple
could Captain Stavers find or invent?"
Cecilia looked down and colored. "It was a revengeful
feeling against Jessie."
"Ah! I comprehend."
" But they have now left the village, and are happily
settled elsewhere. Will has recovered his health, and they
are prospering—much more than they could ever have done
at Graveleigh."
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
25
" In that change you were their benefactress, Miss Travers?'
said Kenehn, in a more tender voice and with a softer eva
than he had ever before evinced towards the heiress.
" No, it is not I whom they have to thank and bless."
" Who, then, is it ? Your father?"
" No. Do not question me ; I am bound not to say. They
do not themselves know ; they rather believe that their
gratitude is due to you."
" To me ! Am I to be forever a sham in spite of myself?
My dear Miss Travers, it is essential to my honor that I should
undeceive this credulous pair ; where can I find them ?"
" I must not say ; but I will ask permission of their con ¬
cealed benefactor, and send you their address."
A touch was laid on Kenelm's arm, and a voice whispered,
" May I ask you to present me to Miss Travers ?"
" Miss Travers," said Kenelm, " I entreat you to add to
the list of your aequaintances a cousin of mine—Mr. Chil¬
lingly Gordon."
While Gordon addressed to Cecilia the well-bred conven¬
tionalisms with which acquaintance in London drawing-rooms
usually commences, Kenelm, obedient to a sign from Lady
Glenalvon, who had just re-entered the room, quitted his seat,
and joined the Marchioness.
" Is not that young man whom you left talking with Misa
Travers your clever cousin Gordon ?"
" The same."
" She is listening to him with great attention. How his
face brightens up as he talks I He is positively handsome,
thus animated."
VOL. II.—B
26
kenelm chillingly.
" Yes, I could fancy him a dangerous wooer. He has wit,
and liveliness, and audacity ; he could be very much in love
with a great fortune, and talk to the owner of it with a fervor
rarely exhibited by a Chillingly. Well, it is no affair of
mine."
" It ought to be."
" Alas and alas I that ' ought to be what depths of sor¬
rowful meaning lie within that simple phrase I How happy
would be our lives, how grand our actions, how pure our
souls, if all could be with us as it ought to be !"
CHAPTER VIIL
We often form cordial intimacies in the confined society of
a country house, or a quiet watering-place, or a small Conti¬
nental town, which fade away into remote acquaintanceship
in the mighty vortex of London life, neither party being to
blame for the estrangement. It was so with Leopold Travers
and Kenelm Chillingly. Travers, as we have seen, had felt a
powerful charm in the converse of the young stranger, so in
contrast with the routine of the rural companionships to which
his alert intellect had for many years circumscribed its range.
But, on reappearing in London the season before .Kenelm
again met him, he had renewed old friendships with men of
his own standing,—officers in the regiment of which he had
once been a popular ornament, some of them still unmarried.
KENELM CniH INQLY.
27
a few of them like himself, widowed; others who had been
his rivals in fashion, and were still pleasant idlers about town ;
and it rarely happens in a metropolis that we have intimate
friendships with those of another generation, unless there be
some common tie in the cultivation of art and letters, or the
action of kindred sympathies in the party strife of politics.
Therefore Travers and Kenelm had had little familiar commu¬
nication with each other since they first met at the Beauma-
noirs'. Now and then they found themselves at the same
crowded assemblies, and interchanged nods and salutations.
But their habits were different. The houses at which thev
were intimate were not the same ; neither did they frequent
the same clubs. Kenelm's chief bodily exercise was still that
of long and early rambles into rural suburbs ; Leopold's was
that of a late ride in the Row. Of the two, Leopold waa
much more the man of pleasure. Once restored to metropoli¬
tan life, a temper constitutionally eager, ardent, and convivial,
took kindly, as in earlier youth, to its light range of enjoyments.
Had the intercourse between the two men been as frankly
familiar as it had been at Neesdale Park, Kenelm would
probably have seen much more of Cecilia at her own home ;
and the admiration and esteem with which she already
inspired him might have ripened into much warmer feeling,
had he thus been brought into clearer comprehension of the
wft and womanly heart, and its tender predisposition towards
himself.-
He had said somewhat vaguely in his letter to Sir Peter
that " sometimes he felt as if his indifference to love, as to
ambition, was because he had some impossible ideal in each."
28
kenelm chillingly.
Taking that conjecture to task, he could not honestly persuade
himself that he had formed any ideal of woman and wife with
which the reality of Cecilia Travers was at war. On the con¬
trary, the more he thought over the characteristics of Cecilia,
the more they seemed to correspond to any ideal that had
floated before him in the twilight of dreamy reverie, and yet he
knew that he was not in love with her, that his heart did not
respond to his reason. And mournfully he resigned himself
to the conviction that nowhere in this planet, from the normal
pursuits of whose inhabitants he felt so estranged, was there
waiting for him the smiling playmate, the earnest helpmate.
As this conviction strengthened, so an increased weariness of
the artificial life of the metropolis, and of all its objects and
amusements, turned his thoughts with an intense yearning
towards the Bohemian freedom and fresh excitements of his
foot ramblings. He often thought with envy of the wander¬
ing minstrel, and wondered whether, if he again traversed the
same range of country, he might encounter again that vagrant
singer.
CHAPTER IX.
It is nearly a week since Kenelm had met Cecilia, and he
is sitting in his rooms with Lord Thetford at that hour of
three in the afternoon which is found the most difficult to
dispose of by idlers about town. Amongst young men of his
own age and class with whom Kenelm assorted in the fashion-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
29
able world, perhaps the one whom he liked the best, and of
whom he saw the most, was this young heir of the Beau-
manoirs ; and though Lord Thetford has nothing to do with
the direct stream of my story, it is worth pausing a few
minutes to sketch an outline of one of the best whom the last
generation has produced for a part that, owing to accidenta
of birth and fortune, young men like Lord Thetford must
f la^ on that stage from which the curtain is not yet drawn
up. Destined to be the head of a family that unites with
princely possessions and an historical name a keen though
honorable ambition for political power. Lord Thetford has
been carefully educated, especially in the new ideas of his
time. His father, though a man of no ordinary talents, has
never taken a prominent part in publie life. He desires his
eldest son to do so. The Beaumanoirs have been Whigs from
the time of William III. They have shared the good and
the ill fortunes of a party which, whether we side with it or
not, no politician who dreads extremes in the government of
a State so pre-eminently artificial that a prevalent extreme at
either en J of the balance would be fatal to equilibrium, can
desire to become extinct or feeble so long as a constitutional
monarchy exists in England. From the reign of George 1
to the death of George IV., the Beaumanoirs were in thf
ascendant. Visit their family portrait gallery, and you musí
admire the eminence of a house which, during that interval
of less than a century, contributed so many men to the ser¬
vice of the State or the adornment of the Court—so many
Ministers, Ambassadors, Generals, Lord Chamberlains, and
Masters of the Horse. When the younger Pitt beat the
so
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
great Whig Houses, the Beaumanoirs vanish into comparative
ohscurity ; they re-emerge with the accession of William IV.,
ami once more produce bulwarks of the State and ornaments
of the Crown. The present Lord of Beaumanoir, poco
curante in politics though he he, has at least held high offices
at Court ; and, as a matter of course, he is Lord Lieutenant
of his county, as well as Knight of the Garter. He is a man
whom the chiefs of his party have been accustomed to consult
on critical questions. He gives his opinions confidentially
and modestly, and when they are rejected never takes offense.
He thinks that a time is coming when the head of the Beau¬
manoirs should descend into the lists and fight hand-to-hand
with any Hodge or Hobson in the cause of his country for
the benefit of the Whigs. Too laay or too old to do this
himself, he says to his son, " You must do it. Without effort
of mine the thing may last my life : it needs effort of yours
that the thing may last through your own."
Lord Thetford cheerfully responds to the paternal admoni¬
tion. He curbs his natural inclinations, which are neither
inelegant nor unmanly ; for, on the one side, he is very fond
of music and painting, an accomplished amateur, and deemed
a sound connoisseur in both; and, on the other side, he has a
passion for all field sports, and especially for hunting. He
ahows no such attractions to interfere with diligent attention
to the business of the House of Commons. He serves in
Committees, he takes the chair at public meetings on sanitary
questions or projects for social improvement, and acquits
himself well therein. He has not yet spoken in debate, but
he has been only two years in Parliament, and he takes his
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
father's wise advice not to speak till the third. But he is
not without weight among the well-born youth of the party,
and has in him the stuff out of which, when it becomes
seasoned, the Corinthian capitals of a Cabinet may be very
efiFectively carved. In his own heart he is convinced that his
party are going too far and too fast; but with that party he
goes on light-heartedly, and would continue to do so if they
went to Erebus. But he would prefer their going the other
way. For the rest, a pleasant bright-eyed young fellow, with
vivid animal spirits ; and, in the holiday moments of reprieve
from public duty, he brings sunshine into draggling hunting-
fields, and a fresh breeze into heated ball-rooms.
" My dear fellow," said Lord Thstford, as he threw aside
his cigar, " I quite understand that you bore yourself—^you
have nothing else to do."
" What can I do?"
" Work."
" Work !"
" Yes, you are clever enough to feel that you have a mind;
and mind is a restless inmate of body—it craves occupation
of some sort, and regular occupation too ; it needs its daily
constitutional exercise. Do you give your mind that ?"
" I am sure I don't know, but my mind is always busying
itself about something or other."
" In a desultory way—with no fixed object.'
" True."
" Write a book, and then it will have its constitutional."
" Nay, my mind is always writing a book (though it may
not publish one), always jotting down impressions, or invent-
32
KENELM CHILLINGIT.
ing incidents, or investigating characters ; and between you
and me, I do not think that I do bore myself so much as I
did formerly. Other people bore me more than they did."
" Because you will not create an object in common with
c thcr people ; come into Parliament, side with a party, and
you have that object."
" Do you miean seriously to tell me that you are not bored
in the House of Commons ?"
" With the speakers very often, yes ; but with the strife
between the speakers, no. The House of Commons life has a
peculiar excitement scarcely understood out of it; hut you
may conceive its charm when you observe that a man who
has once been in the thick of it feels forlorn and shelved if he
lose his seat, and even repines when the accident of birth
transfers him to the serener air of the Upper House. Tiy
that life. Chillingly."
" I might if I were an ultra-Eadical, a Eepublican, a Com¬
munist, a Socialist, and wished to upset everything existing,
for then the strife would at least be a very earnest one."
" But could not you he equally in earnest against those
revolutionary gentlemen ?"
" Are you and your leaders in earnest against them ? They
don't appear to me so."
Thetford was silent for a minute. " Well, if you doubt the
principles of my side, go with the other side. For my part,
I and many of our party would be glad to see the Conserva¬
tives stronger."
" I have no doubt they would. No sensible man likes to
be carried off his legs by the rush of the crowd behind him ;
KENELM CIIILLINaLT.
33
and a crowd is less headlong when it sees a strong forco
arrayed against it in front. But it seems to me that, at
present, Conservatism can but be what it now is—a p*n/
that may combine for resistance, and will not combine for
inventive construction. We are living in an age in which the
process of unsettlement is going blindly at work, as if impelled
by a Nemesis as blind as itself. New ideas come beating in
surf and surge against those which former reasoners had con¬
sidered as fixed banks and breakwaters ; and the new ideas are
so mutable, so fickle, that those which were considered novel
ten years ago are deemed obsolete to-day, and the new ones
of to-day will in their turn be obsolete to-morrow. And, in a
sort of fatalism, you see statesmen yielding way to these suc¬
cessive mockeries of experiment—^for they are experiments
against experience—and saying to each other with a shrug
of the shoulders, ' Bismillah, it must be so ; the country will
have it, even though it sends the country to the dogs.' I
don't feel sure that the country will not go there the sooner, if
you can only strengthen the Conservative element enough to
set it up in office, with the certainty of knocking it down
again. Alas ! I am too dispassionate a looker-on to be fit for
a partisan ; would I were not. Address yourself to my cousin
Cordon."
" Ay, Chillingly Gordon is a coming man, and has all the
earnestness you find absent in party and in yourself."'
" You call him earnest ?"
" Thoroughly, in the pursuit of one object—the advance¬
ment of Chillingly Gordon. If he get into the House of
Commons, and succeed there, I hope he will never become
VOL. II.—B* 3
34
KENELU CHILLINGLY.
my leader ; for if he thought Christianity in the way of hw
promotion, he would bring in a bill for its abolition."
"In that case would he still be your leader?"
" My dear Kenelm, you don't know what is the spirit of
party, and how easily it makes excuses for any act of its
leader. Of course, if Gordon brought in a bill for the aboli¬
tion of Christianity, it would be on the plea that the abolition
was good for the Christians, and his followers would cheer
that enlightened sentiment."
" Ah," said Kenelm, with a sigh, " I own myself the dullest
of blockheads ; for instead of tempting me into the field of
party politics, your talk leaves me in stolid amaze that you do
not take to your heels, where honor can only be saved by
flight."
" Pooh ! my dear Chillingly, we cannot run away from the
age in which we live—we must accept its conditions and
make the best of them ; and if the House of Commons be
nothing else, it is a famous debating society and a capital
club. Think over it. I must leave you now. I am going
to see a picture at the Exhibition which has been most
truculently criticised in ' The Londoner,' but which [ am
assured, on good authority, is a work of remarkable merit.
I can't bear to see a man snarled and sneered down, no doubt
by jealous rivals, who have their influence in journals, so 1
shall judge of the picture for myself. If it be really as good
as I am told, I shall talk about it to everybody I meet—and
in matters of ai-t I fancy my word goes for something. Study
art, my dear Kenclm. No gentleman's education is complete
if he d ~n't know a good picture from a bad one. After the
kenelm cnillinglt.
35
Exhibition I shall just have time for a canter round the Park
before the debate of the session, which begins to-night."
With a light" step the young man quitted the room, hum
ming au air from the " Figaro" as he descended the stairs
From the window Kenelm watched him swinging himself
with careless grace into his saddle and riding briskly down
the street—in form and face and bearing, a very model of
young, high-born, high-bred manhood. " The Venetians,"
muitered Kenelm, " decapitated Marino Faliero for conspiring
against his own order—the nobles. The Venetians loved
their institutions, and had faith in them. Is there such love
and such faith among the English?"
As he thus soliloquized, he heard a shrilling sort of squeak ;
and a showman stationed before his window the stage on which
Punch satirizes the laws and moralities of the world, " kills
the beadle and defies the devil."
CHAPTER X.
Kenelm turned from the sight of Punch and Punch's
friend the cur, as his servant, entering, said, " A person from
the country, who would not give his name, asked to see him."
Thinking it might be some message from his father,
Kenelm ordered the stranger to be admitted, and in another
minute there entered a young man of handsome countenance
and powerful frame, in whom, after a surprised stare, Kenelm
Tec()gnized Tom Bowles. Difficult indeed would have been
36
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
that recognition to an unobservant beholder: no trace waa
»eft of the sullen bully or the village farrier ; the expression
of the face was mild and intelligent—more bashful than
hardy ; the brute strength of the form had lost its former
clumsiness, the simple dress was that of a gentleman—to use
an expressive idiom, the whole man was wonderfully " tonea
down."
" I am afraid, sir, I am taking a liberty," said Tom, rather
nervously, twiddling his hat between his fingers.
" I should he a greater friend to liberty than I am if it
were always taken in the same way," said Kenelm, with a
touch of his saturnine humor; hut then,yielding at once to
the warmer impulse of his nature, he grasped his old antago¬
nist's hand and exclaimed, " My dear Tom, you are so wel¬
come. I am so glad to see you. Sit down, man—sit down ;
make yourself at home."
" I did not know you were hack in England, sir, till within
the last few days ; for you did say that when you came hack
I should see or hear from you," and there was a tone of re¬
proach in the last words.
"I am to blame: forgive me," said Kenelm, remorsefully.
"But how did you find me out? you did not then, I think,
even know my name. That, however, it was easy enough to
discover ; hut who gave you my address in this lodging ?"
" Well, sir, it was Miss Travers ; and she hade me come to
you. Otherwisj, as you did not send for me, it was scarcely
my place to call uninvited."
" But, my dear Tom, I never dreamed that you were in
London. One don't ask a man whom one supposes to he
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
37
more than a hundred miles off to pay one an afternoon call.
Yon are still with your uncle, I presume? And I need not
ask if all thrives well with you—^you look a prosperous man,
every inch of you, from crown to toe."
" Yes," said Tom ; " thank you kindly, sir, I am doing well
in the way of business, and my uncle is to give me up the
whole concern at Christmas."
While Tom thus spoke, Kenelm had summoned his servant,
and ordered up such refreshments as could be found in the
larder of a bachelor in lodgings. " And what brings you to
town, Tom?"
" Miss Travers wrote to me about a little business which
she was good enough to manage for me, and said you wished
to know about it ; and so, after turning it over in my mind
for a few days, I resolved to come to town : indeed," added
Tom, heartily, " I did wish to see your face again."
" But you talk riddles. What business of yours could
Miss Travers imagine I wished to know about ?"
Tom colored high, and looked very embarrassed. Luckily,
the servant here entering with the refreshment-tray allowed
him time to recover himself. Kenelm helped him to a liberal
slice of cold pigeon-pie, pressed wine on him, and did not
renew the subject till he thought his guest's tongue was likely
to be more freely set loose ; then he said, laying a friendly
hand on Tom's shoulder, " I have been thinking over what
passed between me and Miss Travers. I wished to have the
new address of Will Somers ; she promised to write to his
benefactor to a.sk permission to give it. You are that bene¬
factor ?"
38
KENEI>M CHILLINGLY.
" Don't say benefactor, sir. I will tell you how it came
about, if you will let me. You see, I sold my little place at
Graveleigh to the new Squire, and when mother removed to
Iiuscombe to be near me, she told me how poor Jessie had
been annoyed by Captain Stavers, who seems to think his
parchase included the young women on the property along
with the standing timber ; and I was half afraid that she had
given some cause for his persecution, for you know she has a
blink of those soft eyes of hers that might charm a wise man
out of his skin, and put a fool there instead."
" But I hope she has done with those blinks since her mar¬
riage."
" Well, and I honestly think she has. It is certain she did
not encourage Captain Stavers, for I went over to Graveleigh
myself on the sly, and lodged concealed with one of the cot¬
tagers who owed me a kindness ; and one day, as I was at
watch, I saw the Captain peering over the stile which divides
Holmwood from the glebe—you remember Holmwood ?"
" I can't say I do."
" The footway from the village to Squire Travers's goes
through the wood, which is a few hundred yards at the back
of Will Somers's orchard. Presently the Captain drew him¬
self suddenly back from the stile, and disappeared among the
trees, and then I saw Jessie coming from the orchard with a
basket over her arm, and walking quick towards the wood.
Then, sir, my heart sank. I felt sure she was going to meet
the Captain. However, I crept along the hedgerow, hiding
myself, and got into the wood almost as soon as Jessie got
there, by another way. Under the cover of the brushwood I
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
stole on till I saw the Captain come out from the copse on
the other side of the path and plant himself just before Jessie.
Then I saw at once I had wronged her. She had not ex¬
pected to see him, for she hastily turned back, and began to
run homeward ; hut he caught her up, and seized her by the
irm. I could not hear what he said, but I heard her voice
|uite sharp with fright and anger. And then he suddenly
<eized her around the waist, and she screamed, and I sprang
forward "
"And thrashed the Captain?"
" No, I did not," said Tom ; " I had made a vow to myself
that I never would be violent again if I could help it. So I
took him with one hand by the cuif of the neck, and with the
other by the waistband, and just pitched him on a bramble-
bush—quite mildly. He soon picked himself up, for he is a
dapper little chap, and became very blustering and abusive.
But I kept my temper, and said, civilly, ' Little gentleman,
hard words break no bones; but if ever you molest Mrs.
Somers again, I will carry you into her orchard, souse you
into the duck-pond there, and call all the villagers to see you
Scramble out of it again ; and I will do it now if you are not off.
I daresay you have heard of my name—I am Tom Bowles.'
Upon that, his face, which was before very red, grew very
white, and, muttering something I did not hear, he walked
away.
" Jessie—I mean Mrs. Somers—seemed at first as much
frightened at me as she had been at the Captain ; and though
I offered to walk with her to Miss Travers's, where she was
going with a basket which the young lady had ordered, she
40
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
refused, and went back home. I felt hurt, and returned ta
my uncle's the same evening ; and it was not for months that
I heard the Captain had been spiteful enough to set up an
opposition shop, and that poor Will had been taken ill, and
his wife was confined about the same time, and the talk was
that they were in distress, and might have to be sold up.
" When I heard all this, I thought that after all it was my
rough tongue that had so angered the Captain and been the
cause of his spite, and so it was my duty to make it up to
poor AVill and his wife. I did not know how to set about
mending matters, but I thought I'd go and talk to Miss Trav¬
ers; and if ever there was a kind heart in a girl's breast
hers is one."
" You are right there, I guess. What did Miss Travers say?"
" Nay ; I hardly know what she did say, but she set mc-
thinking, and it struck me that Jessie—Mrs. Somers—^had
better move to a distance, and out of the Captain's reach, and
that Will would do better in a less out-of-the way place. And
then, by good luck, I read in the newspaper that a stationery
and fancy-work business, with a circulating library, was to
be sold on moderate terms at Moleswich, the other side of
London. So I took the train and went to the place, and
thought the shop would just suit these young folks, and not
be too much work for either ; then I went to Miss Travers,
and I had a lot of money lying by me from the sale of the old
forge and premises, which I did not know what to do with ,
and so, to cut short a long story, T bought the business, and
Will and bis wife are settled at Moleswich, thriving and
happy, I hope, sir."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
41
Tom's voice quivered at the last words, and he turned
aside quickly, passing his hand over his eyes.
Kenelm was greatly moved.
" And they don't know what you did for them ?"
"To be sure not. I don't think Will would have let him¬
self be beholden to me. Ah 1 the lad has a spirit of his own,
and Jessie—Mrs. Somers—^would have felt pained and hum¬
bled that I should even think of such a thing. Miss Travers
managed it all. They take the money as a loan which is to be
paid by installments. They have sent Miss Travers more
than one installment already, so I know they are doing
well."
" A loan from Miss Travers ?' '
" No ; Miss Travers wanted to have a share in it, but I
begged her not. It made me happy to do what I did all my¬
self ; and Miss Travers felt for me and did not press. They
perhaps think it is Squire Travers (though he is not a man
who would like to say it, for fear it should bring applicants
on him), or some other gentleman who takes an interest
in them."
" I always said you were a grand fellow, Tom. But you
are grander still than I thought you."
" If there be any good in me, I owe it to you, sir. Think
what a drunken, violent brute I was when I first met you.
Those walks with you, and I may say that other gentleman's
talk, and then that long kind letter I had from you, not signed
in your name, and written from abroad—all these changed
me, as the child is changed at nurse."
" Fou have evidently read a good deal since we parted."
42
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Yes ; I belong to our young men's library and institute ;
and when of an evening I get hold of a book, especially a
pleasant story-book, I don't care for other eompany."
" Have you never seen any other girl you could care for
and wish to marry ?"
"Ah, sir," answered Tom, " a man does not go so mad for
a girl as I did for Jessie Wiles, and when it is all over, and
he has come to his senses, put his heart into joint again as
easily as if it were only a broken leg. I don't say that I may
not live to love and to marry another woman—it is my wish to
do so. But I know that I shall love Jessie to my dying day;
but not sinfully, sir—not sinfully. I would not wrong her
by a thought."
There was a long pause.
At last Kenelm said, " You promised to be kind to that
little girl with the flower-ball ; what has become of her?"
" She is quite well, thank you, sir. My aunt has taken a
great fancy to her, and so has my mother. She comes to
them very often of an evening, and brings her work with her.
A quick, intelligent little thing, and full of pretty thoughts.
On Sundays, if the weather is fine, we stroll out together in
the fields."
" She has been a comfort to you, Tom."
" Oh, yes."
" And loves you ?"
" I am sure she does ; an aflectionate, grateful child."
" She will be a woman soon, Tom, and may love you as a
woman then."
Tom looked indignant and rather scornful at that suggestion,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
43
and hastened to revert to the subject more immediately at his
heart.
" Miss Travers said you would like to call on Will Somers
and his wife ; will you? Moleswich is not far from London,
you know."
" Certainly I will call."
" I do hope you will find them happy ; and if so, perhaps
you \^ill kindly let me know ; and—and—I wonder whether
Jeasie's child is like her? It is a boy—somehow or other I
would rather it had been a girl."
" I will write you full particulars. But why flot come with •
me ?"
" No, I don't think I could do that, just at present. It
unsettled me sadly when I did again see her sweet face at
Graveleigh, and she was still afraid of me too !—that was a
sharp pang."
" She ought to know what you have done for her, and
wUl."
" On no account, sir ; promise me that. I should feel mean
if I humbled them—that way."
" I understand ; though I will not as yet make you any
positive promise. Meanwhile, if you are staying in town,
lodge with me ; my landlady can find you a room."
" Thank you heartily, sir ; but I go back by the evening
train ; and, bless me ! how late it is now I I must wish you
good-bye. I have some commissions to do for my aunt, and
I must buy a new doll for Susey."
" Susey is the name of the little girl with the flower-ball ?"
" Yes. I must run off now ; I feel quite light at heart
44
KENKLM CHILLINGLY.
seeing j'ou again and finding that you receive me still so
kindly, as if we were equals."
" Ah, Tom, I wish I was your equal—nay, half as noble
as heaven has made you !"
Tom laughed incredulously, and went his way.
" This mischievous passion of love," said Kenelm to him¬
self, " has its good side, it seems, after all. If it was nearly
making a wild beast of that brave fellow—nay, worse than
wild beast, a homicide doomed to the gibbet—so, on the other
hand, what a refined, delicate, chivalrous nature of gentleman
it has developed out of the stormy elements of its first mad¬
ness! Yes, I will go and look at this new-married couple. I
daresay they are already snarling and spitting at each other
like cat and dog. iloleswich is within reach of a walk."
book: V.
CHAPTER 1.
Two days after the interview recorded in the last chaptei
of the previous Book, Travers, chancing to call at Kenelm's
lodgings, was told by his servant that Mr. Chillingly had left
London, alone, and had given no orders as to forwarding
letters. The servant did not know where he had gone, or
when he would return.
Travers repeated this news incidentally to Cecilia, and she
felt somewhat hurt that he had not written her a line respect¬
ing Tom's visit. She, however, guessed that he had gone to
see the Somerses, and would return to town in a day or so.
But weeks passed, the season drew to its close, and of Kenelm
Chillingly she saw or heard nothing : he had wholly vanished
from the London world. He had but written a line to his
servant, ordering him to repair to Exmundham and await
him there, and inclosing him a cheque to pay outstanding
bills.
We must now follow the devious steps of the strange being
who has gi'own into the hero of this story. He had left his
apartment at daybreak long before his servant was up, with
his knapsack, and a small portmanteau, into which he had
thrust—^besides such additional articles of dress as he thought
he might possibly require, and which his knapsack could not
(45)
46
kenelm chillingly.
contain—a few of his favorite books. Driving with these in
a hack-cab to the Vauxhall station, he directed the portman¬
teau to be forwarded to Moleswich, and, flinging the knapsack
on his shoulders, walked slowly along the drowsy suburbs
that stretched far into the landscape, before, breathing more
freely, he found some evidences of rural culture on either side
of the high-road. It was not, however, till he had left the
roofs and trees of pleasant Bichmond far behind him that he
began to feel he was out of reach of the metropolitan dis¬
quieting influences. Finding at a little inn, where he stopped
to breakfast, that there was a path along fields, and in sight
of the river, through which he could gain the place of his
destination, he then quitted the high-road, and, traversing one
of the loveliest districts in one of our loveliest counties, ho
reached Moleswich about noon.
CHAPTER II.
On entering the main street of the pretty town, the name
of Somers, in gilt capitals, was sufiBciently conspicuous over
the door of a very imposing shop. It boasted two plate-glass
V indows, at one of which were tastefully exhibited various
articles of fine stationery, embroidery patterns, etc. ; at the
other, no less tastefully, sundiy specimens of ornamental
basket-work.
Kenelm crossed the threshold and recognized behind the
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
47
counter—as ever, but with an expression of face more
staid, and a ligure more rounded and matron-like—his old
friend Jessie. There were two or three customers before her,
between whom she was dividing her attention. Whüe a
handsome young lady, seated, was saying, in a somewhat
loud, hut vheery and pleasant voice, " Do not mind me, Mrs.
Somsrs—I can wait," Jessie's quick eye darted towards the
stranger, hut too rapidly to distinguish his features, which,
indeed, he turned away, and began to examine the baskets.
In a minute or so the other customers were served and had
departed. And the voice of the lady was again heard—" Now,
Mrs. Somers, I want to see your picture-books and toys. I am
giving a little children's party this afternoon, and I want to
make them as happy as possible."
" Somewhere or other on this planet, or before my Monad
was whisked away to it, I have heard that voice," muttered
Kenelm. While Jessie was alertly bringing forth her toys
and picture-books, she said, " I am sorry to keep you waiting,
sir ; but if it is the baskets you come about, I can call my hus¬
band."
" Do," said Kenelm.
" William—William," cried Mrs. Somers ; and after a delay
long enough to allow him to slip on his jacket, William
Somers emerged from the back parlor.
His face had lost its old trace of suffering and ill health ;
it was still somewhat pale, and retained its expression of in¬
tellectual refinement.
" How you have improved in your art 1' ' said Kenelm
heartily.
48
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
William started, and recognized Kenelm at once. H*
sprang forward and took Kenelm's outstretched hand in both
his own, and, in a voice between laughing and crying, ex¬
claimed, "Jessie, Jessie, it is he!—he whom we pray for
every night. God bless you !—God bless and make you as
happy as He permitted you to make me !"
Before this little speech was faltered out, Jessie was by her
husband's side, and she added, in a lower voice, but tremulous
with deep feeling, " And me too !"
" By your leave. Will," said Kenelm, and he saluted Jessie's
white forehead with a kiss that could not have been kindlier
or colder if it had been her grandfather's.
Meanwhile the lady had risen noiselessly and unobserved,
and, stealing up to Kenelm, looked him full in the face.
•" You have another friend here, sir, who has also some
cause to thank you "
" I thought I remembered your voice," said Kenelm, look¬
ing puzzled. " But pardon me if I cannot recall your features.
Where have we met before ?"
" Give me your arm when we go out, and I will bring my¬
self to your recollection. But no : I must not hurry you
away now. I will call again in half an hour. Mrs. Somers,
meanwhile put up the things I have selected. I will take them
away with me when I come hack from the vicarage, where T
have left the pony-carriage." So, with a parting nod and
smile to Kenelm, she turned away, and left him bewil¬
dered.
" But who is that lady. Will ?"
" A Mrs. Braefield. She is a new-comer."
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
49
" Slie may well be that, Will," said Jessie, smiling, " for
she has only been married six months."
" And what was her name before she married ?'
" I am sure I don't know, sir. It is only three months
since we came here, and she has been very kind to us, and an
cxcelleni customer. Everybody likes her. Mr. Braefield is
A city gentleman, and very rich ; and they live in the finest
bouse in the place, and see a great deal of company."
" Well, I am no wiser than I was before," said Kenelm.
" People who ask questions very seldom are."
" And how did you find us out, sir?" said Jessie. " Oh !
I guess," she added, with an arch glance and smile. " Of
course, you have seen Miss Travers, and she told you."
" You are right. I first learned your change of residence
from her, and thought I would come and see you, and be
introduced to the baby—a boy, I understand? Like you,
Will?"
" No, sir—the picture of Jessie."
"Nonsense, Will; it is you all over, even to its little
hands."
" And your good mother. Will, how did you leave her ?"
" Oh, sir 1" cried Jessie, reproachfully; " do you think we
could have the heart to leave mother—so lone and rheumatic
too ? She is tending baby now—always does while I am in
the shop."
Here Kenelm followed the young couple into the parlor,
where, seated by the window, they found old Mrs. Somers
reading the Bible and rocking the baby, who slept peacefully
in its cradle.
VOL. II.—0 4
50
KKNELM CHILLINGLY.
" Will," said Kenelm, bending bis dark face over the infant,
" I will tell you a pretty thought of a foreign poet's, which
has been thus badly translated :
" ' Blest babe, a boundless world this bed so narrow seems to thee ;
drew man, and narrower than this bed the boundless world shall be.'"
" I don't think that is true, sir," said Will, simply ; " for
u happy home is a world wide enough for any man."
Tears started into Jessie's eyes ; she bent down and kissed
—not the baby—^but the cradle. " Will made it." She
added, blushing, " I mean the cradle, sir."
Time flew past while Kenelm talked with Will and the old
mother, for Jessie was soon summoned back to the shop ; and
Kenelm was startled when he found the half-hour's grace
allowed to him was over, and Jessie put her head in at the
door and said, " Mrs. Braefield is waiting for you."
" Good-bye, Will ; I shall come and see you again soon ;
and my mother gives me a commission to buy I don't know
how many specimens of your craft."
CHAPTER III.
A SMART pony-phaeton, with a box for a driver in livery
equally smart, stood at the shop-door.
" Now, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Braefield, " it is my turn
to run away with you ; get in !"
* Schiller.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
51
" Eh !" murmured Kenelm, gazing at her with large dreamy
eyes. " Is it possible?"
" Quite possible ; get in. Coachman, home ! Yes, Mr.
Chillingly, you meet again that giddy creature whom you
threatened to thrash; it would have served her right. T
ought to feel so ashamed to recall myself to your recollection,
and yet I am not a bit ashamed. I am proud to show you
that I have turned out a steady, respectable woman, and, my
husband tells me, a good wife."
" You have only been six months married, I hear," said
Kenelm, dryly. " I hope your husband will say the same six
years hence."
" He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long."
" How old is he now ?"
" Thirty-eight."
" When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he
probably has learned to know his own mind; but then, in
most cases, very little mind is left to him to know."
" Don't be satirical, sir ; and don't talk as if you were rail¬
ing at marriage, when you have just left as happy a young
couple as the sun ever shone upon, and owing—for Mrs.
Somers has told me all about her marriage—owing their
happiness to you."
" Their happiness to me ! not in the least. I helped them
to marry, and, in spite of marriage, they helped each other to
be happy."
" You are still unmarried yourself?"
" Yes, thank Heaven 1"
" And are you happy ?"
52
KENELM CHILLINQLT,
"No ; I can't make myself liappy—^myself is a discontented
brute."
" Then why do you say ' thank Heaven' ?"
" Because it is a comfort to think I am not making some¬
body else unhappy."
" Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you,
you should make her unhappy ?"
" I am sure I don't know ; but I have not seen a woman
whom I could love as a wife. And we need not push our
inquiries further. What has become of that ill-treated gray
cob?"
" He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him."
" And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if
you had not so gallantly defended yourself?"
"He is living where he did live, and has married his
housekeeper. He felt a delicate scruple against taking that
step till I was married myself, and out of the way."
Here Mrs. Braefield, beginning to speak very hurriedly, as
women who seek to disguise emotion often do, informed
Kenelm how unhappy she had felt for weeks after having
found an asylum with her aunt—how she had been stung by
remorse and oppressed by a sense of humiliation at the thought
of her folly and the odious recollection of Mr. Compton—^1 ow
she had declared to herself that she would never many any
one now—never ! How Mr. Braefield happened to be on a
visit in the neighborhood, and saw her at church—how he
had sought an introduction to her—and how at first she
rather disliked him than not ; but he was so good and so kind,
and when at last he proposed—and she had frankly told him
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
53
all about her girlish flight and infatuation—^how generously
he had thanked her for a eandor which had placed her as high
in his esteem as she had been before in his love. " And from
that moment," said Mrs. Braefield, passionately, " my whols
heart leapt to him. And now you know all. And here ws
are at the Lodge."
The pony-phaeton went with great speed up a broad gravel
drive, bordered with rare evergreens, and stopped at a hand¬
some house with a portico in front, and a long conservatory
at the garden side—one of those houses which belong to
" city gentlemen," and often contain more comfort and exhibit
more luxury than many a stately manorial mansion.
Mrs. Braefleld evidently felt some pride as she led Kenelm
through the handsome hall, paved with Malvern tiles and
adorned with Scagliola columns, and into a drawing-room
furnished with much taste, and opening on a spacious flower-
garden.
" But where is Mr. Braefleld ?" asked Kenelm.
" Oh, he has taken the rail to his office ; but he will be
back long before dinner, and of course you dine with us."
" You are very hospitable, but "
"No buts; I will take no excuse. Don't fear that you
shall have only mutton-chops and a rice-pudding ; and, be¬
sides, I have a children's party coming at two o'clock, and
there will be all sorts of fun. You are fond of children, I am
sure?"
" I rather think I am not. But I have never clearly ascer¬
tained my own inclinations upon that subject."
"Well, you shall have ample opportunity to do so to day.
54
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
And oh I I promise you the sight of the loveliest face that
you can picture to yourself when you think of your future
wife."
" My future wife, I hope, is not yet horn," said Kenelm,
wearily, and with much effort suppressing a yawn. " But, at
all events, I will stay till after two o'clock ; for two o'clock, I
presume, means luncheon."
Mrs. Braefield laughed.—" You retain your appetite?"
" îlost single men do, provided they don't fall in love and
become doubled up."
At this abominable attempt at a pun, Mrs. Braefield dis¬
dained to laugh ; hut, turning away from its perpetrator, she
took off her hat and gloves and passed her hands lightly over
her forehead, as if to smooth back some vagrant tress in
locks already sufficiently sheen and trim. She was not quite
so pretty in female attire as she had appeared in hoy's dress,
nor did she look quite as young. In all other respects she
was wonderfully improved. There was a serener, a more
settled intelligence in her frank bright eyes, a milder expres¬
sion in the play of her parted lips. Kenelm gazed at her
with pleased admiration. And as now, turning from the
glass, she encountered his look, a deeper color came into the
clear delicacy of her cheeks, and the fr.ink eyes moistened.
She came up to him as he sat, and took his hand in both
hers, pressing it warmly. "Ah, Mr. Chillingly," she said,
with impulsive tremulous tones, " look round, look round this
happy peaceful home !—the life so free from a care, the hus¬
band whom I so love and honor; all the blessings that I
might have so recklessly lost forever had I not met with
kenelü chillingly.
55
you, had I been punished as I deserved. How often I
thought of your words, that 'you would be proud of my
friendship when we met again' 1 What strength they gave
me in my hours of humbled self-reproach !" Her voice here
died away as if in the effort to suppress a sob.
She released his hand, and, before he could answer, passed
quickly through the open sash into the garden.
CHAPTER IV.
The children have come,—some thirty of them, pretty as
English children generally are, happy in the joy of the sum¬
mer sunshine, and the flower lawns, and the feast under cover
of an awning suspended between chestnut-trees, and carpeted
with sward.
No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did
his best to increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke
the children listened eagerly, and when he had done they
laughed mirthfully.
" The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braeficld,
" is not here yet. I have a little note from the young lady to
sa) that Mrs. Cameron does not feel very well this morning,
but hopes to recover sufficiently to come later in the after¬
noon."
" And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"
" Ah I I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs.
56
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Cameron is the aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a
pretty name, Lily?"
" Very ! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with
a white head and a thin stalk."
" Then the name belies my Lily, as you will see."
The children now finished their feast, and betook them¬
selves to dancing in an alley smoothed for a croqueh-ground,
and to the sound of a violin played by the old grandfather of
one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield was busying herself
with fonning the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion to escape
from a young nymph of the age of twelve who had sat next
him at the banquet, and taken so great a fancy to him that he
began to fear she would vow never to forsake his side, and
stole away undetected.
There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us,
especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on
our own quiet mood. Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in
which, though the lilacs were faded, the laburnum still re¬
tained here and there the waning gold of its clusters, Kenelm
came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited him
to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight
trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and
fiowers. In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery
murmuring sound ; at the background, dominating the place,
rose the crests of stately trees on which the sunlight shim¬
mered, but which rampired out all horizon beyond. Even as
in life do the great dominant passions—love, ambition, desire
of power, or gold, or fame, or knowledge—form the proud
background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
57
eyes beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a
loftier sunbeam, and yet, and yet, exclude our sight from tha
lengths and the widths of the space which extends behind and
beyond them.
Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain.
From afar came the whoop and the laugh of the children in
their sports or their dance. At the distance their joy did not
sadden him—^he marveled why ; and thus, in musing reverie,
thought to explain the why to himself.
" The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, " has told us that
' distance lends enchantment to the view,' and thus compares
to the charm of distance the illusion of hope. But the poet
narrows the scope of his own illustration. Distance lends
enchantment to the ear as well as to the sight ; nor to these
bodily senses alone. Memory no less than hope owes its
charm to ' the far away.'
" I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the
midst of yon noisy children. But as their noise reaches mo
here, subdued and mellowed, and knowing, thank Heaven I
that the urchins are not within reach of me, I could readily
dream myself back into childhood, and into sympathy with
the lost playfields of school.
So surely it must be with grief ; how different the ter¬
rible agony for a beloved one just gone from earth, to the
soft regret for one who disappeared into heaven years ago I
So with the art of poetry : how imperatively, when it deals
with the great emotions of tragedy, it must remove the actors
from us, in proportion as the emotions are to elevate, and the
tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws ! Imagine our
c*
58
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Bhock if a poet were to place on the stage some wise gentle¬
man with whom we dined yesterday, and who was discovered
to have killed his father and married his mother. But when
Œdipus commits those unhappy mistakes nobody is shocked.
Oxford in the nineteenth century is a long way off from
Thebes three thousand or four thousand years ago.
" And," continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze
of metaphysical criticism, " even where the poet deals with
peisons and things close upon our daily sight—if he would
give them poetic charm he must resort to a sort of moral or
psychological distance ; the nearer they are to us in external
circumstance, the farther they must be in some internal peculi¬
arities. Werter and Clarissa Harlowe are described as con¬
temporaries of their artistic creation, and with the minutest
details of an apparent realism ; yet they are at once removed
from our daily lives by their idiosyncrasies and their fates.
We know that while Werter and Clarissa are so near to us in
much that we S3Hnpathize with them as friends and kinsfolk,
they are yet as much remote from us in the poetic and ideal¬
ized side of their natures as if they belonged to the age of
Homer ; and this it is that invests with charm the very pain
which their fate inflicts on us. Thus, I suppose, it must be
in love. If the love we feel is to have the glamour of poetry,
it must he love for some one morally at a distance from our ordi¬
nary habitual selves ; in short, differing from us in attributes
which, however near we draw to the possessor, we can never
approach, never blend, in attributes of our own ; so that there
is something in the loved one that always remains an ideal
- a mystery—' a sun-bright summit mingling with the sky !' '
kenelm chillingly.
59
Herewith the soliloquist's musings slided vaguely into
mere reverie. He closed his eyes drowsily, not asleep nor
yet quite awake : as sometimes in bright summer days when
we recline on the grass we do close our eyes, and yet dimly
recognize a golden light bathing the drowsy lids ; and athwart
that light images come and go like dreams, though we know
that we are not dreaming.
CHAPTER V.
From this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm
was roused slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on
his cheek—again a little less softly; he opened his eyes—
they fell first upon two tiny rosebuds, which, on striking his
face, had fallen on his breast : and then, looking up, he saw
before him, in an opening of the trelliscd circle, a female
child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted charged with
another rosebud, but behind the child's figure, looking over
her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face
as innocent but lovelier far—the face of a girl in her first
youth, framed round with the blossoms that festooned^ the
trellis. How the face became the flowers ! It seemed the
fairy spirit of them.
Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one
whom he had so ungallantly escaped from, ran towards him
through a wicket in the circle. Her companion disappeared.
" Is it you ?" said Kenelm to the child—" you who pelted
60
KENELM CniLLINOLT.
me so cruelly? Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you
the best strawberries in the dish and all my own cream ?"
" But why did you run away and hide yourself when you
ought to be dancing with me?" replied the young lady,
evading, with the instinct of her sex, all answer to the re¬
proach she had deserved.
" I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to
hide myself, since you so easily found me out. But how was
the young lady with you ? I suspect she pelted me too, foi
she seems to have run away to hide herself."
" No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you
would have had another rosebud—oh, so much bigger !—^if
she had not held back my arm. Don't you know her—don't
you know Lily ?"
" No ; so that is Lily ? You shall introduce me to her."
By this time they had passed out of the circle through the
little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered,
and opening at once on the lawn. Here at some distance the
children were grouped, some reclined on the grass, some
walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance.
In the space between the group and the trellis, Lily was
walking alone and quickly. The child left Kenelm's side and
ran after her friend, soon overtook, but did not succeed in ar
resting her steps. Lily did not pause till she had reached tho
grassy ballroom, and here all the children came round her and
shut out her delicate form from Kenelm's sight.
Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met
him.
" Lily is come I"
KENELM OHILLINQLY.
61
" I know it—I have seen her."
" Is not she beautiful ?"
" I must see more of her if I am to answer critically ; but
before you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and
what is Lily ?"
hlrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and
yet the answer was brief enough not to need much considera¬
tion. " She is a Miss Mordaunt, an orphan ; and, as I before
told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs. Cameron, a widow. They
have the prettiest cottage you ever saw, on the banks of the
river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place. Mrs.
Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily,
I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet
she is a mere child—^her mind quite unformed."
" Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose
mind was formed?" muttered Kenelm. " I am sure mine is
not, and never will be on this earth."
Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation.
She was looking about for Lily ; and, perceiving her at last as
the children who surrounded her were dispersing to renew the
dance, she took Kenelm's arm, led him to the young lady, and
a formal introduction took place.
Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the
joy of summer and the laugh of children. In such scene and
such circumstance, formality does not last long. I know not
how it was, but in a very few minutes Kenclm and Lily had
ceased to be strangers to each other. They found themselves
seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on a bank
shadowed by lime-trees ; the man listening with downcast eyes,
62
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
the girl with mobile shifting glances now on earth now on
heaven, and talking freely, gayly—like the babble of a happy
stream, with a silvery dulcet voice, and a sparkle of rippling
smiles.
No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred
life, and conventional narrating thereof. According to them,
no doubt, it is for the man to talk and the maid to listen ; but
I state the facts as they were, honestly. And Lily knew no
more of the formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark
fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and the cage.
She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was right—
her mind was still so unformed.
What she did talk about in that first talk between them
that could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so
intently, I know not, at least I could not jot it down on paper,
I fear it was very egotistical, as the talk of children generally
is—about herself and her aunt, and her home and her friends—
all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger—
Clemmy the chief of them. Clenimy was the one who had
taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all this ingenuous
prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy-
nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be
the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child.
But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again
gathered round Lily. Evidently she was the prime favorite
of them all ; and as her companion had now become tired of
dancing, new sports were proposed, and Lily was carried
ofi" to " Prisoner's Base."
" I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chil-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
63
liugly," said a frank, pleasant voice ; and a well-dressed, good-
looking man held out his hand to Kenelm.
" My husband," said Mrs. Braefield, with a certain pride in
her look.
Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master
of the house, who had just returned from his city of5ce and
left all its cares behind him. You had only to look at him to
see that he was prosperous, and deserved to be so. There were
in his countenance the signs of strong sense, of good-humor—
above all, of an active energetic temperament. A man of
broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw;
with a happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in
general, mantling over his genial smile and outspoken in the
metallic ring of his voice.
"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr.
Braefield ; " and, unless you want very much to be in town
to-night, I hope you will take a bed here."
Kenelm hesitated.
" Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield.
Kenelm hesitated still ; and while hesitating his eye rested on
Lily, leaning on the arm of a middle-aged lady, and approach¬
ing the hostess—evidently to take leave
■ I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Ken-
elm, and he fell back a little behind Lily and her com¬
panion.
"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs.
Cameron to the hostess. " Lily has enjoyed herself extremely.
I only regret we could not come earlier."
" If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, " let me
64
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
accompany you, I want to speak to your gardener about hia
heart's-ease—it is much finer than mine."
" If so," said Kenelm to Lily, " may I come too ? Of all
flowers that grow, heart's-ease is the one I most prize."
A few minutes afterwards Kenelm was walking by the
side of Lily along the banks of a little stream, tributary to the
Thames—Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Braefield in advance, for
the path only held two abreast.
Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly—I
think it is called the Emperor of Morocco—that was sunning
its yellow wings upon a group of wild reeds. She succeeded
in capturing this wanderer in her straw hat, over which she
drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture she returned
demurely to Kenelm's side.
" Do you collect insects ?" said that philosopher, as much
surprised as it was his nature to be at anything.
" Only butterflies," answered Lily ; " they are not insects,
you know ; they are souls."
"Emblems of souls, you mean—at least, so the Greeks
prettily represented them to be."
" No, real souls—the souls of infants that die in their
cradles unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not
eaten by birds, and live a year, then they pass into fairies."
" It is a very poetical idea. Miss Mordaunt, and founded
on evidence quite as rational as other assertions of the metar
morphosis of one creature into another. Perhaps you can do
what the philosophers cannot—tell me how you learned a new
idea to be an incontestable fact?"
" I don t know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled ;
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
65
"perhaps I learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed
It."
" You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philos¬
opher. But you talk of taking eare of butterflies ; how do
you do that? Do you impale them on pins stuck into a
glass case?"
"Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You de¬
serve to be pinched by the Fairies."
" I am afraid," thought Kenelm, eompassionately, " that
my companion has no mind to be formed ; what is euphoni¬
ously called ' an Innoeent.' "
He shook his head and remained silent. Lily resumed :
"I will show you my collection when we get home—they
seem so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know
me—they will feed from my hand. I have only had one die
since I began to collect them last summer."
" Then you have kept them a year ; they ought to have
turned into fairies."
" I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all
those that had been with me twelve months—they don't turn
to fairies in the cage, you know. Now I have only those I
caught this year, or last autumn ; the prettiest don't appeal
till the autumn."
The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat,
her tresses shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the
prisoner. Then again she looked up and around her, and
abruptly stopped, and exclaimed :
" How can people live in towns—how can people say they
are ever dull in the country? Look," she continued, gravely
VOL. II. 5
66
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
and eamesJy—"look at that tall pine-tree, with its long
branch sweeping over the water; see how, as the breeze
catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow changes
the play of the sunlight on the brook :—
'Wave your tops, ye pines ;
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.'
Wliat an interchange of music there must be between Nature
and a poet !"
Kenelm was startled. This " an innocent" !—this a girl
who had no mind to be formed ! In that presence he could
not be cynical ; could not speak of Nature as a mechanism, a
lying humbug ; as he had done to the man poet. He replied
gravely :
" The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language,
but few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to
whom it is no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care
and pain, hut rather a native language, learned unconsciously
from the lips of the great mother. To them the butterfly's
wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy's soul !"
When he had thus said, Lily turned, and for the first time
attentively looked into his dark soft eyes ; then instinctively
she laid her light hand on his arm, and said, in a low voice,
" Talk on—talk thus ; I like to hear you."
But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at
the garden-gate of Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder
persons in advance paused at the gate and walked with them
to the house.
It was a long, low, irregular cottage, without pretension to
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
67
areLitectural beauty, yet exceedingly picturesque—a flower-
garden, large but in proportion to the house, with parterres
in which the colors were exquisitely assorted, sloping to the
grassy margin of the rivulet, where the stream expanded into
a lake-like basin, narrowed at either end by locks, from which
with gentle sound flowed shallow waterfalls. By the banks
was a instic seat, half overshadowed by the dropping boughs
of a vast willow.
♦
The inside of the house was in harmony with the exterior
—cottage-like, but with an unmistakable air of refinement
about the rooms, even in the little entrance-hall, which was
painted in Pompeian frescoes.
' " Come and see my butterfly-cage," said Lily, whisperingly.
Kenelm followed her through the window that opened on
the garden ; and at one end of a small conservatory, or rather
greenhouse, was the habitation of these singular favorites. It
was as large as a small room; three sides of it formed by
minute wirework, with occasional draperies of muslin or other
slight material, and covered at intervals, sometimes within,
sometimes without, by dainty creepers ; a tiny cistern in the
centre, from which upsprang a sparkling jet. Lily cautiously
lifted a sash-door and glided in, closing it behind her. Her
entrance set in movement a multitude of gossamer wings, some
fluttering round her, some more boldly settling on her hair or
dress. Kenelm thought she had not vainly boasted when she
said that some of the creatures had learned to know her. She
relieved the Emperor of Morocco from her hat; it circled
round her fearlessly, and then vanished amidst the leaves of
the creepers. Lily opened the door and came out.
68
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
" I have heard of a philosopher who tamed a wasp," said
Konelm, "but never before of a young lady who tamed
butterflies."
" No," said Lily, proudly ; " I believe I am the first who
attempted it. I don't think I should have attempted it if I
had been told that others had suceeeded before me. Not that
I have suceeeded quite. No matter ; if they don't love me, I
love them."
They re-entered the drawing-room, and Mrs. Cameron ad¬
dressed Kenelm,
" Do you know much of this part of the country, Mr.
Chillingly?"
" It is quite new to me, and more rural than many districts
farther from London."
" That is the good fortune of most of our home counties,"
said Mr. Braefield ; " they escape the smoke and din of manu¬
facturing towns, and agricultural science has not demolished
their leafy hedgerows. The walks through our green lanes
are as much bordered with convolvulus and honeysuckle as
they were when Izaak Walton sauntered through them to
angle in that stream 1"
" Does tradition say that he angled in that stream ? I
thought his haunts were rather on the other side of London."
" Possibly ; I am not learned in Walton or in his art, but
there is an old summer-house, on the other side of the lock
yonder, on which is carved the name of Izaak Walton, but
whether by his own hand or another's who shall say ? Has
Mr. Melville been here lately, Mrs. Cameron ?"
" No, not for several months."
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
69
" He lias had a glorious success this year. We may hope
that at last his genius is acknowledged by the world. I
meant to buy his picture, but I was not in time—a Man¬
chester man was before me."
" Who is Mr. Melville ? any relation to you ?" whispered
Kenelm to Lily.
" Relation !—I scarcely know. Yes, I suppose so, because
he is my guardian. But if he were the nearest relation on
earth, I could not love him more," said Lily, with impulsive
eagerness, her cheeks flushing, her eyes fllling with tears.
" And he is an artist—a painter ?" asked Kenelm.
" Oh, yes j no one paints such beautiful pictures—no one
so clever, no one so kind."
Kenelm strove to recollect if he had ever heard the name
of Mel rille as a painter, but in vain. Kenelm, however,
knew but little of painters—^they were not in his way ; and he
owned to him»»elf, very humbly, that there might be many a
living painter of eminent renown whose name and works
would be strauf^ to him.
He glanced round the wall. Lily interpreted his look.
" There are nr, pictures of his here," said she ; " there is
one in my own room. I will show it you when you come
again."
" And now," said Mr. Braefield, rising, " I must just have
a word with your gardener, and then go home. We dine
earlier here than in London, Mr. Chillingly."
As the two gentlemen, after taking leave, re-entered the
hall, Lily followed them, and said to Kenelm, " What time
will you come to-morrow to see the picture ?"
70
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kcnelm averted his head, and then replied, not with his
wonted courtesy, but briefly and brusquely :
" I fear I cannot call to-morrow. I shall be far away by
sunrise."
Lily made no answer, but turned hack into the room.
Mr. Braefield found the gardener watering a flower-border,
conferred with him about the heart's-ease, and then joined
Kenelm, who had halted a few yards beyond the garden-gate.
" A pretty little place that," said Mr. Braefield, with a sort
of lordly compassion, as became the owner of Braefieldville.
" What I call quaint."
" Yes, quaint," echoed Kenelm, abstractedly.
" It is always the case with houses enlarged by degrees. I
have heard my poor mother say that when Melville or Mrs.
Cameron first bought it, it was little better than a mere
laborer's cottage, with a field attached to it. And two or
three years afterwards a room or so more was built, and a bit
of the field taken in for a garden ; and then by degrees the
whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving
only the old cottage as a scullery and wash-house ; and the
whole field was turned into the garden, as you see. But
whether it was Melville's money or the aunt's that did it, I
don't know. More likely the aunt's. I don't see what in¬
terest Melville has in the place ; he does not go there often,
I fancy—it is not his home."
" Mr. Melville, it seems, is a painter, and, from what I
heard you say, a successful one."
" I fancy he had little suceess before this year. But surely
you saw his pictures at the Exhibition ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
71
" 1 am ashamed to say I have not been to the Exhibition."
" You surprise me. However, Melville had three pictures
there—all very good ; but the one I wished to buy made
much more sensation than the others, and has suddenly lifted
him from obscurity into fame."
" He appears to be a relation of Miss Mordaunt's, but so
distant a one that she could not even tell me what grade of
cousinship he could claim."
" Nor can I. He is her guardian, I know. The relation¬
ship, if any, must, as you say, be very distant ; for Melville
is of humble extraction, while any one can see that Mrs.
Cameron is a thorough gentlewoman, and Lily Mordaunt is
her sister's child. I have heard my mother say that it was
Melville, then a very young man, who bought the cottage,
perhaps with Mrs. Cameron's money ; saying it was for a
widowed lady, whose husband had left her with verj small
means. And when Mrs. Cameron arrived with Lily, then a
mere infant, she was in deep mourning, and a very young
woman herself,—pretty, too. If Melville had been a fi ¿quent
visitor then, of course there would have been scandal ; but he
very seldom came, and when he did, he lodged in a vottage,
Cromwell Lodge, on the other side of the brook ; now and
then bringing with him a fellow-lodger—some other young
artist, I suppose, for the sake of angling. So there could bo
no cause for scandal, and nothing can be more blameless than
poor Mrs. Cameron's life. My mother, who then resided at
Braefieldville, took a great fancy to both Lily and her aunt,
and when by degrees the cottage grew into a genteel sort
of place, the few gentry in the neighborhood followed my
72
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
mother's example and were very kind to Mrs. Cameron, so
that she has now her place m the society about here, and is
much liked."
"And Mr. Melville?—does he still very seldom come
here?"
" To say truth, he has not been at all since I settled at
Braefieldville. The place was left to my mother for her life,
and I was not much there during her occupation. In fact, I
was then a junior partner in our firm, and conducted the
branch business in New York, coming over to England for
my holiday once a year or so. When my mother died, there
was much to arrange before I could settle personally in Eng¬
land, and I did not come to settle at Bracficldville till I
married. I did see Melville on one of my visits to the place
some years ago; but, between ourselves, he is not the sort
of person whose intimate acquaintance one would wish to
court. My mother told me he was an idle, dissipated man,
and I have heard from others that he was very unsteady.
Mr. , the great painter, told me that he was a loose fish ;
and I suppose his habits were against his getting on, till this
year, when, perhaps by a lucky accident, he has painted a
picture that raises him to the top of the tree. But is not
Miss Lily wondrously nice to look at? What a pity her
education has been so much neglected 1"
« Has it ?"
" Have not you discovered that already ? She has not had
even a music-master, though my wife says she has a good ear
and can sing prettily enough. As for reading, I don't think
she has read anything but fairy-tales and poetry, and such
kenelm chillingly.
73
silly stuff. However, she is very young yet ; and now that
her guardian can sell his pictures, it is to be hoped that he
will do more justice to his ward. Painters and actors are not
so regular in their private lives as we plain men are, and
great allowance is to be made for them ; still, every one is
bound to do his duty. I am sure you agree with me?"
" Certainly," said Kenelm, with an emphasis which startled
the merchant. " That is an admirable maxim of yours ; it
seems a commonplace, yet how often, when it is put into our
heads, it strikes as a novelty ! A duty may be a very difficult
thing, a very disagreeable thing, and, what is strange, it is
often a very invisible thing. It is present—close before us,
and yet we don't see it; somebody shouts its name in our
ears, ' Duty,' and straight it towers before us a grim giant.
Pardon me if I leave you—I can't stay to dine. Duty sum¬
mons me elsewhere. Make my excuses to Mrs. Braefield."
Before Mr. Braefield could recover his self-possession,
Kenelm had vaulted over a stile and was gone.
CHAPTER VI.
Kenelm walked into the shop kept by the Somerses, and
found Jessie still at the counter. " Give me back my knap¬
sack. Thank you," he said, flinging the knapsack across his
shoulders. " Now, do me a favor. A portmanteau of mine
ought to be at the station. Send for it, and keep it till I give
Vol. ii.—d
74
KENBLM CHILLINGLY.
further directions. I think of going to Oxford for a day or
two. Mrs. Somers, one more word with you. Think, answer
frankly, are you, as you said this morning, thoroughly happy,
and yet married to the man you loved ?"
" Oh, so happy 1"
" And wish for nothing beyond ? Do not wish Will to be
other than he is ?"
" God forbid ! You frighten me, sir."
" Frighten you ! Be it so. Every one who is happy
should be frightened, lest happiness fly away. Do your best
to chain it, and you will, for you attach Duty to Happiness ;
and," muttered Kenelm, as he turned from the shop, " Duty
is sometimes not a rose-colored tie, but a heavy iron-hued
clog."
He strode on through the street towards the sign-post with
" To Oxford" inscribed thereon. And whether he spoke
literally of the knapsack, or metaphorically of Duty, he mur¬
mured, as he strode—
" A pedlar's pack that bows the bearer down."
kenelm chillingly.
75
CHAPTER VIL
Kenelm might have reached Oxford that night, for he
was g, rapid and untirable pedestrian ; but he halted a little
after the moon rose, and laid himself down" to rest beneath a
new-mown haystack, not very far from the high-road.
He did not sleep. Meditatingly propped on his elbow, ho
said to himself :
" It is long since I have wondered at nothing. I wonder
now : can this be love—really love—^unmistakably love ?
Pooh I it is impossible ; the very last person in the world to
be in love with. Let us reason upon it—you, myself, and 1.
To begin with—face ! What is face ? In a few years the
most beautiful face may be very plain. Take the Venus at
Florence. Animate her ; see her ten years after ; a chignon,
front teeth (blue or artificially white), mottled complexion,
double chin—all that sort of plump prettiness goes into
double chin. Face, bah 1 What man of sense—^what pupil
of Welby, the realist—can fall in love with a face ? and even
if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty faces are as com¬
mon as daisies. Cecilia Travers has more regular features;
Jessie Wiles a richer coloring. I was not in love with them—■
not a hit of it. Myself, you have nothing to say there. Well,
then, mind ? Talk of mind, indeed ! a creature whose favorite
companionship is that of butterflies, and who tells me that
76
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized. What an
article for ' The Londoner,' on the culture of young women !
What a girl for Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Faithful! I
Put aside Mind as we have done Face. What rests ?—the
Frenchman's ideal of happy marriage ? congenial circumstanci
of birth, fortune, tastes, habits. Worse still. Myself, answer
honestly, are you not floored ?"
Whereon " Myself" took up the parable and answered,
0 thou fool 1 why wert thou so ineflably blest in one
presence ? Why, in quitting that presence, did Duty become
so grim ? Why dost thou address to me those inept pedantic
questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has suddenly
ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body, and has
become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart's dreams
with romance and poesy and first love? Why, instead of
gazing on that uncomfortable orb, art thou not quickening thy
steps towards a cozy inn and a good supper at Oxford ? Ken-
elm, my friend, thou art in for it. No disguising the fact—
thou art in love !"
" I'll be hanged if I am," said the Second in the Dualism
of Kenelm's mind; and therewith he shifted his knapsack
into a pillow, turned his eyes from the moon, and still could
not sleep. The face of Lily still haunted his eyes—^the voice
of Lily still rang in his ears.
Oh, my reader ! dost thou here ask me to tell thee what
Lily was like ?—^was she dark, was she fair, was she tall, was
she short? Never shalt thou learn these secrets from me.
Imagine to thyself the being to which thine whole of life,
body and mind and soul, moved irresistibly as the needle to
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
77
the pole. Let her be tall or short, dark or fair, she is that
which out of all womankind has suddenly become the one
woman for thee. Fortunate art thou, my reader, if thou
chance to have heard the popular song of " My Queen" sung
by the one lady who alone can sing it with expression worthy
the verse of the poetess and the music of the composition, ty
the sister of the exquisite songstress. But if thou hast not
heard the verse thus sung, to an accompaniment thus com¬
posed, still the words themselves are, or ought to be, familiar
to thee, if thou art, as I take for granted, a lover of the true
lyrical muse. Recall then the words supposed to be uttered
by him who knows himself destined to do homage to one he
has not yet beheld :
She is standing somewhere—she I shall honor.
She that I wait for, my queen, my queen;
Whether her hair be golden or raven.
Whether her eyes be hazel or blue,
I know not now, it will be engraven
Some day hence as my loveliest hue.
"She may be humble or proud, my lady,
Or that sweet calm which is just between;
But whenever she comes, she will find me ready
To do her homage, my queen, my queen."
Was it possible that the cruel boy-god "who sharpens his
arrows on the whetstone of the human heart" had found the
moment to avenge himself for the neglect of his altars and
the scorn of his power ! Must that redoubted knight-errant.,
the hero of this tale, despite The Three Fishes on his charmed
shield, at last veil the crest and bow the knee, and murmur to
himself, " She has come, my queen" I
78
kenelm chillingly.
CHAPTER VIIL
The next morning Kenelm arrived at Oxford—" Verum
secretumque 3Iouseion."
If there be a place in this busy island wbicb may distract
tbe passions of youtb from love to scbolarsbip, to Ritualism,
to mediaeval associations, to tbat sort of poetical sentiment or
poetical fanaticism wbicb a Mivers and a Welby and an advo¬
cate of tbe Realistic School would bold in contempt—certainly
tbat place is Oxford. Home, nevertheless, of great thinkers
and great actors in tbe practical world.
Tbe vacation bad not yet commenced, but tbe commence¬
ment was near at band. Kenelm thought be could recognize
tbe leading men by their slower walk and more abstracted
expression of countenance. Among tbe fellows was tbe emi¬
nent author of tbat book wbicb bad so powerfully fascinated
tbe earlier adolescence of Kenelm Chillingly, and who bad
himself been subject to tbe fascination of a yet stronger spirit.
Tbe Rev. Decimus Roach bad been ever an intense and
reverent admirer of John Henry Newman—an admirer, I
mean, of tbe pure and lofty character of tbe man, quite apart
from sympathy with bis doctrines. But although Roach
remained an unconverted Protestant of orthodox, if High
Church, creed, yet there was one tenet be did bold in com¬
mon with tbe author of tbe ' Apologia.' He ranked celibacy
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
79
among the virtues most dear to Heaven. In that eloquent
treatise, ' The Approach to the Angels,' he not onlj main¬
tained that the state of single blessedness was strictly incum¬
bent on every member of a Christian priesthood, hut to be
commended to the adoption of every conscientious layman.
It was the desire to confer with this eminent theologian
that had induced Kenelm to direct his steps to Oxford.
Mr. Roach was a friend of Welby's, at whose house, when
a pupil, Kenelm had once or twice met him, and been even
more charmed by his conversation than by his treatise.
Kenelm called on Mr. Roach, who received him very gra¬
ciously, and, not being a tutor or examiner, placed his time
at Kenelm's disposal ; took him the round of the colleges
and the Bodleian ; invited him to dine in his college-hall ;
and after dinner led him into his own rooms and gave him
an excellent bottle of Chateau-Margaux.
Mr. Roach was somewhere about fifty—a good-looking man,
and evidently thought himself so, for he wore his hair long
behind and parted in the middle ; which is not done by men
who form modest estimates of their personal appearance.
Kenelm was not long in drawing out his host on the sub¬
ject to which that profound thinker had devoted so much
meditation.
" I cm scarcely convey to you," said Kenelm, " the intense
admiration with which I have studied your nohie work,
'Approach to the Angels.' It produced a great effect on me
in the age between boyhood and youth. But of late some
doubts on the universal application of your doctrine have
crept into my mind."
80
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
"Ay, indeed?" said Mr. Roacli, with an expression of in¬
terest in his face.
" And I eome to you for their solution."
Mr. Roach turned away his head, and pushed the bottle to
Kenelm.
" I am quite willing to concede," resumed the heir of the
Chillinglys, " that a priesthood should stand apart from the
distracting cares of a family, and pure from all carnal affec¬
tions."
" Hem, hem," grunted Mr. Roach, taking his knee on his
lap and caressing it.
" I go further," continued Kenelm, " and supposing with
you that the Confessional has all the importance, whether in
its monitory or its cheering effects upon repentant sinners,
which is attached to it by the Roman Catholics, and that it
ought to be no less cultivated by the Reformed Church, it
seems to me essential that the Confessor should have no bet¬
ter half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an un¬
guarded moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female
acquaintances."
" I pushed that argument too far," murmured Roach.
" Not a bit of it. Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls
with the Confessional. Your argument there is as sound as
a bell. But when it comes to the layman, I think I detect a
difference."
Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied, stoutly, " No ; if
celibacy be incumbent on the one, it is equally incumbent on
the other. I say ' if.' "
" Permit me to deny that assertion. Do not fear that I
KENELM CHILLINGLÏ.
81
ehall insult your understanding by the popular platitude—■
viz., that if celibacy were universal, in a very few years the
human race would be extinct. As you have justly observed,
in answer to that fallacy, ' It is the duty of each human soul
to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual state
for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of
the Creator.' If celibacy be necessary to spiritual perfection,
how do we know but that it may be the purpose and decree
of the All-Wise that the human race, having attained to that
perfection, should disappear from earth ? Universal celibacy
would thus be the euthanasia of mankind. On the other
hand, if the Creator decided that the human race, having
culminated to this crowning but barren flower of perfection,
should nevertheless continue to increase and multiply upon
earth, have you not victoriously exclaimed, ' Presumptuous
mortal ! how canst thou presume to limit the resources of the
Almighty? Would it not be easy for Him to continue some
other mode, unexposed to trouble and sin and passion, as in
the nuptials of the vegetable world, by which the generations
will be renewed ? Can we suppose that the angels—the im¬
mortal companies of heaven—are not hourly increasing in
number, and extending their populations throughout infinity ?
and yet in heaven there is no marrying nor giving in mar-
riiige,'—All this, clothed by you in words which my memory
only serves me to quote imperfectly—all this I unhesitatingly
concede."
Mr. Roach rose and brought another bottle of the Chateau-
Margaux from his cellaret, filled Kenelm's glass, reseated
himself, and took the other knee into his lap to care&s.
Vol. II.—b* 6
82
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" But," resumed Kenelm, " my doubt is this."
" Ha !" cried Mr. Roach, " let us hear the doubt."
" In the first place, is celibacy essential to the highest state
of spiritual perfection ? and, in the second place, if it were,
are mortals, as at present constituted, capable of that culmina¬
tion ?"
" Very well put," said Mr. Roach, and he tossed ofiF his
glass with more cheerful aspect than he had hitherto ex¬
hibited.
" You see," said Kenelm, " we are compelled in this, as in
other questions of philosophy, to resort to the inductive pro¬
cess, and draw our theories from the facts within our cog¬
nizance. Now, looking round the world, is it the fact that
old maids and old bachelors are so much more spiritually
advanced than married folks ? Do they pass their time, like
an Indian dervish, in serene contemplation of divine excel¬
lence and beatitude ? Are they not quite as worldly in their
own way as persons who have been married as often as the
Wife of Bath, and, generally speaking, more selfish, more
frivolous, and more spiteful ? I am sure I don't wish to
speak uncharitably against old maids and old bachelors. I
have three aunts who are old maids, and fine specimens of the
genus ; but I am sure they would all three have been more
agreeable companions, and quite as spiritually gifted, if they
had been happily married, and were caressing their children
instead of lap-dogs. So, too, I have an old-bachelor cousin.
Chillingly Mivers, whom you know. As clever as a man can
be. But, Lord bless you ! as to being wrapt in spiritual
meditation, he could not be more devoted to the things of
kenelm cuillinglt.
83
eaxth if he had married as many wives as tíolomon and had
as many children as Priam. Finally, have not half the mis¬
takes in the world arisen from a separation between the
spiritual and the moral nature of man ? Is it not, after all,
through his dealings with his fellow-men that man makes his
safest ' approach to the angels' ? And is not the moral system
a very muscular system ? Does it not require for healthful
vigor plenty of continued exercise, and does it not get that
exercise naturally, by the relationships of family, with all the
wider collateral struggles with life which the care of family
necessitates ?
" I put these questions to you with the humblest diflSdence.
I expect to hear such answers as will thoroughly convince my
reason, and I shall he delighted if so. For at the root of the
controversy lies the passion of love. And love must be a
very disquieting troublesome emotion, and has led many
heroes and sages into wonderful weaknesses and follies."
" Gently, gently, Mr. Chillingly ; don't exaggerate. Love,
no doubt, is—ahem—a disquieting passion. Still, every
emotion that changes life from a stagnant pool into the fresh¬
ness and play of a running stream is disquieting to the pool.
Not only love and its fellow-passions—such as ambition—but
tl e exercise of the reasoning faculty, which is always at work
in changing our ideas, is very disquieting. Love, Mr Chil¬
lingly, has its good side as well as its bad. Pass the bottle."
Kenelm (passing the bottle).—" Yes, yes ; you are quite
right in putting the adversary's case strongly before you de¬
molish it—all good rhetoricians do that. Pardon me if I am
up to that trick in argument. Assume that I know all that
81
kenelm chillingly.
can be said in favor of tbe abnegation of common-sense,
enpboniously called ' love,' and proceed to the demolition of
the case."
The Kev. Decimos Roach (hesitatingly).—" The demo¬
lition of the case ? humph ! The passions are ingrafted in
the human system as part and parcel of it, and are not to be
demolished so easily as you seem to think. Love, taken
rationally and morally by a man of good education and sound
principles, is—is "
Kenelm.—"Well, is what?"
The Rev. Decimos Roach.—"A—^a—a—thing not to
be despised. Like the sun, it is the great colorist of life, Mr.
Chillingly. And you are so right—^the moral system does
require daily exercise. What can give that exercise to a
solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age in which he
cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine
essence, and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adven¬
ture into the wilds of Africa as a missionary ? At that age,
Nature, which will be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her
rights. A sympathizing female companion by one's side ;
innocent little children climbing one's knee,—^lovely, bewitch¬
ing picture 1 Who can be Goth enough to rub it out, who
fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a St. Simon sitting
alone on a pillar! Take another glass. You don't drink
enough, Mr. Chillingly."
" I have drunk enough," replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice,
" to think I see double. I imagined that before me sat the
austere adversary of the insanity of love and the miseries of
wedlock. Now I fancy I listen to a puling sentimentalist
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
85
uttering the platitudes whicli the other Deeimus Roach had
already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse
yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom."
" Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I
wrote that hook of which you speak, I was young, and youth
is enthusiastic and one-sided. Now, with the same disdain
of the excesses to which love may hurry weak intellects, I
recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before said,
rationally—taken rationally, my young friend. At that period
of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing com¬
panionship of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind
and prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude is
chilled and made rigid by increasing years. In short, Mr.
Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred in the
opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it
to Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world.
And I am about next month to enter into the matrimonial
state with a young lady who "
" Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must he a
painful subject to you. Let us drop it."
" It is not a painful subject at all !" exclaimed Mr. Roach,
with warmth. " I look forward to the fulfillment of my duty
with the pleasure which a well-trained mind always ought to
feel in reeanting a fallacious doctrine. But you do me the
justice to understand that of course I do not take this step I
propose—^for my personal satisfaction. No, sir, it is the value
of my example to others, which purifies my motives and
animates my soul."
After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation
8G
kenelm chillinglt.
drooped. Host and guest both felt they had had enough of
each other. Kenelm soon rose to depart.
Mr. Roach, on taking leave of him at the door, said, with
marked emphasis :
" Not for my personal satisfaction—^remember that. When¬
ever you hear my conversion discussed in the world, say that
from my own lips you heard these words—not for my per¬
sonal satisfaction. No ! My kind regards to Welby—
a married man bimself, and a father ; he will understand me."
CHAPTER IX.
On quitting Oxford, Kenelm wandered for several days
about the country, advancing to no definite goal, meeting
with no noticeable adventure. At last he found himself
mechanically retracing his steps. A magnetic influence he
could not resist drew him back towards the grassy meads and
the sparkling rill of Moleswich.
" There must be," said he to himself, " a mental, like an
optical, illusion. In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre.
If we dare not face the apparition—dare not attempt to touch
it—^run superstitiously away from it—what happens? We
shall believe to our dying day that it was not an illusion—that
it was a spectre—and so we may be crazed for life. But if
we manfully walk up to the Phantom, stretch our hands to
KENELM CHILLINOLY.
87
seize it, lo 1 it fades into tliin air, the cheat of our eyesight is
dispelled, and we shall never be ghost-ridden again. So it
must be with this mental illusion of mine. I see an image
strange to my experience—it seems to me, at that first sight,
clothed with a supernatural charm ; like an unreasoning
coward, I run away from it. It continues to haunt me ; I
cannot shut out its apparition. It pursues me by day alike in
the haunts of men—alike in the solitudes of nature ; it visits
me by night in my dreams. I begin to say this must be a
real visitant from another world—it must be love—the love
of which I read in the Poets, as in the Poets I read of witch¬
craft and ghosts. Surely I must approach that apparition as
a philosopher like Sir David Brewster would approach the
black cat seated on a hearth-rug, which he tells us that some
lady of his acquaintance constantly saw till she went into a
world into which black cats are not held to be admitted. The
more I think of it, the less it appears to me possible that I
can be really in love with a wild, half-educated, anomalous
creature, merely because the apparition of her face haunts
me. With perfect safety, therefore, I can approach that
creature ; in proportion as I see more of her, the illusion will
vanish. I will go back to Moleswich manfully."
Thus said Kenelm to himself, and himself answered :
" Go ; for thou canst not help it. Thinkest thou that
Daces can escape the net that has meshed a Roach? No;
' Come it will, the day decreed by fate,'
when thou must succumb to the ' nature which will be heard.'
Better succumb now, and with a good gvace, than resist till
88
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
thou hast reached thy fiftieth year, and then make a rational
choice not for thy personal satisfaction."
Whereupon Kenelm answered to himself, indignantly,
" Pooh ! thou flippant. My alter ego, thou knowest not what
thou art talking about ! It is not a question of nature ; it is
a question of the supernatural—an illusion—^a phantom !"
Thus Kenelm and himself continued to quarrel with each
other; and the more they quarreled, the nearer they ap¬
proached to the haunted spot in which had been seen, and
fled from, the fatal apparition of first love.
booik: -vi.
CHAPTER L
Sir Peter had not heard from Kenelm since a letter
informing him that his son had left town on an excursion,
which would probably be short, though it might last a few
weeks ; and the good Baronet now resolved to go to Loudon
himself, take his chance of Kenelm's return, and if still ab¬
sent, at least learn from Mivers and others how far that very
eccentric planet had contrived to steer a regular course amidst
the fixed stars of the metropolitan system. He had other
reasons for his journey. He wished to make the acquaint¬
ance of Gordon Chillingly before handing him over the
£20,000 which Kenelm had released in that resettlement
of estates, the necessary deeds of which the young heir had
signed before quitting London for Moleswich. Sir Peter
wished still more to see Cecilia Travers, in whom Kenelm's
accounts of her had inspired a very strong interest.
The day after his arrival in town Sir Peter breakfasted
with Mivers.
" Upon my word you are very comfortable here," said Sir
Peter, glancing at the well-appointed table and round the
well-furnished rooms.
" Naturally so—there is no one to prevent my being com-
foiiable. I am not married ;—taste that omelette."
(89)
90
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Some men declare they never knew comfort till they were
married, cousin Mivcrs."
" Some men are reflecting bodies, and catch a pallid gleam
from the comfort which a wife concentres on herself. With a
fortune so modest and secure, what comforts, possessed by me
now, would not a Mrs. Chillingly Mivers ravish from my hold
and appropriate to herself I Instead of these pleasant rooms,
where should I be lodged? In a dingy den looking on a
backyard, excluded from the sun by day and vocal with cats
by night ; while Mrs. Mivers luxuriated in two drawing-rooms
with southern aspect and perhaps a boudoir. My brougham
would be torn from my uses and monopolized by ' the angel
of my hearth,' clouded in her crinoline and halved by her
chignon. No ! if ever I marry—^and I never deprive myself
of the civilities and needlework which single ladies waste
upon me, by saying I shall not marry—it will be when women
have fully established their rights ; for then men may have a
chance of vindicating their own. Then, if there are two
drawing-rooms in the house, I shall take one, if not, we
will toss up who shall have the back parlor ; if we keep a
brougham, it will be exclusively mine three days in the
week ; if Mrs. M. wants £200 a year for her wardrobe, she
must be contented with one, the other half will belong to my
personal decoration; if I am oppressed by proof-sheets and
printers' devils, half of the oppression falls to her lot, while I
take my holiday on the croquet-ground at Wimbledon. Yes,
when the present wrongs of women are exchanged for equality
with men, I will cheerfully marry; and to do the thing
generous, I will not oppose Mrs. M.'s voting in the vestry
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
91
or fljr Parliament. I will give her my own votes with
pleasure."
" I fear, my dear cousin, that you have infected Kenelm
with your selfish ideas on the nuptial state. He does not
Bccm inclined to marry—eh ?"
"Not that I know of."
" What sort of girl is Cecilia Travers ?"
" One of those superior girls who are not likely to tower
into that terrible giantess called ' a superior woman.' A hand¬
some, well-educated, sensible young lady. Not spoilt by
being an heiress—in fine, just the sort of girl whom you
could desire to fix on for a daughter-in-law."
" And you don't think Kenelm has a fancy for her ?"
" Honestly speaking—I do not."
" Any counter-attraction ? There are some things in which
sons do not confide in their fathers. You have never heard
that Kenelm has been a little wild ?"
" Wild he is, as the noble savage who ran in woods," said
cousin Mivers.
" You frighten me !"
" Before the noble savage ran across the squaws, and was
wise enough to run away from them. Kenelm has run away
now, somewhere."
" Yes, he does not tell me where, nor do they know at his
lodgings. A heap of notes on his table, and no directions
where they are to be forwarded. On the whole, however, he
has held his own in London society—eh ?"
" Certainly ! he has been more courted than most young
men, and perhaps more talked of. Oddities generally are."
92
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" You own he has talents above the average ? Do you not
think he will make a figure in the world some day, and dis¬
charge that debt to the literary stores or the political interesfs
of his country which, alas, I and my predecessors, the other
Sir Peters, failed to do, and for which I hailed his birth and
gave him the name of Kenelm ?"
" Upon my word," answered Mivers—who had now finished
his breakfast, retreated to an easy-chair, and taken from the
chimney-piece one of his famous trabucos,—" upon my word
I can't guess ; if some great reverse of fortune befell him, and
he had to work for his livelihood, or if some other direful
calamity gave a shock to his nervous system and jolted it into
a fussy fidgety direction, I dare say he might make a splash
in that current of life which bears men on to the grave. But
you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two stim¬
ulants to definite action—poverty and vanity."
" Surely there have been great men who were neither poor
nor vain ?"
" I doubt it. But vanity is a ruling motive that takes
many forms and many aliases—call it ambition, call it love of
fame, still its substance is the same—the desire of applause
carried into fussiness of action."
" There may be the desire for abstract truth without care
for applause."
" Certainly. A philosopher on a desert island may amuse
himself by meditating on the distinction between light and
heat. But if on returning to the world he publish the
result of his meditations, vanity steps in and desires to b#
applauded."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
93
" Nonsense, cousin Mi vers 1 he may rather desire to be of
nse and benefit to mankind. You don't deny that there is
Buch a thing as philanthropy?"
" I don't deny that there is such a thing as humbug. And
whenever I meet a man who has the face to tell me that he
is taking a great deal of trouble, and putting himself very
much out of his way, for a philanthropical object, without the
slightest idea of reward either in praise or pence, I know that
I have a humbug before me—a dangerous humbug—a swin¬
dling humbug—a fellow with his pocket full of villanous
prospectuses and appeals to subscribers."
" Pooh, pooh ! leave off that affectation of cynicism ; you
are not a bad-hearted fellow—^you must love mankind—^you
must have an interest in the welfare of posterity."
" Love mankind ? Interest in posterity ? Bless my soul,
cousin Peter, I hope you have no prospectuses in your
pockets ; no schemes for draining the Pontine Marshes out of
pure love to mankind ; no propositions for doubling the in¬
come tax, as a reserve fund for posterity should our coal-fields
fail three thousand years hence. Love of mankind ! Rub¬
bish ! This comes of living in the country."
" But you do love the human race—you do care for the
generations that are to come."
"II Not a bit of it. On the contrary, I rather dislike
the human race, taking it altogether, and including the Aus¬
tralian bushmen ; and I don't believe any man who tells me
that he would grieve half as much if ten millions of human
beings were swallowed up by an earthquake at a considerable
distance from his own residence, say Abyssinia, as he would
94
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
for a rise in his butcher's bills. As to posterity, who would
consent to have a month's fit of the gout or tic-douloureux in
order that in the fourth thousand year, A.D., posterity should
enjoy a perfect system of sewage ?"
Sir Peter, who had recently been afflicted by a very sharp
attiick of neuralgia, shook his head, but was too conscientious
n jt to keep silence.
"To turn the subject," said Mivers, relighting the cigar
which he had laid aside while delivering himself of his amiable
opinions, " I think you would do well, while in town, to call
on your old friend Travers and be introduced to Cecilia. If
you think as favorably of her as I do, why not ask father and
daughter to pay you a visit at Exmundham? Girls think
more about a man when they see the place which he can oflfer
to them as a home, and Exmundham is an attractive place to
girls—picturesque and romantic."
"A very good idea," cried Sir Peter, heartily. "And I
want also to make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon.
Give me his address."
" Here is his card on the chimney-piece : take it ; you will
always find him at home till two o'clock. He is too sensible
to waste the forenoon in riding out in Hyde Park with young
ladies."
" Give me your frank opinion of that young kinsman.
Kenelm tells me that he is clever and ambitious."
" Kenelm speaks truly. He is not a man who will talk
stuff about love of mankind and posterity. He is of our day,
with large keen wide-awake eyes, that look only on such por¬
tions of mankind as can be of use to him—and do not spoil
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
their sight by poring through cracked telescopes, to catch a
glimpse of posterity. Gordon is a man to be a Chancellor of
the Exchequer, perhaps a Prime Minister."
" And old Gordon's son is cleverer than my boy—than the
namesake of Kenelm Digby 1" and Sir Peter sighed.
" 1 did not say that. I am cleverer than Chillingly G ordon,
and the proof of it is that I am too clever to wish to be Prime
Minisl^r—very disagreeable office—hard work—irregular
hours for meals—much abuse and confirmed dyspepsia."
Sir Peter went away rather down-hearted. He found Chil¬
lingly Gordon at home in a lodging in Jermyn Street.
Though prepossessed against him by all he had heard. Sir
Peter was soon propitiated in his favor. Gordon had a frank
man-of-the-world way with him, and much too fine a tact to
utter any sentiments likely to displease an old-fashioned
country gentleman, and a relation who might possibly be of
service in his career. He touched briefly, and with apparent
feeling, on the unhappy litigation commenced by his father ;
spoke with affectionate praise of Kenelm ; and with a dis¬
criminating good-nature of Mivers, as a man who, to parody
the epigram on Charles II.,
" Never saya a kindly thing,
And never does a harsh one."
Then he drew Sir Peter on to talk of the country and
agricultural prospects ; learned that among his objects in
visiting town was the wish to inspect a patented hydraulic
ram that might be very useful for his farmyard, which was
ill supplied with water; startled the Baronet by evincing
96
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
some practical knowledge of mechanics ; insisted on accom¬
panying him to the city to inspect the ram ; did so, and ap¬
proved the purchase ; took him next to see a new American
reaping-machine, and did not part with him till he had ob¬
tained Sir Peter's promise to dine with him at the Garrick,—
an invitation peculiarly agreeable to Sir Peter, who had a
natural curiosity to see some of the more recently distin¬
guished frequenters of that social club. As, on quitting
Gordon, Sir Peter took his way to the house of Leopold
Travers, his thoughts turned with much kindliness towards
his young kinsman. " Mivers and Kenelm," quoth he to
himself, " gave me an unfavorable impression of this lad ;
they represent him as worldly, self-seeking, and so forth.
But Mivers takes such cynical views of character, and
Kenelm is too eccentric to judge fairly of a sensible man of
the world. At all events, it is not like an egotist to put him¬
self out of his way to be so civil to an old fellow like me. A
young man about town must have pleasanter modes of passing
his day than inspecting hydraulic rams and reaping-machines.
Clever they allow him to be. Yes, decidedly clever—and not
offensively clever—practical."
Sir Peter found Travers in the dining-room with his
daughter, Mrs. Campion, and Lady Glenalvon. Travers was
one of those men, rare in middle age, who are more cftcn to
be found in their drawing-room than in their private study,
he was fond of female society ; and perhaps it was this pre¬
dilection which contributed to presei-ve in him the charm o:
good breeding and winning manners. The two men had not
met for many years ; not, indeed, since Travers was at the
KENELM CUILLINGLr.
97
Eenitli of his career of fashion, and Sir Peter was one of
those pleasant dilettanti and half-humoristic conversationalists
who become popular and courted diners-out.
Sir Peter had originally been a moderate Whig because his
father had been one before him, hut he left the Whig party
with the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord
Derby), and others, when it seemed to him that that party
had (feased to be moderate.
Leopold Travers had, as a youth in the Guards, been a
high Tory, but, siding with Sir Robert Peel on the repeal of
the Corn Laws, remained with the Peelites after the bulk of
the Tory party had renounced the guidance of their former
chief, and now went with these Peelites in whatever direction
the progress of the age might impel their strides in advance
of Whigs and in defiance of Tories.
However, it is not the politics of these two gentlemen that
are in question now. As I have just said, they had not met
for many years. Travers was very little changed. Sir Peter
recognized him at a glance; Sir Peter was much changed,
and Travers hesitated before, on hearing his name announced,
he felt quite sure that it was the right Sir Peter towards
whom he advanced and to whom he extended his cordial
hand. Travers preserved the color of his hair and the neat
pnjportions of his figure, and was as scrupulously well dressed
as in his dandy days. Sir Peter, originally very thin and
V, ith fair locks and dreamy blue eyes, had now become rather
portly, at least towards the middle of him—very gray—had
long ago taken to spectacles—his dress, too, was very old-
fashioned, and made by a country tailor. He looked quite
TOL. II.—E 7
98
K£NELM CHILLINGLY.
as much a gentleman as Travers did; quite perhaps as
healthy, allowing for difference of years ; quite as likely to
last his time. But betweeu them was the difference of the
nervous temperament and the lymphatic. Travers, with less
brain than Sir Peter, had kept his brain constantly active ;
Sir Peter had allowed his brain to dawdle over old books and
lazy delight in letting the hours slip by. Therefore Travers
still looked young—alert—up to his day, up to anything;
while Sir Peter, entering that drawing-room, seemed a sort
of Rip Van Winkle who had slept through the past genera^
tion and looked on the present with eyes yet drowsy. Still,
in those rare moments when he was thoroughly roused up,
there would have been found in Sir Peter a glow of heart,
nay, even a vigor of thought, much more expressive than the
constitutional alertness that characterized Leopold Travers, of
the attributes we most love and admire in the young.
" My dear Sir Peter, is it you ? I am so glad to see you
again," said Travers. " What an age since we met, and how
condescendingly kind you were then to me ; silly fop that I
was I But bygones are bygones ; come to the present. Let
me introduce to you, first, my valued friend, Mrs. Campion,
whose distinguished husband you remember. Ah, what
pleasant meetings we had at his house 1 And next, that
young lady of whom she takes motherly charge ; my daught(!r
Cecilia. Lady Grlenalvon, your wife's friend, of courst needs
no introduction: time stands still with her."
Sir Peter lowered his spectacles, which in reality he only
wanted for books in small print, and gazed attentively on the
three ladies—at each gaze a bow. But while his eyes wer»
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
99
still lingeringîy fixed on Cecilia, Lady Glenalvon advanced,
naturally, in right of rank and the claim of old acquaintance,
the first of the three to greet him.
" Alas, my dear Sir Peter 1 time does not stand still for any
of us; but what matter, if it leaves pleasant footprints?
When I see you again, my youth comes before me. My early
friend, Caroline Brotherton, now Lady Chillingly ; our girlish
walk» with each other ; wreaths and ball-dresses the practical
topic ; prospective husbands, the dream at a distance. Come
and sit here : tell me all about Caroline."
Sir Peter, who had little to say about Caroline that could
possibly interest anybody but himself, nevertheless took his
seat beside Lady Glenalvon, and, as in duty bound, made the
most flattering account of his She Baronet which experience
or invention would allow. All the while, however, his
thoughts were on Kenelm, and his eyes on Cecilia.
Cecilia resumes some mysterious piece of lady's work—no
matter what—^perhaps embroidery for a music-stool, perhaps
a pair of slippers for her father (which, being rather vain of
his feet and knowing they look best in plain morocco, ho
will certainly never wear). Cecilia appears absorbed in her
occupation ; but her eyes and her thoughts are on Sir Peter.
Why, my lady reader may guess. And oh, so flatteringly, so
lovingly fixed 1 She thinks he has a most charming, intelli¬
gent, benignant countenance. She admires even his old-
fashioned frock-coat, high neckcloth, and strapped trousers.
She venerates his gray hairs, pure of dye. She tries to find
a close resemblance between that fair, blue-eyed, plumpish
elderly gentleman and the lean, dark-eyed, saturnine, lofty
100
KENELM CUILLINGLT.
Kenelm ; she detects the likeness which nobody else would.
She begins to love Sir Peter, though he has not said a word
to her.
Ah ! on this, a word for what it is worth to you, my
young readers. You, sir, wishing to marry a girl who is to
be deeply, lastingly in love with you, and a thoroughly good
wife practically, consider well how she takes to your parents—
how she attaches to them an inexpressible sentiment, a disin¬
terested reverence—even should you but dimly recognize the
sentiment, or feel the reverence, how if between you and your
parents some little cause of coldness arise, she will charm you
back to honor your father and your mother, even though they
are not particularly genial to her—well, if you win that sort
of girl as your wife, think you have got a treasure. You
have won a woman to whom Heaven has given the two best
attributes—^intense feeling of love, intense sense of duty.
What, my dear lady reader, I say of one sex, I say of another,
though in a less degree ; because a girl who marries becomes
of her husband's family, and the man does not become of his
wife's. Still I distrust the depth of any man's love to a
woman, if he does not feel a great degree of tenderness (and
forbearance where differences arise) for her parents. But the
wife must not so put them in the foreground as to make the
husband think he is cast into the cold of the shadow. Par¬
don this intolerable length of digression, dear reader—it is
not altogether a digression, for it belongs to my tale that you
should clearly understand the sort of girl that is personified in
Cecilia Travers.
" What has become of Kenelm ?" asks Lady Glenalvon.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
101
"I wish I could tell you," answers Sir Peter. "He
wrote me word that he was going forth on rambles into ' fresh
woods and pastures new,' perhaps for some weeks. I have
not had a word from him since."
"You make me uneasy," said Lady Glenalvon. "I hope
nothing can have happened to him—he cannot have fallen
ill."
Cecilia stops her work, and looks up wistfully.
"^lake your mind easy," said Travers with a laugh ; " I
am in his secret. He has challenged the champion of Eng¬
land, and gone into the country to train."
" Very likely," said Sir Peter quietly ; " I should not be in
the least surprised ; should you. Miss Travers ?"
"I think it more probable that Mr. Chillingly is doing
some kindness to others which he wishes to keep concealed."
Sir Peter was pleased with this reply, and drew his chair
nearer to Cecilia's. Lady Glenalvon, charmed to bring those
two together, soon rose and took leave.
Sir Peter remained nearly an hour, talking chiefly with
Cecilia, who won her way into his heart with extraordinary
case ; and he did not quit the house tUl he had engaged her
father, Mrs. Campion, and herself to pay him a week's visit
at Exmundham, towards the end of the London season, which
was fast approaching.
Having obtained this promise. Sir Peter went away, and
ten minutes after Mr. Gordon Chillingly entered the drawing-
room. He had already established a visiting acquaintance
with the Traverses. Travers had taken a liking to him. Mrs.
Campion found him an extremely well-informed, unaffected
102
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
young man, very superior to young men in general. Cecilia
was cordially polite to Kenelm's cousin.
Altogether, that was a very happy day for Sir Peter. He
enjoyed greatly his dinner at the Garrick, where he met some
old acquaintances and was presented to some new " celel ri-
ties." He observed that Gordon stood well with these eminent
persons. Though as yet undistinguished himself, they treated
him with a certain respect, as well as with evident liking.
The most eminent of them, at least the one with the most
solidly-established reputation, said in Sir Peter's ear, " You
may be proud of your nephew Gordon 1"
" He is not my nephew, only the son of a very distant
cousin."
" Sorry for that. But he will shed lustre on kinsfolk,
however distant. Clever fellow, yet popular ; rare combina¬
tion—sure to rise."
Sir Peter suppressed a gulp in the throat. " Ah, if some
one as eminent had spoken thus of Kenelm 1"
But he was too generous to allow that half-envious senti¬
ment to last more than a moment. Wliy should he not be
proud of any member of the family who could irradiate the
antique obscurity of the Chillingly race ? And how agreeable
this clever young man made himself to Sir Peter I
The next day Gordon insisted on accompanying him to see
the latest acquisitions in the British Museum, and various
other exhibitions, and went at night to the Prince of Wales's
Theatre, whore Sir Peter was infinitely delighted with an
admirable little comedy by Mr. Robertson, admirably placed
on the stage by Marie Wilton. The day after, when Gordon
KENEtM CHILLINGLY.
103
called on him at his hotel, he cleared his throat, anl thus
plunged at once into the communication he had hitherto de¬
layed.
" Gordon, my boy, I owe you a debt, and I am now, thanks
to Kenelm, able to pay it."
Gordon gave a little start of surprise, but remained silenl.
" I told your father, shortly after Kenelm was bom, that I
meant to give up my London house and lay by £1000 a year
for you, in compensation for your chance of succeeding to
Exmundham should I have died childless. Well, your father
did not seem to think much of that promise, and went to law
with me about certain unquestionable rights of mine. How
BO clever a man could have made such a mistake, would puzzle
me, if I did not remember that he had a quarrelsome temper.
Temper is a thing that often dominates cleverness—^an uncon¬
trollable thing; and allowances must be made for it. Not
being of a quarrelsome temper myself (the Chillinglys are a
placid race), I did not make the allowance for your father's
differing, and (for a Chillingly) abnormal, constitution. The
language and the tone of his letter respecting it nettled me.
I did not see why, thus treated, I should pinch myself to lay
by a thousand a year. Facilities for buying a property most
desirable for the possessor of Exmundham presented thcm-
Belves. I bought it with borrowed money, and, though I gave
up the house in London, I did not lay by the thousand a
year. '
" My dear Sir Peter, I have always regretted that my poor
father was misled—perhaps out of too paternal a care for my
supposed interests—into that unhappy and fruitless litigation,
104
KENELM CniLLINQLT.
after wliîcli no one could doubt that any generous intentions
on your part would be finally abandoned. It bas been a
grateful surprise to me that I have been so kindly and cor¬
dially received into the family by Kenelm and yourself.
Pray oblige me by dropping all reference to pecuniary mat¬
ters : the idea of compensation to a very distant relative for
the loss of expectations he had no right to form, is too absurd,
for me at least, ever to entertain."
" But I am absurd enough to entertain it—though you
express yourself in a very high-minded way. To come to the
point, Kenelm is of age, and we have cut off the entail. The
estate of course remains absolutely with Kenelm to dispose
of, as it did before, and we must take it for granted that he
will marry ; at all events he cannot fall into your poor father's
error ; but whatever Kenelm hereafter does with his property,
it is nothing to you, and is not to be counted upon. Even
the title dies with Kenelm if he has no son. On reset¬
tling the estate, however, sums of money have been relea'if d
which, as I stated before, enable me to discharge the debt
which, Kenelm heartily agrees with me, is due to you.
£20,000 are now lying at my bankers' to be transferred to
yours ; meanwhile, if you will call on my solicitor, Mr.
Vining, Lincoln's-inn, you can see the new deed, and give to
him your receipt for the £20,000 for which he holds my
cheque. Stop—stop—stop—I will not hear a word—no
thanks, they are not due."
Here Gordon, who had during this speech uttered various
brief exclamations, which Sir Peter did not heed, caught hold
of his kinsman's hand, and, despite of all struggles, pressed
KENELM CHiLLINQLT.
105
his lips on it. " I must thank you, I must give some vent
to my emotions," cried Gordon. " This sum, great in itself,
is far more to me than you can imagine—it opens my career
—it assures my future."
" So Kenelm tells me ; he said that sum would be more use
to you now than ten times the amount twenty years hence."
" So it will—it will. And Kenelm consents to this sacri¬
fice?"
'' Consents—urges it 1"
Gordon turned away his face, and Sir Peter resumed:
"You want to get into Parliament; very natural ambition
for a clever young fellow. I don't presume to dictate politics
to you. I hear you are what is called a liberal ; a man may
be a liberal, I suppose, without being a Jacobin."
" I hope so, indeed. For my part, I am anything but a
violent man."
" Violent, no 1 Who ever heard of a violent Chillingly ?
But I was reading in the newspaper to-day a speech addressed
to some populous audience, in which the orator was for
dividing all the land and all the capital belonging to other
people among the working class, calmly and quietly, without
any violence, and deprecating violence ; but saying, perhaps
very tnily, that the people to be robbed might not like it,
and might offer violence ; in which case woe betide them—
it was they who would be guilty of violence—and they must
take the consequences if they resisted the reasonable propo¬
sitions of himself and his friends ! That, I suppose, is among
the new ideas with which Kenelm is more familiar than I am.
Do you entertain those new ideas ?"
E*
lOtí
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Certainly not—I despise the fools who do."
" And you will not abet revolutionary measures if you get
into Parliament?"
" My dear Sir Peter, I fear you have heard very false re¬
ports of my opinions if you put such questions. Listen," and
therewith Gordon launched into dissertations very clever, very
subtle, which committed him to nothing, beyond the wisdom
of guiding popular opinion into right directions ; what might
be right directions he did not define, he left Sir Peter to guess
them. Sir Peter did guess them, as Gordon meant he should,
to be the directions which he. Sir Peter, thought right ; and
he was satisfied.
That subject disposed of, Gordon said, with much apparent
feeling, " May I ask you to complete the favors you have
lavished on me ? I have never seen Exmundham, and the
home of the race from which I sprang has a deep interest for
me. Will you allow me to spend a few days with you, and
under the shade of your own trees take lessons in political
science from one who has evidently reflected on it pro¬
foundly?"
" Profoundly—no—a little—^a little, as a mere bystander,"
said Sir Peter, modestly, but much flattered. " Come, my dear
boy, by all means ; you will have a hearty welcome. By-the hy,
Travers and his handsome daughter promised to visit me in
about a fortnight : why not come at the same time ?"
A sudden flash lit up the young man's countenance. " 1
sh ill be so delighted," he cried. " I am but slightly ac¬
quainted with Mr. Travers, but I like him much, and Mrs
Campion is so well informed."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
107
" And what say you to the girl?"
" The girl, Miss Travers. Oh, she is very well in htr way.
But I don't talk with young ladies more than I can help."
" Then you are like your cousin Kenelm ?"
" I wish I were like him in other things."
" No, one such oddity in a family is quite enough. But
though I would not have you ehange to a Kenelm, I would
not change Kenelm for the most perfect model of a son that
the Vorld can exhibit." Delivering himself of this burst of
parental fondness. Sir Peter shook hands with Gordon, and
walked off to Mivers, who was to give him luncheon and
then accompany him to the station. Sir Peter was to return
to Exmundham by the afternoon express.
Left alone, Gordon indulged in one of those luxurious
guesses into the future which form the happiest moments in
youth, when so ambitious as his. The sum Sir Peter placed
at his disposal would insure his entranee into Parliament.
He counted with confidence on early successes there. He
extended the scope of his views. With such successes he
might calculate with certainty on a brilliant marriage, aug¬
menting his fortune, and confirming his position. He had
previously fixed his thoughts on Cecilia Travers—I will do
him the justice to say not from mercenary motives alone, but
not certainly with the impetuous ardor of youthful love. He
thought her exactly fitted to be the wife of an eminent public
man, in person, acquirement, dignified yet popular manners.
He esteemed her, he liked her, and then her fortune would
add solidity to his position. In fact, he had that sort of
rational attachment to Cecilia which wise men, like Lord
108
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Bacon and Montaigne, would commend to another wise man
seeking a wifa What opportunities of awaking in herself a
similar, perhaps a warmer, attachment the visit to Exmund-
ham would alford ! He had learned when he had called on
the Traverses that they were going thither, and hence that
hurst of family sentiment which had procured the invitation
to himself.
But he must be cautious ; he must not prematurely awaken
Travers's suspicions. He was not as yet a match that the
squire could approve of for his heiress. And, though he was
ignorant of Sir Peter's designs on that young lady, he was
much too prudent to confide his own to a kinsman of whose
discretion he had strong misgivings. It was enough for him at
present that way was opened for his own resolute energies.
And cheerfully, though musingly, he weighed its obstacles, and
divined its goal, as he paced his floor with bended head and
restless strides, now quick, now slow.
Sir Peter, in the meanwhile, found a very good luncheon
prepared for him at Mivers's rooms, which he had all to him¬
self, for his host never " spoilt his dinner and insulted his
breakfast" by that intermediate meal. He remained at his
desk writing brief notes of business or of pleasure, while Sir
Peter did justice to lamb cutlets and grilled chicken. But
he looked up from his task, with raised eyebrows, when Sir
Peter, after a somewhat discursive account of his visit to the
Traverses, his admiration of Cecilia, and the adroitness with
which, acting on his cousin's hint, he had engaged the family
to spend a few days at Exmundham, added, " And, by-the
by, I have asked young Gordon to meet them."
KENELM CIIILLINGLT.
109
" To meet them ; meet Mr. and Miss Travers ! you have ?
I thought you wished Kenehn to marry Cecilia. I was
mistaken, you meant Gordon !"
" G ordon 1" exclaimed Sir Peter, dropping his knife and
fork. " Nonsense ! you don't suppose that Miss Travers pre¬
fers him to Kenelm, or that he has the presumption to fancy
that her father would sanction his addresses."
" I indulge in no suppositions of the sort. I content myself
with thinking that Gordon is clever, insinuating, young ; and
it is a very good chance of bettering himself that you have
thrown in his way. However, it is no affair of mine ; and
though on the whole I like Kenelm better than Gordon, still
I like Gordon very well, and I have an interest in following
his career which I can't say I have in conjecturing what may
be Kenelm's—more likely no career at all."
" Mivers, you delight in provoking me ; you do say such
uncomfortable things. But, in the first place, Gordon spoke
rather slightingly of Miss Travers."
" Ah, indeed ; that's a bad sign," muttered Mivers.
Sir Peter did not hear him, and went on.
"And, besides, I feel pretty sure that the dear girl has
already a regard for Kenelm which allows no room for a rival.
However, I shall not forget your hint, but keep a sharp look¬
out ; and if I see the young man wants to be too sweet on
Cecilia, I shall cut short his visit."
" Give yourself no trouble in the matter ; it will do no
good. Marriages are made in heaven. Heaven's will be
done. If I can get away, I will run down to you for a day
or two. Perhaps in that case you can ask Lady Glenalvon
110
kenelm chillingly.
I like her, and she likes Kenelm. Have you finished ? 1
see the brougham is at the door, and we have to call at your
hotel to take up your carpet-bag."
Mivers was deliberately sealing his notes while he thus
spoke. He now rang for his servant, gave orders for their
delivery, and then followed Sir Peter down-stairs and into the
brougham. Not a word would he say more about Gordon,
and Sir Peter shrank from telling him about the £20,000.
Chillingly Mivers was perhaps the last person to whom Sir
Peter would be tempted to parade an act of generosity.
Mivers might not unfrequently do a generous act himself,
provided it was not divulged; but he had always a sneer
for the generosity of others.
CHAPTER IL
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 Mor-
daunt. He stood long and silently by the grassy margin, his
dark shadow falling over the stream, broken into fragments
oy the eddy and strife of waves, fresh from their leap down
the neighboring 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 «>
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
Ill
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 áhiall retail tradesman, with a fishing-rod in his hand and
a basket belted to his side.
"For trout," replied Kenelm; " I daresay. 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 Kcnelm 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 farther down
you see that white, neat-looking house. Well, that is my
house, sir, and I have an apartment which I let to gentlemen
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 cœlo, et die age tibia" said Kenelm.
"iSirl" said tbe elderly man.
112
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" I beg you ten thousand pardons. I have had the mis¬
fortune to have been at the university, and to have learned a
little Latin, which sometimes comes hack 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, hut 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 Ihe
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-lhe-by," said Kenelm, as they walked, " do you know
much of the family who 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 Jlrs,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
113
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 paintirgs
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 beau¬
tiful 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 con¬
tented 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 ; re¬
flective on things in general, without being unmindful of
your interests in particular, especially when you have lodg¬
ings to let. Do not be offended. That sort of man is not
perhaps bom 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."
VOL. II. 8
11-t KENELM CniLLINGLT.
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 de¬
cided 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 earis, and aristocrats. ' An honest man's the noblest work
of God.' Some poet says that. I think Shakspeare. "Won¬
derful man, Shakspeare. A. tradesman's son—^butcher, I
believe. Eh ! My uncle was a butcher, and I 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 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 pretenses.
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
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
115
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 I don't see that. What do you mean by
aristocracy ?"
" The ascendency of the better man. In a rude State tho
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
honor ; 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 gov¬
ernment of the State, if the State be fiourishing and free.
All these four classes of better men constitute true aids
tocraey ; 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
Kenclm into a pleasant parlor, with a bay window, and an
equally pleasant bedroom behind it.
" Will it do, sir ?"
" Perfectly. I take it from this moment. My knapsack
116
KENELM CIIILLINGLT.
contains all I shall need for the night. There is a portman¬
teau of mine at Mr. Somers's shop, which can he 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 nowadays," said the elderly man, " and
I am afraid, for board and lodging, I cannot charge you less
than £3 3s.—say £3 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
kenelm chillingly.
in
young man bent bis face on bis bands and mused dream¬
ily : tbe evening deepened, tbe stars came fortb, tbe rays of
tbe moon now peered aslant tbrougb tbe arcbing dips of
the willow, silvering their way as they stole to tbe waves
bebw.
" Shall I bring lights, sir ? or do you prefer a lamp or
candles?" asked a voice behind; tbe voice of tbe elderly
man'# wife. " Do you like tbe shutters closed ?"
Tbe questions startled tbe dreamer. They seemed mocking
his own old moekings on tbe romance of love. Lamp or can¬
dles, practical lights for prosaic eyes, and shutters closed
against moon and stars I
" Thank you, ma'am, not yet," be said ; and rising quietly
be placed bis band on tbe window-sill, swung himself tbrougb
tbe open casement, and passed slowly along tbe margin of the
rivulet by a path chequered alternately with shade and star¬
light ; tbe moon yet more slowly rising above tbe willows
and lengthening its track along tbe wavelets.
CHAPTER III.
Though Kenelm did not think it necessary at present to
report to bis parents, or bis London acquaintances, bis recent
movements and bis present resting-place, it never entered into
bis bead to lurk perdu in tbe immediate vicinity of Lily's
house and seek opportunities of meeting her clandestinely.
118
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
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 neighbor¬
hood, on the banks of the brook, for the sake of its trout-fish¬
ing. So you will allow me to call on you sometimes, and ono
of these days I hope you will give me the dinner that I so
unceremoniously rejected some days ago. I was then sum¬
moned 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 sum¬
mer 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."
" Wliatever they were, I am pleased to see they did not
prevent your return," said Mrs. Rraefield, graciously. " But
where have you found a lodging—^why not have come to us ?
My husband would have been sciircely less glad than myself
to receive you."
" You say that so sincerely, and so cordially, that to answer
KENELM CniLLINQLY.
119
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 in¬
terest. She had gone before him through the solitary land
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
[ were your sister, and that you would confide in me. Some¬
thing 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 his 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 mor«
about him. Mr. Jones is quite a character."
120
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" 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, be was un¬
happily 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 bap¬
tizes his house Cromwell Lodge, seeing that Algernoa 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 par¬
liamentary reform met with at the hands of his Highness.
But we must be indulgent to men who have been unfortu¬
nately christened before they had any choice of the names
that were to rule their fate. I myself should have been less
whbxjical had I not been named after a Kenelm who believed
in sy ipathetic powders. Apart from his political doctrines,
E like my landlord—be keeps his wife in excellent order. She
secmc 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. Cam¬
eron's."
" Now I think of it, so it is," said Kenelm innocently.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
121
Ah ! my friend Kenelm, enemy of shams, and truth-teller
par excellence^ what hast thou come to I How are the
mighty fallen ! " Since you say you will dine with us, sup¬
pose 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 1" said Mrs. Braefield ; " I wish she wer»
less of a child."
Kenelm re-seated 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."
VOL. II.—P
122
kenelm chillingly.
" Fairy ! Fairies have no age ; faiiy is neither shild nor
woman."
" Faiiy. She is called Fairy by those who know her best?
Fairy 1"
" And she believes in fairies."
" Does she ?—so do I. Pardon me, I must be ofiF. 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 1 my dear Mrs. Braefield. As you say, I pass
close by the cottage."
CHAPTEK IV.
Kenelm went with somewhat rapid pace from Mrs. Brae-
field's to the shop in the High Street, kept by Will Somers.
Jessie was behind the counter, which was thronged with
customers. Kenelm gave her a brief direction about his
portmanteau, and then passed into the back parlor, where her
husband was employed on his baskets—with the baby's cradle
KKNELM CHILLINGLY.
123
in the comer, and its grandmother rocking it mechanically, as
she read a wonderful missionary tract full of tales of miracu¬
lous conversions: into what sort of Christians we will not
pause to inquire.
"And so you are happy. Will?" said Kenelm, seating
himself between the basket-maker and the infant ; the dear
old mother beside him, reading the tract which linked her
dreams of life eternal with life just opening in the cradle that
she rocked. He not happy I How he pitied the man who
could ask such a question !
" Happy, sir I I should think so, indeed. There is not a
night on which Jessie and I, and mother too, do not pray
that some day or other you may be as happy. By-and-by
the baby will learn to pray ' God bless papa, and mamma,
grandmamma, and Mr. Chillingly.' "
" There is some one else much more deserving of prayers
than I, though needing them less. You will know some day
—pass it by now. To return to the point ; you are happy ;
if I asked why, would not you say, ' Because I have married
the girl I love, and have never repented' ?"
" Well, sir, that is about it ; though, begging your pardon,
I think it could be put more prettily somehow."
"You are right there. But perhaps love and happiness
never yet found any words that could fitly express them.
Good-bye, for the present."
Ah 1 if it were as mere materialists, or as many middle-
aged or elderly folks, who if materialists are so without know¬
ing it, unreflectingly say, " The main element of happiness is
bodily or animal health and strength," that question which
i24
kenelm chillingly.
Chillingly put would appear a very unmeaning or a very
insulting one addressed to a pale cripple, who, however im¬
proved of late in health, would still be sickly and ailing all
his life,—put, too, by a man of the rarest conformation of
physical powers that nature can adapt to physical enjoyment
—man who, since the age in which memory commences,
had never known what it was to be unwell, who could scarcely
understand you if you talked of a finger-ache, and whom those
refinements of mental culture which multiply the delights of
the senses had endowed with the most exquisite conceptions
of such happiness as mere nature and its instincts can give !
But Will did not think the question unmeaning or insulting
He, the poor cripple, felt a vast superiority on the scale of
joyous being over the young Hercules, well-born, cultured,
and wealthy, who could know so little of happiness as to ask
the crippled basket-maker if he were happy—he, blessed
husband and father!
CHAPTER V.
Lilt was seated on the grass under a chestnut-tree on the
lawn. A white cat, not long emerged from kittenhood, curled
itself by her side. On her lap was an open volume, which
she was reading with the greatest delight.
Mrs. Cameron came from the house, looked round, per¬
ceived the girl, and approached; and either she moved so
gently, or Lily was so absorbed in her book, that the latter
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
125
Was not aware of her presence till she felt a light hand on
her shoulder, and, looking up, recognized her aunt's gentle
face.
" Ah ! Fairy, Fairy, that silly book, when you ought to be
at your French verbs. What will your guardian say when
he comes and finds you have so wasted time?"
" He will say that fairies never waste their time ; and he
will scold you for saying so." Therewith Lily threw down
the book, sprang up to her feet, wound her arm round Mrs.
Cameron's neck, and kissed her fondly. " There ! is that
wasting time? I love you so, aunty. In a day like this
I think I love everybody and everything 1" As she said
this, she drew up her lithe form, looked into the blue sky,
and with parted lips seemed to drink in air and sunshine.
Then she woke up the dozing cat, and began chasing it
round the lawn.
Mrs. Cameron stood still, regarding her with moistened
eyes. Just at that moment Ken elm entered through the
garden gate. He, too, stood still, his eyes fixed on the undu¬
lating movements of Fairy's exquisite form. She had arrested
her favorite, and was now at play with it, shaking oflF her
straw hat, and drawing the ribbon attached to it tantalizingly
along the smooth grass. Her rich hair, thus released and
disheveled by the exercise, fell partly over her face in wavy
ringlets ; and her musical laugh and words of sportive endear¬
ment sounded on Kenelm's ear more joyously than the trill
of the skylark, more sweetly than the coo of the ringdove.
He approached towards Mrs. Cameron. Lily turned sud¬
denly and saw him. Instinctively she smoothed back her
126
KENELM CHILLIXaLY.
loosened tresses, replaced the straw hat, and came up demurely
to his side just he had accosted her aunt.
" Pardon my intrusion, Mrs. Cameron. I am the bearer
of this note from Mrs. Braefield." While the aunt read the
note, he turned to the niece.
" You promised to show me the picture. Miss Mordaunt."
" But that was a long time ago."
" Too long to eipect a lady's promise to be kept ?"
Lily seemed to ponder that question, and hesitated before
she answered.
" I will show you the picture. I don't think I ever broks
a promise yet, but I shall be more careful how I make one in
future."
" Why so?"
"Because you did not value mine when I made it, and
that hurt me." Lily lifted up her head with a bewitching
stateliness, and added gravely, " I was offended."
" Mrs. Braefield is very kind," said Mrs. Cameron ; " she
asks us to dine the day after to-morrow. You would like to
go, Lily?"
"All grown-up people, I suppose? No, thank you, dear
'lunt. You go alone : I would rather stay at home. May I
have little Clemmy to play with ? She will bring Juba, and
Blanche is very partial to Juba, though she does scratch
him."
" Very well, my dear, you shall have your playmate, and I
will go by myself."
Kenelm stood aghast. " You will not go, Miss Mordaunt ?
Mrs. Braefield will be so disappointed. And if you don't go,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
127
wliom shall I have to talk to ? I don't like gro wn-up people
better than you do."
" You are going ?"
" Certain!}'."
' And if I go you will talk to me ? I am afraid of Mr.
Bracfield. He is so wise."
'' I will save you from him, and will not utter a grain of
wisdom."
" Aunty, I will go."
Here Lily made a bound and eaught up Blanche, who,
taking her kisses resignedly, stared with evident curiosity
upon Kenelm.
Here a bell within the house rung the announcement of
luncheon. Mrs. Cameron invited Kenelm to partake of that
meal. He felt as Romulus might have felt when first invited
to taste the ambrosia of the gods. Yet certainly that lun¬
cheon was not such as might have pleased Kenelm Chillingly
in the early days of The Temperance Hotel. But somehow
or other of late he had lost appetite ; and on this occasion a
very modest share of a very slender dish of chicken fricasseed,
and a few cherries daintily arranged on vine-leaves, which
Lily selected for him, contented him—as probably a very little
ambrosia contented Romulus while feasting his eyes on Hebe.
Luncheon over, while Mrs. Cameron wrote her reply to Elsie,
Kenelm was conducted by Lily into her own oion room, in
vulgar parlance her houdoir, though it did not look as if any
one ever houdedà there. It was exquisitely pretty—pretty
not as a woman's, but a child's dream of the own own room
she would like to have—wondrously neat and cool and pure-
128
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
looking ; a trellis paper, the trellis gay with roses and wood«
bine and birds and butterflies ; draperies of muslin, festooned
with dainty tassels and ribbons ; a dwarf bookcase, that seemed
well stored, at least as to bindings; a dainty little writing-
table in French marqueterie—looking too fresh and spotless
to have known hard service. The casement was open, and in
keeping with the trellis paper ; woodbine and roses from with¬
out encroached on the window-sides, gently stirred by the faint
summer breeze, and wafting sweet odors into the little room.
Kenelm went to the window, and glanced on the view beyond.
" I was right," he said to himself ; " I divined it." But though
he spoke in a low inward whisper, Lüy, who had watched his
movements in surprise, overheard.
" You divined it. Divined what?"
" Nothing, nothing; I was but talking to myself."
" Tell me what you divined—I insist upon it !" and Fairy
petulantly stamped her tiny foot on the floor.
" Do you ? Then I obey. I have taken a lodging for a
short time on the other side of the brook—Cromwell Lodge—
and, seeing your house as I passed, I divined that your room
was in this part of it. How soft here is the view of the water I
Ah ! yonder is Izaak Walton's summer-house."
" Don't talk about Izaak Walton, or I shall quarrel with
you, as I did with Lion when he wanted me to like that
cruel book."
" Who is Lion ?"
" Lion—of course, my guardian. I called him Lion when
I was a little child. It was on seeing in one of his books a
print of a lion playing with a little child."
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
129
" All ! I know the design well," said Kenelm, with a slight
sigh. " It is from an antique Greek gem. It is not the lion
that plays with the child, it is the child that masters the lion,
and the Greeks called the child ' Love.' "
This idea seemed beyond Lily's perfect comprehension
Sho paused before she answered, with the naïveté of a child
six years old :
" I see now why I mastered Blanche, who will not make
friends with any one else : I love Blanche. Ah, that reminds
me—come and look at the picture,"
She went to the wall over the writing-table, drew a sUk
curtain aside from a small painting in a dainty velvet frame¬
work, and, pointing to it, cried with triumph, " Look there 1
is it not beautiful ?"
Kenelm had been prepared to see a landscape, or a group,
or anything but what he did see—it was the portrait of
Blanche when a kitten.
Little elevated though the subject was, it was treated with
graceful fancy. The kitten had evidently ceased from play¬
ing with the cotton-reel that lay between her paws, and was
fixing her gaze intent on a bullfinch that had lighted on a
spray within her reach.
" You understand," said Lily, placing her hand on his arm
and drawing him towards what she thought the best light fot
the picture. " It is Blanche's first sight of a bird. Look well
at her face ; don't you see a sudden surprise—half joy, half
fear ? She ceases to play with the reel. Her intellect—or,
as Mr. Braefield would say, 'her instinct'—is for the first
time aroused. From that moment Blanche was no longer a
Vol. II. f* 9
Î30
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
more kitten. And it required, oh, the most careful educa¬
tion to teach her not to kill the poor little birds. She never
does now, but I had such trouble with her."
" I cannot say honestly that I do see all that you do in the
picture ; hut it seems to me very simply painted, and was, no
douhl, a striking likeness of Blanche at that early age."
" So it was. Lion drew the first sketch from life with his
pencil ; and when he saw how pleased I was with it—^he was
BO good—^he put it on canvas, and let me sit by him while he
pain^^^ed it. Then he took it away, and brought it back finished
and framed as you see, last May, a present for my birthday."
" You were born in May—with the flowers."
" The best of all the flowers are bom before May—violets."
" But they are born in the shade, and cling to it. Surely,
as a child of May, you love the sun !"
" I love the sun—it is never too bright nor too warm for
me. But I don't think that, though born in May, I was born
in sunlight. I feel more like my own native self when I
creep into the shade and sit down alone. I can weep then."
As she thus shyly ended, the character of her whole coun¬
tenance was changed—its infantine mirthfulness was gone ; a
grave, thoughtful, even a sad expression settled on the tender
eyes and the tremulous lips.
Kenelm was so touched that words failed him, and there
was silence for some moments between the two. At length
Kenelm said slowly :
" You say your own native self. Do you then feel, as I
often do, that there is a second, possibly a native, self, deep
hid beneath the self—not merely what we show to the worlil
KEKELM CniLLINGLY.
131
in common (that may be merely a mask)—but the self that
we ordinarily accept even when in solitude as our own ; an
inner innermost self ; ob, so different and so rarely coming
forth from its hiding-place ; asserting its right of sovereignty,
and putting out the other self, as the sun puts out a star ?"
Had Kenelm thus spoken to a clever man of the world—to
a Chillingly Mivers—to a Chillingly Gordon—^they certainly
would not have understood him. But to such men he never
would have thus spoken. He had a vague hope that this
childlike girl, despite so much of childlike talk, would under¬
stand him ; and she did, at once.
Advancing close to him, again laying her hand on his arm,
and looking up towards his bended face with startled wonder¬
ing eyes, no longer sad, yet not mirthful :
" How true ! You have felt that too ? Where is that in¬
nermost self, so deep down—so deep ; yet when it does come
forth, so much higher—^higher—immeasurably higher than
one's everyday self? It does not tame the butterflies—it
longs to get to the stars. And then—and then—ah, how
soon it fades back again 1 You have felt that. Does it not
puzzle you ?"
" Very much."
" Are there no wise hooks about it that help to explain ?"
" No wise books in my very limited reading even hint at
the puzzle. I fancy that it is one of those insoluble questions
that rest between the infant and his Maker. Mind and soul
are not the same things, and what you and I call ' wise men
are always confounding the two "
Fortunately for all parties—eí*pecially the reader; for
132
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelja had here got on the back of one of his most cherished
hobbies—the distinction between psychology and metaphysics
—soul and mind scientifically or logically considered—Mrs.
Cameron here entered the room and asked him how he liked
the picture.
" Very much. I am no great judge of the art. But it
pleased me at once, and, now that Miss Mordaunt has inter¬
preted the intention of the painter, I admire it yet more."
" Lily chooses to interpret his intention in her own way,
and insists that Blanche's expression of countenance conveys
an idea of her capacity to restrain her destructive instinct and
be taught to believe that it is wrong to kill birds for mere
sport. For food she need not kill them, seeing that Lily
takes care that she has plenty to eat. But I don't think that
Mr. Melville had the slightest suspicion that he had indicated
that capacity in his picture."
" He must have done so, whether he suspected it or not,"
said Lily, positively ; " otherwise he would not be truthful."
" Why not truthful ?" asked Kenelm.
"Don't you see? If you were called upon to describe
truthfully the character of any little child, would you only
speak of such naughty impulses as all children have in com¬
mon, and not even hint at the capacity to be made better ?"
" Admirably put !" said Kenelm. " There is no doubt
that a much fiercer animal than a cat—a tiger, for instance,
or a conquering hero—may be taught to live on the kindest
possible terms with the creatures on which it was its natural
instinct to prey."
" Yes—^yes ; hear that, aunty ! You remember the Happy
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
133
Family that we saw, eight years ago, at Moleswich Fair, with
a cat not half so nice as Blanche allowing a mouse to bite her
ear? Well, then, would Lion not have been shamefully falso
to Blanche if Lion had not "
Lily paused and looked half shyly, half archly, at Kenelm,
then added, in slow, deep-drawn tones—" given a glimpse of
her innermost self?"
" Innermost self!" repeated Mrs. Cameron, perplexed, and
laughing gently.
Lily stole nearer to Kenelm, and whispered :
" Is not one's innermost self one's best self?"
Kenelm smiled approvingly. The fairy was rapidly deepen¬
ing her spell upon him. If Lily had been his sister, hia
betrothed, his wife, how fondly he would have kissed her !
She had expressed a thought over which he had often
inaudibly brooded, and she had clothed it with all the charm
of her own infantine fancy and womanlike tenderness ! Goethe
has said somewhere, or is reported to have said, " There is
something in every man's heart, that, if you knew it, would
make you hate him." What Goethe said, still more what
Goethe is reported to have said, is never to be taken quite
literally. No comprehensive genius—genius at once poet and
thinker—ever can be so taken. The sun shines on a dunghill.
But the sun has no predilection for a dunghill. It only
comprehends a dunghill as it does a rose. Still, Kenelm had
always regarded that loose ray from Goethe's prodigal orb
with an abhorrence most unphilosophical for a philosopher so
young as generally to take upon oath any words of so great a
master. Kenelm thought that the root of all private bcnovo-
134
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
lence, of all enlightened advance in social reform, lay in the
adverse theorem—that in every man's nature there lies a
something that, could we get at it, cleanse it, polish it, render
it visibly clear to our eyes, would make us love him. And
in this spontaneous, uncultured sympathy with the result oi
80 many laborious struggles of his own scholastic intellect
against the dogma of the German giant, he felt as if he had
found a younger—true, but, oh, how much more subduing,
because so much younger—sister of his own man's soul.
Then came, so strongly, the sense of her sympathy with his
own strange innermost self which a man will never feel more
than once in his life with a daughter of Eve, that he dared
not trust himself to speak. He somewhat hurried his leave-
taking.
Passing in the rear of the garden towards the bridge which
led to his lodging, he found on the opposite bank, at the
other end of the bridge, Mr. Algernon Sidney Gale Jones,
peacefully angling for trout.
" Will you not try the stream to-day, sir ? Take my rod."
Kenelm remembered that Lily had called Izaak Walton's
book "a cruel one," and, shaking his head gently, went his
way into the house. There he seated himself silently by the
window, and looked towards the grassy lawn and the dipping
willows, and the gleam of the white walls through the gird¬
ling trees, as he had looked the eve before.
"Ah!" he murmured at last, "if, as I hold, a man but
tolerably good does good unconsciously merely by the act of
living—if he can no more traverse his way from the cradle to
the grave, without letting fall, as he passes, the germs of
kenelm chillingly.
135
strength, fertility, and beauty, than can a reckless wind or a
vagrant bird, which, where it passes, leaves behind it the oak,
the cornsheaf, or the flower—ah, if that be so, how tenfold
the good must be, if the man find the gentler and purer
duplicate of his own being in that mysterious, undeflnable
union which Shakespeares and day-laborers equally agree to
call love; which Newton never recognizes, and which Des¬
cartes (his only rival in the realms of thought at once severe
and imaginative) reduces into links of early association, ex¬
plaining that he loved women who squinted because, when he
was a boy, a girl with that infirmity squinted at him from
the other side of his father's garden-wall 1 Ah I be this union
between man and woman what it may ; if it be really love—
really the bond which embraces the innermost and bettermost
self of both—^how, daily, hourly, momently, should we bless
God for having made it so easy to be happy and to be good 1"
CHAPTER VI.
The dinner-party at Mr. Braefield's was not quite so small
as Kenelm had anticipated. When the merchant heard from
his wife that Kenelm was coming, he thought it would be
but civil to the young gentleman to invite a few other persons
to meet him.
" You see, my dear," he said to Elsie, " Mrs. Cameron is a
very good, simple sort of woman, but not particularly amusing ;
136
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
and Lily, thougli a pretty girl, is so exceedingly cliildisli. Wa
owe mucli, my sweet Elsie, to this Mr. Chillingly"—here
there was a deep tone of feeling in his voice and look—" and
we must make it as pleasant for him as we can. I will bring
down my friend Sir Thomas, and you ask Mr. Emlyn and his
wife. Sir Thomas is a very sensible man, and Emlyn a very
learned one. So Mr. Chillingly will find people worth talking
to. By-the-by, when I go to town I will send down a haunch
of venison from Groves'."
So when Kenelm arrived, a little before six o'clock, he
found in the drawing-room the Rev. Charles Emlyn, vicar of
Moleswich Proper, with his spouse, and a portly middle-aged
man, to whom, as Sir Thomas Pratt, Kenelm was introduced.
Sir Thomas was an eminent city banker. The ceremonies of
introduction over, Kenelm stole to Elsie's side.
" I thought I was to meet Mrs. Cameron. I don't see her.'
" She will be here presently. It looks as if it might rain,
and I have sent the carriage for her and Lily. Ah, here they
are !"
Mrs. Cameron entered, clothed in black silk. She always
wore black ; and behind her came Lily, in the spotless color
that became her name; no ornament, save a slender gold
chain to which was appended a simple locket, and a single
blush-rose in her hair. She looked wonderfully lovely ; and
with that loveliness there was a certain nameless air of dis¬
tinction, possibly owing to delicacy of form and coloring;
possibly to a certain grace of carriage, which was not without
a something of pride.
Mr, Braefield, who was a very punctu.rJ man, made a sign
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
137
to his servant, and in another moment or so dinner was an¬
nounced. Sir Thomas, of course, took in the hostess ; Mr.
Braefield, the vicar's wife (she was a dean's daughter) ;
Kenelm, Mrs. Cameron ; and the vicar, Lily.
On seating themselves at the table, Kenelm was on the left
hand, next to the hostess, and separated from Lily oy Mrs.
Cameron and Mr. Emlyn ; and when the vicar had said gi-ace,
Lily glanced behind his back and her aunt's at Kenelm (who
did the same thing), making at him what the French call a
moue. The pledge to her had been broken. She was between
two men very much grown up—the vicar and the host.
Kenelm returned the moue with a mournful smil<» and an
involuntary shrug.
All were silent till, after his soup and his first glass of
sherry. Sir Thomas began ;
" I think, Mr. Chillingly, we have met before, though I
had not the honor then of making your acquaintance.' Sir
Thomas paused before he added, "Not long ago; the last
State ball at Buckingham Palace."
Kenelm bent his head acquiescingly. He had been at that
ball.
"You were talking with a very charming woman—a friond
of mine—Lady Glenalvon."
(Sir Thomas was Lady Glenalvon's banker.)
" I remember perfectly," said Kenelm. " Wc were seated
in the picture-gallery. You came to speak to Lady Glen¬
alvon, and I yielded to you my place on the sett re."
" Quite true ; and I think you joined a your g lady—ve*v
handsome—the great heiress, Miss Travers."
138
KENELM CHILLINaLT.
Keuelm again bowed, and, turning away as politely as he
could, addressed himself to Mrs. Cameron. Sir Thomas,
satisfied that he had impressed on his audience the facts of
his friendship with Lady Glenalvon and his attendance at the
court ball, now directed his conversational powers towards the
vicar, who, utterly foiled in the attempt to draw out Lily, met
the baronet's advances with the ardor of a talker too long
suppressed. Kenelm continued, unmolested, to ripen his ac¬
quaintance with Mrs. Cameron. She did not, however, seem
to lend a very attentive ear to his preliminary commonplace
remarks about scenery or weather, but at his first pause said;
"Sir Thomas spoke about a Miss Travers: is she re¬
lated to a gentleman who was once in the Guards—Leopold
Travers ?"
" She is his daughter. Did you ever know Leopold Trav¬
ers?"
" I have heard him mentioned by friends of mine long ago
—long ago," replied Mrs. Cameron, with a sort of weary
languor, not unwonted, in her voice and manner, and then,
as if dismissing the bygone reminiscence from her thoughts,
changed the subject.
"Lily tells me, Mr. Chillingly, that you said you weie
staying at Mr. Jones's, Cromwell Lodge. I hope you are
made comfortable there."
'Very. The situation is singularly pleasant."
" Yes, it is considered the prettiest spot on the brookside,
and used to be a favorite resort for anglers ; but the trout, I
believe, are grown scarce ; at least, now that the fishing in the
Thames is improved, poor Mr. Jones complains that his old
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
139
lodgers desert him. Of course you took the rooms for the
sake of tlie fishing. I hope the sport may he better than it
is said to be."
" It ia of little consequence to me ; I do not care mueh
about fishing ; and since Miss Mordaunt calls the book whieh
first enticed me to take to it ' a cruel one,' I feel as if the
trout had become as sacred as crocodiles were to the ancient
Egyptians."
" Lily is a foolish child on such matters. She cannot bear
the thought of giving pain to any dumb creature ; and just
before our garden there are a few trout which she has tamed.
They feed out of her hand ; she is always afraid they will
Wander away and get caught."
" But Mr. Melville is an angler ?"
" Several years ago he would sometimes pretend to fish,
but I believe it was rather an excuse for lying on the grass
and reading ' the cruel hook,' or perhaps, rather, for sketching.
But now he is seldom here till autumn, when it grows too
cold for such amusement."
Here Sir Thomas's voice was so loudly raised that it stopped
the conversation between Kenelm and Mrs. Cameron. He
had got into some question of politics on which he and the
vicar did not agree, and the discussion threatened to become
warm, when Mrs. Braefield, with a woman's true tact, broached
a new topic, in which Sir Thomas was immediately interested,
relating to the construction of a conservatory for orchids that
he meditated adding to his country-house, and in which fre¬
quent appeal was made to Mrs. Cameron, who was considered
an accomplished florist, and who seemed at some time or other
140
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
in her life to lave acquired a very intimate acquaintance with
the costly family of orchids.
When the ladies retired, Kenelm found himself seated next,
to Mr. Emlyn, who astounded him by a complimentary quo¬
tation from one of his own Latin prize poems at the university,
hoped he would make some stay at Moleswich, told him of the
principal places in the neighborhood worth visiting, and offered
him the run of his library, which he flattered himself was
rather rich, both in the best editions of Greek and Latin
classics and in early English literature. Kenelm was much
pleased with the scholarly vicar, especially when Mr. Emlyn
began to speak about Mrs. Cameron and Lily. Of the first
he said, " She is one of those women in whom Quiet is so
predominant that it is long before one can know what under¬
currents of good feeling flow beneath the unruflled surface.
I wish, however, she was a little more active in the manage¬
ment and education of her niece—a girl in whom I feel a
very anxious interest, and whom I doubt if Mrs. Cameron
understands. Perhaps, however, only a poet, and a very pecu¬
liar sort of poet, can understand her : Lily Mordaunt is her¬
self a poem."
" I like your definition of her," said Kenelm. " Thete is
certainly something about her which differs much from the
prose of common life."
" You probably know Wordsworth's lines:
' . . . and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round.
And beauty, born of murmuring sound.
Shall pass into her face.'
kenelm chillingly.
141
They are lines that many critics have found unintelligible ;
but Lily seems like the living key to them."
Kenelm's dark face lighted up, but he made no answer.
" Only,' ' continued Mr. Emlyn, " how a girl of that sort,
left wholly to herself, untrained, undisciplined, is to grow up
into the practical uses of womanhood, is a question that per¬
plexes and saddens me."
" Any more wine ?" asked the host, closing a conversation
on commercial matters with Sir Thomas. " No ?—^shall we
join the ladies?"
CHAPTEK VII.
The drawing-room was deserted; the ladies were in the
garden. As Kenelm and Mr. Emlyn walked side by side
towards the group (Sir Thomas and Mr. Braefield following
at a little distance), the former asked, somewhat abruptly,
"What sort of man is Miss Cameron's guardian, Mr. Mel¬
ville?"
" I can scarcely answer that question. I see little of him
when he comes here. Formerly he used to run down pretty
often with a harum-scarum set of young fellows, quartered at
Cromwell Lodge—Grasmere had no accommodation for them
—students in the Academy, I suppose. For some years he
has not brought those persons, and when he does come himself
it is but for a few days. He has the reputation of being very
wüd."
142
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
Fui-ther conversation was here stopped. The two men,
while they thus talked, had been diverging from the straight
way across the lawn towards the ladies, turning into seques¬
tered paths through the shrubbery; now they emerged into
the open sward, just before a table, on which cofiFeo was
served, and round which all the rest of the party were
gathered.
" I hope, Mr. Emlyn," said Elsie's cheery voice, " that you
have dissuaded Mr. Chillingly from turning papist. I am sure
you have taken time enough to do so."
Mr. Emlyn, protestant every inch of him, slightly recoiled
from Kenelm's side. " Do you meditate turning " Ho
could not conclude the sentence.
" Be not alarmed, my dear sir. I did hut own to Mr.
Braefield that I had paid a visit to Oxford in order to confer
with a learned man on a question that puzzled me, and as
abstract as that feminine pastime, theology, is nowadays. I
cannot convince Mrs. Braefield that Oxford admits other puz¬
zles in life than those which amuse the ladies." Here Kenelm
dropped into a chair by the side of Lily.
Lily half turned her back to him.
" Have I offended again ?"
Lily shrugged her shoulders slightly and would not answer.
" I suspect. Miss Mordaunt, that among your good qualities
nature has omitted one; the bettormost self within you should
replace it."
Lily here abruptly turned to him her front face—the light
of the skies was becoming dim, but the evening star shone
upon it.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
143
" How I what do you mean ?"
" Am I to answer politely or truthfully ?'
"Truthfully! Oh, tnithfullyl What is life without
tjTith ?"
"Even though one believes in fairies?"
" Eairies are truthful, in a eertain way. But you are not
truthful. You were not thinking of fairies when you "
" When I what?"
" Found fault with me I"
" I am not sure of that. But I will translate to you my
thoughts, so far as I can read them myself, and to do so I
will resort to the fairies. Let us suppose that a fairy has
placed her chaugeling into the cradle of a mortal ; that into
the cradle she drops all manner of fairy gifts, which are not
bestowed on mere mortals ; but that one mortal attribute she
forgets. The changeling grows up, she charms those around
her ; they humor, and pet, and spoil her. But there arises a
moment in which the omission of the one mortal gift is felt by
her admirers and friends. Guess what that is."
, Lily pondered. " I see what you mean ; the reverse of
truthfulness, politeness."
" No, not exactly that, though politeness slides into it un¬
awares ; it is a very humble quality, a very unpoetic quality ;
a quality that many dull people possess ; and yet without it
no fairy can fascinate mortals, when on the face of the fairy
settles the first wrinkle. Can you not guess it now?"
" No ; you vex me, you provoke me ;" and Lily stamped
her foot petulantly, as in Kenelm's presence she had stamped
it once before. " Speak plainly, I insist."
144
kenelm cuillinqly.
" Miss Mordaunt, excuse me, I dare not," said Kenelm,
rising -with the sort of bow one makes to the Queen ; and he
crossed over to Mrs. Braefield.
Lily remained, still pouting fiercely.
Sir Thomas took the chair Kenelm had vacated.
CHAPTER VIII.
The hour for parting came. Of all the guests. Sir Thomas
aione stayed at the house a guest for the night. Mr. and Mis.
Emlyn had their own carriage. Mrs. Braefield's carriage
came to the door for Mrs. Cameron and Lily.
Said Lily, impatiently and discourteously, "Who would
not rather walk on such a night?" and she whispered to
her aunt.
Mrs. Cameron, listening to the whisper, and obedient to
every whim of Lily's, said, " You are too considerate, dear
Mrs. Braefield. Lily prefers walking home ; there is no chance
of rain now."
Kenelm followed the steps of the aunt and niece, and soon
overtook them on the brookside.
" A charming night, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Cameron.
" An English summer night ; nothing like it in such parts
of the world as I have visited. But, alas ! of English summer
nights there are but few."
" You have traveled much abroad?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
145
" Much—no, a little ; chiefly on foot."
Lily hitherto had not said a word, and had been walking
with downcast head. Now she looked up, and said, in the
mildest and most conciliatory of human voices :
" You have been abroad," then, with an acquiescence in
the manners of the world which to him she had never yet
manifested, she added his name, " Mr. Chillingly," and went
on, more familiarly. " What a breadth of maaning the word
' abroad' conveys ! Away, afar from one's self, from one's every¬
day life. How I envy you ! you have been abroad : so has
Lion"—(Here drawing herself up)—" I mean my guardian,
Mr. Melville."
" Certainly, I have been abroad ; but afar from myself—
never. It is an old saying—all old sayings are true, most
new sayings are false—a man carries his native soil at the sole
of his foot."
Here the path somewhat narrowed. Mrs. Cameron went
on first, Kenelm and Lily behind ; she, of course, on the dry
path, he on the dewy grass.
She stopped him. " You are walking in the wet, and with
those thin shoes." Lily moved instinctively away from the
dry path.
Homely though that speech of Lily's be, and absurd as
said by a fragile girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a
whole world of womanhood—it showed all that undiscover-
able land which was hidden to the learned Mr. Emlyn, all that
land which an uncomprehended girl seizes and reigns over
when she becomes wife and mother.
At that homely speech, and that impulsive movement,
VOL. II.—G 10
146
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelni halted, in a sort of dreaming maze. He turned
timidly—" Can you forgive me for my rude words ? I pi-e-
sumed to find fault with you."
" And so justly. I have been thinking over all you said,
and I feel you were so right ; only I still do not quite under¬
stand what you meant by the quality for mortals which tha
fairy did not give to her changeling."
" If I did not dare say it before, I should still less dare to
say it now."
" Do." There was no longer the stamp of the foot, no
longer the flash from her eyes, no longer the willfulness which
said, " I insist —" Do," soothingly, sweetly, imploringly.
Thus pushed to it, Kenelm plucked up courage, and, not
trusting himself to look at Lily, answered brusquely :
" The quality desirable for men, but more essential to
women in proportion as they are fairy-like, though the tritest
thing possible, is good temper."
Lily made a sudden bound from his side, and joined her
aunt, walking through the wet grass.
When they reached the garden-gate, Kenelm advanced and
opened it. Lily passed him by haughtily ; they gained the
cottage-door.
" I don't ask you in at this hour," said Mrs. Cameron. " It
would be but a false compliment."
Kenelm bowed and retreated. Lily left her aunt's side,
and came towards him, extending her hand.
" I shall consider your words, Mr. Chillingly," she said,
with a strangely majestic air. " At present I think you are
not right. I am not ill-tempered; but"—^here she paused,
kenelm CniLLINQLY.
147
and then added, with a loftiness of mien which, had she not
been so exquisitely pretty, would have been rudeness—"in
any case I forgive you."
CHAPTER IX.
There were a good many pretty villas in the outskirts of
Moleswich, and the owners of them were generally well off
and yet there was little of what is called visiting society—
owing, perhaps, to the fact that, there not being among these
proprietors any persons belonging to what is commonly called
" the aristocratic class," there was a vast deal of aristocratic
pretension. The family of Mr. A , who had enriched
himself as a stock-jobber, turned up its nose at the family of
Mr. B , who had enriched himself still more as a linen-
draper, while the family of Mr. B showed a very cold
shoulder to the family of Mr. C , who had become richer
than either of them as a pawnbroker, and whose wife wore
diamonds, but dropped her h's. England would be a com¬
munity so aristocratic that there would be no living in it, if
one could exterminate what is now called "aristocracy."
The Braefields were the only persons who really drew together
the antagonistic atoms of the Moleswich society, partly be¬
cause they were acknowledged to be the first persons there, in
right not only of old settlement (the Braefields had held Brae-
fieldville for four generations), but of the wealth derived from
148
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
those departments of commercial enterprise which are recog¬
nized as the highest, and of an establishment considered to be
the most elegant in the neighborhood; principally because
Elsie, while exceedingly genial and cheerful in temper, had a
certain power of will (as her runaway folly had manifested),
and when she got people together compelled them to be civil
to each other. She had commenced this gracious career by
inaugurating children's parties, and when the children became
friends the parents neeessarily grew closer together. Still her
task had only recently begun, and its effects were not in full
operation. Thus, though it became known at Moleswich that
a young gentleman, the heir to a baronetcy and a high estate,
was sojourning at Cromwell Lodge, no overtures were made
to him on the part of the A's, B's, and C's. The vicar, who
called on Kenelm the day after the dinner at BraefieldviUe,
explained to him the social conditions of the place. " You
understand," said he, " that it will be from no want of cour¬
tesy on the part of my neighbors if they do not offer you
any relief from the pleasures of solitude. It will be simply
because they are shy, not because they are uncivil. And
it is this consideration that makes me, at the risk of seem¬
ing too forward, entreat you to look into the vicarage any
morning or evening on which you feel tired of your own
company. Suppose you drink tea with us this evening—
you will find a young lady whose heart you have already
won."
" Whose heart I have won !" faltered Kenelm, and the
warm blood rushed to his cheek.
" But," continued the vicar, smiling, " she has no matri-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
149
monial designs on you at present. She is only twelve years
old—^my little girl Clemmy."
" Clemmy !—She is your daughter. I did not know that
I very gratefully accept your invitation."
" I must not keep you longer from your amusement. The
sky is just clouded enough for sport. What fly do you
use?"
" To say truth, I doubt if the stream has much to tempt
me in the way of its trout, and I prefer rambling about the
lanes and by-paths to
' The noiseless angler's solitary stand.'
I am an indefatigable walker, and the home scenery round
the place has many charms for me. Besides," added Kenelm,
feeling conscious that he ought to find some more plausible
excuse than the charms of home scenery for locating himself
long in Cromwell Lodge—" besides, I intend to devote my¬
self a good deal to reading. I have been very idle of late,
and the solitude of this place must be favorable to study."
" You are not intended, I presume, for any of the learned
professions ?"
" The learned professions," replied Kenelm, " is an invidious
form of speech that we are doing our best to eradicate from
the language. All professions nowadays are to have much
about the same amount of learning. The learning of the
military profession is to be leveled upwards—the learning of
the scholastic to be leveled downwards. Cabinet ministers
sneer at the uses of Greek and Latin. And even such mas¬
culine studies as Law and Medicine are to be adapted to the
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
measurements of taste and propriety in colleges for young
ladies. No, I am not intended for any profession; but still
an ignorant man like myself may not be the worse for a little
book-reading now and then."
"You seem to be badly provided with books here," said
the vicar, glancing round the room, in which, on a table in
the corner, lay half a dozen old-looking volumes, evidently
belonging not to the lodger but the landlord. " Eut, as I
before said, my library is at your service. What branch of
reading do you prefer?"
Kenelm was, and looked, puzzled. But after a pause he
answered :
" The more remote it be from the present day, the better
for me. You said your collection was rich in mediaeval liter¬
ature. But the Middle Ages are so copied by the modern
Goths, that I might as well read translations of Chaucer, or
take lodgings in Wardour Street. If you have any books
about the manners and habits of those who, according to the
newest idea in science, were our semi-human progenitors in
the transition state between a marine animal and a gorilla, I
should be very much edified by the loan."
" Alas," said Mr. Emlyn, laughing, " no such books have
been left to us."
" No such books ? You must be mistaken. There must
be plenty of them somewhere. I grant all the wonderful
powers of invention bestowed on the creators of poetic ro¬
mance; still, not the sovereign masters in that realm of
literatuie—not Scott, not Cervantes, not Goethe, not even
Shakspeare—could have presumed to rebuild the past with-
KENELM chillingly.
151
out such materials as they found in the books that record it
And though I, no less cheerfully, grant that we have now
living among us a creator of poetic romance immeasurably
more inventive than they—appealing to our credulity in por¬
tents the most monstrous, with a charm of style the most
conversationally familiar—still I cannot conceive that even
that unrivaled romance-writer can so bewitch our understand¬
ings as to make us believe, that, if Miss Mordaunt's cat dis¬
likes to wet her feet, it is probably because in the prehistoric
age her ancestors lived in the dry country of Egypt ; or that
when some lofty orator, a Pitt or a Gladstone, rebuts with a
polished smile which reveals his canine teeth the rude assault
-»f an opponent, he betrays his descent from a ' semi-human
progenitor' who was accustomed to snap at his enemy.
Surely—surely there must be some books still extant written
by philosophers before the birth of Adam, in which there is
authority, even though but in mythic fable, for such poetic
inventions. Surely—^surely some early chroniclers must de¬
pose that they saw, saw with their own eyes, the great gorillas
who scratched off their hairy coverings to please the eyes of
the young ladies of their species, and that they noted the
gradual metamorphosis of one animal into another. For, if
you tell me that this illustrious romance-writer is but a cau¬
tious man of science, and that we must accept his inventions
according to the sober laws of evidence and fact, there is not
the most incredible ghost-story which does not better satisfy
the common sense of a skeptic. However, if you have no
such books, lend me the most unphilosophical you possess—
on magic, for instance—the philosopher's stone "
152
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" I have some of them," said the vicar, laughing : " you
shall choose for yourself."
" If you are going homeward, let me accompany you part
of the way—I don't yet know where the church and the
vicarage are, and I ought to know before I come in the
evening."
Kenelm and the vicar walked side by side, very sociabl},
across the bridge and on the side of the rivulet on which
stood Mrs. Cameron's cottage. As they skirted the garden
pale at the rear of the cottage, Kenelm suddenly stopped in
the middle of some sentenee which had interested Mr. Emlyn,
and as suddenly arrested his steps on the turf that bordered
the lane. A little before him stood an old peasant woman,
with whom Lily, on the opposite side of the garden pale, was
conversing. Mr. Emlyn did not at first see what Kenelm
saw ; turning round rather to gaze on his companion, surprised
by his abrupt halt and silence. The girl put a small basket
into the old woman's hand, who then dropped a low curtsy,
and uttered low a " God bless you." Low though it was,
Kenelm overheard it, and said abstractedly to Mr. Emlyn,
" Is there a greater link between this life and the next than
God's blessing on the young, breathed from the lips of the
old?"
kenelm cnillinqly.
153
CHAPTER X.
"And how is your good man, Mrs. Haley?" said the
ïicar, who had now reached the spot on which the old woman
stood—with Lily's fair face still bended down to her—^while
Kenelm slowly followed him.
" Thank you kindly, sir, he is better—out of his bed now
The young lady has done him a power of good "
" Hush !" said Lily, coloring. " Make haste home now
you must not keep him waiting for his dinner."
The old woman again curtsied, and went off at a brisk
pace.
" Do you know, Mr. Chillingly," said Mr. Emlyn, " that
Miss Mordaunt is the best doctor in the place ? Though if
she goes on making so many cures she will find the number
of her patients rather burdensome."
" It was only the other day," said Lily, " that you scolded
me for the best cure I have yet made."
" I ?—Oh ! I remember ; you led that silly child Madge
to believe that there was a fairy charm in the arrowroot you
sent her. Own you deserved a scolding there."
" No, I did not. I dress the arrowroot, and am I not
Fairy? I have just got such a pretty note from Clemmy,
Mr. Emlyn, asking me to come up this evening and see her
new magic-lantern. Will you tell her to expect me ? And
—^mind—no scolding."
G*
154
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" And all magic?" said Emlyn ; " be it so."
Lily and Kenelm bad not hitherto exchanged a word. She
had replied with a grave inclination of her head to his silent
bow. But now she turned to him shyly and said, " I suppose
you have been fishing all the morning?"
"No; the fishes hereabout are under the protection of a
Fairy—whom I dare not displease."
Lily's face brightened, and she extended her hand to him
over the palings. " Good-day ; I hear aunty's voice—those
dreadful French verbs 1"
She disappeared among the shrubs, amid which they heard
the trill of her fresh young voice singing to herself.
" That child has a heart of gold," said Mr. Emlyn, as the
two men walked on. " I did not exaggerate when I said she
was the best doctor in the place. I believe the poor really
do believe that she is a Fairy. Of course we send from the
vicarage to our ailing parishioners who require it food and
wine ; but it never seems to do them the good that her little
dishes made by her own tiny hands do ; and I don't know if
you noticed the basket that old woman took away—Miss Lily
taught Will Somers to make the prettiest little baskets ; and
she puts her jellies or other savories into dainty porcelain
gallipots nicely fitting into the baskets, which she trims with
ribbons. It is the look of the thing that tempts the appetite
of the invalids, and certainly the child may well be called
Fairy at present ; but I wish Miss Cameron would attend a
little more strictly to her education. She can't be a Fairy
forever."
Kenelm sighed, but made no answer.
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
155
Mr. Emlyn tlien turned the conversation to erudite suhjcets;
and so they came in sight of the town, when the vicar stopped
and pointed towards the ehurch, of which the spire rose a
little to the left, with two aged yew-trees half shadowing the
burial-ground, and in the rear a glimpse of the vicarage seen
amid the shrubs of its garden ground.
"You will know your way now," said the vicar; "excuse
me if I quit you ; I have a few visits to make ; among others,
to poor Haley, husband to the old woman you saw. I read to
him a chapter in the Bible every day ; yet still I fancy that
he believes in fairy charms."
" Better believe too much than too little," said Kenelm ;
and he turned aside into the village, and spent half an hour
with Will, looking at the pretty baskets Lily had taught Will
to make. Then, as he went slowly homeward, he turned
aside into the churchyard.
The church, built in the thirteenth century, was not large,
but it probably sufiiced for its congregation, since it betrayed
no signs of modern addition ; restoration or repair it needed
not. The centuries had but mellowed the tints of its solid
walls, as little injured by the huge ivy stems that shot forth
their aspiring leaves to the very summit of the stately tower,
as by the slender roses which had been trained to climb up a
foot or so of the massive buttresses. The site of the l nrial-
ground was unusually picturesque : sheltered towards the north
by a rising ground clothed with woods, sloping down at tho
sc util towards the glebe pasture grounds, through which ran
the brooklet, sufficiently near for its brawling gurgle to he
heard on a still day. Kenelm sat himself on an antique tomb.
156
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
wliicli was evidently appropriated to some one of higher than
common rank in bygone days, but on which the sculpture was
wholly obliterated.
The stillness and solitude of the place had their charm for
his meditative temperament ; and he remained there long, for¬
getful of time, and scarcely hearing the boom of the deck
that warned him of its lapse.
"When suddenly, a shadow—the shadow of a human form—
fell on the grass on which his eyes dreamily rested. He
looked up with a start, and beheld Lily standing before him
mute and still. Her image was so present in his thoughts at
the moment that he felt a thrill of awe, as if the thoughts had
conjured up her apparition. She was the first to speak.
" You here, too ?" she said very softly, almost whisperingly.
" Too !" echoed Kenelm, rising ; " too ! 'Tis no wonder
that I, a stranger to the place, should find my steps attracted
towards its most venerable building. Even the most careless
traveler, halting at some remote abodes of the living, turns
aside to gaze on the burial-ground of the dead. But my sur¬
prise is that you. Miss Mordaunt, should be attracted towards
the same spot."
" It is my favorite spot," said Lily, " and always has been.
[ have sat many an hour on that tombstone. It is strange to
(hink that no one knows who sleeps beneath it. The ' Gruido
Book to Moleswich,' though it gives the history of the church
from the reign in which it was first built, can only venture a
guess that this tomb, the grandest and oldest in the burial-
ground, is tenanted by some member of a family named
Montfiehet, that was once very powerful in the county, and
kenelm CniLLINQLY.
157
has become extinct since the reign of Henry the Sixth.
But," added Lily, " there is not a letter of the name Mont-
fichet left. I found out more than any one else has done—I
learned hlack-letter on purpose ; look here," and she pointed
to a small spot in which the moss had been removed. " Do
y m see those figures? are they not xviil ? and look again, in
what was once the line above the figures, ele. It must have
been an Eleanor, who died at the age of eighteen "
" I rather think it more probable that the figures refer to
the date of the death, 1318 perhaps ; and so far as I can de¬
cipher hlack-letter, which is more in my father's line than
mine, I think it is a l, not e l, and that it seems as if there
had been a letter between l and the second e, which is now
efiaced. The tomb itself is not likely to belong to any
powerful family then resident at the place. Their monuments,
according to usage, would have been within the church;
probably in their own mortuary chapel."
" Don't try to destroy my fancy," said Lily, shaking her
head; "you cannot succeed; I know her history too well.
She was young, and some one loved her, and built over her
the finest tomb he could afford ; and see how long the epitaph
must have been ! how much it must have spoken in her praise,
and of his grief. And then he went his way, and the tomb
was neglected, and her fate forgotten."
" My dear Miss Mordaunt, this is indeed a wild romance
to spin out of so slender a thread. But even if true, there is
no reason to think that a life is forgotten though a tomb he
neglected."
" Perhaps not " said Lily, thoughtfully. " But when I am
158
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
dead, if I can look down, I tkink it would please me to se«
my grave not neglected by those who had loved me once."
She moved from him as she said this, and went to a little
mound that seemed not long since raised ; there was a simple
cross at the head, and a narrow border of flowers round it.
Lily knelt beside the flowers and pulled out a stray weed.
Then she rose, and said to Kenehn, who had followed and
now stood beside her ;
" She was the little grandchild of poor old Mrs. Hales. I
could not cure her, though I tried hard ; she was so fond of
me, and died in my arms. No, let me not say ' died:' surely
there is no such thing as dying. 'Tis but a change of life :
" ' Less than the void between two waves of air.
The space between existence and a souL' "
" Whose lines are those?" asked Kenelm.
" I don't know ; I learnt them from Lion. Don't you be¬
lieve them to be true ?"
"Yes! But the truth does not render the thought of
quitting this scene of life for another more pleasing to most
of us. See how soft and gentle and bright is all that living
summer land beyond ; let us find subject for talk from that,
not from the graveyard on which we stand."
" But is there not a summer land fairer than that we see
now ; and which we do see, as in a dream, best when we take
subjects of talk from the graveyard?" Without waiting for
a reply, Lily went on : "I planted these flowers ; Mr. Emlyn
was angry with me, he said it was ' popish.' But he had
not the heart to have them taken up ; I come here very often
kenelm cuillingly.
159
to aee to them. Do you think it wrong ? Poor little Nell 1—
she was so fond of flowers. And the Eleanor in the great
tomb, she too perhaps knew some one who called her Nell ;
but tliere are no flowers round her tomb—Poor Eleanor 1"
She took the nosegay she wore on her bosom, and as she
repassed the tomb laid it on the mouldering stone.
CHAPTER XL
They quitted the burial-ground, taking their way to Gras-
mere. Kenelm walked by Lily's side; not a word passed
between them till they came in sight of the cottage.
Then Lily stopped abruptly, and, lifting towards him her
charming face, said :
" I told you I would think over what you said to me last
night. I have done so, and feel I can thank you honestly.
You were very kind. I never before thought that I had a
bad temper ; no one ever told me so. But I see now what you
mean—sometimes I feel very quickly, and then I show it.
But how did I show it to you, Mr. Chillingly?"
" Did you not turn your back to me when I seated myself
next you in Mrs. Braefield's garden, vouchsafing me no
reply when I asked if I had offended?"
Lily's face became bathed in blushes, and her voice faltered,
as she answered :
" I was not offended ; I was not in a bad temper then : it
was worse than that."
160
KENELM CniLLINOLT.
" Worse—^what could it possibly be?"
" I am afraid it was envy."
" Envy of what—of whom ?"
" I don't know how to explain ; after all, I fear aunty ia
right, and the fairy-tales put very silly, very naughtj, thought«
into one's head. When Cinderella's sisters went to the king's
ball, and Cinderella was left alone, did not she long to go too ?
Did not she envy her sisters ?"
"Ah! I understand now—Sir Charles spoke of the Court
Ball."
" And you were there talking with handsome ladies—and
—oh 1 I was so foolish and felt sore."
" You, who when we first met wondered how people who
could live in the country preferred to live in towns, do then
sometimes contradict yourself, and sigh for the great world
that lies beyond these quiet water banks. You feel that you
have youth and beauty, and wish to be admired !"
"It is not that exactly," said Lily, with a perplexed look
in her ingenuous countenance, " and in my better moments,
when the ' bettermost self comes forth, I know that I am not
made for the great world you speak of. But you see "
Ilere she paused again, and, as they had now entered the
garden, dropped wearily on a bench beside the path. Kenelm
sealed himself there too, waiting for her to finish her broken
sentence.
" You see," she continued, looking down embarrassed, and
describing vague circles on the gravel with her fairy-like foot,
" that at home, ever since I can remember, they have treated
me as if, well as if I were—what shall I say?—the child of
kenelm chillingly.
161
one of your great ladies. Even Lion, who is so noble, so
grand, seemed to think when I was a mere infant that I was
a little queen : once when I told a fib he did not scold me,
but I never saw him look so sad and so angry as when he
wid, 'Never again forget that you are a lady.' And, bat [
til e you "
" Tire me, indeed I go on."
" No, I have said enough to explain why I have at times
proud thoughts, and vain thoughts ; and why for instance I
said to myself, ' Perhaps my place of right is among those
fine ladies whom he'—^but it is all over now." She roso
hastily with a pretty laugh, and bounded towards Mrs. Cam¬
eron, who was walking slowly along the lawn with a book in
her hand.
CHAPTER XII.
It was a very merry party at the vicarage that evening.
Lily had not been prepared to meet Kenelm there, and her
face brightened wonderfully as at her entrance he turned from
the bookshelves to which Mr. Emlyn was directing his atten¬
tion. But, instead of meeting his advance, she darted oflF to
the lawn, where Clemmy and several other children greeted
her with a joyous shout."
"Not acquainted with Macleane's 'Juvenal'?" said the
reverend scholar ; " you will be greatly pleased with it—here
vol. ii. 11
162
KENELM CniLLINGLY.
it is—a posthumous work, edited by George Long. I can
lend you Munro's Lucretius, '69. Aha ! we have some
scholars yet to pit against the Germans."
" I am heartily glad to hear it," said Kenelm. " It will be
k long time before they will ever wish to rival us in that
game which Miss Clemmy is now forming on the lawn, and
in which England has recently acquired an European reputa¬
tion."
" I don't take you. What game ?"
" Puss in the Comer. With your leave I will look out
and see whether it be a winning game for puss—in the long
run." Kenelm joined the children, amidst whom Lily seemed
not the least childlike. Resisting all overtures from Clemmy
to join in their play, he seated himself on a sloping bank at a
little distance—an idle looker-on. His eye followed Lily's
nimble movements, his ear drank in the music of her joyous
laugh. Could that be the same girl whom he had seen tend¬
ing the flower-bed amid the grave-stones ? Mrs. Emlyn came
across the lawn and joined him, seating herself also on the
bank. Mrs. Emlyn was an exceedingly clever woman ; never¬
theless she was not formidable, on the contrary pleasing ;
and though the ladies in the neighborhood said " she talked
like a book," the easy gentleness of her voice carried ofi" that
offense.
" I suppose, Mr. Chillingly," said she, " I ought to apolo¬
gize for my husband's invitation to what must seem to you so
frivolous an entertainment as a child's party. But when Mr.
Emlyn asked you to come to us this evening, he was not aware
that Clemmy had also invited her young friends. He had
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
1G3
looked forward to a rational conversation with you on his own
favorite studies."
" It is not so long since I left school but that I prefer a
half-holiday to lessons, even from a tutor so pleasant as Mi.
Emlyn—
• Ah, happy years—onoe more who would not be a boy 1' "
" Nay," said Mrs. Emlyn, with a grave smile. " Who that
had started so fairly as Mr. Chillingly in the career of man
would wish to go back and resume a place among boys?"
" But, my dear Mrs. Emlyn, the line I quoted was wrung,
from the heart of a man who had already outstripped all rivals
in the raceground he had chosen, and who at that moment
was in the very Maytime of youth and of fame. And if such
a man at such an epoch in his career could sigh to ' be once
more a boy,' it must have been when he was thinking of the
boy's half-holiday, and recoiling from the taskwork he was
condemned to learn as man."
" The line you quote is, I think, from Childe Harold, and
surely you would not apply to mankind in general the senti¬
ment of a poet so peculiarly self-reflecting (if I may use that
expression), and in whom sentiment is often so morbid."
" You are right, Mrs. Emlyn," said Kenelm, ingenuously.
" Still a boy's half-holiday is a very happy thing ; and among
mankind in general, there must be many who would be glad
to have it back again. Mr. Emlyn himself, I should think."
" Mr. Emlyn has his half-holiday now. Do you not see
him standing just outside the window? Do you not liear
him laughing? He is a child again in the mirth of his
164
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
children. I hope you will stay some time in the neighbor¬
hood J I am sure you and he will like each other. And it is such
a rare delight to him to get a scholar like yourself to talk to."
" Pardon me, I am not a scholar—a very noble title that,
and not to be given to a lazy trifler on the surface of book-
lore like myself."
" You are too modest. My husband has a copy of your
Cambridge prize verses, and says 'the Latinity of them is
quite beautiful.' I quote his very words."
" Latin verse-making is a mere knack, little more than
.a proof that one had an elegant scholar for one's tutor, as
I certainly had. But it is by special grace that a real scholar
can send forth another real scholar, and a Kennedy produce a
Munro. But to return to the more interesting question of
half-holidays; I declare that Clemmy is leading off your
husband in triumph. He is actually going to be Puss in the
Comer." '
" When you know more of Charles—I mean my husband—
you will discover that his whole life is more or less of a holi¬
day. Perhaps because he is not what you accuse yourself of
being—^he is not lazy ; he never wishes to be a boy once more ;
and taskwork itself is holiday to him. He enjoys shutting
himself up in his study and reading—^he enjoys a walk with
the children—he enjoys visiting the poor—he enjoys his
duties as a clergyman. And though I am not always con¬
tented for him, though I think he should have had those
honors in his profession which have been lavished on men
with less ability and less learning, yet he Ls never discontented
himself. Shall I tell you his secret ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
165
"Do."
" He is a Tlianlcs-giving Man.. You, too, must have much
to thank God for, Mr. Chillingly ; and in thanksgiving to God
does there not blend usefulness to man, and such sense of
pastime in the usefulness as makes each day a holiday ?"
Kenelni looked up into the quiet face of this obscure
pastor's wife with a startled expression in his own.
"I see, ma'am," said he, "that you have devoted much
thought to the study of the sesthetical philosophy as ex¬
pounded by German thinkers, whom it is rather diflScult
to understand."
" I, Mr. Chillingly-—^good gracious ! No ! What do you
mean by your aesthetical philosophy?"
" According to aesthetics, I believe man arrives at his
highest state of moral excellence when labor and duty lose
all the harshness of efiFort—when they become the impulse
and habit of life; when, as the essential attributes of the
beautiful, they are, like beauty, enjoyed as pleasure; and
thus, as you expressed, each day becomes a holiday. A
lovely doctrine, not perhaps so lofty as that of the Stoics,
but more bewitching. Only, very few of us can practically
merge our cares and our worries into so serene an atmos¬
phere."
"Some do so without knowing anything of aesthetics and
with no pretense to be Stoics; but, then, they are Christians."
" There are some such Christians, no doubt, but they are
rarely to be met with. Take Christendom altogether, and it
appears to comprise the most agitated population in the world ;
the population in which there is the greatest grumbling as to
166
KENELM CHILLINGL?.
the quantity of labor to be done, the loudest complaints that
duty instead of a pleasure is a very bard and disagreeable
struggle, and in wbicb holidays are fewest and the moral
atmosphere least serene. Perhaps," added Kenelm, with a
deeper shade of thought on his brow, "it is this perpetual
consciousness of struggle ; this difficulty in merging toil into
ease, or stern duty into placid enjoyment; this refusal to
ascend for one's self into the calm of an air aloof from the
cloud which darkens, and the hailstorm which beats upon,
the fellow-men we leave below ; that makes the troubled life
of Christendom dearer to heaven, and more conducive to
heaven's design in rendering earth the wrestling-ground and
not the resting-place of man, than is that of the Brahmin,
ever seeking to abstract himself from the Christian's con¬
flicts of action and desire, and to carry into its extremest
practice the aesthetic theory, of basking undisturbed in the
contemplation of the most absolute beauty human thought
can reflect from its idea of divine good !"
Whatever Mrs. Emlyn might have said in reply was intei
rupted by the rush of the children towards her ; they were
tired of play, and eager for tea and the magic-lantern.
kenelm chillinolt.
167
CHAPTEE XIII.
The room is duly obscured, and the white sheet attached
tc the wall ; the children are seated, hushed and awe-stricken.
And éenelm is placed next to Lily.
The tritest things in our mortal experience are among the
most mysterious. There is more mystery in the growth of a
blade of grass than there is in the wizard's mirror or the feats
of a spirit medium. Most of us have known the attraction
that draws one human being to another, and makes it so ex¬
quisite a happiness to sit quiet and mute by another's side ;
which stills for the moment the busiest thoughts in our brain,
the most turbulent desires in our heart, and renders us but
conscious of a present ineffable bliss. Most of us have known
that. But who has ever been satisfied with any metaphysical
account of its why or wherefore? We can but say it is love,
and love at that earlier section of its histoiy which has not
yet escaped from romance : but by what process that other
person has become singled out of the whole universe to attain
such special power over one, is a problem that, though many
have attempted to solve it, has never attained to solution. In
the dim light of the room Kenelm could only distinguish the
outlines of Lily's delicate face, but at each new surprise in
the show the face intuitively turned to his, and once, when
the terrible image of a sheeted ghost, pursuing a guilty man,
168
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
passed along the wall, she drew closer to him in her childish
fright, and by an involuntary innocent movement laid her
hand on his. He detained it tenderly, but, alas ! it was with¬
drawn the next moment ; the ghost was succeeded by a couple
of dancing dogs. And Lily's ready laugh—^partly at the
dogs, partly at her own previous alarm—^vexed Kenelm's ear
He wished there had been a succession of ghosts, each more
appalling than the last.
The entertainment was over, and after a slight refreshment
of cakes and wine-and-water the party broke up ; the children-
visitors went away attended by servant-maids who had come
for them. Mrs. Cameron and Lily were to walk home on
foot.
" It is a lovely night, Mrs. Cameron," said Mr. Emlyn,
" and I will attend you to your gate."
" Permit me also," said Kenelm.
" Ay," said the vicar, " it is your own way to Cromwell
Lodge."
The path led them through the church-yard as the nearest
approach to the brook-side. The moonbeams shimmered
through the yew-trees and rested on the old tomb—^playing,
as it were, round the flowers which Lily's hand had that day
dropped upon its stone. She was walking beside Kenelm-—
the elder two a few paces in front.
" How silly I was," said she, " to be so frightened at (he
false ghost ! I don't think a real one would frighten me, at
least if seen here, in this loving moonlight, and on God's
ground 1"
" Ghosts, were they permitted to appear except in a magic-
KENELM CHILLINGLY^
1G9
lantern, could not harm the innocent. And I wonder why
the idea of their apparition should always have been asso¬
ciated with such phantasies of horror, especially by sinless
children, who have the least reason to dread them."
" Oh, that is true," cried Lily ; " but even when we are
grown up there must be times in which we should so long
to see a ghost, and feel what a comfort, what a joy it would
be."
"I understand you. If some one very dear to us had
vanished from our life ; if we felt the anguish of the separa¬
tion so intensely as to efface the thought that life, as you said
so well, ' never dies well, yes, then I can conceive that the
mourner would yearn to have a glimpse of the vanished one,
were it but to ask the sole and only question he could desire
to put : ' Art thou happy ? May I hope that we shall meet
again, never to part—never?' "
Kenelm's voice trembled as he spoke; tears stood in his
eyes. A melancholy, vague, unaccountable, overpowering,
passed across his heart, as the shadow of some dark-winged
bird passes over a quiet stream.
" You have never yet felt this ?" asked Lily doubtingly, in
a soft voice, full of tender pity, stopping short and looking
into his face.
"I? No. I have never yet lost one whom I so loved and
so yearned to see again. I was but thinking that such losses
may befall us all ere we too vanish out of sight."
'' Lily 1" called forth Mrs. Cameron, halting at the gate of
the burial-ground.
"Yes, auntie ?"
VOL. II.—H
170
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Mr. Emlyn wants to know how far you have got in
'Numa Pompilius.' Come and answer for yourself."
" Oh, those tiresome grown-up people I" whispered Lily,
petulantly, to Kenelm. " I do like Mr. Emlyn ; he is one
of the very best of men. But still he is grown up, and his
' Numa Pompilius' is so stupid."
" My first French lesson-book. No, it is not stupid. Bead
on. It has hints of the prettiest fairy-tale I know, and of
the fairy in especial who bewitched my fancies as a boy."
By this time they had gained the gate of the burial-ground.
"What fairy-tale? what fairy?" asked Lily, speaking
quickly.
" She was a faiiy, though in heathen language she is called
a nymph—Egeria. She was the link between men and gods
to him she loved ; she belongs to the race of gods. True,
she, too, may vanish, but she can never die."
" Well, Miss Lily," said the vicar, " and how far in the
book I lent you—' Numa Pompilius' ?"
" Ask me this day next week."
" I will ; but mind you are to translate as you go on. I
must see the translation."
" Very well. I will do my best," answered Lily, meekly.
Lily now walked by the vicar's side, and Kenelm by Mrs.
Cameron's, till they reached Grasmere.
" I will go on with you to the bridge, Mr. Chillingly," said
the vicar, when the ladies had disappeared within their garden.
" We had little time to look over my books, and, by-the-by,
1 hope you at least took the 'Juvenal.' "
" No, Mr. Emlyn ; who can quit your house with an incli
KENBLM CHILLINGLY.
171
naiîûu for satire? I must come some morning and select a
volume from those works which give pleasant views of life
and bequeath favorable impressions of mankind. Your wife,
with whom I have had an interesting conversation upon the
principles of aesthetical philosophy "
" My wife—Charlotte 1 She knows nothing about œsthct,-
ical philosophy."
" She calls it by another name, but she understands it well
enough to illustrate the principles by example. She tells me
that labor and duty are so taken up by you
' In den heitem Regionen
Wo die reinen Formen wohnen,'
that they become joy and beauty—is it so ?"
" I am sure that Charlotte never said anything half so
poetical. But, in plain words, the days pass with me very
happily. I should be ungrateful if I were not happy.
Heaven has bestowed on me so many sources of love—^wife,
children, hooks, and the calling which, when one quits one's
own threshold, carries love along with it into the world beyond.
A small world in itself—only a parish—but then my calling
links it with infinity."
" I see ; it is from the sources of love that you draw the
supplies for happiness."
" Surely ; without love one may be good, but one could
scarcely be happy. No one can dream of a heaven except as
the abode of love. What writer is it who says, ' How well
the human heart was understood by him who first called God
by the name of Father' ?"
172
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
" I do not remember, but it is beautifully said. Y'^u evi¬
dently do not subscribe to the arguments in Decimus Roach's
' Approach to the Angels.' "
" Ah, Mr. Chillingly ! your words teach me how lacerated
a man's happiness may be if he does not keep the claws of
vanity closely pared. I actually feel a keen pang when you
speak to me of that eloquent panegyric on celibacy, ignorant
that the only thing I ever published which I fancied was not
without esteem by intellectual readers is a Reply to ' The
Approach to the Angels'—a youthful book, written in the
first year of my marriage. But it obtained success ; I have
just revised the tenth edition of it."
" That is the book I will select from your library. You
will be pleased to hear that Mr. Roach, whom I saw at Ox¬
ford a few days ago, recants his opinions, and, at the age of
fifty, is about to be married—^he begs me to add, ' not for his
own personal satisfaction.' "
" Going to be married !—Decimus Roach ! I thought my
Reply would convince him at last."
" I shall look to your Reply to remove some lingering
doubts in my own mind."
" Doubts in favor of celibacy ?"
" Well, if not for laymen, perhaps for a priesthood."
" The most forcible p.irt of my Reply is on that head : read
it attentively. I think that, of all sections of mankind, the
clergy are those to whom, not only for their own sakes, but
for the sake of the community, marriage should be most com¬
mended. Why, sir," continued the vicar, warming up into
oratorical enthusiasm, " are you not aware that there are no
KENELM CniL INOLY.
173
homes in England from wliieh men who have served and
adorned their country have issued forth in such prodigal
numbers as those of the clergy of our Church ? What other
class can produce a list so crowded with eminent names as we
can boast in the sons we have reared and sent forth into the
world ? How many statesmen, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, phy¬
sicians, authors, men of science, have been the sons of us
village pastors I Naturally—for with us they receive careful
education ; they acquire of necessity the simple tastes and dis¬
ciplined habits which lead to industry and perseverance ; and,
for the most part, they carry with them throughout life a
purer moral code, a more systematic reverence for things and
thoughts religious associated with their earliest images of
affection and respect, than can he expected from the sons of
laymen, whose parents are wholly temporal and worldly. Sir,
I maintain that this is a cogent argument, to he considered
well by the nation, not only in favor of a married clergy—for,
on that score, a million of Roaches could not convert public
opinion in this country—^hut in favor of the Church, the Es¬
tablished Church, which has been so fertile a nursery of illus¬
trious laymen ; and I have often thought that one main and
undetected cause of the lower tone of morality, public and
private, of the greater corruption of manners, of the more
prevalent scorn of religion which we see, for instance, in a
country so civilized as France, is, that its clergy can train no
sons to carry into the contests of earth the steadfast belief in
accountability to Heaven."
" I thank you with a full heart," said Kenelm. " I shall
ponder well over all that you have so earnestly said. I am
174
kenelm chillinqlt.
already disposed to give up all lingering crotchets as to a bach
elor clergy ; but, as a layman, I fear that I shall never attain
to the purified philanthropy of Mr. Decimus Roach, and if ever
I do marry it will be very much for my personal satisfaction."
Mr. Emlyn laughed good-humoredly, and, as they had now
r:ached the bridge, shook hands with Kenelm, and walked
homewards, along the brook-side and through the burial
ground, with the alert step and the uplifted head of a man
who has joy in life and admits of no fear in death.
CHAPTER XIV.
For the next two weeks or so Kenelm and Lily met, not
indeed so often as the reader might suppose, but still fre¬
quently; 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. Kenolm was more and more fasci¬
nated 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 opposiles
rarely blended into harmony. Her ignorance of much that
girls know before they number half her years, was so relieved
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
175
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 in¬
stilled, 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, how¬
ever, 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 com
mended " Numa Pompilius" to her study, she had taken verj
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 efiect that he—the first man of years
correspondent to her own with whom she had ever familiarly
conversed—^what was the efiect that Kenelm Chillingly pro¬
duced 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 candor with which she manifested
176
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
lier liking to him was at variance with the ordinary character
of maiden love ; it seemed more the fondness of a child for a
favorite brother. And it was this uncertainty that, in his
own thoughts, justified Kenelm for lingering on, and believ¬
ing that it was necessary to win, or at least to learn more of,
her secret heart before he could venture to disclose his own.
Tie 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 con¬
versations 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 ho
could say to himself, " She loves me." Often he said to him¬
self, " 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
colors appear pale unless the light he 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 unafiiectedly genial ; the mind you at
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
177
first might term inert, though well-informed, you now ac¬
knowledge to be full of disciplined vigor. Emlyn was not,
however, without his little amiable foibles ; and it was, per¬
haps, 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 chil¬
dren, the best servants, the best bee-hive, the best pony, and
the best house-dog. His parish was the most virtuous, his
church the most picturesque, his vicarage the prettiest, cer¬
tainly, in the whole shire—perhaps, in the whole kingdom.
Probably it was this philosophy of optimism which con¬
tributed 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 cher¬
ished the odium iheologicum for all that savored 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
aflFections 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 veiy
little of any world beyond that of his parish, he piqued him¬
self 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 char-
VOL. II.—H* 12
178
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
acter tj which the ancient classics afforded no counterpart
nor clue ; and perhaps it was this also that made Lilj 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
thai Kenelm's sojourn at Cromwell Lodge was influenced by
the vicinity to Grasmere. Mr. Emlyn was sure that he knew
human nature, and practical afiairs in general, too well to sup¬
pose 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 inno¬
cent child—the companion and friend of his Clemmy.
Mrs. Braefleld 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 cwn
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 prin¬
cess to be found in poetic dramas whose rank was for awhile
kept concealed, was yet one of the higher-born daughters of
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
179
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 ap¬
pearance and manners of the aunt, and the exquisite delicacj
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 ele¬
ments of a beautiful womanhood. So that altogether, from
the very day she first re-eneountered Kenelm, Elsie's thought
had been that Lily was the wife to suit him. Once con¬
ceiving that idea, her natural strength of will made her resolve
on giving all facilities to carry it out silently and unobtrusively,
and therefore skillfully.
" 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-in¬
formed ; it compensates for your disappointment in discover¬
ing that our brook yields such bad sport."
" Don't disparage the brook ; it yields the pleasantest banks
tm 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
180
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
deal from him, and am often asking myself whether I shall
ever make peaee 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 genera¬
tion, 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 favor of Worth-whileism,
old idea though it be. I see a man who, with very common¬
place 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 specula¬
tions to disturb. Be those beliefs questionable or not by
others, at least they are such as cannot displease a Deity, and
cannot fail to bè 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, ho can-ies
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, flxed beliefs
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
181
daily warmed into vital action in the sunshine of a congenial
home."
Mrs. Braefiold 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 1" 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."
" You are coming back ?"
" Of course—this evening. I left no address at my lodg¬
ings in London. There must be a large accumulation of
182
kenelm chillingly.
letters—^some, no doubt, from my father and mother. I am
only going for them. Good-bye. How kindly you have
listened to me 1"
" 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.
CHAPTER XV.
Kenelm did indeed find a huge pile of letters and notes
on reaching his forsaken apartment in Mayfair—many of
them merely invitations for days long past, none of them
of interest except two from Sir Peter, three from his mother,
and one from Tom Bowles.
Sir Peter's were short. In the first he gently scolded
Kenelm for going away without communicating any address ;
and stated the acquaintance he had formed with Gordon, the
favorable impression that young gentleman had made on him,
the transfer of the £20,000, and the invitation given to
Gordon, the Traverses, and Lady Glenalvon. The second,
dated much later, noted the arrival of his invited guests,
dwelt with warmth unusual to Sir Peter on the attractions
of Cecilia, and took occasion to refer, not the less emphatic¬
ally because as it were incidentally, to the sacred promise
which Kenelm had given him never to propose to a young
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
183
lady until the case had been submitted to the exaiLination
and received the consent of Sir Peter. " Come to Exmund-
ham, and if I do not give my consent to propose to Cecilia
Travers, hold me a tyrant and rebel."
Lady Chillingly's letters were much longer. They dwelt
more complainingly on his persistence in eccentric habits—so
exceedingly unlike other people, quitting London at the very
height of the season, going without even a servant nobody
knew*where: she did not wish to wound his feelings, but
still those were not the ways natural to a young gentleman of
station. If he had no respect for himself, he ought to have
some consideration for his parents, especially his poor mother.
She then proceeded to comment on the elegant manners of
Leopold Travers, and the good sense and pleasant conversa¬
tion of Chillingly Gordon, a young man of whom any mother
might be proud. From that subject she diverged to mildly
querulous references to family matters. Parson John had
expressed himself very rudely to Mr. Chillingly Gordon upon
some books by a foreigner—Comte, or Count, or some such
name—in which, so far as she could pretend to judge, Mr.
Gordon had uttered some very benevolent sentiments about
humanity, which, in the most insolent manner. Parson John
had denounced as an attack on religion. But really Parson
John was too High Church for her. Having thus disposed
of Parson John, she indulged some ladylike wailings on the
singular costume of the three Miss Chillinglys. They had
been asked by Sir Peter, unknown to her—so like him—to
meet their guests ; to meet Lady Glenalvon and Miss Trav¬
ers, whose dress was so perfect (here she described their dress)
184
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
.—and they came in pea-green with pelerines of mock blonde,
and Miss Sally with corkscrew ringlets and a wreath of jessa¬
mine, " which no girl after eighteen would venture to wear."
" But my dear," added her ladyship, "your poor father's
family are certainly great oddities. I have more to put up
with than any one knows. I do my best to carry it off. I
know my duties, and will do them."
Family grievances thus duly recorded and lamented. Lady
Chillingly returned to her guests.
Evidently unconscious of her husband's designs on Cecilia,
she dismissed her briefly : " A very handsome young lady,
though rather too blonde for her taste, and certainly with an
air distingué." Lastly, she enlarged on the extreme pleasure
she felt on meeting again the friend of her youth, Lady Glen-
alvon.
" Not at all spoilt by the education of the great world,
which, alas ! obedient to the duties of wife and mother, how¬
ever little my sacrifices are appreciated, I have long since
relinquished. Lady Glenalvon suggests turning that hideous
old moat into a fernery—a great improvement. Of course
your poor father makes objections."
Tom's letter was written on black-edged paper, and ran thus :
" Dear Sir,—Since I had the honor to see you in London
I have had a sad loss—my poor uncle is no more. He died
very suddenly, after a hearty supper. One doctor says it was
apoplexy, another valvular disease of the heart. He has left
me his heir, after providing for his sister—no one had an idea
that he had saved so much money. I am quite a rich man
now. And I shall leave the veterinary business, which of
kenelm chillingly.
185
late—-since I took to reading, as you kindly advised—is not
much to my liking. The principal corn-merchant here has
offered to take me into partnership ; and, from what I can see,
it will be a very good thing, and a great rise in life. But, sir,
I can't settle to it at present—I can't settle, as I would wish,
to anything. I know you will not laugh at me when I say I
have a strange longing to travel for awhile. I have been
reading books of travels, and they get into my head more than
any other books. But I don't think I could leave the country
with a contented heart, till I have had just another look al
you know whom—just to see her and know she is happy. 1
am sure I could shake hands with Will, and kiss her little one
without a wrong thought. What do you say to that, dear sir ?
You promised to write to me about Her. But I have not
heard from you. Susy, the little girl with the flower ball, has
had a loss too—^the poor old man she lived with died within
a few days of my dear uncle's decease. Mother moved here,
as I think you know, when the forge at Graveleigh was sold ;
and she is going to take Susy to live with her. She is quite
fond of Susy. Pray let me hear from you soon, and do, dear
sir, give me your advice about traveling—and about Her.
You see, I should like Her to think of me more kindly when I
am in distant parts.
" I remain, dear sir,
" Your grateful servant,
" T. Bowles.
•' P.S.—Miss Travers has sent me Will's last remittance.
There is very little owed me now ; so they must be thriving.
I hope She is not overworked."
On returning by the train that evening, Kenelm went to
the house of Will Somers. The shop was already closed, but
186
KENEl.M CniLLINGLF.
he was admitted by a trusty servant-maid to the parlor, where
he found them all at supper, except indeed the baby, who had
long since retired to the cradle, and the cradle had been
removed up-stairs. Will and Jessie were very proud when
Kenelm invited himself to share their repast, which, though
simple, was by no means a bad one. When the meal was
over and the supper-things removed, Kenelm drew his chair
near to the glass door which led into a little garden very
neatly kept—for it was Will's pride to attend to it—before he
sat down to his more professional work. The door was open,
and admitted the coolness of the starlit air and the fragrance
of the sleeping flowers.
" You have a pleasant home here, Mrs. Somers."
" We have, indeed, and know how to bless him we owe
It to."
"I am rejoiced to think that. How often when God de¬
signs a special kindness to us He puts the kindness into the
heart of a fellow-man—perhaps the last fellow-man we should
have thought of ; but in blessing him we thank God who in¬
spired him. Now, my dear friends, I know that you all three
suspect me of being the agent whom God chose for His bene¬
fits. You fancy that it was from me came the loan which
enabled you to leave Graveleigh and settle here. You are
mistaken—you look incredulous."
"It could not be the Squire," exclaimed Jessie. "Miss
Travers assured me that it was neither he nor herself. Oh, it
must be you, sir. I beg pardon, but who else could it be ?"
" Your husband shall guess. Suppose, Will, that you had
behaved ill to some one who was nevertheless dear to you, and
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
187
on thinking over it afterwards felt very sorry and much
ashamed of yourself, and suppose that later you had the op¬
portunity and the power to render a service to that person,
do you think you would do it ?"
" I should be a bad man if I did not "
" Bravo ! And supposing that when the person you thus
served came to know it was you who rendered the service, he
did not feel thankful, he did not think it handsome of you
m
thus to repair any little harm he might have done you before,
but became churlish, and sore, and cross-grained, and with a
wretched false pride said that because he had offended you
once he resented your taking the liberty of befriending him
now, would not you think that person an ungrateful fellow—
ungrateful not only to you his fellow-man—^that is of less
moment—but ungrateful to the God who put it into your
heart to be His human agent in the benefit received ?"
" Well, sir, yes, certainly," said Will, with all the superior
refinement of his intellect to that of Jessie, unaware of what
Kenelm was driving at; while Jessie, pressing her hands
tightly together, turning pale, and with a frightened hurried
glance towards Will's face, answered impulsively :
" Oh, Mr. Chillingly, I hope you are not thinking, not
speaking of Mr. Bowles ?"
" Whom else should I think or speak of?"
Will rose nervously from his chair, all his features wriih-
ing.
" Sir, sir, this is a bitter blow—very bitter, very !"
Jessie rushed to Will, flung her arms round him, and
sobbed.
188
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Kenelm turned quietly lo old Mrs. Somers, who had sus»
pended the work on which since supper she had been em¬
ployed, knitting socks for the baby.
" My dear Mrs. Somers, what is the good of being a grand¬
mother and knitting socks for baby grandchildren, if you
cannot assure those silly children of yours that they are too
happy in each other to harbor any resentment against a man
who would have parted them, and now repents?"
Somewhat to Kenelm's admiration, I dare not say surprise,
old Mrs. Somers, thus appealed to, rose from her seat, and,
with a dignity of thought or of feeling no one could have
anticipated from the quiet peasant woman, approached the
wedded pair, lifted Jessie's face with one hand, laid the other
on Will's head, and said, "If you don't long to see Mr.
Bowles again and say 'the Lord bless you, sir!' you don't
deserve the Lord's blessing upon you." Therewith she went
back to her seat, and resumed her knitting.
" Thank Heaven, we have paid back the best part of the
loan," said Will, in very agitated tones, " and I think, with a
little pinching, Jessie, and with selling off some of the stock,
we might pay the rest ; and then' '—and then he turned to
Kenelm—" and then, sir, we wUl" (here a gulp) " thank Mr.
Bowles."
" This don't satisfy me at all. Will," answered Kenelm ;
" and since I helped to bring you two together, I claim the
right to say I would never have done so could I have guessed
you could have trusted your wife so little as to allow a remem¬
brance of Mr. Bowles to be a thought of pain. You did not
feel humiliated when you imagined that it was to me you
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
189
owed some moneys which you have been honestly paying cfiF.
Well, then, I will lend you whatever trifle remains to dis¬
charge your whole debts to Mr. Bowles, so that you may
sooner be able to say to him, 'Thank you.' But,between
you and me. Will, I think you will be a flner fellow ard a
manlier fellow if you decline to borrow that trifle of mo ;
if you feel you would rather say ' Thank you' to Mr. Bowles,
without the silly notion that when you have paid him his
money you owe him nothing for his kindness."
Will looked away, irresolutely. Kenelm went on : "I have
received a letter from Mr. Bowles to-day. He has come into
a fortune, and thinks of going abroad for a time ; but before
he goes, he says, he should like to shake hands with Will,
and be assured by Jessie that all his old rudeness is forgiven.
He had no notion that I should blab about the loan; he
wished that to remain always a secret. But between friends
there need be no secrets. What say you, Will? As head
of this household, shall Mr. Bowles be welcomed here as a
friend or not?"
" Kindly welcome," said old Mrs. Somers, looking up from
the socks.
"Sir," said Will, with sudden energy, "look here; you
have never been in love, I daresay. If you had, you would
not be so hard on me. Mr. Bowles was in love with my wife
there. Mr. Bowles is a very fine man, and I am a cripple."
"Oh, Will! Will!" cried Jessie.
" But I trust my wife with my whole heart and soul ; and,
now that the first pang is over, Mr. Bowles shall be, as
mother says, kindly welcome—heartily welcome."
190
kenelm chillingly.
" Shake hands. Now you speak like a man, Will. I hopa
to bring Bowles here to supper before many days are over."
A.nd that night Kenelm wrote to Mr. Bowles :
" My dear Tom,—Come and spend a few days with me at
Cromwell Lodge, Moleswich. Mr. and Mrs. Somers wish
much to see and to thank you. I could not remain forevei
degraded in order to gratify your whim. They would have
it that I bought their shop, etc., and I was forced in self-
defense to say who it was. More on this and on travels
when you come.
" Your true friend,
" K. C."
CIIAPTEK XVI.
Mrs. Cameron was seated alone in her pretty drawing-
room, with a book lying open, but unheeded, on her lap.
She was looking away from its pages, seemingly into the
garden without, but rather into empty space.
To a very acute and practiced observer, there was in her
countenance an expression which baffled the common eye.
To the common eye it was simply vacant ; the expression
of a quiet, humdrum woman, who might have been thinking
of some quiet hum dram household detail, found that too
much for her, and was now not thinking at all.
But to the true observer, there were in that face indications
of a troubled past, still haunted with ghosts never to be laid
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
191
at rest; indications too of a character in herself that had
undergone some revolutionary change ; it had not always been
the character of a woman quiet and humdrum. The delicate
outlines of the lip and nostril evinced sensibility, and the
deep and downward curve of it bespoke habitual sadness.
The softness of the look into space did not tell of a vacant
mind, but rather of a mind subdued and overburdened by
the weight of a secret sorrow. There was also about her
whole presence, in the very quiet which made her prevalent
external characteristic, the evidence of manners formed in a
high-bred society—the society in which quiet is connected
with dignity and grace. The poor understood this better
than her rich acquaintances at Moleswich, when they said,
"Mrs. Cameron was every inch a lady." To judge by her
features, she must once have been pretty,—not a showy pretti-
ness, but decidedly pretty. Now, as the features were smaH,
all prettiness had faded away in cold gray colorings, and a
sort of tamed and slumbering timidity of aspect. She was
not only not demonstrative, but must have imposed on her¬
self as a duty the suppression of demonstration. Who could
look at the formation of those lips and not see that they be¬
longed to the nervous, quick, demonstrative temperament?
And yet, observing her again more closely, that suppression
of the constitutional tendency to candid betrayal of emotion
would the more enlist your curiosity or interest ; because, if
physiognomy and phrenology have any truth in them, there
was little strength in her character. In the womanly yield-
ingness of the short curved upper lip, the pleading timidity
of the regard, the disproportionate but elegant slenderness of
19Z KENELM CHILLINGLY.
tho head between the ear and the neck, there were the tokens
of one who eannot resist the will, perhaps the whim, of an¬
other whom she either loves or trusts.
The book open on her lap is a serious book, on the doctrine
of grace, written by a popular clergyman of what is termed
" the Low Church." She seldom read any but serious books,
except where such care as she gave to Lily's education com¬
pelled her to read " Outlines of History and Geography," or
the elementary French books used in seminaries for young
ladies. Yet if any one had decoyed Mrs. Cameron into
familiar conversation he would have discovered that she must
early have received the education given to young ladies of
station. She could speak and write French and Italian as a
native. She had read, and still remembered, such classic
authors in either language as are conceded to the use of pupils
by the well-regulated taste of orthodox governesses. She had
a knowledge of botany, such as botany was taught twenty
years ago. I am not sure that, if her memory had been fairly
aroused, she might not have come out strong in divinity and
political economy, as expounded by the popular manuals of
Mrs. Marcet. In short, you could see in her a thoroughbred
English lady, who had been taught in a generation before
Lily's, and immeasurably superior in culture to the ordinary
run of English young ladies taught nowadays. So, in what
after all are very minor accomplishments—now made major
accomplishments—^such as music, it was impossible that a con¬
noisseur should hear her play on the piano without remarking,
" That woman has had the best masters of her time." Sho
could only play pieces that belonged to her generation. She
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
193
had learned nothing since. In short, the whole intellectual
culture had come to a dead stop long years ago, perhaps be¬
fore Lily was born.
Now, while she is gazing into space, Mrs. Braefield is an¬
nounced. Mrs. Cameron does not start from reverie. She
never starts. But she makes a weary movement of annoyance,
resettles herself, and lays the serious book on the sofa table.
Elsie enters, young, radiant, dressed in all the perfection of
the fashion, that is, as ungracefully as in the eyes of an artist
any gentlewoman can be ; but rieh merchants who are proud
of their wives so insist, and their wives, in that respect, sub¬
missively obey them.
The ladies interchange customary salutations, enter into
the customary preliminaries of talk, and, after a pause, Elsie
begins in earnest.
" But sha'n't I see Lily ? Where is she ?"
" I fear she is gone into the town. A poor little boy, who
did our errands, has met with an accident—^fallen from a
cherry-tree."
•' Which he was robbing ?"
" Probably."
" And Lily has gone to lecture him ?" *
" I don't know as to that ; but he is much hurt, and Lily
lus gone to see what is the matter with him."
Mrs. Braefield, in her frank outspoken way : " I don't take
much to girls of Lily's age in general, though I am passionately
Ibnd of children. You know how I do take to Lily; perhaps
because she is so like a child. But she must be an anxious
charge to you."
VOL. n.—I 13
194
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious " No. She is still a
child, a very good one ; why should I he anxious ?"
Mrs. Braefield, impulsively ; " Why, your child must now
he eighteen."
Mrs. Cameron : " Eighteen—is it possible I How time
flies 1 Ihough in a life so monotonous as mine, time does not
seem to fly : it slips on like the lapse of water. Let me think
—eighteen? No, she is hut seventeen—seventeen last May."
Mrs. Braefield : " Seventeen 1 A very anxious age for a
girl ; an age in whieh dolls cease and lovers begin."
Mrs. Cameron, not so languidly, hut still quietly : " Lily
never cared much for dolls—never much for lifeless pets ;
and as to lovers, she does not dream of them."
Mrs. Braefield, briskly : " There is no age after six in
which girls do not dream of lovers. And here another ques¬
tion arises. When a girl so lovely as Lily is eighteen next
birthday, may not a lover dream of her?"
Mrs. Cameron, with that wintry cold tranquillity of man¬
ner which implies that in putting such questions an inter¬
rogator is taking a liberty : " As no lover has appeared, I
cannot trouble myself about his dreams."
Said Elsie, inly Ä herself, " This is the stupidest woman
I ever met!" and aloud to Mrs. Cameron: "Do you not
(hink that your neighbor Mr. Chillingly is a very fine young
man ?"
" I suppose he would be generally considered so. He is
very tall."
" A handsome face ?"
" Handsome, is it ? I dare say."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
19á
" What does Lily say ?"
" About what ?"
"About Mr. Chillingly. Does she not think him hand¬
some ?"
" I never asked her."
"My dear Mrs. Cameron, would it not he a very pretty
match for Lily ? The Chillinglys are among the oldest fami¬
lies in ' Burke's Landed Gentry,' and I believe his father. Sir
Peter, has a considerable property."
For the first time in this conversation, Mrs. Cameron be¬
trayed emotion. A sudden flush overspread her countenance,
and then left it paler than before. After a pause she recovered
her accustomed composure, and replied, rudely :
" It would be no friend to Lily who could put such notions
into her head ; and there is no reason to suppose that they
have entered into Mr. Chillingly's."
" Would you be sorry if they did ? Surely you would like
your niece to marry well ; and there are few chances of her
doing so at Moleswich."
" Pardon me, Mrs. Braefield, but the question of Lily's
marriage I have never discussed, even with her guardian.
Nor, eonsidering the childlike nature of her tastes and habits,
rather than the years she has numbered, can I think the tima
has yet come for discussing it at all."
Elsie, thus rebuked, changed the subject to some newspaper
topie which interested the public mind at the moment, and
very soon rose to depart. Mrs. Cameron detained the hand
that her visitor held out, and said in low tones, which, though
embarrassed, were evidently earnest, " My dear Mrs. Braefield,
Ï96
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
let me trust to your good sense and the affection with which
you have honored my niece, not to incur the risk of unsettling
her mind by a hint of the ambitious projects for her future
on which you have spoken to me. It is extremely improba¬
ble that a young man of Mr. Chillingly's expectations would
entertain any serious thoughts of marrrying out of his own
sphere of life, and "
'' Stop, Mrs. Cameron. I must interrupt you. Lily's per¬
sonal attractions and grace of manner would adorn any sta¬
tion ; and have I not rightly understood you to say that
though her guardian, Mr. Melville, is, as we all know, a
man who has risen above the rank of his parents, your niece.
Miss Mordaunt, is, like yourself, by birth a gentlewoman?"
" Yes, by birth a gentlewoman," said Mrs. Cameron, raising
her head with a sudden pride. But she added, with as sudden
a change to a sort of freezing humility, "What does that
matter ? A girl without fortune, without connection, brought
up in this little cottage, the ward of a professional artist, who
was the son of a city clerk, to whom she owes even the home she
has found, is not in the same sphere of life as Mr. Chillingly,
and his parents could not approve of such an alliance for him.
It would be most cruel to her if you were to change the
innocent pleasure she may take in the conversation of a clever
and well-informed stranger into the troubled interest which,
since you remind me of her age, a girl even so childlike and
beautiful as Lily might conceive in one represented to her as
the possible partner of her life. Don't commit that cruelty ;
don't—don't, I implore you !"
" Trust me," cried the warm-hearted Elsie, with tears rush-
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
197
ing to her eyes. " What you say so sensibly, so nobly, never
struck me before. I do not know much of the world—knew
nothing of it till I married—and being very fond of Lily, and
having a strong regard for Mr. Chillingly, I fancied I could
not serve both better than—than-^but I see now ; he is very
young, very peculiar ; his parents might object, not to Lily
herself, but to the circumstances you name. And you would
not wish her to enter any family where she was not as
cordially welcomed as she deserves to be. I am glad to have
had this talk with you. Happily, I have done no mischief
as yet. I will do none. I had come to propose an excursion
to the remains of the Roman Villa, some miles off, and to
invite you and Mr. Chillingly. I will no longer try to bring
him and Lily together."
"Thank you. But you still misconstrue me. I do not
think that Lily cares half so much for Mr. Chillingly as she
does for a new butterfly. I do not fear their coming to¬
gether, as you call it, in the light in which she now regards
him, and in which, from all I observe, he regards her. My
only fear is that a hint might lead her to regard him in
another way, and that way impossible."
Elsie left the house, extremely bewildered, and with a pro
found contempt for Mrs. Cameron's knowledge of what may
Lappen to two young persons " brought together."
198
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
CHAPTER XVIL
Now, on that very day, and about the same hour in
wnich the conversation just recorded between Elsie and Mrs.
Cameron took place, Kenelm, in his solitary noonday wander¬
ings, entered the burial-ground in which Lily had, some short
time before, surprised him. And there he found her, standing
beside the flower-border which she had placed round the grave
of the child whom she had tended and nursed in vain.
The day was clouded and sunless ; one of those days that
BO often instill a sentiment of melancholy into the heart of an
English summer.
" You come here too often, Miss Mordaunt," said Kenelm
very softly, as he approached.
Lily turned her face to him, without any start of surprise,
with no brightening change in its pensive expression—an
expression rare to the mobile play of her features.
" Not too often. I promised to come as often as I could ;
and, as I told you before, I have never broken a promise yet."
Kenelm made no answer. Presently the girl turned from
the- spot, and Kenelm followed her silently till she halted
before the old tombstone with its effaced inscription.
" See," she said, with a faint smile, " I have put fresh
flowers there. Since the day we met in this churchyard, I
have thought much of that tomb, so neglected, so forgotten,
KENELM CIIILLINaLY.
199
and"—she paused a moment, and went on abruptly,—" do
you not often find that you are much too—what is the word ?
ah ! too egotistical, considering, and pondering, and dreaming
greatly too much about yourself?"
" Yes, you are right there ; though, till you so accused me,
my conscience did not detect it."
" And don't you find that you escape from being so hauntefl
by the thought of yourself, when you think of the dead ? they
«
can never have any share in your existence here. When you
say, ' I shall do this or that to-day when you dream, ' I may
be this or that to-morrow,' you are thinking and dreaming,
all by yourself, for yourself. But you are out of yourself,
beyond yourself, when you think and dream of the dead, who
can have nothing to do with your to-day or your to-morrow."
As we all know, Kenelm Chillingly made it one of the rules
of his life never to be taken by surprise. But when the speech
I have written down came from the lips of that tamer of but¬
terflies, he was so startled that all it occurred to him to say,
after a long pause, was :
" The dead are the past ; and with the past rests all in the
present or the future that can take us out of our natural selves.
The past decides our present. By the past we divine our
future. History, poetry, science, the welfare of states, the
advancement of individuals, are all connected with tombstones
of which inscriptions are eifaced. You are right to honor the
mouldered tombstones with fresh flowers. It ts only in the
companionship of the dead that one ceases to be an egotist."
If the imperfectly educated Lily had been above the quick
comprehension of the academical Kenelm in her speech, so
200
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
Kenelm was now above the comprehension of Lily. She too
paused before she replied :
" If I knew you better, I think I could understand you
better. I wish you knew Lion. I should like to hear you
talk with him."
While thus conversing, they had left the burial-ground,
and were in the pathway trodden by the common wayfarer.
Lily resumed.
" Yes, I should so like to hear you talk with Lion."
" You mean your guardian, Mr. Melville."
" Yes, you know that."
" And why should you like to hear me talk to him?"
" Because there are some things in which I doubt if he was
altogether right, and I would ask you to express my dow''*s
to him ; you would, would not you?"
" But why can you not express them yourself to youi
guardian? Are you afraid of him?"
" Afraid ? no indeed I But—ah, how many people there are
coming this way ! There is some tiresome public meeting in
the town to-day. Let us take the ferry : the other side of the
stream is much pleasanter, we shall have it more to ourselves."
Turning aside to the right while she thus spoke, Lily
descended a gradual slope to the margin of the stream, on
which they found an old man dozily reclined in his ferry¬
boat.
As, seated side by side, they were slowly borne over thft
still waters under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed
the subject which his companion had begun, but she shook
her head, with a significant glance at the ferryman. Evi-
KENELM CUILLINGLT.
201
dcntly what she had to say was too confidential to admit of a
listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take the
trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him.
Lily soon did address her talk to him. " So, Brown, the cow
has quite recovered."
" Yes, Miss, thanks to you, and God bless you. To think
cf your beating the old witch like that 1"
" 'Tis not I who beat the witch. Brown ; 'tis the fairy.
Fairies, you know, are much more powerful than witches."
" So I find. Miss."
Lily here turned to Kenelm. " Mr. Brown has a very nice
milch cow that was suddenly taken very ill, and both he and
his wife were convinced that the cow was bewitched."
" Of course it were ; that stands to reason. Did not Mother
Wright tell my old woman that she would repent of selling
milk, and abuse her dreadful ? and was not the cow taken with
shivers that very night ?"
" Gently, Brown. Mother Wright did not say that your
wife would repent of selling milk, but of putting water into
it."
" And how did she know that, if she was not a witch ? We
have the best of customers among the gentlefolks, and never
an one that complained."
" And," answered Lily to Kenelm, unheeding this last ob¬
servation, which was made in a sullen manner, " Brown had
a horrid notion of enticing Mother Wright into his ferry-boat
and throwing her into the water, in order to break the spell
upon the cow. But I consulted the fairies, and gave him a
fairy charm to tie round the cow's neck. And th» eow is
I*
202
KENEi^M chillinglt.
quite well now, you see. So, Brown, there was no necessity
to throw Mother "Wright into the water because she said you
put some of it into the milk. But," she added, as the boat
now touched the opposite bank, "shall I tell you, Brown,
what the fairies said to me this morning?"
" Do, Miss."
" It was this : If Brown's cow yields milk without any
water in it, and if water gets into it when the milk is sold, we,
the fairies, will pinch Mr. Brown black and blue ; and when
Brown has his next fit of rheumatics he must not look to the
fairies to charm it away."
Herewith Lily dropped a silver groat into Brown's hand,
and sprang lightly ashore, followed by Kenelm.
" You have quite converted him, not only as to the exist¬
ence, but as to the beneficial power, of fairies," said Kenelm.
" Ah," answered Lily very gravely, " Ah, but would it not
be nice if there were fairies still ? good fairies, and one could
get at them ? tell them all that troubles and puzzles us, and
win from them charms against the witchcraft we practice on
ourselves?"
" I doubt if it would be good for us to rely on such super¬
natural counselors. Our own souls are so boundless, that the
more we explore them the more we shall find worlds spread¬
ing upon worlds into infinities; and among the worlds is
Fairyland." He added, inly to himself, "Am I not in Fairy¬
land now ?"
" Hush 1" whispered Lily. " Don't speak more yet awhile.
I am thinking over what you have just said, and trying to
understand it."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
203
Thus, walking silently, they gained the little summer-house
which tradition dedicated to the memory of Izaak Walton.
Lily entered it and seated herself. Kenelm took his place
beside her. It was a small octagon building, which, judging
by its architecture, might have been built in the troubled
reign of Charles I. ; the walls plastered within were thickly
covered with names, and dates, and inscriptions in praise of
angling, in tribute to Izaak, or with quotations from his
books. On the opposite side they could see the lawn of Gras-
mere, with its great willows dipping into the water. The
stillness of the place, with its associations of the angler's still
life, were in harmony with the quiet day, its breezeless air
and cloud-vested sky.
" You were to tell me your doubts in connection with your
guardian, doubts if he were right in something which you
left unexplained, which you could not yourself explain to
him."
Lily started as from thoughts alien to the subject thus re¬
introduced. "Yes, I cannot mention my doubts to him, be¬
cause they relate to me, and he is so good. I owe him so
much that I could not bear to vex him by a word that might
seem like reproach or complaint. You remember," here she
drew nearer to him ; and, with that ingenuous confiding look
and movement which had, not unfrcquently, enraptured him
at the moment, and saddened him on reflection—^too in¬
genuous, too confiding, for the sentiment with which he
yearned to inspire her—she turned towards him her frank
untimorous eyes, and laid her hand on his arm : " Y ou re¬
member that I said in the burial-ground how much I felt
204
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
that one is constantly thinking too much of one's self. That
must be wrong. In talking to you only about myself I know
I am wrong ; but I cannot help it, I must do so. Do not
think ill of me for it. You see, I have not been brought up
like other girls. Was my guardian right in that? Perhaps
if he had insisted upon not letting me have my own willful
way, if he had made me read the books which Mr. and Mrs.
Emlyn wanted to force on me, instead of the poems and fairy¬
tales which he gave me, I should have had so much more to
think of that I should have thought less of myself. You
said that the dead were the past ; one forgets one's self when
one thinks of the dead. If I had read more of the past, had
more subjects of interest in the dead whose history it tells,
surely I should be less shut up, as it were, in my own small,
selfish heart. It is only very lately I have thought of this,
only very lately that I have felt sorrow and shame in the
thought that I am so ignorant of what other girls know, even
little Clemmy. And I dare not say this to Lion when I see
him next, lest he should blame himself, when he only meant
to be kind, and used to say, ' I don't want Fairy to be learned,
it is enough for me to think she is happy.' And oh, I was
so happy, till—till of late I"
" Because till of late you only knew yourself as a child.
Dut, now that you feel the desire of knowledge, childhood is
vanishing. Do not vex yourself. With the mind which
nature has bestowed on you, such learning as may fit you to
converse with those dreaded ' grown-up folks' will come to
you very easily and quickly. You will acquire more in a
month now than you would have acquired in a year when you
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
205
were a child and task-work was loathed, not courted. Your
aunt is evidently well instructed, and if I might venture to
talk to her about the choice of books "
" No, don't do that. Lion would not like it."
" Your guardian would not like you to have the education
common to other young ladies?"'
" Lion forbade my aunt to teach me much that I rather
wished to learn. She wanted to do so, but she has given it
up at his wish. She only now teases me with those hori id
French verbs, and that I know is a mere make-belief. Of
course on Sunday it is different ; then I must not read any¬
thing but the Bible and sermons. I don't care so much for
the sermons as I ought, but I could read the Bible all day,
every weekday as well as Sunday ; and it is from the Bible
that I learn that I ought to think less about myself."
Kenelm involuntarily pressed the little hand that lay so
innocently on his arm.
" Do you know the difference between one kind of poetry
and another ?" asked Lily, abruptly.
" I am not sure. I ought to know when one kind is good
and another kind is bad. But in that respect I find many
people, especially professed critics, who prefer the poetry
which I call bad to the poetry I think good."
" The difference between one kind of poetry and another
supposing them both to be good," said Lily positively, and
with an air of triumph, " is this—I know, for Lion explained
it to me. In one kind of poetry the writer throws himself
entirely out of his existence; he puts himself into other ex-
Litences quite strange to his own. He may be a very good
206
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
man. find he writes his best poetry about very wicked men •,
he would not hurt a fly, but he delights in describing mur¬
derers. But in the other kind of poetry the writer does not
put himself into other existences ; he expresses his own joys
and sorrows, his own individual heart and mind. If he could
not huit a fly, he certainly could not make himself at home
in the cruel heart of a murderer. There, Mr. Chillingly, that
is the diflerence between one kind of poetry and another."
" Very true," said Kenelm, amused by the girl's critical
definitions. " The difference between dramatic poetry and
lyrical. But may I ask what that definition has to do with
the subject into which you so suddenly introduced it ?"
" Much ; for when Lion was explaining this to my aunt,
he said, ' A perfect woman is a poem ; but she can never be
a poem of the one kind, never can make herself at home in
the hearts with which she has no connection, never feel any
sympathy with crime and evü ; she must be a poem of the
other kind, weaving out poetry from her own thoughts and
fancies.' And turning to me, he said, smiling, ' That is the
poem I wish Iiily to be. Too many dry books would only
spoil the poem.' And you now see why I am so ignorant
and so unlike other girls, and why Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn look
down upon me."
" You wrong at least Mr. Emlyn, for it was he who first
»aid to me, ' Lily Mordaunt is a poem.' "
" Did he ? I shall love him for that. How pleased Lion
will be !"
" Mr. Melville seems to have an extraordinary influence
over your mind," said Kenelm, with a jealous pang.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
207
" Of course. I have neither father nor mother ; Lion has
been both to ma Aunty has often said, ' You cannot be too
grateful to your guardian; without him I should have no
home to shelter you, no bread to give you.' He never said
that—he would be very angry with aunty if he knew she had
said it. When he does not call me Fairy he calls me Princess.
I would not displease him for the world."
" He is very much older than you, old enough to be your
father, I hear."
" I daresay. But if he were twice as old I could not love
him better."
Kenelm smiled—the jealousy was gone. Certainly not
thus could any girl, even Lily, speak of one with whom, how¬
ever she might love him, she was likely to fall in love.
Lily now rose up, rather slowly and wearily. " It is time
to go home : aunty will be wondering what keeps me away.
Come."
They took their way towards the bridge opposite to Crom¬
well Lodge.
It was not for some minutes that either broke silenee. Lily
was the first to do so, and with one of those abrupt changes
of topic which were common to the restless play of her secret
thoughts.
" You have father and mother still living, Mr. Chillingly."
"Thank Heaven, yes."
" Which do you love the best ?"
" That is scarcely a fair question. I love my mother very
much; but my father and I understand each other better
than "
208
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" I see—it is so diffieult to be understood. No one under«
stands me."
"I think I do."
Lily shook her head, with an energetic movement of dis¬
sent.
" At least as well as a man can understand a young lady."
" What sort of young lady is Miss Cecilia Travers?"
" Cecilia Travers ? When and how did you ever hear that
such a person existed?"
" That big London man whom they called Sir Thomas men¬
tioned her name the day we dined at Braefieldville."
" I remember—as having been at the Court ball."
" He said she was very handsome."
" So she is.' '
"Is she a poem, too?"
" No ; that never struck me."
" Mr. Emlyn, I suppose, would call her perfectly brought
up—well educated. He would not raise his eyebrows at her
as he does at me, poor me, Cinderella 1"
" Ah, Miss Mordaunt, you need not envy her. Again let
me say that you could very soon educate yourself to the level
of any young ladies who adorn the Court balls."
" Ay ; but then I should not be a poem," said Lily, with a
shy arch side-glance at his face.
They were now on the bridge, and, before Kenelm could
answer Lily resumed quickly, "You need not come any
farther : it is out of your way."
" I cannot be so disdainfully dismissed. Miss Mordaunt ; 1
insist on seeing you to, at least, your garden gate."
KENEIiM CniLLINGLT.
209
Lily made no objection, and again spoke:
"Wba,t sort of country do you live in wbon at home?
is it like this ?"
" Not so pretty ; the features are larger, more hill and dale
and woodland ; yet there is one feature in our grounds which
lemiuds me a little of this landscape : a light stream, some¬
what wider, indeed, than your brooklet ; but here and there
the banks are so like those by Cromwell Lodge that I some¬
times start and fancy myself at home. I have a strange love
for rivulets and all running waters, and in my foot-wander¬
ings I find myself magnetically attracted towards them."
Lily listened with interest, and after a short pause said, with
a half-suppressed sigh, " Your home is much finer than any
place here, even than Braefieldville, is it not ? Mrs. Braefield
says your father is very rich."
" I doubt if he is richer than Mr. Braefield, and though his
house may be larger than Braefieldville, it is not so smartly
furnished, and has no such luxurious hot-houses and conser¬
vatories. My father's tastes are like mine, very simple. Give
him his library, and he would scarcely miss his fortune if he
lost it. He has in this one immense advantage over me."
" You would miss fortune?" said Lily, quickly.
" Not that ; but my father is never tired of books. And
khall I own it? there are days when books tire me almost as
much as they do you."
They were now at the garden gate. Lily with one hand
on the latch held out the other to Kenelm, and her smile lit
up the dull sky like a burst of sunshine, as she looked in his
face and vanished.
VOL. 11. 14
«
BOOIC "VIX.
CHAPTEE I.
Kenelm did not return home till dusk, and just as he was
sitting down to his solitary meal there was a ring at the bell,
and Mrs. Jones ushered in Mr. Thomas Bowles.
Though that gentleman had never written to announce the
day of his arrival, he was not the less welcome.
" Only," said Kenelm, " if you preserve the appetite I
have lost, I fear you will find meagre fare to-day. Sit down,
man."
" Thank you kindly, but I dined two hours ago in London,
and I really can eat nothing more."
Kenelm was too well-bred to press unwelcome hospitalities.
In a very few minutes his frugal repast was ended, the cloth
removed, the two men were left alone.
"Your room is here, of course, Tom; that was engaged
frim the day I asked you ; but you ought to have given me a
line to say when to expect you, so that I could have put our
hostess on her mettle as to dinner or supper. You smoke
still, of course : light your pipe."
" Thank you, Mr. Chillingly, I seldom smoke now ; but it
you will excuse a cigar," and Tom produced a very smart
cigar-case.
" Bo as you would at home. I shall send word to Will
I 210)
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
211
Somers that you and I sup there to-morrcw. You forgive
me for letting out your secret. All straightforward now and
henceforth. You come to their hearth as a friend, who will
grow dearer to them both every year. Ah, Tom, this love
for woman seems to me a very wonderful thing. It may sink
a man into such deeps of evil, and lift a man into such
heights of good."
" I don't know as to the good," said Tom, mournfully, and
laying aside his cigar.
" Go on smoking ; I should like to keep you company : can
you spare me one of your cigars?"
Tom offered his case. Kenelm extracted a cigar, lighted
it, drew a few whiffs, and, when he saw that Tom had resumed
his own cigar, recommenced conversation.
" You don't know as to the good ; but tell me honestly, do
you think if you had not loved Jessie Wiles you would be as
good a man as you are now ?"
" If I am better than I was, it is not because of my love
for the girl."
" What then ?"
" The loss of her."
Kenelm started, turned very pale, threw aside the cigar,
rose and walked the room to and fro with very quick but
very irregular strides,
Tom continued quietly. "Suppose I had won Jessie and
married her, I don't think any idea of improving myself would
have entered my head. My uncle would have been very much
offended at my marrying a day-laborer's daughter, and would
not have invited me to Luscombe. I should have remained
212
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
at Grareleigh, with no ambition of being more than a common
farrier, an ignorant, noisy, quarrelsome man ; and if I could
not bave made Jessie as fond of me as I wished, I should not
have broken myself of drinking ; and I shudder to think what
a brute I might have been, when I see in the newspapers an
account of some drunken wife-beater. How do we know but
what that wife-beater loved his wife dearly before marriage,
and she did not care for him ? His home was unhappy, and
so he took to drink and to wife-beating."
"I was right, then," said Kenehn, halting his strides,
" when I told you it would be a miserable fate to be married
to a girl whom you loved to distraction, and whose heart you
could never warm to you, whose life you could never render
happy."
" So right 1"
"Let us drop that part of the subject at present," said
Kenelm, reseating himself, "and talk about your wish to
travel. Though contented that you did not marry Jessie,
though you can now without anguish greet her as the wife
of another, still there are some lingering thoughts of her that
make you restless ; and you feel that you could more easily
wrench yourself from these thoughts in a marked change of
scene and adventure, that you might bury them altogether in
the soil of a strange land. Is it so ?"
" Ay, something of that, sir."
Then Kenelm roused himself to talk of foreign lands,
and to map out a plan of travel that might occupy some
months. He was pleased to find that Tom had already learned
enough of French to make himself understood at least upon
KENKLM CHILIilNGLY.
213
commonplace matters, and still more pleased to discover that
he had been not only reading the proper guide-books or
manuals descriptive of the principal places in Europe worth
visiting, but that he had acquired an interest in the places ;
interest in the fame attached to them by their hrstcry in (he
past, or by the treasures of art they contained.
So they talked far into the night, and when To<n retired to
Iiis room Kenelm let himself out of the house noiseleasly, and
walked with slow steps towards the old summer-house in
which he had sat with Lily. The wind had risen, scattering
the clouds that had veiled the preceding day, so that the stars
were seen in far chasms of the sky beyond—seen for awhile
in one place, and, when the swift clouds rolled over them
there, shining out elsewhere. Amid the varying sounds of
the trees, through which swept the night gusts, Keuclm
fancied he could distinguish the sigh of the willow on thA
opposite lawn of Grasmere.
CHAPTER IL
Kenelm dispatched a note to Will Somors early the next
morning, inviting himself and Mr. Bowles to supper that
evening. His tact was sufficient to make him aware that in
such social meal there would be far less restraint for each and
all concerned than in a more formal visit from Tom during
the daytime, and when Jessie, too, was engaged with cus¬
tomers to the shop.
214
KENELM CHILLINQLy.
But he led Tom through the town and showed him
the shop itself, with its pretty goods at the plate-glass win¬
dows, and its general air of prosperous trade ; then he carried
him off into the lanes and fields of the country, drawing out
the mind of his companion, and impressed with great admira¬
tion of its marked improvement in culture, and in the trains
of thought which culture opens out and enriches.
But throughout all their multiform range of subject,
Kenelm could perceive that Tom was still preoccupied and
abstracted ; the idea of the coming interview with Jessie
weighed upon him.
When they left Cromwell Lodge at nightfall, to repair to
the supper at Will's, Kenelm noticed that Bowles had availed
himself of the contents of his carpet-bag, to make some
refined alterations in his dress. The alterations became him.
When they entered the parlor. Will rose from his chair
with the evidence of deep emotion on his face, advanced to
Tom, took his hand and grasped and dropped it without a
word. Jessie saluted both guests alike, with drooping eyelids
and an elaborate curtsy. The old mother alone was perfectly
self-possessed and up to the occasion.
" I am heartily glad to see you, Mr, Bowles," said she,
" and so all three of us are, and ought to be ; and if baby was
older, there would be four."
" And where on earth have you hidden baby ?" cried
Kenelm. " Surely he might have been kept up for me to¬
night, when I was expected ; the last time I supped here I
took you by surprise, and therefore had no right to complain
of baby's want of respect to his parents' friends."
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
215
Jessie raised the window-curtain, and pointed to the cradle
behind it Kenelm linked his arm in Tom's, led him to the
cradle, an i, leaving him alone to gaze on the sleeping inmate,
seated himself at the table, between old Mrs. Somers and
Will. Will's eyes were turned away towards the curtain,
Jessie holding its folds aside, and the formidable Tom, who
had been the terror of his neighborhood, bending smiling over
the cradle ; till at last he laid his large hand on the pillow,
gently, timidly, careful not to awake the helpless sleeper, and
his lips moved, doubtless with a blessing ; then he too came to
the table, seating himself, and Jessie carried the cradle up-stairs.
Will fixed his keen intelligent eyes on his by-gone rival ;
and noticing the changed expression of the once aggressive
countenance, the changed costume in which, without tinge
of rustie foppery, there was the token of a certain gravity of
station scarcely compatible with a return to old loves and old
habits in the village world, the last shadow of jealousy van¬
ished from the clear surface of Will's affectionate nature.
" Mr. Bowles," he exclaimed impulsively, " you have a
kind heart, and a good heart, and a generous heart. And
your coming here to-night on this friendly visit is an honor
which—which"—" Which," interrupted Kenclm, compas¬
sionating Will's embarrassment, " is on the side of us single
men. In this free country a married man who has a male
baby may be father to the Lord Chancellor or the Archbishop
of Canterbury. But—well, my friends, such a meeting as we
have to-night does not come often ; and after supper let us
celebrate it with a bowl of punch. If we have headaches the
next morning, none of us will grumble."
216
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Old Mrs. Somers laughed out jovially. " Bless you, sir, I
did not think of the punch ; I will go and see about it ; " and
baby's socks still in her hands, she hastened from the room.
What with the supper, what with the punch, and what
with Kenelm's art of cheery talk on general subjects, all ro-
serve, all awkwardness, all shyness between the convivialists,
rapidly disappeared. Jessie mingled in the talk ; perhaps
(excepting only Kenelm) she talked more than the others,
artlessly, gayly, no vestige of the old coquetry, but now and
then with a touch of genteel finery, indicative of her rise in
life, and of the contact of the fancy shopkeeper with noble
customers. It was a pleasant evening—Kenelm had resolved
that it should be so. Not a hint of the obligations to Mr.
Bowles escaped until Will, following his visitor to the door,
whispered to Tom, " You don't want thanks, and I can't ex¬
press them. But when we say our prayers at night, we have
always asked God to bless him who brought us together, and
has since made us so prosperous—I mean Mr. Chillingly.
To-night there will be another besides him for whom we
shall pray, and for whom baby, when he is older, will pray
too."
Therewith Will's voice thickened; and he prudently re¬
ceded, with no unreasonable fear lest the punch might make
him too demonstrative of emotion if he said more.
Tom was very silent on the return to Cromwell Lodgn ; it
did not seem the silence of depressed spirits, but rather of
quiet meditation, from which Kenelm did not attempt to rouse
him.
It was not till they reached the garden pales of Grasmere
KENELM CniLLINGLY.
217
tliat Tom, stopping short, and turning his face to Kcnclm,
said;
" I am very grateful to you for this evening—very."
" It has revived no painful thoughts, then ?"
" No ; I feel so much calmer in mind than I ever believed
I could have been, after seeing her again."
" Is it possible !" said Kenelm, to himself. " How should
I feel if I ever saw in Lily the wife of another man, the
mother of his child ?" At that question he shuddered, and
an involuntary groan escaped from his lips. Just then, having,
willingly in those precincts, arrested his steps when Tom
paused to address him, something softly touched the arm
which he had rested on the garden pale. He looked and saw
that it was Blanche. The creature, impelled by its instincts
towards night^wanderings, had, somehow or other, escaped
from its own bed within the house, and, hearing a voice that
had grown somewhat familiar to its ear, crept from among
the shrubs behind upon the edge of the pale. There it stood,
with arched back, purring low as in pleased salutation.
Kenelm bent down and covered with kisses the blue ribbon
which Lily's hand had bound round the favorite's neck.
Blanche submitted to the caress for a moment, and then,
catching a slight rustle among the shrubs, made by some
awaking bird, sprang into the thick of the quivering leaves
and vanished.
Kenelm moved on with a quick impatient stride, and no
further words were exchanged ietwcen him and his com¬
panion till they reached their lodging and parted for the
night.
VOL. II.—K
218
kenelm chillingly.
CHAPTER III.
The next day, towards noon, Kenelm and his visitor,
walking together along the brook-side, stopped before Izaak
"Walton's summer-house, and, at Kenelm's suggestion, entered
therein to rest, and more at their ease to continue the conver¬
sation they had begun.
" You have just told me," said Kenelm, " that you feel as
if a load were taken off your heart, now that you have again
met Jessie Somers, and that you find her so changed that she
is no longer the woman you loved. As to the change, what¬
ever it be, I own it seems to me for the better, in person, in
manners, in character: of course I should not say this if I
were not convinced of your perfect sincerity when you as¬
sured me that you are cured of the old wound. But I feel
so deeply interested in the question how a fervent love, once
entertained and enthroned in the heart of a man so earnestly
affectionate and so warm-blooded as yourself, can be, all of a
sudden, at a single interview, expelled or transferred into the
cjJm sentiment of friendship, that I pray you to explain."
"Tliat is what puzzles me, sir," answered Tom, passing
his hand over his forehead. " And I don't know if I can
explain it."
" Think over it, and try."
Tom mused for some moments, and then began. " Yon
KENKLM CHILLINaLY.
219
see, sir, that I was a very different man myself when I fell in
love with Jessie Wiles, and said, ' Come what may, that girl
shall be my wife. Nobody else shall have her.' "
" Agreed ; go on."
" But while I was becoming a different man, when I
thought of her,—and I was always thinking of her,—I still
pietured her to myself as the same Jessie Wiles; and
though, when I did see her again at Graveleigh, after she
had married—the day "
" You saved her from the insolence of the squire."
" —She was but very recently married. I did not realize
her as married. I did not see her husband, and the differenee
within myself was only then beginning. Well, so all the time
I was reading and thinking, and striving to improve my old
self at Luseombe, still Jessie Wiles haunted me as the only
girl I had ever loved, ever eould love ; I could not believe it
possible that I could ever marry any one else. And lately I
have been much pressed to marry some one else; all my
family wish it ; but the face of Jessie rose up before me, and
I said to myself, ' I should be a base man if I married one
woman, whUe I could not get another woman out of • my
head.' I must see Jessie onee more, must learn whether
her face is now really the face that haunts me when I sit
alone ; and I have seen her, and it is not that face ; it may
be handsomer, but it is not a girl's faee, it is the faee of a
wife and a mother. And, last evening, while she was talking
with an open-heartedness which I had never found in her
before, I became strangely conscious of the difference in my¬
self that had been silently at work within the last two years
220
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
or SO. Then, sir, when I was but an ill-conditioned, un¬
educated, petty village farrier, there was no inequality be¬
tween me and a peasant girl ; or rather, in all things except
fortune, the peasant girl was much above me. But last
evening I asked myself, on watching her and listening to
ter talk, ' If Jessie were now free, should I press her to
bo my wife ?" and I answered myself, ' No.' "
Kenelm listened with rapt attention, and exclaimed briefly,
but passionately, " Why ?"
" It seems as if I were giving myself airs to say why. But,
sir, lately I have been thrown among persons, women as well
as men, of a higher class than I was born in ; and in a wife I
should want a companion up to their mark, and who would
keep me up to mine ; and ah, sir, I don't feel as if I could
find that companion in Mrs. Somers."
" I understand you now, Tom. But you are spoiling a silly
romance of mine. I had fancied the little girl with the
flower face would grow up to supply the loss of Jessie ; and,
I am so ignorant of the human heart, I did think it would
take all the years required for the little girl to open into a
woman, before the loss of the old love could be supplied. I
see now that the poor little child with the flower face has no
chance."
"Chance? Why, Mr. Chillingly," cried Tom, evidently
much nettled, " Susy is a dear little thing, but she is scarcely
more than a mere charity girl. Sir, when I last saw you in
London you touched on that matter as if I were still the
village farrier's son who might marry a village laborer's
daughter. But," added Tom, softening down his irvitated
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
221
tone of voice, " even if Susy were a lady born, I think a man
would make a very great mistake if be thought he could
bring up a little girl to regard bim as a father, and then,
when she grew up, expect her to accept him as a lover."
" Ah, you think that 1" exclaimed Kenelm, eagerly, and
turning eyes that sparkled with joy towards the lawn of
Orasmere. " You think that; it is very sensibly said—well
—and you have been pressed to marry, and bave hung back
till you had seen again Mrs. Somers. Now you will be better
disposed to such a step ; tell me about it."
" I said, last evening, that one of the principal capitalists
at Luscombe, the leading corn-merchant, had offered to take
me into partnership. And, sir, he has an only daughter ; she
is a very amiable girl, has had a first-rate education, and has
such pleasant manners and way of talk, quite a lady. If I
married her I should soon be the first man at Luscombe, and
Luscombe, as you are no doubt aware, returns two members
to Parliament; who knows but that some day the farrier's
son might be " Tom stopped abruptly—abashed at the
aspiring thought which, while speaking, had deepened his
hardy color and flashed from his honest eyes.
" Ah 1" said Kenelm, almost mournfully. " Is it so ? must
each man in his life play many parts ? Ambition succeeds
to love, the reasoning brain to the passionate heart. True,
you are changed ; my Tom Bowles is gone."
" Not gone in his undying gratitude to you, sir, ' said Toni,
with great emotion. " Your Tom Bowles would give up all
his dreams of wealth or of rising in life, and go through fire
and water, to serve the friend who first bid bim be a new Tom
222
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Bowles ! Don't despise me as your own work : you said to
me, that terrible day when madness was on my brow and
crime within my heart, ' I will be to you the truest friend
man ever found in man.' So you have been. You com¬
manded me to read, you commanded me to think, you taught
me that body should be the servant of mind."
" Hush, hush ! times are altered ; it is you who can teach
me now. Teach me, teach me ; how does ambition replace
love ? How does the desire to rise in life become the all-
mastering passion, and, should it prosper, the all-atoning con¬
solation of our life? We can never be as happy, though we
rose to the throne of the Caesars, as we dream that we could
have been had Heaven but permitted us to dwell in the
obscurest village, side by side with the woman we love."
Tom was exceedingly startled by such a burst of irrepressible
passion from the man who had told him, that, though friends
were found only once in a life, sweethearts were as plentiful
as blackberries.
Again he swept his hand over his forehead, and replied
hesitatingly. " I can't pretend to say what may he the ease
with others. But to judge by my own case it seems to he
this : a young man who, out of his own business, has nothing
to interest or excite him, finds content, interest, and excite¬
ment when he falls in love ; and then, whether for good or
ill, l;c thinks there is nothing like love in the world ; he don't
care a fig for ambition then. Over and over again did my
poor uncle ask me to come to him at Luscombe, and represent
all the worldly advantage it would be to me ; but I could not
leave the village in which Jessie lived, and, besides, I felt
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
223
myself unfit to be anything higher than I was. But when I
had been some time at Lnscombe, and gradually got accus¬
tomed to another sort of people and another sort of talk,
then I began to feel interest in the same objects that inter¬
ested those about me; and when, partly by mixing with
better-educated men, and partly by the pains I took to educati
myself, I felt that I might now more easily rise above my
uncle'» rank of life than two years ago I could have risen
above a farrier's forge, then the ambition to rise did stir in
me and grew stronger every day. Sir, I don't think you can
wake up a man's intellect but what you wake with it emula¬
tion. And, after all, emulation is ambition."
'' Then I suppose I have no emulation in me, for certainly
I have no ambition."
" That I can't believe, sir. Other thoughts may cover it over
and keep it down for a time ; but, sooner or later, it will force
its way to the top, as it has done with me. To get on in life,
to be respected by those who know you, more and more as you
grow o'.der, I call that a manly desire. I am sure it comes as
naturally to an Englishman as—as "
"As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who
stands in his way does. I perceive now that you were always
a very ambitious man, Tom; the ambition has only taken
another direction. Caesar might have been
' But the first wrestler on the green.'
"And now, I suppose, you abandon the idea of travel;
yot will return to Lnscombe, cured of all regret for the loss
of Jes.sie ; you will marry the young lady you mention, and
224
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
rise through progressive steps of alderman and mayor into the
rank of member for Lnscombe."
"All that may come in good time," answered Tom, not
resenting the tone of irony in which he was addressed, " but
I still intend to travel ; a year so spent must render me all
the more fit for any station I aim at. I shall go back to
Lnscombe to arrange my affairs, come to terms with Mr.
Leland the corn-merchant against my return, and "
" The young lady is to wait till then."
« Emily."
" Oh, that is the name ? Emily ! a much more elegant
name than Jessie."
" Emily," continued Tom, with an unruflled placidity,
which, considering the aggravating bitterness for which
Kenelm had exchanged his wonted dulcitudes of indifferent-
ism, was absolutely saintlike, " Emily knows that if she were
my wife I should be proud of her, and will esteem me the
more if she feels how resolved I am that she shall never be
ashamed of me."
" Pardon me, Tom," said Kenelm, softened, and laying his
hand on his friend's shoulder with brother-like tenderness.
" Nature has made you a thorough gentleman ; and you could
not think and speak more nobly if you had come into the
world as the head of all the Howards."
kenelm chillingly.
225
CHAPTER IV.
Tom went away the next morning. He declined to ses
Jessie again, saying, curtly, " I don't wish the impression
made on me the other evening to incur a chance of being
weakened."
Kenelm was in no mood to regret his friend's departure.
Despite all the improvement in Tom's manners and culture,
which raised him so much nearer to equality with the polite
and instructed heir of the Chillinglys, Kenelm would have
felt more in sympathy and rapport with the old disconsolate
fellow-wanderer who had reclined with him on the grass,
listening to the Minstrel's talk or verse, than he did with the
practical, rising citizen of Lusccmbe. To the young lover
of Lily Mordaunt there was a discord, a jar, in the knowledge
that the human heart admits of such well-reasoned, well-justi¬
fied transfers of allegiance ; a Jessie to-day, or an Emily to¬
morrow—"La reine est morte ; vive la reine !"
An hour or two after Tom had gone, Kenelm found him¬
self almost mechanically led towards Braefieldville. He had
instinctively divined Elsie's secret wish with regard to him¬
self and Lily, however skillfully she thought she had con¬
cealed it.
At Braefieldville he should hear talk of Lily, and in the
scenes where Lily had been first beheld.
He found Mrs. Braefield alone in the drawing-room, seated
vol. ix.—k» 15
22C
KENKLM CHILLINGLY.
by a table covered with flowers, which she was assorting and
intermixing for the vases to which they were destined.
It struck him that her manner was more reserved than
usual, and somewhat embarrassed ; and when, after a few pre¬
liminary matters of small talk, he rushed boldly in medias res,
and asked if she had seen Mrs. Cameron lately, she replied,
briefly, " Yes, I called there the other day," and immediately
changed the conversation to the troubled state of the Continent.
Kenelm was resolved not to be so put off, and presently
returned to the charge.
" The other day you proposed an excursion to the site of
the Roman villa, and said you would ask Mrs. Cameron to be
of the party. Perhaps you have forgotten it?"
" No ; but Mrs. Cameron declines. We can ask the Em-
lyns instead. He will be an excellent cicereme."
" Excellent ! Why did Mrs. Cameron decline ?"
Elsie hesitated, and then iifted her clear brown eyes to his
face, with a sudden determination to bring matters to a crisis.
" I cannot say why Mrs. Cameron declined, but in declining
she acted very wisely and very honorably. Listen to me, Mr.
Chillingly. You know how highly I esteem and how cor¬
dially I like you, and judging by what I felt for some weeks,
perhaps longer, after we parted at Tor Hadham " Here
again she hesitated, and, with a half laugh and a slight blurh,
again went resolutely on. " If I were Lily's aunt or elder
sister, I should do as Mrs. Cameron does ; decline to let Lily
see much more of a young gentleman too much above her in
wealth and station for "
" Stop," cried Kenelm, haughtily. " I cannot allow that any
KENELM CHILLINOLT.
227
man's wealth or station would warrant his presumption in
thinking himself above Miss Mordaunt."
" Above her in natural grace and refinement, certainly not.
But in the world there are other considerations, which per¬
haps Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly might take into account."
" STou did not think of that before you last saw Mrs. Cam¬
eron."
" Honestly speaking, I did not. Assured that Miss Mor¬
daunt was a gentlewoman by birth, I did not sufficiently re¬
flect upon other disparities."
" You know, then, that she is by birth a gentlewoman?"
" I only know it as all here do, by the assurance of Mrs.
Cameron, whom no one could suppose not to be a lady. But
there are different degrees of lady and of gentleman, which are
little heeded in the ordinary intercourse of society, but become
very perceptible in questions of matrimonial alliance ; and
Mrs. Cameron herself says very plainly that she does not con¬
sider her niece to belong to that station in life from which
Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly would naturally wish their son
should select his bride. Then" (holding out her hand) " par¬
don me if I have wounded or offended you. I speak as a true
ftiend to you and to Lily both. Earnestly I advise you, if
Miss Mordaunt be the cause of your lingering here, earnestly
I advise you to leave while yet in time for her peace of mind
and your own."
'' Her peace of mind," said Kenelm, in low faltering tones,
scarcely hearing the rest of Mrs. Braefield's speech. " Her
j>eace of mind. Do you sincerely think that she cares for ma
—could care for me—if I stayed ?"
228
kenelm chillingly.
" I wish I could answer you decidedly. I am not in the
secrets of her heart. I can but conjecture that it might bo
dangerous for the peace of any young girl to see too much of
a man like yourself, to divine that he loved her, and not to be
aware that he could not, with the approval of his family, ask
her to become his wife."
Kenelm bent his face down, and covered it with his right
hand. He did not speak for some moments. Then he rose,
the fresh cheek very pale, and said :
" You are right. Miss Mordaunt's peace of mind must be
the first consideration. Excuse me if I quit you thus ab¬
ruptly. You have given me much to think of, and I can
only think of it adequately when alone."
CHAPTER V.
From Kenelm Chillingly to Sir Peter Chillingly.
" My Father, my dear Father,—This is no reply ro
your letters. I know not if itself can be called a letter. I
cannot yet decide whether it be meant to reach your hands.
Tired with talking to myself, I sit down to talk to you. Often
have I reproached myself for not seizing every fitting occasion
to let you distinctly know how warmly I love, how deeply I
reverence you ; you, 0 friend, 0 father. But we Chillingly»
are not a demonstrative race. I don't remember that you, by
words, ever expressed to me the truth that you love your son
infiuitely more than he deserves. Yet, do I not know that
kenelm chillinqir.
229
you would send all your beloved old books to the hammer,
rather than I should pine in vain for some untried, if sinless,
delight ou which I had set my heart ? And do you not know,
equally well, that I would part with all my heritage, and turn
day-laborer, rather than you should miss the beloved old books?
" That mutual knowledge is taken for granted in all that my
heart yearns to pour forth to your own. But, if I divine
aright, a day is coming when, as between you and mo, there
must be a sacrifice on the part of one to the other. If so, I
impldfe that the sacrifice may come from you. How is this ?
How am I so ungenerous, so egotistical, so selfish, so ungrate¬
fully unmindful of all I already owe to you, and may never
repay? I can only answer, 'It is fate, it is nature, it is
love'
" Here I must break ofiF. It is midnight, the moon halts
opposite to the window at which I sit, and on the stream that
runs below there is a long narrow track on which every wave
trembles in her light ; on either side of the moonlit track all
the other waves, running equally to their grave in the invisible
deep, seem motionless and dark. I can write no more."
Dated two days later.
" They say she is beneath us in wealth and station. Are
we, my father—we, two well-born gentlemen—coveters of
gold or lackeys of the great ? When I was at College, if
there were any there more heartily despised than another, it
was the parasite and the tuft-hunter ; thp man who chose hLs
friends according as their money or their rank might be of
use to him. If so mean where the choice is so little impor¬
tant to the happiness and career of a man who has something
of manhood in him, how much more mean to be the parasite
and tuft-hunter in deciding what woman to love, what woman
to select as the sweetener and ennobler of one's every-day life 1
230
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Could she be to my life that sweetener, that ennohler ? I
firmly believe it. Already life itself has gained a charm that
I never even guessed in it before ; already I begin, though as
yet hut faintly and vaguely, to recognize that interest in the
objects and aspirations of my fellow-men, which is strongest
in those whom posterity ranks among its ennoblers. In this
quiet village it is true that I might find examples enough to
prove that man is not meant to meditate upon life, but to take
active part in it, and in that action to find his uses. But I
doubt if I should have profited by such examples, if I should
not have looked on this small stage of the world as I have
looked on the large one, with the indifferent eyes of a spectator
on a trite familiar play carried on by ordinary actors, had not
my whole being suddenly leapt out of philosophy into passion,
and, at once made warmly human, sympathized with humanity
wherever it burned and glowed. Ah, is there to be any
doubt of what station, as mortal bride, is due to her—her,
my princess, my Fairy ? If so, how contented you shall be,
my father, with the worldly career of your son ! how perse-
veringly he will strive (and when did perseverance fail ?) to
supply all his deficiencies of intellect, genius, knowledge, by
the energy concentrated on a single object which—more than
intellect, genius, knowledge, unless they attain to equal energy
equally concentrated—commands what the world calls honors I
" Yes, with her, with her as the bearer of my name, with
her to whom I, whatever I might do of good or of great, could
say, ' It is thy work,' I promise that you shall bless the day
when you took to your arms a daughter.
' Thou art in contact with the beloved in all that thou
feelost elevated above thee.' So is it written by one of those
weird Germans who search in our bosoms for the seeds of
buried truths, and conjure them into flowers before we our-
Bolves were even aware of the seeds.
KENELM CniLLtNOI.Y.
231
" E^'c^y thought that associates itself with my beloved seems
to me born with wings.
**♦*»***»
I have just seen her, just parted from her. Since I had been
told—kindly, wisely told—that I had no right to hazard her
peace of mind unless I were privileged to woo and to win her,
1 promised myself that I would shun her presence until I had
bared my heart to you, as I am doing now, and received that
privilege from yourself ; for even had I never made the
promise' that binds my honor, your consent and blessing must
hallow my choice. I do not feel as if I could dare to ask one
so innocent and fair to wed an ungrateful, disobedient son.
But this evening I met her, unexpectedly, at the vicar's, an
excellent man, from whom I have learned much ; whose pre¬
cepts, whose example, whose delight in his home, and his life
at once active and serene, are in harmony with my own dreams
when I dream of her.
" I will tell you the name of the beloved—^hold, it is as yet
a profound secret between you and me. But oh for the day
when I may hear you call her by that name, and print on her
forehead the only kiss by man of which I should not be
jealous I
" It Ls Sunday, and after the evening service it is my friend's
custom to gather his children round him, and, without any
formal sermon or discourse, engage their interest in subjects
harmonious to associations with the sanctity of the day ; often
not directly bearing upon religion ; more often, indeed, play¬
fully startinw from some little incident or some slight story¬
book which had amused the children in the course of the past
week, and then gradually winding into reference to some sweet
moral precept or illustration from some divine example. It is
a maxim with him that, while much that children must learn
they can only learn well through conscious labor and as
positivo task-work, yet Keligion should be connected in their
232
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
minds, not with labor and task-work, but should become in
sensibly infused into their habits of thought, blending itself
with memories and images of peace and love ; with the indul¬
gent tenderness of the earliest teachers, the sinless mirthfulness
of the earliest home ; with consolation in after-sorrows, sup¬
port through after-trials, and never parting company with its
twin sister, Hope.
" I entered the vicar's room this evening just as the group
had collected round him. By the side of his wife sat a lady
in whom I feel a keen interest. Her face wears that kind
of calm which speaks of the lassitude bequeathed by sorrow.
She is the aunt of my beloved one. Lily had nestled her¬
self on a low ottoman at the good pastor's feet, with one of
his little girls, round whose shoulder she had wound her arm.
She is much more fond of the companionship of children than
that of girls of her own age. The vicar's wife, a very clever
woman, once, in my hearing, took her to task for this prefen-
ence, asking her why she persisted in grouping herself with
mere infants who could teach her notliing. Ah 1 could you
have seen the innocent, angel-like expression of her face when
she answered simply, ' I suppose because with them I feel
safer, I mean nearer to God.'
" Mr. Emlyn—that is the name of the vicar—deduced his
homily this evening from a pretty fairy-tale which Lily had
been telling to his children the day before, and which he drew
her on to repeat.
" Take, in brief, the substance of the story :—
" Once on a time, a king and queen made themselves very
unhappy because they had no heir to their throne ; and they
prayed for one ; and lo, on some bright summer morning, the
Queen, waking from sleep, saw a cradle beside her bed, and in
the cradle a beautiful sleeping babe. Great day throughout
the kingdom I But as the infant grew up, it became very
wayward and fretfal ; it lost its beauty, it would not learn its
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
233
lessons, it was as naughty as a child could be. The parents
were very sorrowful ; the heir, so longed for, promised to be a
great plague to themselves and their subjects. At last, one
day, to add to their trouble, two little bumps appeared on the
Prince's shoulders. All the doctors were consulted as to the
cause and the cure of this deformity. Of course they tried
the efiect of back-bands and steel machines, which gave the
poor little Prince great pain, and made him more unamiable
than ever. The bumps, nevertheless, grew larger, and as they
increased, so the Prince sickened and pined away. At last a
skillful surgeon proposed, as the only chance of saving the
Prince's life, that the bumps should be cut out, and the next
morning was fixed for that operation. But at night the Queen
saw, or dreamed she saw, a beautiful shape standing by her
bedside. And it said to her reproachfully, ' Ungrateful woman !
How wouldst thou repay me for the precious boon that my.
favor bestowed on thee? In me behold the Queen of the
Fairies. For the heir to thy kingdom, I consigned to thy
charge an infant from Fairyland, to become a blessing to thee
and to thy people ; and thou wouldst inflict upon it a death
of torture by the surgeon's knife.' And the Queen answered
' Precious indeed thou mayest call the boon ! A miserable,
sickly, feverish changeling.'
" ' Art thou so dull,' said the beautiful visitant, ' as not to
comprehend that the earliest instincts of the fairy ehild would
be those of discontent at the exile from its native home ? and
in that discontent it would have pined itself to death, or grown
up soured and malignant, a fairy still in its power, but a fairy
of wrath and evil, had not the strength of its inborn nature
suf&ced to develop the growth of its wings. That which thy
blindness condemns as the deformity of the human-born, is to
the fairy-born the crowning perfection of its beauty. Woe to
thee if thou suffer not the wings of the fairy child to grow 1'
" And the next morning the Queen sent away the surgeon
234
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
when he came with his horrible knife, and removed the back¬
board and the steel machines from the Prince's shoulders,
though all the doctors predicted that the child would die.
And from that moment the royal heir began to recover bloom
and health. And when at last, out of those deforming bumps,
budded delicately forth the plumage of snow-white wings, the
wayward peevishness of the Prince gave place to sweet temper.
Instead of scratching his teachers, he became the quickest and
most docile of pupils, grew up to be the joy of his parents and
the pride of their people ; and the people said, ' In him we
shall have hereafter such a king as we have never yet known.'
" Here ended Lily's tale. I cannot convey to you a notion
of the pretty, playful manner in which it was told. Then she
said, with a grave shake of the head, ' But you do not seem
to know what happened afterwards. Do you suppose that the
Prince never made use of his wings ? Listen to me. It was
discovered by the courtiers who attended on his Royal High¬
ness that on certain nights, every week, he disappeared. In
fact, on these nights, obedient to the instinct of the wings, he
flew from palace halls into Fairyland ; coming back thence all
the more lovingly disposed towards the human home from
which he had escaped for awhile.'
" ' Oh, my children,' interposed the preacher, earnestly, ' the
wings would be given to us in vain if we did not obey the
instinct which allures us to soar ; vain no less would be the
soaring, were it not towards the home whence we came, bear¬
ing back from its native airs a stronger health and a serener
joy, more reconciled to the duties of earth by every new
flight into heaven.'
" As he thus completed the moral of Lily's fairy-tale, the
girl rose from her low seat, took his hand, kissed it reverently,
and walked away towards the window. I could see that she
was affected even to tears, which she sought to conceal.
Later in the evening, when we were dispersed on the lawn
KENELM CHILLINOLT,
235
for a few minutes before the party broke up, Lily came to
my side timidly, and said, in a low whisper :
" ' Are you angry with me ? what have I done to displease
you?'
" ' Angry with you ? displeased ? How can you think of
me so unjustly ?'
" ' It is so many days since you have called, since I have
seen you,' she said, so artlessly, looking up at me with eyes
in which tears still seemed to tremble.
" Before I could trust myself to reply, her aunt approached,
and, noticing me with a cold and distant ' Good-night,' led
away her niece.
"I had calculated on walking back to their home with
them, as I generally have done when we met at another
house. But the aunt had probably conjectured I might
be at the vicarage that evening, and, in order to frustrate my
intention, had engaged a carriage for their return. No doubt
she has been warned against permitting further intimacy with
her niece.
"My father, I must come to you at once, discharge my
promise, and receive from your own lips your consent to my
choice ; for you will consent, will you not ? But I wish you
to be prepared beforehand, and I shall therefore put up theso
disjointed fragments of my commune with my own heart and
with yours, and post them to-morrow. Expect me to follow
them, after leaving you a day free to consider them alone—■
alone, my dear father ; they are meant for no eye but yours.
"K. C."
236
kenelm chillinqlt.
CHAPTEK VI.
The next day Kenelm walked into the town, posted hia
voluminous letter to Sir Peter, and then looked in at the
shop of Will Somers, meaning to make some purchases of
baskehwork or trifling fancy goods in Jessie's pretty store
of such articles, that might please the taste of his mother.
On entering the shop his heart heat quicker. He saw two
young forms bending over the counter, examining the contents
of a glass case. One of these customers was Clemmy ; in the
other there was no mistaking the slight graceful shape of Lily
Mordaunt. Clemmy was exclaiming, " Oh, it is so pretty, Mrs.
Somers ; but," turning her eyes from the counter to a silk
purse in her hand, she added, sorrowfully, " I can't buy it. I
have not got enough, not by a great deal."
" And what is it. Miss Clemmy ?" asked Kenelm.
The two girls turned round at his voice, and Clemmy's face
brightened.
" Look here," she said, "is it not too lovely?"
The object thus admired and coveted was a little gold
locket, enriched by a cross composed of small pearls.
" I assure you, miss," said Jessie, who had acquired all the
coaxing arts of her trade, " it is really a great bargain. Miss
Mary Burrows, who was here just before you came, bought
one not nearly so pretty, and gave ten shillings more for it."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
m
Miss Mary Burrows was the same age as Miss Clementina
Emlyn, and there was a rivalry as to smartness between those
youthful beauties. " Miss Burrows 1" sighed Clemmy, very
scornfully.
But Kenelm's attention was distracted from Clemmy"s
locket to a little ring which Lily had been persuaded by Mis.
Somers to try on, and which she now drew off and returned
with ^ shake of the head. Mrs. Somers, who saw that she
had small chance of selling the locket to Clemmy, was now
addressing herself to the elder girl, more likely to have suf¬
ficient pocket-money, and whom, at all events, it was quite
safe to trust.
" The ring fits you so nicely. Miss Mordaunt, and every
young lady of your age wears at least one ring ; allow me to
put it up?" She added in a lower voice, "Though we only
sell the articles in this case on commission, it is all the same
to us whether we are paid now or at Christmas."
" 'Tis no use tempting me, Mrs. Somers," said Lily, laugh¬
ing, and then, with a grave air, " I promised Lion, I mean
my guardian, never to run into debt; and I never will."
Lily turned resolutely from the perilous counter, taking up
a paper that contained a new ribbon she had bought for
Blanche, and Clemmy reluctantly followed her out of the
shop.
Kenelm lingered behind, and selected very hastily a few
trifles, to be sent to him that evening with some specimens of
basket-work left to Will's tasteful discretion ; then purchased
the locket on which Clemmy had set her heart ; but all the
while his thoughts were fixed on the ring which Lily had
238
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
tried on. It was no sin against etiquette to give the lockel
to a child like Clemmy, but would it not be a cruel imperti¬
nence to offer a gift to Lily ?
Jessie spoke :
" Miss Mordaunt took a great fancy to this ring, Mr. Chil
lingly. I am sure her aunt would like her to have it. I have
a great mind to put it by on the chance of Mrs. Cameron's
calling here. It would be a pity if it were bought by some
one else."
" I think," said Kenelm, " that I will take the liberty of
showing it to Mrs. Cameron. No doubt she will buy it for
her niece. Add the price of it to my bill." He seized the
ring and carried it off ; a very poor little simple ring, with
a single stone, shaped as a heart, not half the price of the
locket.
Kenelm rejoined the young ladies just where the path split
into two, the one leading direct to Grasmere, the other
through the churchyard to the Vicarage. He presented the
locket to Clemmy with brief kindly words which easily re¬
moved any scruple she might have had in accepting it ; and,
delighted with her acquisition, she bounded off to the Vicar¬
age, impatient to show the prize to her mamma and sisters,
and more especially to Miss Mary Burrows, who was coming
to lunch with them.
Kenelm walked on slowly by Lily's side.
" You have a good heart, Mr. Chillingly," said she, some¬
what abruptly. " How it must please you to give such
pleasure I Dear little Clemmy 1"
This -artless praise, and the perfect absence of enw or
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
239
thought of self evinced by her joy that her friend's wish was
gratified though her own was not, enchanted Kenelm.
" If it pleases to give pleasure," said he, " it is your turn to
be pleased now : you can confer such pleasure upon me."
"How?" she asked, falteringly, and with quick change of
color.
" By conceding to me the same right your little friend ha«
allowed."
Ani he drew forth the ring.
Lily reared her head with a first impulse of haughtiness.
But when her eyes met his the head drooped down again, and
a slight shiver ran through her frame.
"Miss Mordaunt," resumed Kenelm, mastering his pas¬
sionate longing to fall at her feet and say, " But, oh 1 in this
ring it is my love that I offer—it is my troth that I pledge !"
" Miss Mordaunt, spare me the misery of thinking that I have
offended you ; least of all would I do so on this day, for it may
be some little while before I see you again. I am going home
for a few days upon a matter which may affect the happiness
of my life, and on which I should be a bad son and an un¬
worthy gentleman if I did not consult him who, in all that
concerns my affections, has trained me to turn to him, the
father ; in all that concerns my honor, to him, the gentle¬
man,"
A speech more unlike that which any delineat(»r of manners
and morals in the present day would put into the mouth of a
lover, no critic in " The Londoner" could ridicule. But, some¬
how or other, this poor little tamer of butterflies and teller of
fairy-tales comprehended on the instant all that this most eccen-
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
trie of human beings thus frigidly left untold. Into her inner¬
most heart it sank more deeply than would the most ardent
declaration put into the lips of the boobies or the scamps in
whom delineators of manners in the present day too often
debase the magnificent chivalry embodied in the name of
" Lover."
Where these two had, while speaking, halted on the path
along the brook-side, there was a bench, on which it so hap¬
pened that they had seated themselves weeks before. A few
moments later, on that bench they were seated again.
And the trumpery little ring with its turquoise heart was
on Lily's finger, and there they continued to sit for nearly
half an hour ; not talking much, but wondrously happy ; not
a single vow of troth interchanged. No, not even a word
that could be construed into " I love." And yet when they
rose from the bench, and went silently along the brook-side,
each knew that the other was beloved.
When they reached the gate that admitted into the garden
of Grasmere, Kenelm made a slight start. Mrs. Cameron
was leaning over the gate. Whatever alarm at the appear¬
ance Kenelm might have felt was certainly not shared by
Lily; she advanced lightly before him, kissed her aunt on
the cheek, and passed on aeross the lawn with a bound in her
st ep and the carol of a song upon her lips.
Kenelm remained by the gate, faee to face with Mrs.
Cameron. She opened the gate, put her arm in his, and led
him back along the brook-side.
" I am sure, Mr. Chillingly," she said, " that you will not
Impute to my words any meaning more grave than that which
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
241
I wish them to convey, when I remind you that there is no
place too obscure to escape from the ill-nature of gossip ; and
you must own that my niece incurs the chance of its notice
if she be seen walking alone in these by-paths with a man of
your age and position, and whose sojourn in the neighbor¬
hood, without any ostensible object or motive, has already
begun to excite conjecture. I do not for a moment assume
that you regard my niece in any other light than that of an
artless child whose originality of tastes or fancy may serve to
amuse you ; and still less do I suppose that she is in danger
of misrepresenting any attentions on your part. But for her
sake I am bound to consider what others may say. Excuse
me then if I add that I think you are also bound in honor
and in good feeling to do the same. Mr. Chillingly, it would
give me a great sense of relief if it suited your plans to
move from the neighborhood."
" My dear Mrs. Cameron," answered Kenelm, who had
listened to this speech with imperturbable calm of visage,
" I thank you much for your candor, and I am glad to have
this opportunity of informing you that I am about to move
from this neighborhood, with the hope of returning to it in
a very few days and rectifying your mistake as to the point
of view in which I regard your niece. In a word," here the
expression of his countenance and the tone of his voice under¬
went a sudden change, " it is the dearest wish of my heart
to be empowered by my parents to assure you of the waimth
with which they will welcome your niece as their daughter,
should she deign to listen to my suit and intrust me with the
charge of her happiness."
VOL. II.—L 16
242
KENELM CHILLINGLr.
Mrs. Cameron stopped short, gazing into his face with a
look of inexpressible dismay.
" No ! Mr. Chillingly," she exclaimed, " this must not be—
cannot be. Put out of your mind an idea so wild. A young
man s senseless romance. Your parents cannot consent to
your union with my niece ; I tell you beforehand they can¬
not."
"But why?" said Kenelm, with a slight smile, and not
much impressed by the vehemence of Mrs. Cameron's adju¬
ration.
"Why?" she repeated, passionately ; and then recovering
something of her habitual weariness of quiet. " The why
is easily explained. Mr. Kenelm Chillingly is the heir of a
very ancient house, and, I am told, of considerable estates.
Lily Mordaunt is a nobody, an orphan, without fortune, with¬
out connection, the ward of a humbly born artist, to whom she
owes the roof that shelters her ; she is without the ordinary
education of a gentlewoman ; she has seen nothing of the
world in which you move. Your parents have not the right
to allow a son so young as yourself to throw himself out of
his proper sphere by a rash and imprudent alliance. And
never would I consent, never would Walter Melville consent,
to her entering into any family reluctant to receive her.
There—^that is enough. Dismiss the notion so lightly enter¬
tained. And farewell."
" Madam," answered Kenelm, very earnestly, " believe me,
that had I not entertained the hope approaching to conviction
that the reasons you urge against my presumption will not
have the weight with my parents which you ascribe to them.
KENELM CUILLINGLY.
243
I should not have spoken to you thus frankly. Young though
I be, still I might fairly claim the right to choose for myself
in marriage. But I gave to my father a very binding promise
that I would not formally propose to any one till I had ac¬
quainted him with my desire to do so, and obtained his ap¬
proval of my choice ; and he is the last man îh the world who
would withhold that approval where my heart is set on it as
it is npw. I want no fortune with a wife, and should I ever
care to advance my position in the world no connection could
help me like the approving smile of the woman I love. There
is but one qualification which my parents would deem they
had the right to exact from my choice of one who is to hear
our name. I mean that she should have the appearance, the
manners, the principles, and—^my mother at least might add—
the birth of a gentlewoman. Well, as to appearance and
manners, I have seen much of fine society from my boyhood,
and found no one among the highest-born who can excel the
exquisite refinement of every look, and the inborn delicacy
of every thought, in her of whom, if mine, I shall be as proud
as I shall be fond. As to defects in the frippery and tinsel
of a boarding-school education, they are very soon remedied.
Bemains only the last consideration—^birth. Mrs. Braefield
informs me that you have assured her that, though circum¬
stances into which as yet I have no right to inquire have
made her the ward of a man of hiunble origin. Miss Mordaunt
is of gentle birth. Do you deny that ?"
" No," said Mrs. Cameron, hesitating, but with a flash ol
pride in her eyes as she went on. "No. I cannot deny that
my niece is descended from those who, in point of birth, were
244
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
not unequal to your own ancestors. But what of that ?" she
added, with a bitter despondency of tone. " Equality of birth
ceases when one falls into poverty, obscurity, neglect, nothing¬
ness I"
" Eeally this is a morbid habit on your part. But since
we have thus spoken so confidentially, will you not empower
me to answer the question which will probably be put to me,
and the answer to which will, I doubt not, remove every
obstacle in the way of my happiness ? Whatever the reasons
which might very suf&ciently induce you to preserve, whilst
living so quietly in this place, a discreet silence as to the
parentage of Miss Mordaunt and your own,—and I am well
aware that those whom altered circumstances of fortune have
compelled to altered modes of life may disdain to parade to
strangers the pretensions to a higher station than that to
which they reconcile their habits,—^whatever, I say, such
reasons for silence to strangers, should they preclude you
from confiding to me, an aspirant to your niece's hand, a
secret which, after all, cannot be concealed from her future
husband?"
" From her future husbaud? of course not," answered Mrs.
Cameron. " But I decline to be questioned by one whom I
may never see again, and of whom I know so little. I decline,
indeed, to assist in removing any obstacle to a union with
my niece, which I hold to be in every way unsuited to either
party. I have no cause even to believe that my niece would
accept you if you were free to propose to her. You have not,
I presume, spoken to her as an aspirant to her hand. You
have not addressed to her any declaration of your attachment,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
245
or sougLt to extract from her inexperience any words that
warrant you in thinking that her heart will break if she never
sees you again."
" I do not merit such cruel and taunting questions," said
Kenelm, indignantly. " But I will say no more now. Whex
we again meet let me hope you will treat me less unkindly
Adieu !"
" Stay, sir. A word or two more. You persist in asking
your father and Lady Chillingly to consent to your proposal
to Miss Mordaunt?"
" Certainly I do."
" And you will promise me, on your word as a gentleman,
to state fairly all the causes which might fairly operate against
their consent ; the poverty, the humble rearing, the imperfect
education of my niece ; so that they might not hereafter say
you had entrapped their consent, and avenge themselves
for your deceit by contempt for her?"
" Ah, madam, madam, you really try my patience too far.
But take my promise, if you can hold that of value from one
whom you can suspect of deliberate deceit."
" I beg your pardon, Mr. Chillingly. Bear with my rude¬
ness. I have been so taken by surprise I scarcely know what
I am saying. But let us understand each other completely
before we part. If your parents withhold their consent you
will communicate it to me ; me only, not to Lily. I repeat, I
know nothing of the state of her affections. But it might
embitter any girl's life to be led on to love one whom she could
not marry."
" It shall be as you say. But if they do consent ?"
2^6
KENELM CHILLINflLT.
" Then you will speak to me before you seek an interview
■with Lily; for then comes another question: Will her
guardian consent ?—and—and "
" And what ?"
" No matter. I rely on your honor in this request, as in
all else. Good-day."
She turned back with hurried footsteps, muttering to her¬
self, " But they will not consent. Heaven grant that they
will not consent, or, if they do, what—^what is to be said or
done ? Oh that Walter Melville were here, or that I knew
where to write to him !"
On his way back to Cromwell Lodge, Kenelm was overtaken
by the vicar.
" I was coming to you, my dear Mr. Chillingly, first to
thank you for the very pretty present with which you have
gladdened the heart of my little Clemmy, and next to ask you
to come with me quietly to-day to meet Mr. , the cele-
Drated antiquarian, who came to Moleswich this morning at
my request, to examine that old gothic tomb in our church¬
yard. Only think,—though he cannot read the inscription
any better than we can, he knows all about its history. It
seems that a young knight renowned for feats of valor in the
reign of Henry IV. married a daughter of one of those great
Earls of Montfichet who were then the most powerful family
in these parts. He was slain in defending the church from
an assault by some disorderly rioters of the Lollard faction ;
he fell on the very spot where the tomb is now placed. That
accounts for its situation in the churchyard, not within the
fabric. Mr. discovered this fact in an old memoir of
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
247
the ancient and once famous family to which the young
knight Albert belonged, and which came, alas 1 to so shame¬
ful an end,—the Fletwodes, Barons of Fletwode and Malpas.
What a triumph over pretty Lily Mordaunt, who always chose
to imagine that the tomb must be that of some heroine of her
own romantic invention ! Do come to dinner ; Mr. is
a most agreeable man, and full of interesting anecdote."
" I am so sorry I cannot. I am obliged to return home at
once for a few days. That old family of Fletwode 1 I think
I see before me, while we speak, the gray tower in which
they once held sway ; and the last of the race following
Mammon along the Progress of the Age—a convicted felon !
What a terrible satire on the pride of birth !"
Kenelm left Cromwell Lodge that evening, but he still kept
on his apartments there, saying he might be back unex¬
pectedly any day in the course of the next week.
He remained two days in London, wishing all that he had
communicated to Sir Peter in writing to sink into his father's
heart before a personal appeal to it.
The more he revolved the ungracious manner in which
Mrs. Cameron had received his confidence, the less impor¬
tance he attached to it. An exaggerated sense of disparities
of fortune in a person who appeared to him to have the pride
so common to those who have known better days, coupled
with a nervous apprehension lest his family should ascribe to
her any attempt to insnare a very young man of considerable
worldly pretensions into a marriage with a penniless niece,
seemed to account for much that had at first perplexed and
angered him. And if, as he conjectured, Mrs. Cameron had
248
kenelm ohillinqly.
once held a much higher position in the world than she did
now—a conjecture warranted by a certain peculiar conven¬
tional undeniable elegance which characterized her habitual
manner—and was now, as she implied, actually a dependent
on tie bounty of a painter who had only just acquired soma
professional distinction, she might well shrink from the morti¬
fication of becoming an object of compassion to her richer
neighbors; nor, when he came to think of it, had he any
more right than those neighbors to any confidence as to her
own or Lily's parentage, so long as he was not formally
entitled to claim admission into her privity.
London seemed to him intolerably dull and wearisome. Ho
called nowhere except at Lady Glenalvon's : he was glad to
hear from the servants that she was still at Exmundham.
He relied much on the influence of the queen of the Fashion
with his mother, who he knew would be more diflicult to
persuade than Sir Peter, nor did he doubt that he should win
to his side that sympathizing and warm-hearted queen.
CHAPTER VII.
It is somewhere about three weeks since the party invited
by Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly assembled at Exmundham,
and they are still there, though people invited to a country
house have seldom compassion enough for the dullness of its
owner to stay more than three days. Mr. Chillingly Mivers,
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
249
indeed, had not exceeded that orthodox limit. Quietly ob¬
servant, during his stay, of young Gordon's manner toAvarJa
Cecilia, and hers towards him, he had satisfied himself that
there was no cause to alarm Sir Peter or induce the worthy
baronet to regret the invitation he had given to that clever
kinsman. For all the visitors remaining, Exmundham had at
charm.
To Lady Glenalvon, because in the hostess she ;net her
mos! familiar friend when both were young girls, and because
it pleased her to note the interest which Cecilia Trav»-rs took
in the place so associated with memories of the man to whom
it was Lady Glenalvon's hope to see her united. To Gordon
Chillingly, because no opportunity could be so favorable for
his own well-concealed designs on the hand and heart of the
heiress. To the heiress herself the charm needs no explana¬
tion.
To Leopold Travers the attractions of Exmundham were
unquestionably less fascinating. Still, even he was well pleased
to prolong his stay. His active mind found amusement in
wandering over an estate the acreage of which would have
warranted a much larger rental, and lecturing Sir Peter on
the old-fashioned system of husbandry which that good-
natured easy proprietor permitted his tenants to adopt, as well
as on the number of superfluous hands that were employed
on the pleasure-grounds and in the general management of the
estate, such as carpenters, sawyers, woodmen, bricklayers, and
smiths.
When the squire said, "You could do just as well with a
third of those costly dependants," Sir Peter, unconsciously
L*
250
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
plagiarizing the answer of the old French grand seigneur^
replied, " Very likely. But the question is, could the rest do
just as well without me ?"
Exmundham, indeed, was a very expensive place to keep
up. The house, built by some ambitious Chillingly three
centuries ago, would have been large for an owner of thrice
the revenues ; and though the flower-garden was smaller than
that at Braefleldville, there were paths and drives through
miles of young plantations and old woodlands that furnished
lazy occupation to an army of laborers. No wonder that,
despite his nominal ten thousand a year. Sir Peter was far
from being a rich man. Exmundham devoured at least half
the rental. The active mind of Leopold Travers also found
ample occupation in the stores of his host's extensive library.
Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser
of learning, and he soon took to historical and archaeological
researches with the ardor of a man who must always throw
energy into any pursuit that occasion presents as an escape
from indolence. Indolent, Leopold Travers never could be.
But, more than either of these resources of occupation, the
companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his interest and
quickened the current of his thoughts. Always fond of re¬
newing his own youth in the society of the youngs and of the
sympathizing temperament which belongs to cordial natures,
he had, as we have seen, entered very heartily into the ambi¬
tion of George Belvoir, and reconciled himself very pliably to
the humors of Kenelm Chillingly. But the flrst of these two
was a little too commonplace, the second a little too eccentric,
to enlist the complete good-fellowship which, being alike very
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
251
clever and very practical, Leopold Travers estaWislied with
that very clever and very practical representative of the rising
generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between them there was this
meeting-ground, political and worldly,—^a great contempt for
innocuous old-fashioned notions ; added to which, in the mind
of Leopold Travers, was a contempt—which would have been
complete, but that the contempt admitted dread—of harmful
new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts,
«
threatened ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of
existent society, and which, interpreted by his language, tamed
itself into the man of the world's phrase, " Going too far for
me." Notions which, by the much more cultivated intellect
and the immeasurably more soaring ambition of Chillingly
Gordon, might be viewed and criticized thus : " Could I
accept these doctrines ? I don't see my way to being Prime
Minister of a country in which religion and capital are still
powers to be consulted. And, putting aside religion and
capital, I don't see how, if these doctrines passed into law,
with a good coat on my back I should not be a sufferer.
Either I, as having a good coat, should have it torn off my
back as a capitalist, or, if I remonstrated in the name of moral
honesty, be put to death as a religionist."
Therefore when Leopold Travers said, " Of com-se we must
go on," Chillingly Gordon smiled and answered, " Certainly,
go on." And when Leopold Travers added, " But we may
go too far,"' Chillingly Gordon shook bis head and replied,
" How true that is ! Certainly, too far."
Apart from the congeniality of political sentiment, there
were other points of friendly contact between the older and
252
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
younger man. Eacli was an exceedingly pleasant man of the
world ; and, though Leopold Travers could not have plumbed
certain deeps in Chillingly Gordon's nature—^and in every
man's nature there are deeps which his ablest observer cannot
fathom—^yet he was not wrong when he said to himself,
" Gordon is a gentleman."
Utterly would my readers misconceive that very clever
young man, if they held him to be a hypocrite like Blifil
or Joseph Surface. Chillingly Gordon, in every private sense
of the word, was a gentleman. If he had staked his whole
fortune on a rubber at whist, and an undetected glance at his
adversary's hand would have made the difference between
loa" and gain, he would have turned away his head and
said, "Hold up your cards." Neither, as I have had occa¬
sion to explain before, was he actuated by any motive in
common with the vulgar fortune-hunter in his secret resolve
to win the hand of the heiress. He recognized no inequality
of worldly gifts between them. He said to himself, " What¬
ever she may give me in money, I shall amply repay in
worldly position if I succeed ; and succeed I certainly shall.
If I were as rich as Lord Westminster, and still cared about
being Prime Minister, I should select her as the most fitting
woman I have seen for a Prime Minister's wife."
It must be acknowledged that this sort of self-commune, if
not that of a very ardent lover, is very much that of a sensible
man setting high value on himself, bent on achieving the
prizes of a public career, gnd desirous of securing in bis wife
a wonian who would adorn the station to which he confidently
aspired. In fact, no one so able as ChUlingly Gordon \yould
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
253
ever have conceived the ambition of being Minister of Eng«
land if, in all that in private life constitutes the English
gentleman, be could be fairly subject to reproach.
He was but in public life what many a gentleman honest
in private life has been before bim, an ambitious, resolute'
egotist, by no means without personal afiFeetions, but holding
them all subordinate to the objects of personal ambition, and
with no more of other principle than that of expediency in
reference to bis own career, than would cover a silver penny.
But expediency in itself be deemed the statesman's only
rational principle. And to the consideration of expediency be
brought a very unprejudiced intellect, quite fitted to decide
whether the public opinion of a free and enlightened people
was for turning St. Paul's Cathedral into an Agapomone or
not.
During the summer weeks be bad thus vouchsafed to the
turfs and groves of Exmundbam, Leopold Travers was not
the only person whose good opinion Chillingly Gordon bad
ingratiated. He bad won the warmest approbation from Mrs.
Campion. His conversation reminded her of that which she
bad enjoyed in the bouse of her departed spouse. In talking
with Cecilia she was fond of contrasting bim to Kenelm, not
to the favor of the latter, whose humors she utterly failed to
understand, and whom she pertinaciously described as " so
affected." " A most superior young man Mr. Gordon, so well
informed, so sensible, above all, so natural." Such was bei
judgment upon the unavowed candidate to Cecilia's band ¡
and Mrs. Campion required no avowal to divine the candida¬
ture. Even Lady Glcnalvon bad begun to take friendly in
254
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
terest in the fortunes of this promising young man. Most
women can sympathize with youthful ambition. He im¬
pressed her with a deep conviction of his abilities, and still
more with respect for their concentration upon practical
objects of power and renown. She too, like Mrs. Campion,
began to draw comparisons unfavorable to Kenelm between
(he two cousins ; the one who seemed so slothfully determined
to hide his candle under a bushel, the other so honestly dis¬
posed to set his light before men. She felt also annoyed and
angry that Kenelm was thus absenting himself from the pater¬
nal home at the very time of her first visit to it, and when he
had so felicitous an opportunity of seeing more of the girl in
whom he knew that Lady Glenalvon deemed he might win, if
he would properly woo, the wife that would best suit him. So
that when one day Mrs. Campion, walking through the gardens
alone with Lady Glenalvon, while from the gardens into
the park went Chillingly Gordon arm-in-arm with Leopold
Travers, abruptly asked, " Don't you think that Mr. Gordon
is smitten with Cecilia, though he, with his moderate fortune,
does not dare to say so ? And don't you think that any girl,
if she were as rich as Cecilia will be, would he more proud
of such a husband as Chillingly Gordon than of some silly
Earl?"
Lady Glenalvon answered curtly, but somewhat sorrow¬
fully—
" Yes."
After a pause, she added, " There is a man with whom I did
once think she would have been happier than with any other ;
one man who ought to be dearer to me than Mr. Gordon, for
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
255
he saved the life of my sen, and who, though perhaps less
clever than Mr. Gordon, still has a great deal of talent within
him, which might come forth and make him—what shall I
say?—^a useful and distinguished member of society, if married
to a girl so sure of raising any man she marries as Cecilia
Travers But if I am to renounce that hope, and look
through the range of young men brought under my notice,
I don't know one, putting aside consideration of rank and
fortune, I should prefer for a clever daughter who went heart
and soul with the ambition of a clever man. But, Mrs.
Campion, I have not yet quite renounced my hope ; and,
unless I do, I yet think there is one man to whom I would
rather give Cecilia, if she were my daughter."
Therewith Lady Glenalvon so decidedly broke off the sub
ject of conversation, that Mrs. Campion could not have re¬
newed it without such a breach of the female etiquette of
good breeding as Mrs. Campion was the last person to
adventure.
Lady Chillingly could not help being pleased with Gordon.
He was light in hand, served to amuse her guests, and made
no a rubber of whist in case of need.
There were two persons, however, with whom Gordon made
10 ground, viz.. Parson John and Sir Peter. When Travers
praised him one day for the solidity of his parts and the
soundness of his judgment, the Parson replied, snappishly,
" Yes, solid and sound as one of those tables you buy at a
broker's: the thickness of the varnish hides the defects in
the joints ; the whole framework is rickety." But when the
Parson was indignantly urged to state the reason by which
256
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
he arrived at so harsh a conclusion, he could only reply by an
assertion which seemed to his questioner a declamatory burst
of parsonic intolerance.
" Because," said Parson John, " he has no love for man,
and no reverence for God. And no character is sound and
solid which enlarges its surface at the expense of its supports."
On the other hand, the favor with which Sir Peter had at
first regarded Gordon gradually vanished, in proportion as,
acting on the hint Mivers had originally thrown out but did
not deem it necessary to repeat, he watched the pains which
the young man took to insinuate himself into the good graces
of Mr. Travers and Mrs. Campion, and the artful and half-
suppressed gallantry of his manner to the heiress.
Perhaps Gordon had not ventured thus " to feel his way"
till after Mivers had departed ; or perhaps Sir Peter's parental
anxiety rendered him in this instance a shrewder observer
than was the man of the world, whose natural acuteness was,
in matters of afifection, not unfrequently rendered languid by
his acquired philosophy of indifferentism.
More and more every day, every hour, of her sojourn be¬
neath his roof, did Cecilia become dearer to Sir Peter, and
stronger and stronger became his wish to secure her for his
daughter-in-law. He was inexpressibly flattered by her pref¬
erence for his company ; ever at hand to share his customary
walks, his kindly visits to the cottages of pea ants or the
homesteads of petty tenants ; wherein both were sure to hear
many a simple anecdote of Master Kenelm in his childhood,
anecdotes of whim or good nature, of considerate pity or reck
less courage.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
257
Throughout all these varieties of "thought or feeling in
the social circle around her, Lady Chillingly preserved the
unmoved calm of her dignified position. A very good woman
certainly, and very ladylike. No one could detect a fiaw in
her character, or a fold awry in her flounce. She was only,
like the gods of Epicurus, too good to trouble her serene
existence with the cares of us simple mortals. Not that she
was without a placid satisfaction in the tribute which the
world laid upon her altars ; nor was she so supremely goddess¬
like as to soar above the household afifections which humanity
entails on the dwellers and denizens of earth. She liked her
husband as much as most elderly wives like their elderly hus¬
bands. She bestowed upon Kenelm a liking somewhat more
warm, and mingled with compassion. His eccentricities would
have puzzled her, if she had allowed herself to be puzzled : it
troubled her less to pity them. She did not share her hus¬
band's desire for his union with Cecilia. She thought that
her son would have a higher place in the county if he married
Lady Jane, the Duke of Clareville's daughter ; and " that is
what he ought to do," said Lady Chillingly to herself. She
entertained none of the fear that had induced Sir Peter to
extract from Kenelm the promise not to pledge his hand
before he had received his father's consent. That the son of
Lady Chillingly should make a Ttiésalliance, however crotchety
he might be in other respects, was a thought that it would
have so disturbed her to admit, that she did not admit it.
Such was the condition of things at Exmundham when
the lengthy communication of Kenelm reached Sir Peter's
hands.
VOL. TI. 17
SOOK -V-IIX.
CHAPTER 1.
Nevjeb in ills wliole life had the mind of Sir Peter been
so agitated as it was during, and after, the perusal of Kenelm's
flighty composition. He had received it at the breakfast-
table, and, opening it eagerly, ran his eye hastily over the
contents, till he very soon arrived at sentences which appalled
him. Lady Chillingly, who was fortunately busied at the tea^
urn, did not observe the dismay on his countenance. It was
visible only to Cecilia and to Gordon. Neither guessed whom
that letter was from.
"Not bad news, I hope?" said Cecilia, softly.
" Bad news," echoed Sir Peter. " No, my dear, no ; a
letter on business. It seems terribly long," and he thrust
the packet into his pocket, muttering, " see to it by-and-by."
" That slovenly farmer of yours, Mr. Nostock, has failed,
I suppose," said Mr. Travers, looking up and observing a
quiver on his host's lip. " I told you he would- -a fine farm
too. Let me choose you another tenant."
Sir Peter shook his head with a wan smile.
" Nostock will not fail. There have been six generation«
of Nostocks on the farm."
" So I should guess," said Travei-s, dryly.
"And—and," faltered Sir Peter, "if the last of the race
( 258)
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
259
fails, lie must lean upon me, and—if one of the two break
down—it shall not be "
" Shall not be that cross-cropping blockhead, my dear Sir
Peter. This is carrying benevolence too far."
Here the tact and savoir-vivre of Chillingly Gordon cano
to the rescue of the host. Possessing himself of the Time»
newspaper, he uttered an exclamation of surprise, genuine or
simulated, and read aloud an extract from the leading article,
announcing an impending change in the Cabinet.
As soon as he could quit the breakfast-table, Sir Peter hur¬
ried into his library, and there gave himself up to the study
of Kenelm's unwelcome communication. The task took him
long, for he stopped at intervals, overcome by the struggle
of his heart, now melted into sympathy with the passionate
eloquence of a son hitherto so free from amorous romance,
and now sorrowing for the ruin of his own cherished hopes.
This uneducated country girl would never be such a helpmate
to a man like Kenelm as would have been Cecilia Travers.
A.t length, having finished the letter, he buried his head
between his clasped hands, and tried hard to realize the situa¬
tion that placed the father and son into sueh direct antago¬
nism.
" But," he murmured, " after all it is the boy's happiness
that must be consulted. If he will not be happy in my way,
what right have I to say that he shall not be happy in his ?"
.Just then Cecilia came softly into the room. She had
acquired the privilege of entering his library at will, some¬
times to choose a book of his recommendation, sometimes to
direct and seal his letters,—Sir Peter was grateful to any one
260
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
who savtíd him an extra trouble,—and sometimes, espeeially
at this hour, to decoy him forth into his wonted constituí ional
walk.
He lifted his face at the sound of her approaching tread
and her winning voice, and the face was so sad that the teara
rushed to her eyes on seeing it. She laid her hand on his
shoulder, and said, pleadingly, " Dear Sir Peter, what is it—
what is it ?"
•' Ah—ah, my dear," said Sir Peter, gathering up the scat¬
tered sheets of Kenelm's effusion with hurried, trembling
hands. " Don't ask—don't talk of it ; 'tis but one of the dis¬
appointments that all of us must undergo, when we invest our
hopes in the uncertain will of others."
Then, observing that the tears were trickling down the
girl's fair, pale cheeks, he took her hand in both his, kissed
her forehead, and said, whisperingly, " Pretty one, how good
you have been to me ! Heaven bless you ! What a wife you
will be to some man !"
Thus saying, he shambled out of the room through the
open casement. She followed him impulsively, wonderingly ;
but before she reached his side he turned round, waved his
hand with a gently repelling gesture, and went his way alone
through dense fir groves which had been planted in honor cf
Kenelm's birth.
KENELM CniLLINGLY.
261
CHAPTEK IL
Kenelm arrived at Exmundham just in time to dress for
dinner. His arrival was not unexpected, for the morning
after his father had received his communication, Sir Peter had
said to Lady Chillingly " that he had heard from Kenelm to
the effect that he might be down any day."
" Quite time he should come," said Lady Chillingly.
" Have you his letter about you ?"
"No; my dear Caroline. Of course he sends you his
kindest love, poor fellow."
" Why poor fellow ? Has he been ill ?"
"No; but there seems to be something on his mind. If
so, we must do what we can to relieve it. He is the best of
sons, Caroline."
" I am sure I have nothing to say against him, except,"
added her ladyship, reflectively, " that I do wish he were a
little more like other young men."
" Hum—^like Chillingly Gordon, for instance?"
" Well, yes ; Mr. Gordon is a remarkably well-bred, sensible
young man. How different from that disagreeable, bearish
father of his, who went to law with you !"
" Very different indeed, but with just as much of the Chil¬
lingly blood in him. How the Chillinglys ever gave birth to
a Kenelm is a question much more puzzling."
262
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
"Oh, my dear Sir Peter, don't be metaphysical. You
know how I hate puzzles."
" And yet, Caroline, I have to thank you for a puzzle which
I can never interpret by my brain. There are a great many
puzzles in human nature which can only be interpreted by the
heart."
" Very true," said Lady Chillingly. " I suppose Kenelm la
to have his old room, just opposite to Mr. Gordon's."
" Ay—ay, just opposite. Opposite they will be all their
lives. Only think, Caroline, I have made a discovery."
"Dear me, I hope not. Your discoveries are generally
very expensive, and bring us in contact with such very odd
people."
" This discovery shall not cost us a penny, and I don't
know any people so odd as not to comprehend it. Briefly it
is this : To genius the flrst requisite is heart ; it is no requi¬
site at all to talent. My dear Caroline, Gordon has as much
talent as any young man I know, but he wants the first requi¬
site of genius. I am not by any means sure that Kenelm has
genius, but there is no doubt that he has the first requisite
of genius—heart. Heart is a very perplexing, wayward,
irrational thing; and that perhaps accounts for the general
incapacity to comprehend genius, while any fool can compro-
nend talent. My dear Caroline, you know that it is very
seldom, not more than once in three years, that I presume to
have a will of my own against a will of yours ; but should there
come a question in which our son's heart is concerned, then
Cspeaking between ourselves) my will'must govern yours."
" Sir Peter is growing more odd every day," said Lady
kenelm chillingly.
263
Cliillingly to herself when left alone. " But he does not mean
ill, and there are worse husbands in the world."
Therewith she rang for her maid, gave requisite orders for
the preparing of Kenelm's room, which had not been slept in
for many months, and then consulted that functionary as to
the adaptation of some dress of hers, too costly to be laid aside,
to the style of some dress less costly which Lady Glenalvon
had imported from Paris as la demilre mode.
On the very day on which Kenelm arrived at Exmundham,
Chillingly Gordon had received this letter from Mr. Gerard
Danvers ;
" Dear Gordon,—In the ministerial changes announced
as rumor in the public papers, and which you may accept as
certain, that sweet little cherub * * * is to he sent to sit up
aloft and pray there for the life of poor Jack—viz., of the
government he leaves below. In accepting the peerage,
which I persuaded him to do, * * * creates a vacancy for the
borough of , just the place for you, far better in every
way than Saxborough. * * * promises to recommend you to
his committee. Come to town at once.
" Yours, etc.,
" G. Danvers."
Gordon showed this letter to Mr. Travers, and, on receiving
ihe hearty good wishes of that gentleman, said, with emotion
partly genuine partly assumed, " You cannot guess all that
the realization of your good wishes would be. Once in the
House of Commons, and my motives for action are so strong
that—do not think me very conceited if I count upon
Parliameutarj' success."
264
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" M J dear Gordon, I am as certain of your success as I am
of my own existence."
" Should I succeed—^should the great prizes of public life
be within my reach—should I lift myself into a position that
would warrant my presumption, do you think I could come
to you and say, 'There is an object of ambition dearer to
me than power and ofl&ce—the hope of attaining which was
the strongest of all my motives of action,? And in that
hope shall I also have the good wishes of the father of Cecilia
Travers?"
" My dear fellow, give me your hand ; you speak manfully
and candidly, as a gentleman should speak. I answer in the
same spirit. I don't pretend to say that I have not enter¬
tained views for Cecilia which included hereditary rank and
established fortune in a suitor to her hand, though I never
should have made them imperative conditions. I am neither
potentate nor parvenu enough for that ; and I can never for¬
get" (here every muscle in the man's face twitched) " that 1
myself married for love, and was so happy. How happy
Heaven only knows ! Still, if you had thus spoken a few
weeks ago, T should not have replied very favorably to your
question. But now that I have seen so much of you, my
answer is this : If you lose your election—if you don't como
into Parliament at all, you have my good wishes all the same.
If you win my daughter's heart, there is no man on whom I
would more willingly bestow her hand. There she is, by
herself too, in the garden. Go and talk to her."
Gordon hesitated. He knew too well that he had not won
her heart, though he had no suspicion that it was given to
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
265
Another. And he was much too clever not to know also how
much he hazards who, in afiairs of courtship, is premature.
" Ah 1" he said, " I cannot express my gratitude for words
BO generous, encouragement so cheering. But I have never
yet dared to utter to Miss Travers a word that would prepare
h(;r even to harbor a thought of me as a suitor. And T
scarcely think I should have the courage to go through this
election with the grief of her rejection on my heart."
" Well, go in and win the election first; meanwhile, at all
events, take leave of Cecilia."
Gordon left his friend, and joined Miss Travers, resolved
not indeed to risk a formal declaration, but to sound his way
to his chances of acceptance.
The interview was very brief. He did sound his way skill¬
fully, and felt it very unsafe for his footsteps. The advantage
of having gained the approval of the father was too great to
be lost altogether by one of those decided answers on the
part of the daughter which allow of no appeal, especially to a
poor gentleman who wooes an heiress.
He returned to Travers, and said, simply, " I bear with me
her good wishes as well as yours. That is all. I leave myself
in your kind hands."
Then he hurried away to take leave of his host and hostess,
say a few significant words to the ally he had already gained
in Mrs. Campion, and within an hour was on his road to
London, passing on his way the train that bore Kenelm to
Exmundham. Gordon was in high spirits. At least ha
felt as certain of winning Cecilia as he did of winning his
«lection.
vol,. II.—M
266
kenelm chillingly.
"I have never yet failed in what I desired," said he tc
himself, " because I have ever taken pains not to fail."
The cause of Gordon's sudden departure created a great
excitement in that quiet circle, shared by all except Cecilia
and Sir Peter.
CHAPTBK III.
Kenelm did not see either father or mother till he ap¬
peared at dinner. Then he was seated next to Ceci.Ha. There
was but little conversation between the two; in fact, the
prevalent subject of talk was general and engrossing, the
interest in Chillingly Gordon's election ; predictions of his
success, of what he would do in Parliament ; " where," said
Lady Glenalvon, "there is such a dearth of rising young
men, that if he were only half as clever as he is he would be
a gain."
"A gain to what?" asked Sir Peter, testily. "To his
."iountry ? about which I don't believe he cares a brass
button."
To this assertion Leopold Travers replied warmly, and was
not less warmly backed by Mrs. Campion.
" For my part," said Lady Glenalvon, in conciliatory ac¬
cents, " I think every able man in Parliament is a gain to the
country ; and he may not serve his country less efFectivel j
because he does not boast of his love for it. The politicians
T dread most are those so rampant in France nowadays, the
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
267
bawling patriots. When Sir Robert Walpole said, ' All those
men have their price,' he pointed to the men who called them¬
selves ' patriots.' "
" Bravo !" cried Travers.
" Sir Robert Walpole showed his love for his country by
corrupting it. There are many ways besides bribing fcr
corrupting a country," said Kenelm, mildly ; and that was
Kenelm's sole contribution to the general conversation.
It was not till the rest of the party had retired to rest, that
the conference, longed for by Kenelm, dreaded by Sir Peter,
took place in the library. It lasted deep into the night; both
parted with lightened hearts and a fonder affection for each
other. Kenelm had drawn so charming a picture of the
Fairy, and so thoroughly convinced Sir Peter that his own
feelings towards her were those of no passing youthful fancy,
but of that love which has its roots in the innermost heart,
that though it was still with a sigh, a deep sigh, that he dis¬
missed the thought of Cecilia, Sir Peter did dismiss it ; and,
taking comfort at last from the positive assurance that Lily
was of gentle birth, and the fact that her name of Mordaunt
was that of ancient and illustrious houses, said, with half a
smile, " It might have been worse, my dear boy. I began to
be afraid that, in spite of the teachings of Mivers and Welty,
it was ' The Miller's Daughter,' after all. But we still have
a difficult task to persuade your poor mother. In covering
your first flight from our roof I unluckily put into her head
the notion of Lady Jane, a duke's daughter, and the notion
has never got out of it. That comes of fibbing."
" I count on Lady Glenalvon's influence on my mother in
2G8
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Bupport of your own," said Kenclm. " If so accepted a»,
oracle in the great world pronounce in my favor, and promisa
to present my wife at Court and bring her into fashion, I
think that my mother will consent to allow us to reset the old
family diamonds for her next re-appearance in London. And
then, too, you can tell her that I will stand for the county. I
will go into Parliament, and if I meet there our clever cousin,
and find that he does not care a brass button for the country,
take my word for it, I will lick him more easily than I licked
Tom Bowles."
" Tom Bowles I Who is he?—ah ! I remember some letter
of yours in which you spoke of a Bowles, whose favorite study
was mankind, a moral philosopher."
" Moral philosophers," answered Kenelm, " have so mud¬
dled their brains with the alcohol of new ideas that their
moral legs have become shaky, and the humane would rather
help them to bed than give them a licking. My Tom Bowles
is a muscular Christian, who became no less muscular, but
much more Christian, after he was licked."
And in this pleasant manner these two oddities settled their
conference, and went up to bed with arms wrapt round each
other's shoulder.
kenelm chillinqlt.
269
CHAPTER IV.
Kenelm found it a mucli harder matter to win Lady Glen
alvon to his side than he had anticipated. With the stronj^
interest she had taken in Kenelm's future, she could not hut
revolt from the idea of his union with an obscure portionless
girl whom he had only known a few weeks, and of whose very
parentage he seemed to know nothing, save an assurance that
she was his equal in birth. And, with the desire, which she
had cherished almost as fondly as Sir Peter, that Kenelm
might win a hride in every way so worthy of his choice as
Cecilia Travers, she felt not less indignant than regretful at
the overthrow of her plans.
At first, indeed, she was so provoked that she would not
listen to his pleadings. She broke away from him with a
rudeness she had never exhibited to any one before, refused
to grant him another interview in order to re-discuss the
matter, and said that, so far from using her influence in favor
of his romantic folly, she would remonstrate well with Lady
Chillingly and Sir Peter against yielding their assent to his
" thus throwing himself away."
It was not till the third day after his arrival that, touched
by the grave but haughty mournfulness of his countenance,
she yielded to the arguments of Sir Peter in the course of a
private conversation with that worthy baronet. Still it was
270
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
reluctantly (she did not fulfill her threat of remonstrance with
Lady Chillingly) that she conceded the point, that a son who,
succeeding to the absolute fee-simple of an estate, had volun¬
teered the resettlement of it on terms singularly generous
to both his parents, was entitled to some sacrifice of thíñr
inclinations on a question in which he deemed his happiness
vitally concerned ; and that he was of age to choose for him¬
self, independently of their consent, but for a previous promise
extracted from him by his father, a promise which, rigidly
construed, was not extended to Lady Chillingly, but confined
to Sir Peter as the head of the family and master of the
household. The father's consent was already given, and, if
in his reverence for both parents Kenelm could not dispense
with his mother's approval, surely it was the part of a true
friend co remove every scruple from his conscience, and
smooth away every obstacle to a love not to be condemned
because it was disinterested.
After this conversation Lady Glenalvon sought Kenelm,
found him gloomily musing on the hanks of the trout stream,
took his arm, led him into the sombre glades of the fir grove,
and listened patiently to all he had to say. Even then her
woman's heart was not won to his reasonings, until he said,
pathetically, " You thanked me once for saving your son's
life ; you said then that you could never repay me ; you can
repay me tenfold. Could your son, who is now, we trust, in
heaven, look down and judge between us, do you think he
would approve you if you refuse ?"
Then Lady Glenalvon wept, and took his hand, kissed his
forehead as a mother might kiss it, and said, " You triumph.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
271
I will go to Lady Cliillingly at once. Marry her whom yon
so love, on one condition : marry her from my house."
Lady Glenalvon was not one of those women who serve a
friend by .halves. She knew well how to propitiate and
reason down the apathetic temperament of Lady Chillingly ;
she did not cease till that lady herself came into Kenelm'.<i
room, and said, very quietly :
" So you are going to propose to Miss Mordaunt ?—the War¬
wickshire Mordaunts, I suppose. Lady Glenalvon says she
is a very lovely girl, and will stay with her before the wed¬
ding. And, as the young lady is an orphan. Lady Glenalvon's
uncle the Duke, who is connected with the eldest branch of
the Mordaunts, will give her away. It will be a very bril¬
liant affair. I am sure I wish you happy: it is time you
should have sown your wild oats."
Two days after the consent thus formally given, Kenelm
quitted Exmundham. Sir Peter would have accompanied
him to pay his respects to the intended, but the agitation he
had gone through brought on a sharp twinge of the gout,
which consigned his feet to flannels.
After Kenelm had gone. Lady Glenalvon went into Cecilia's
room. Cecilia was seated very desolately by the open window ;
she had detected that something of an anxious and painful
nature had been weighing upon the minds of father and son,
and had connected it with the letter which had so disturbed
the even mind of Sir Peter ; but she did not divine what the
something was, and if mortified by a certain reserve, more
distant than heretofore, which had characterized Kenelm's
manner towards herself, the mortification was less sensibly felt
272
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
than a tender sympathy for the sadness she had observed on
his face, and yearned to soothe. His reserve had, however,
made her own manner more reserved than of old, for which
she was now rather chiding herself than reproaching him.
Lady Glenalvon put her arms round Cecilia's neck and
kissed her, whispering, " That man has so disappointed me !
he is so unworthy of the happiness I had once hoped %r
him !"
"Whom do you speak of?" murmured Cecilia, turning
very pale.
"Kenelm Chillingly. It seems that he has conceived a
fancy for some penniless girl whom he has met in his wan¬
derings, has come here to get the consent of his parents to
propose to her, has obtained their consent, and is gone to
propose."
Cecilia remained silent for a moment with her eyes closed,
then she said, " He is worthy of all happiness, and he would
never make an unworthy choice. Heaven bless him—and—■
and " She would have added " His bride," but her lips
refused to utter the word bride.
" Cousin Gordon is worth ten of him," cried Lady Glenal¬
von, indignantly.
She had served Kenelm, but she had not forgiven him.
kenelm chillingly. 273
CHAPTER V.
Kenelm slept in London tliat night, and, the next day
being singularly fine for an English summer, he resolved to
go to Moleswich on foot He had no need this time to
eneumher himself with a knapsack ; he had left suEScient
change of dress in his lodgings at Cromwell Lodge.
It was towards the evening when he found himself in one
of the prettiest rural villages by which
" Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way,"
It was not in the direct road from London to Moleswich,
but it was a pleasanter way for a pedestrian. And when,
'pitting the long street of the sultry village, he came to the
«helving margin of the river, he was glad to rest awhile, enjoy
the cool of the rippling waters, and listen to their placid mur¬
murs amid the rushes in the bordering shallows. He had
ample time before him. His rambles while at Cromwell
Lo\lre had made him familiar with the district for miles
round Moleswich, and he knew that a footpath through the
fields at the right would lead him, in less than an hour, to
the side of the tributary brook on which Cromwell Lodge
was placed, opposite the wooden bridge which conducted to
Grasmere and Moleswich.
To one who loves the romance of history, English history,
VOL. II.—M* 18
274 KENELM CniLLlNGLT.
the whole course of the Thames is full of charm. Ah ! could
I go back to the days in which younger generations than that
of Kenelm Chillingly were unborn, when every wave of the
llhine spoke of history and romance to me, what fairies should
meet on thy banks, 0 thou, our own Father Thames ! Per¬
haps some day a German pilgrim may repay tenfold to thee
the tribute rendered by the English kinsman to the Father
Rhine.
Listening to the whispers of the reeds, Kenelm Chillingly
felt the haunting influence of the legendary stream. Many
a poetic incident or tradition in antique chronicle, many a
votive rhyme in song, dear to forefathers whose very names
have become a poetry to us, thronged dimly and confusedly
back to his memory, which had little cared to retain such
graceful trinkets in the treasure-house of love. But every¬
thing that, from childhood upward, connects itself with
romance, revives with yet fresher bloom in the memories of
him who loves.
And to this man, through the first perilous season of youth
so abnormally safe from youth's most wonted peril,—^to this
would-be pupil of realism, this learned adept in the schools
of a "Welby or a Mivers,—^to this man. Love came at last as
with the fatal powers of the fabled Cytherèa ; and with that
love all the realisms of life became ideals, all the stern lines
of our commonplace destinies undulating into curves of
beauty, all the trite sounds of our every-day life attuned into
delicacies of song. How full of sanguine yet dreamy bliss
was his heart,—and seemed his future,—in the gentle breeze
and the softened glow of that summer eve ! He should see
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
275
Lily the next morn, and his lips were now free to say all that
they had as yet suppressed.
Suddenly he was roused from the half-awake half-asleep
happiness that belongs to the moments in which we transport
ourselves into Elysium, by the carol of a voice more loudly
joyous than that of his own heart :
" Singing—singing.
Lustily singing,
Down the road, with his dogs before.
Came the Ritter of Neirestein."
Kenelm turned his head so quickly that he frightened
Max, who had for the last minute been standing behind him
inquisitively with one paw raised, and snifiing, in some doubt
whether he recognized an old acquaintance ; but at Kenelm's
quick movement the animal broke into a nervous bark, and
ran back to his master.
The Minstrel, little heeding the figure reclined on the
hank, would have passed on with his light tread and his
cheery carol, but Kenelm rose to his feet, and, holding out
his hand, said, " I hope you don't share Max's alarm at
mecting.me again ?"
" Ah, my young philosopher, is it indeed you ?"
" If I am to be designated a philosopher, it is certainly
not I, And^ honestly speaking, I am not the same. I, who
spent that pleasant day with you among the fields round
Luscombe two years ago "
" Or who advised me at Tor Hadham to string my lyre to
the praise of a beef-steak. I tot am not quite the same, I
whose dog presented you with the begging tray."
276
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" Yet you still go through the world singing."
" Even that vagrant singing-time is pretty well over. But
I disturbed you from your repose. I would rather share it ;
you are probably not going my way, and, as I am in no hurry,
I should not like to lose the opportunity chance has so hap¬
pily given me of renewing acquaintance with one who has
often been present to my thoughts since we last met." Thus
saying, the Minstrel stretched himself at ease on the bank,
and Kenelm followed his example.
There certainly was a change in the owner of the dog with
the begging-tray, a change in costume, in countenance, in
that indescribable self-evidence which we call "manner."
The costume was not that Bohemian attire in which Kenelm
had first encountered the "Wandering Minstrel, nor the
studied, more graceful garb which so well became his shapely
form during his visit to Luscombe. It was now neatly sim¬
ple, the cool and quiet summer dress any English gentleman
might adopt in a long rural walk. And as he uncovered his
head to court the cooling breeze, there was a graver dignity
in the man's handsome Bubens-like face, a line of more con¬
centrated thought in the spacious forehead, a thread or two
of gray shimmering here and there through the thick auburn
curls of hair and beard. And in his manner, though still
very frank, there was just perceptible a sort of self-assertion,
not offensive, but manly ; such as does not misbecome one of
maturer years, and of some established position, addressing
another man much younger than himself, who in all proba¬
bility has achieved no position at all beyond that which tho
accident of birth might assign to him.
KENELM CniLLINGLT.
277
" Yes," said the Minstrel, with a half-suppressed sigh, " the
last year of my vagrant holidays has come to its close. 1
recollect that the first day we met by the roadside fountain I
advised you to do like me, seek amusement and adventure as
a foot-traveler. Now, seeing you, evidently a gentleman by
education and birth, still a foot-traveler, I feel as if I ought
to say, ' You have had enough of such experience ; vagabond
life has its perils as well as charms ; cease it and settle down.' "
think of doing so," replied Kenelm, laconically.
" In a profession ?—army—law—medicine ?"
" No."
"Ah, in marriage then. Bight; give me your hand on
that. So a petticoat indeed has at last found its charm for
you in the actual world as well as on the canvas of a picture ?"
" I conclude," said Kenelm,—evading any direct notice of
that playful taunt,—" I conclude from your remark that it is
in marriage you are about to settle down."
" Ay, could I have done so before I should have been savea
from many errors, and been many years nearer to the goal
which dazzled my sight through the haze of my boyish
dreams."
" What is that goal—the grave ?"
" The grave ! That which allows of no grave—Fame."
" I see—despite of what you just now said—you still mean
to go through the world seeking a poet's fame."
" Alas ! I resign that fancy," said the Minstrel, with
another half sigh. " It was not indeed wholly, but in great
part, the hope of the poet's fame that made me a truant in the
way to that which destiny and such few gifts as nature con
278
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
ceded to me, marked out for my proper and only goal. But
what a straoge, delusive Will-o'-the-Wisp the love of verse-
making is ! How rarely a man of good sense deeeives him¬
self as to other things for which he is fitted, in which he can
succeed 1 but let him once drink into his being the charm of
verse-making, how the glamour of the charm bewitches hLs
understanding ! how long it is before he can believe that the
world will not take his word for it when he cries out to sun,
moon, and starS, ' I too am a poet.' And with what agonies,
as if at the wrench of soul from life, he resigns himself at last
to the conviction, that whether he or the world he right, it
comes to the same thing ! Who can plead his cause before a
court that will not give him a hearing?"
It was with an emotion so passionately strong, and so
intensely painful, that the owner of the dog with the begging-
tray thus spoke, that Kenelm felt, through sympathy, as if he
himself were torn asunder by the wrench of life from soul.
But then Kenelm was a mortal so eccentric that, if a single
acute sufiering endured by a fellow-mortal could be brought
before the evidence of his senses, I doubt whether he would
not have suffered as much as that fellow-mortal. So that,
though if there were a thing in the world which Kenelm
Chillingly would care not to do, it was verse-making, his
inind involuntarily hastened to the arguments by which he
could best mitigate the pang of the verse-maker.
Quoth he, "According to my very scanty reading, you
share the love of verse-makirg with men the most illustrious
in careers which have achieved the goal of fame. It must,
then, be a very noble love—Augustus, Pollio, Varius, Maeo>
KENELM CHILLINQLY.
279
nas—tlie greatest statesmen of their day; they were verse-
makers. Cardinal Richelieu was a verse-maker; A\7alter
Raleigh and Philip Sidney; Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Warren
Hastings, Canning—even the grave William Pitt ; all were
verse-makers. Verse-making did not retard—no doubt tho
qualities essential to verse-making accelerated—their race to
the goal of fame. What great painters have been verse-
makers ! Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Rosa"
—ani Heaven knows how many other great names Kenelm
Chillingly might have proceeded to add to his list, if the
Minstrel had not here interposed.
" What ! all those mighty painters were verse-makers ?"
" Verse-makers so good, especially Michael Angelo—the
greatest painter of all—that they would have had the fame
of poets, if, unfortunately for that goal of fame, their glory in
the sister art of painting did not outshine it. But, when you
give to your gift of song the modest title of verse-making,
permit me to observe that your gift is perfectly distinct from
that of the verse-maker. Your gift, whatever it may be,
could not exist without some sympathy with the non-verse
making human heart. No doubt, in your foot-travels, you
have acquired not only observant intimacy with external
nature in the shifting hues at each hour of a distant mountain,
in the lengthening shadows which yon sunset casts on the
waters at our feet, in the habits of the thrush dropped fear¬
lessly close beside me, in that turf moistened by its neighbor¬
hood to those dripping rushes, all of which I could describe
no less accurately than you—as a Peter Bell might describe
them no less accurately than a William Wordsworth. But in
280
KENELM CHILLIXaLT.
such songs of yours as you have permitted me to hear, you
seem to have escaped out of that elementary accidence of the
poet's art, and to touch, no matter how slightly, on the only
lasting interest which the universal heart of man can have in
the song of the poet, viz., in the sound which the poet's indi¬
vidual sympathy draws forth from the latent chords in that
universal heart. As for what you call ' the world,' what is it
more than the fashion of the present day ? How far the
judgment of that is worth a poet's pain I can't pretend to say.
But of one thing I am sure, that while I could as easily
square the circle as compose a simple couplet addressed to the
heart of a simple audience with sufBcient felicity to decoy
their praises into Max's begging-tray, I could spin out by the
yard the sort of verse-making which characterizes the fashion
of the present day.' '
Much flattered, and not a little amused, the Wandering
Minstrel turned his bright countenance, no longer dimmed
by a cloud, towards that of his lazily reclined consoler, and
answered gayly :
" You say that you could spin out by the yard verses in
the fashion of the present day. I wish you would give me a
specimen of your skill in that handiwork."
" Very well ; on one condition, that you will repay my
trouble by a specimen of your own verses, not in the fashion
of the present day,—something which I can construe. I
defy you to construe mine."
" Agreed."
" Well, then, let us take it for granted that this is the
Augustan age of English poetry, and that the English
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
281
language is dead, like the Latin. Suppose I am writing
for a prize medal, in English, as I wrote at college for a prize
medal, in Latin ; of course I shall be successful in proportion
as I introduce the verbal elegances peculiar to our Augustan
age, and also catch the prevailing poetic characteristic of that
classical epoch.
*' Now, I think that every observant critic will admit that
the striking distinctions of the poetry most in the fashion of
the present day, viz., of the Augustan age, are—first, a selec¬
tion of such verbal elegances as would have been most repul¬
sive to the barbaric taste of the preceding century, and,
secondly, a very lofty disdain of all prosaic condescensions to
common sense, and an elaborate cultivation of that element
of the sublime which Mr. Burke defines under the head of
obscurity.
" These premises conceded, I will only ask you to chooso
the metre. Blank verse is very much in fashion just now."
" Pooh,—blank verse, indeed I I am not going so to free
your experiment from the difficulties of rhyme."
" It is all one to me," said Kenelm, yawning. " Khyme
be it : Heroic, or lyrical ?' '
" Heroics are old-fashioned ; but the Chaucer couplet, as
brought to perfection by our modern poets, I think the best
adapted to dainty leaves and uncrackable nuts."
" I accept the modern Chaucerian."
"The subject?"
" Oh, never trouble yourself about that. By whatever
title your Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius,
like Pindar's, disdains to be cramped by the subject. Listen,
282
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
and don't sufier Max to howl, if he can help it. Here
goes."
And in an affected, hut emphatic, sing-song, Kenelm
began:
•In Attica the gentle Pythias dwelt.
Youthful he was, and passing rich ; he felt
As if nor youth nor riches could suffice
For bliss. Dark-eyed Sophronia was a nice
Girl : and one summer day, when Neptune drove
His sea-car slowly, and the olive grove
That skirts Ilissus, to thy shell. Harmonía,
Rippled, he said 'I love thee' to Sophronia.
Crocus and iris, when they heard him, wagg'd
Their pretty heads in glee : the honey-bagg'd
Bees became altars : and the forest dove
Her plumage smooth'd. Sueh is the eharm of love.
Of this sweet story do ye long for more ?
Wait till I publish it in volumes four;
Which certain eritics, my good friends, will cry
Up beyond Chaucer. Take their word for't. I
Say ' Trust them : but not read,—or you'll not buy.' "
" You liave certainly kept your word," said the Minstrel,
laughing. "And if this be the Augustan age, and the
English were a dead language, you deserve to win the prize
medal."
" You flatter me," said Kenelm, modestly. " But if I, who
never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so
readily in the style of the present day, why should not a
practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume
or so in the same style, disguising completely the verbal ele¬
gances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the rhyme by
the frequent introduction of a line that will not scan, and
towering yet more into the sublime by becoming yet more
KENEI-M CHILLINGLY.
28d
unintelligible ? Do that, and I promise you the most glowing
panegyric in ' The Londoner,' for I will write it myself."
" ' The Londoner' 1 " exclaimed the Minstrel, with an angry
flush on his cheek and brow. " My bitter, relentless enemy."
" I fear, then, you have as little studied the critical press
of the Augustan age as you have imbued your Muse with the
classical spirit of its verse. For the art of writing, a man
must cultivate himself. The art of being reviewed consists
in cultivating the acquaintance of reviewers. In the Augustan
age criticism is cliqueism. Belong to a clique, and you are
Horace or Tibullus. Belong to no clique, and of course you
are Bavius or Mœvius. ' The Londoner' is the enemy of
no man—it holds all men in equal contempt. But as, in
order to amuse, it must abuse, it compensates the praise it is
compelled to bestow upon the members of its clique by heap¬
ing additional scorn upon all who are cliqueless. Hit him
hard, he has no friends."
" Ah," said the Minstrel, " I believe that there is much
truth in what you say. I never had a friend among the
cliques. And Heaven knows with what pertinacity those
from whom I, in utter ignorance of the rules which govern
the so-called organs of opinion, had hoped, in my time of
struggle, for a little sympathy,—a kindly encouragement,—
have combined to crush me down. They succeeded long.
But at last I venture to hope that I am beating them. Hap¬
pily, Nature endowed me with a sanguine, joyous, elastic tem¬
perament. He who never despairs seldom completely fails."
This speech rather perplexed Kenclm ; for had not the Min¬
strel declared that his singing days were over, that he had
284
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
decided on the renunciation of verse-making? What other
path to fame, from which the critics had not been able to ex¬
clude his steps, was he, then, now pursuing ? he whom Ken-
elm had assumed to belong to some commercial money-nr-aking
firm. No doubt some less difficult prose-track ; probably a
novel. Everybody writes novels nowadays, and as tbe public
will read novels without being told to do so, and will not read
poetry unless they are told that they ought, possibly novels
are not quite so much at the mercy of cliques as are the
poems of our Augustan age.
However, Kenelm did not think of seeking for further
confidence on that score. His mind at that moment, not un¬
naturally, wandered from books and critics to love and wed¬
lock.
" Our talk," said he, " has digressed into fretful courses—
permit me to return to the starting-point. You are going to
settle down into the peace of home. A peaceful home is like
a good conscience. The rains without do not pierce its roof,
the winds without do not shake its walls. H" not an imperti¬
nent question, is it long since you have known your intended
bride?"
" Yes, very long."
" And always loved her?"
" Always, from her infancy. Out of all womankind, she
was designed to be my life's playmate and my soul's purifier.
I know not what might have become of me, if the thought of
her had not walked beside me, as my guardian angel. For,
like many vagrants from the beaten high-roads of the world,
there is in my nature something ef that lawlessness which be
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
285
longs to high animal spirits, to the zest of adventure, and the
warm blood which runs into song, chiefly because song is the
voice of a joy. And, no doubt, when I look back on the past
years I must own that I have too often been led astray from
the objects set before my reason, and cherished at my heart,
by erring impulse or wanton fancy."
" Petticoat interest, I presume," interposed Kenelm, dryly.
" I wish I could honestly answer 'No,' " said the Minstrel,
coloring high. " But from the worst, from all that would
have permanently blasted the career to which I intrust my
fortunes, all that would have rendered me unworthy of the
pure love that now, I trust, awaits and crowns my dreams of
happiness, I have been saved by the haunting smile in a sin¬
less infantine face. Only once was I in great peril : that hour
of peril I recall with a shudder. It was at Luscombe."
" At Luscombe !"
" In the temptation of a terrible crime I thought I heard
a voice say, ' Mischief! Remember the little child.' In that
supervention which is so readily accepted as a divine warning
when the imagination is morbidly excited, and when the con¬
science, though lulled asleep for a moment, is still asleep so
lightly that the sigh of a breeze, the fall of a leaf, can awake
it with a start of terror, I took the voice for that of my
guardian angel. Thinking over it later, and coupling the
Voice with the moral of those weird lines you repeated to me
so appositely the next day, I conclude that I am not mistaken
when I say it was from your lips that the voice which pre¬
served me came."
" I confess the impertinence—^you pardon it!"
286
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
The Minstrel seized Kenelm's hand and pressed it earnestly.
" Pardon it 1 Oh, could you but guess what cause I have
to be grateful, everlastingly grateful 1 That sudden cry, the
remorse and horror of my own self that it struck into me—
deepened by those rugged lines which the next day made me
shrink in dismay from ' the face of my darling sin' 1 Then
came the turning-point of my life. From that day, the lawless
vagabond within me was killed. I mean not, indeed, the love
of nature and of song which had first allured the vagabond,
hut the hatred of steadfast habits and of serious work—that
Was killed. I no longer trifled with my calling ; I took to it
as a serious duty. And when I saw her whom Fate has re¬
served and reared for my bride, her face was no longer in my
eyes that of the playful child ; the soul of the woman was
dawning into it. It is but two years since that day, to me so
eventful. Yet my fortunes are now secured. And if fame
be not established, I am at last in a position which warrants
my saying to her I love, ' The time has come when, without
fear for thy future, I can ask thee to be mine.' "
The man spoke with so fervent a passion that Kenehn
silently left him to recover his wonted self-possession,—not
unwilling to be silent,—not unwilling, in the softness of the
hour, passing from roseate sunset into starry twilight, to
murmur to himself, " And the time, too, has come for me !"
After a few moments the Minstrel resumed lightly and
cheerily :
" Sir, your turn ; pray, have you long known—judging by
our former conversation, you cannot have long loved—the
lady whom you have wooed and won ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
287
As Kenelm had neither as yet wooed nor won the lady
in question, and did not deem it necessary to enter into any
details on the subject of love particular to himself, he replied
by a general observation :
" It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming
of spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It
may be slow and gradual, it may be quick and sudden. But
in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the
world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward,
warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, then we say Spring
has come I"
" I like your illustration. And if it be an idle question to
ask a lover how long he has known the beloved one, so it is
almost as idle to ask if she he not beautiful. He cannot
but see in her face the beauty she has given to the world
without."
" True ; and that thought is poetic enough to make me
remind you that I favored you with the maiden specimen of
my verse-making on condition that you repaid me by a speci¬
men of your own practical skill in the art. And I claim the
right to suggest the theme. Let it he "
" Of a beef-steak ?"
" Tush ! you have worn out that tasteless joke at my ex¬
pense. The theme must he of love, and if you could impro¬
vise a stanza or two expressive of the idea you just uttered I
shall listen with yet more pleased attention."
" Alas ! I am no improvisators. Yet I will avenge my¬
self on your former neglect of my craft by chanting to you a
trifle somewhat in unison with the thought you ask me to
288
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
versify, but whicb you would not stay to bear at Tor Had-
bam (tbougb you did drop a shilling into Max's tray)—it
was one of tbe songs I sang tbat evening, and it was not ill
received by my bumble audience.
THE BEAUTY OF THE MISTRESS IS IN THE LOVER'S EYE.
" Is she not pretty, my Mabel May ?
Nobody ever yet called ber so.
Are not ber lineaments faultless, say ?
If I must answer you plainly—No.
" Joy to believe tbat tbe maid I love
None but myself as she is can see ;
Joy tbat she steals from ber heaven above
And is only revealed on this earth to me !"
As soon as be bad finished this very artless ditty, the
Minstrel rose and said :
"Now I must bid you good-bye. My way lies through
those meadows, and yours, no doubt, alowg tbe high-road."
" Not so. Permit me to accompany you. I have a lodging
not far from hence, to which the path through the fields is
the shortest way."
The Minstrel turned a somewhat surprised and somewhat
inquisitive look towards Kenelm. But feeling, perhaps, that
having withheld from his fellow-traveler all confidence as to
his own name and attributes, he had no right to ask any con¬
fidence from that gentleman not voluntarily made to him, he
courteously said that he wished the way were longer, since
it would be so pleasantly halved, and strode forth at a brisk
pace.
The twilight was now closing into the brightness of »
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
289
Starry summer night, and the solitude of the fields was un¬
broken. Both these men, walking side by side, felt supremely
happy. But happiness is like wine ; its effect differing with
the differing temperaments on which it acts. In this case
garrulous and somewhat vaunting with the one man, warm-
•julored, sensuous, impressionable to the influences of external
nature, as an .folian harp to the rise or fall of a passing
wind; and, with the other man, taciturn and somewhat
modestly expressed, saturnine, meditative, not indeed dull to
the influences of external nature, hut deeming them of no
value save where they passed out of the domain of the sen¬
suous into that of the intellectual, and the soul of man
dictated to the soulless nature its own questions and its own
replies.
The Minstrel took the talk on himself, and the talk charmed
his listener. It became so really eloquent in the tones of its
utterance, in the frank play of its delivery, that I could no
more adequately describe it than a reporter, however faithful
to every word a true orator may say, can describe that which,
apart from all words, belongs to the presence of the orator
himself.
Not, then, venturing to report the language of this singular
ilinerant, I content myself with saying that the substance of
it was of the nature on which it is said most men can be
eloquent; it was personal to himself. He spoke of aspirar
tions towards the achievement of a name, dating hack to the
dawn of memory; of early obstacles in lowly birth, stinted
fortunes ; of a sudden opening to his ambition, while yet in
boyhood, through the generous favor of a rich man, who said,
VOL. II.—N 19
290
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
" The child has genius, I will give it the discipline of culture,
one day it shall repay to the world what it owes to me of
studies passionately begun, earnestly pursued, and mournfully
suspended in early youth. He did not say how or wherefore :
he rushed on to dwell upon the struggles for a livelihood for
himself and those dependent on him ; how in such struggles
he was compelled to divert toil and energy from the systematic
pursuit of the object he had once set before him ; the neces¬
sities for money were too urgent to be postponed to the visions
of fame. " But even," he exclaimed, passionately, " even in
such hasty and crude manifestations of what is within me, as
circumstances limited my powers, I know that I ought to have
found from those who profess to he authoritative judges the
encouragement of praise. How much better, then, I should
have done if I had found it ! How a little praise warms out
of a man the good that is in him, and the sneer of a contempt
which he feels to be unjust chills the ardor to excel 1 How¬
ever, I forced my way, so far as was then most essential to
me, the sufficing bread-maker for those I loved ; and in my
holidays of song and ramble I found a delight that atoned for
all the rest. But still the desire of fame, once conceived in
childhood, once nourished through youth, never dies but in
our grave. Foot and hoof may tread it down, hud, leaf, stalk ;
its root is too deep below the surface for them to reach, and
year after year stalk and leaf and bud re-emerge. Love may
depart from our mortal life ; we console ourselves—the be¬
loved will be reunited to us in the life to come. But if he
who sets his heart on fame loses it in this life, what can con¬
sole him ?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
291
" Did you not say a little while ago that fame allowed of
uo grave ?"
" True ; but if we do not achieve it before we ourselves are
in the grave, what comfort can it give to us ? Love ascends
to heaven, to which we hope ourselves to ascend ; but fame
remains on the earth, which we shall never again revisit»
And it is because fame is earth-born tbat the desire foi it is
the most lasting, the regret for the want of it the most bitter,
to the child of earth. But I shall achieve it now; it is
already in my grasp."
By this time the travelers had arrived at the brook, facing
the wooden bridge beside Cromwell Lodge.
Here the Minstrel halted; and Kenelm, with a certain
tremble in his voice, said, "Is it not time that we should
make ourselves known to each other by name ? I have no
longer any cause to conceal mine, indeed I never had any
cause stronger than whim—Kenelm Chillingly, the only son
of Sir Peter, of Exmundham, shire."
" I wish your father joy of so clever a son," said the Min
strel, with his wonted urbanity. " You already know enough
of me to be aware that I am of much humbler birth and
station than you; but if you chance to have visited the
exhibition of the Boyal Academy this year—^ah ! I under¬
stand that start—^you might have recognized a picture of
which you have seen the rudimentary sketch, ' The girl
with the flower ball,' one of three pictures very severely
handled by 'The Londoner,' but, in spite of that potent
enemy, insuring fortune and promising fame to the Wander¬
ing Minstrel, whose name, if the sight of the pictures had
¿i)2 kenelm chillingly.
induced you to inquire into that, you would have found to
be Walter Melville. Next January I hope, thanks to that
picture, to add ' Associate of the Royal Academy.' The
public will not let them keep me out of it, in spite of ' The
Londoner.' You are probably an expected guest at one of
the more imposing villas from which we see the distant lights.
I am going to a very humble cottage, in which henceforth I
hope to find my established home. I am there now only for
a few days, but pray let me welcome you there before I leave.
The cottage is called Grasmere."
CHAPTER VI.
The Minstrel gave a cordial parting shake of the hand
to the fellow-traveler whom he had advised to settle down,
not not'cing how very cold had become the hand in his own
genial grasp. Lightly he passed over the wooden bridge,
preceded by Max, and merrily, when he had gained the other
side of the bridge, came upon Kenelm's ear, through the
hush of the luminous night, the verse of the uncompleted lovo-
Bong:
" Singing—singing,
Lustily singing,
Down the road, with his dogs be "ore.
Came the Ritter of Neirestein."
Love-song, uncompleted—why uncompleted? It was not
given to Kenelm to divine the why. It was a love-song ver-
kenelm chillingly.
293
BÍfying one of the prettiest fairy-tales in the world, which was
a great favorite with Lily, and which Lion had promised Lily
to versify, but only to complete it in her presence and to her
perfect satisfaction.
CHAPTER VII.
If I could not venture to place upon paper the exact words
of an eloquent coveter of fame, the earth-born, still less can I
dare to place upon paper all that passed through the voiceless
heart of a coveter of love, the heaven-born.
From the hour in which Kenelm Chillingly had parted
from Walter Melville until somewhere between sunrise and
noon the next day, the summer joyousness of that external
nature which does now and then, though for the most part
deceitfully, address to the soul of man questions and answers
all her soulless own, laughed away the gloom of his mis¬
givings.
No doubt this Walter Melville was the beloved guardian
of Lily ; no doubt it was Lily whom he designated as reserved
and reared to become his bride. But on that question Lily
herself had the sovereign voice. It remained yet to be seen
whether Kenelm had deceived himself in the belief that had
made the world so beautiful to him since the hour of their
last parting. At all events it was due to her, due even to his
rival, to assert his own claim to her choice. And the more
he recalled all that Lily had ever sail to him of her guardian,
294
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
80 openly, so frankly, proclaiming aflFection, admiration, grati¬
tude, the more convincingly his reasonings allayed his fears,
whispering, " So might a child speak of a parent: not so does
the maiden speak of the man she loves ; she can scarcely trust
herself to praise."
In fine, it was not in despondent mood, nor with dejected
looks, that, a little before noon, Kenelm crossed the bridge
and re-entered the enchanted land of Grasmere. In answer
to his inquiries, the servant who opened the door said that
neither Mr. Melville nor Miss Mordaunt were at home ; they
had but just gone out together for a walk. He was about to
turn back, when Mrs. Cameron came into the hall, and, rather
by gesture than words, invited him to enter. Kenelm fol¬
lowed her into the drawing-room, taking his seat beside her.
He was about to speak, when she interrupted him in a tone
of voice so unlike its usual languor, so keen, so sharp, that it
Bounded like a cry of distress.
" I was just about to come to you. Happily, however, you
find me alone, and what may pass between us will be soon
over. But first tell me—you have seen your parents ; you
have asked their consent to wed a girl such as I described ;
tell me, oh, tell me that that consent is refused !"
" On the contrary, I am here with their full permissi )n to
iisk the hand of your niece."
Mrs. Cameron sank back in her chair, rocking herself to
and fro in the posture of a person in great pain.
"I feared that. Walter said he had met you last evening ;
that you, like himself, entertained the thought of marriage.
You, of course, when you learnt his name, must have known
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
295
with whom his thought was connected. Happily, he could
not divine what was the choice to which your youthful fancy
had been so blindly led."
" My dear Mrs. Cameron," said Kenelm, very mildly, but
very firmly, " you were aware of the purpose for which I left
Moleswich a few days ago, and it seems to me that you might
have forestalled my intention, the intention which brings mo
thus early to your house. I come to say to Miss Mordaunt's
guardian, ' I ask the hand of your ward. If you also woo
her, I have a very noble rival. With both of us no consid¬
eration for our own happiness can be comparable to the duty
of consulting hers. Let her choose between the two.' "
"Impossible!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron; "impossible!
You know not what you say; know not, guess not, how
sacred are the claims of Walter Melville to all that the orphan
whom he has protected from her very birth can give him in
return. She has no right to a preference for another ; her
heart is too grateful to admit of one. If the choice were
given to her between him and you, it is he whom she would
choose. Solemnly I assure you of this. Do not, then, sub¬
ject her to the pain of such a choice. Suppose, if you will,
that you had attracted her fancy, and that now you pro¬
claimed your love and urged your suit, she would not, must,
not, the less reject your hand, but you might cloud her hap¬
piness in accepting Melville's. Be generous. Conquer your
own fancy ; it can be but a passing one. Speak not to her
noi to Mr. Melville, of a wish which can never be realized.
Go hence, silently, and at once."
The words and the manner of the pale imploring woman
29G
KENELM CHILLINQLr.
struck a vague awe into the heart of her listener. But ho
did not the less resolutely answer, " I cannot obey you. It
seems to me that my honor commands me to prove to your
niece that, if I mistook the nature of her feelings towards
me, I did nit, by word or look, lead her to believe mine
towards herself were less in earnest than they are ; and it
seems scarcely less honorable towards my worthy rival to
endanger his own future happiness, should he discover later
that his bride would have been happier with another. Why
be so mysteriously apprehensive ? If, as you say, with such
apparent conviction, there is no doubt of your niece's prefer¬
ence for another, at a word from her own lips I depart, and
you will see me no more. But that word must be said by
her ; and if you will not permit me to ask for it in your own
house, I will take my chance of finding her now, on her walk
with Mr. Melville ; and, could he deny me the right to speak
to her alone, that which I would say can be said in his pres¬
ence. Ah 1 madam, have you no mercy for the heart that
you so needlessly torture ? If I must bear the worst, let me
learn it, and at once."
"Le&rn it, then, from my lips," said Mrs. Cameron, speak¬
ing with voice unnaturally calm, and features rigidly set into
stern composure. " And I place the secret you wring from
me under the seal of that honor which you so vauntingly make
your excuse for imperiling the peace of the home I ought
never to have suffered you to enter. An honest couple, of
humble station and narrow means, had an only son, who
evinced in early childhood talents so remarkable that they
attracted the notice of the father's employer, a rich man of
KENELM CIIILLINQLY.
297
very benevolent heart and very cultivated taste. He sent the
child, at his expense, to a first-rate commercial school, mean¬
ing to provide for him later in his own firm. The rich man
was the head partner of an eminent bank ; but very infirm
health, and tastes much estranged from business, had induced
him to retire from all active share in the firm, the manage¬
ment of which was confided to a son whom he idolized. But
the talents of the protégé he had sent to school, there took so
pagsionate a direction towards art, and estranged from trade,
and his designs in drawing when shown to connoisseurs were
deemed so promising of future excellence, that the patron
changed his original intention, entered him as a pupil in the
studio of a distinguished French painter, and afterwards bade
him perfect his taste by the study of Italian and Flemish
mastei-pieces.
" He was still abroad, when " here Mrs. Cameron
stopped, with visible efibrt, suppressed a sob, and went on,
whisperingly, through teeth clinched together—" when a
thunderbolt fell on the house of the patron, shattering his
fortunes, blasting his name. The son, unknown to the father,
had been decoyed into speculations, which proved unfortunate ;
the loss might have been easily retrieved in the first instance!,
unhappily he took the wrong course to retrieve it, and launched
into new hazards. I must be brief. One day the world was
st.artled by the news that a firm, famed for its supposed wealth
and solidity, was bankrupt. Dishonesty was alleged, was
proved, not against the father,—he went forth from the trial,
censured indeed for neglect, not condemned for fraud, but a
penniless pauper. The—son—the son—the idolized son—■
298
ICENELM CHILLINGLY.
was removed from the prisoner's dock, a convicted felon,
sentenced to penal servitude. Escaped that sentence by—
by—^you guess—^you guess. How could he escape except
through death ?—death by his own guilty deed."
Almost as much overpowered by emotion as Mrs. Cameron
herself, Kenelm covered his bended face with one hand,
stretching out the other blindly to clasp her own, but she
W(mld not take it.
A dreary foreboding. Again before his eyes rose the old
gray tower—again in his ears thrilled the tragic tale of the
Fletwodes. What was yet left untold held the young man in
spell-bound silence. Mrs. Cameron resumed :
" I said the father was a penniless pauper ; he died linger-
ingly bed-ridden. But one faithful friend did not desert that
bed ; the youth to whose genius his wealth had ministered.
He had come from abroad with some modest savings from the
sale of copies or sketches made in Florence. These savings
kept a roof over the heads of the old man and the two help¬
less broken-hearted women—paupers like himself,—^his own
daughter and his son's widow. When the savings were gone,
the young man stooped from his destined calling, found em¬
ployment somehow, no matter how alien to his tastes, and
these three whom his toil supported never wanted a home or
food. Well, a few weeks after her husband's terrible death,
his young widow (they had not been a year married) gave
birth to a child—a girl. She did not survive the exhaustion
of her confinement many days. The shock of her death
snapped the feeble thread of the poor father's life. Both
were borne to the grave on the same day. Before they died,
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
299
both made the same prayer to their sole two i aourners, the
felon's sister, the old man's young benefactor. The prayer
was this, that the new-born infant should be reared, however
humbly, in ignorance of her birth, of a father's guilt and
shame. She was not to pass a suppliant for charity to rich
and high-born kinsfolk, who had vouchsafed no word even of
pity to the felon's guiltless father and as guiltless wife. That
promise has been kept till now. I am that daughter. The
name I bear, and the name which I gave to my nieee, are not
ours, save as we may indirectly claim them through alliances
centuries ago. I have never married. I was to have been a
bride, bringing to the representative of no ignoble house what
was to have been a princely dower; the wedding-day was
fixed, when the bolt fell. I have never again seen my be¬
trothed. He went abroad and died there. I think he loved
me, he knew I loved him. Who can blame him for desert¬
ing me? Who could marry the felon's sister? Who would
marry the felon's child? Who, but one? The man who
knows her secret, and will guard it; the man who, caring
little for other education, has helped to instill into her spotless
childhood so steadfast a love of truth, so exquisite a pride of
honor, that did she know such ignominy rested on her birth,
she would pine herself away."
" Is there only one man on earth," cried Kenelm, suddenly,
rearing his face,—till then concealed and downcast,—and with
a loftiness of pride on its aspect, new to its wonted mildness,
" Is there only one man who would deem the virgin, at whose
feet he desires to kneel and say, ' Deign to be the queen of my
life,' not far too noble in herself to be debased by the sins of
300
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
others before she was even horn ; is there only one man who
does not think that the love of truth and the pride of honor
are most royal attributes of woman or of man, no matter
whether the fathers of the woman or the man were pirates as
lawless as the fathers of Norman kings, or liars as unscrupu¬
lous, where their own interests were concerned, as have been
the crowned representatives of lines as deservedly famous as
Caesars and Bourbons, Tudors and Stuarts? Nobility, like
genius, is inborn. One man alone guard her secret !—guard
a secret that if made known could trouble a heart that recoib
from shame ! Ah, madam, we Chillinglys are a very ohscuj a
undistinguished race, but for more than a thousand years Vt o
have been English gentlemen. Guard her secret rather than
risk the chance of discovery that could give her a pang ? I
would pass my whole life by her side in Kamtchatka, a id
even there I would not snatch a glimpse of the secret itself
with mine own eyes, it should be so closely muffled and
wrapped round by the folds of reverence and worship."
This burst of passion seemed to Mrs. Ciuueron the sense¬
less declamation of an inexperienced, hot-headed young man,
and, putting it aside, much as a great lawyer dismisses as
balderdash the florid rhetoric of some junior counsel, rhetoric*
in which the great lawyer had once indulged, or as a woman
for whom romanpe is over dismisses as idle verbiage some
romantic sentiment that befools her young daughter, Mis.
Cameron simply replied, "AH this is hollow talk, Mr. Chil¬
lingly ; let us come to the point. After all I have said, do
you mean to persist in your suit to my niece?"
" I persist."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
301
" What !" she cried, this time indignantly, and with gen¬
erous indignation ; " what, even were it possible that you
could win your parents' consent to marry the child of a man
condemned to penal servitude, or, consistently with the duties
a son owes to parents, conceal that fact from them, could you,
fcorn to a station on which every gossip will ask, 'Who and
what is the name of the future Lady Chillingly?' believe
that the who and the what will never be discovered ? Rave
you* a mere stranger, unknown to us a few weeks ago, a right
to say to Walter Melville, ' Resign to me that which is your
sole reward for the sublime sacrifices, for the loyal devotion,
for the watchful tenderness of patient years' ? "
" Surely, madam," cried Kenelm, more startled, more shaken
in soul by this appeal than by the previous revelations;
" surely, when we last parted, when I confided to you my love
for your niece, when you consented to my proposal to return
home and obtain my father's approval of my suit; surely
then was the time to say, 'No; a suitor with claims para¬
mount and irresistible has come before you.' "
" I did not then know. Heaven is my witness, I did not
men even suspect, that Walter Melville ever dreamed of seek¬
ing a wife in the child who had grown up under his eyes.
You must own, indeed, how much I discouraged your suit; I
30uld not discourage it more without revealing the secret of
hei birth, only to be revealed as an extreme necessity. But
my persuasion was that your father would not consent to your
alliance with one so far beneath the expectations he was
entitled to form, and the refusal of that consent would termi¬
nate all further accjuaintance between you and Lily, leaving
302
kenelm chillinglt.
her secret undisclosed. It was not till jou had left, only
indeed two days ago, that I received from Walter Melville a
letter, which told me what I had never before conjectured.
Here is the letter ; read it, and then say if you have the heart
to force yourself into rivalry with—^with " She broke off,
choked by her exertion, thrust the letter into his hands, and
with keen, eager, hungry stare watched his countenance while
he read.
" Street, Bloomsbury.
" My dear Friend,—Joy and triumph ! My picture is
completed ; the picture on which, for so many months, I have
worked night and day in this den of a studio, without a
glimpse of the green fields, concealing my address from every
one, even from you, lest I might be tempted to suspend my
labors. The picture is completed—it is sold ; guess the price !
Fifteen hundred guineas, and to a dealer—a dealer ! Think
of that ! It is to be carried about the country, exhibited by
itself. You remember those three little landscapes of mine
which two years ago I would gladly have sold for ten pounds,
only neither Lily nor you would let me. My good friend
and earliest patron, the German merchant at Luscombe, who
called on me yesterday, offered to cover them with guineas
thrice piled over the canvas. Imagine how happy I felt when
I forced him to accept them as a present. What a leap in a
man's life it is when he can afford to say ' I give' 1 Now
then, at last, at last I am in a position which justifies the
utterance of the hope which has for eighteen years been my
solace, my support ; been the sunbeam that ever shone through
the gloom, when my fate was at the darkest; been the
melody that buoyed me aloft as in the song of the skylark,
when in the voices of men I heard but the laugh of scorn.
Do you remember the night on which Lily's mother besought
us to bring up her child in ignorance of her parentage, not
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
30ä
even communicate to unkind and disdainful relatives that such
a child was born ? do you remember how plaintively, and yet
how proudly, she so nobly born, so luxuriously nurtured,
clasping my hand when I ventured to remonstrate and say
that her own family could not condemn her child because of
her father's guilt,—she, the proudest woman I ever knew,
she whose smile I can at rare moments detect in Lily, raised
her head from her pillow, and gasped forth :
'' ' I am dying—the last words of the dying are com¬
mands. I command you to see that my child's lot is not
that of a felon's daughter transported to the hearth of nobles.
To be happy, her lot must be humble—no roof too hum¬
ble to shelter, no husband too humble to wed, the felon's
daughter.'
" From that hour I formed the resolve that I would keep
hand and heart free, that when the grandchild of my princely
benefactor grew up into womanhood I might say to her, ' I
am humbly born, but thy mother would have given thee to
me.' The new-born, consigned to our charge, has now ripened
into woman, and I have now so assured my fortune that it is
no longer poverty and struggle that I should ask her to share.
I am conscious that, were her fate not so exceptional, this
hope of mine would be a vain presumption—conscious that I
am but the creature of her grandsire's bounty, and that from
it springs all I ever can be—conscious of the disparity in
years—conscious of many a past error and present fault-
But, as fate so ordains, such considerations are trivial ; I am
her rightful choice. What other choice, compatible with
these necessities which weigh, dear and honored friend, im¬
measurably more on your sense of honor than they do upon
mine, and yet mine is not dull ? Granting, then, that you,
her nearest and most responsible relative, do not contemn me
for presumption, all else seems to me clear. Lily's child-like
affection for me is too deep and too fond not to warm into a
304
KENELS! CniLIINGLY.
wife's love. Happily, too, she has not been reared in th«
stereotyped hoarding-school shallownesses of knowledge and
vulgarities of gentility ; but educated, like myself, by the free
influences of nature; longing for no halls and palaces save
those that we build as we list, in fairyland ; educated to com¬
prehend and to share the fancies which are more than book-
lore to the worshiper of art and song. In a day or two,
perhaps the day after you receive this, I shall be able to
escape from London, and most likely shall come on foot as
usual. How I long to see onee more the woodbine on the
hedge-rows, the green blades of the corn-fleld, the sunny lapse
of the river, and, dearer still, the tiny falls of our own little
noisy rill ! Meanwhile I entreat you, dearest, gentlest, most
honored of such few friends as my life has hitherto won to
itself, to consider well the direct purport of this letter. If
you, born in a grade so much higher than mine, feel that it
is unwarrantable insolence in me to aspire to the hand of my
patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I remain not lesa
grateful for your friendship, than I was to your goodness
when dining for the flrst time at your father's palace. Shy
and sensitive and young, I felt that his grand guests wondered
why I was invited to the same board as themselves. You,
then courted, admired, you had sympathetic compassion on
the raw, sullen boy ; left those who then seemed to me like
the gods and goddesses of a heathen Pantheon, to come and
sit beside your father's protégé, and cheeringly whisper to
him such words as make a low-horn, ambitious lad go home
light-hearted, saying to himself, ' Some day or other.' And
what it is to an ambitious lad, fancying himself lifted by the
gods and goddesses of a Pantheon, to go home light-hearted,
muttering to himself, ' Some day or other,' I doubt if even
you can divine.
" But should you be as kind to the presumptuous man as
you were to the bashful boy, and say, ' Realized be the dream.
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
305
fulfilled be the object of your life ! take from me, as her next
of kin, the last descendant of your benefactor,' then I venture
to address to you this request. You are in the place of
mother to your sister's child ; act for her as a keeper now, to
prepare her mind and heart for the coming change in the
relations between her and me. When I last saw her, six
months ago, she was still so playfully infantine that it half
seems to me I should he sinning against the reverence due to
a child, if I said too abruptly, 'You are woman, and I love
you not as child but as woman.' And yet, time is not allowed
to me for long, cautious, and gradual slide from the relation¬
ship of friend into that of lover. I now understand what
the great master of my art once said to me, ' A career is a
destiny.' By one of those merchant princes who now at
Manchester, as they did once at Genoa or Venice, reign alike
over those two civilizers of the world which to dull eyes seem
antagonistic, Art and Commerce, an offer is made to me for a
picture on a subject which strikes his fancy ; an offer so mag¬
nificently liberal that his commerce must command my art ;
and the nature of the subject compels me to seek the banks
of the Rhine as soon as may be. I must have all the hues
of the foliage in the meridian glories of summer. I can but
stay at Grasmere a very few days ; but before I leave I must
know this, am I going to work for Lily or am I not ? On
the answer to that question depends all. If not to work for
her, there would be no glory in the summer, no triumph in
art to me : I refuse the offer. If she says, 'Yes ; it is for
me you work,' then she becomes my destiny. She assures
my career. Here I speak as an artist : nobody who is not an
artist can guess how sovereign over even his moral being, at a
certain critical epoch in his career of artist or his life of man,
is the success or the failure of a single work. But I go on
to speak as man. My love for Lily is such for the last six
months, that though if she rejected me I should still serva
VOL. II. 20
\
30tí KENELM CHILLINGLY.
art, still yearn for fame, it would be as an old man migbc do
either. The youth of my life would be gone.
" As man I say, all my thoughts, all my dreams of happi¬
ness, distinct from Art and fame, are summed up in the one
question—' Is Lily to be my wife or not ?'
" Yours afifectionately,
« W. M."
Kenelm returned the letter without a word.
Enraged by his silence, Mrs. Cameron exclaimed : " Now,
sir, what say you? You have scarcely known Lily five
weeks. What is the feverish fancy of five weeks' growth to
the life-long devotion of a man like this ? Do you now dare
to say, ' I persist' ?"
Kenelm waved his hand very quietly, as if to dismiss all
conception of taunt and insult, and said, with his soft melan¬
choly eyes fixed upon the working features of Lily's aunt,
" This man is more worthy of her than 1. He prays you, in
his letter, to prepare your niece for that change of relation¬
ship which he dreads too abruptly to break to her himself
Have you done so ?"
" I have ; the night I got the letter."
"And—^you hesitate; speak truthfully, I implore. And
—she "
" She," answered Mrs. Cameron, feeling herself involun¬
tarily compelled to obey the voice of that prayer, " She
seemed stunned at first, muttering, ' This is a dream—it can¬
not be true—cannot! I Lion's wife—I—I! I his destiny!
In me his happiness !' And then she laughed her pretty
child's laugh, and put her arms round my neck, and said,
•You are jesting, aunty. He could not write thus!' So T
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
307
put that part of his letter under her eyes ; and when she had
convinced herself, her face became very grave, more like a
woman's face than I ever saw it ; and after a pause she cried
out, passionately, ' Can you think me—can I think myself—
so bad, so ungrateful, as to doubt what I should answer, if
Lion asked me whether I would willingly say or do anything
that made him unhappy ? If there be such a doubt in my
heart, I would tear it out by the roots, heart and all 1' Oh,
Mr. Chillingly, there would be no happiness for her with
another, knowing that she had blighted the life of him to
whom she owes so much, though she never will learn how
much more she owes." Kenelm not replying to this remark,
Mrs. Cameron resumed. " I will be perfectly frank with you,
Mr. Chillingly. I was not quite satisfied with Lily's manner
and looks the next morning, that is, yesterday. I did fear
there might be some struggle in her mind in which there
entered a thought of yourself. And when Walter, on his
arrival here in the evening, spoke of you as one he had met
before in his rural excursions, but whose name he only
learned on parting at the bridge by Cromwell Lodge, I saw
that Lily turned pale, and shortly afterwards went to her own
room for the night. Fearing that any interview with you,
though it would not alter her resolve, might lessen her happi¬
ness on the only choice she can and ought to adopt, I resolved
to visit you this morning, and make that appeal to your reason
and your heart which I have done now—not, I am sure, in
vain. Hush ! I hear his voice !"
Melville entered the room, Lily leaning on his arm. The
artist's comely face was radiant with an ineffable joyousness.
■308
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
Leaving Lily, he reached Kenelm's side as with a single
bound, shook him heartily by the hand, and said, " I find
that you have already been a welcomed visitor in this house.
Long may you be so, so say I, so (I answer for her) says my
fair betrothed, to whom I need not present you."
Lily advanced, and held out her hand very timidly.
Kenelm touched rather than clasped it. His own strong
hand trembled like a leaf. He ventured but one glance at
her face. All the bloom had died out of it, but the expres¬
sion seemed to him wondrously, cruelly tranquil.
" Your betrothed—^your future bride 1" he said to the
artist, with a mastery over his emotion rendered less difficult
by the single glance at that tranquil face. " I wish you joy.
All happiness to you. Miss Mordaunt. You have made a
noble choice."
He looked round for his hat ; it lay at his feet, but he did
not see it ; his eyes wandering away with uncertain vision,
like those of a sleep-walker.
Mrs. Cameron picked up the hat and gave it to him.
" Thank you," he said, meekly ; then with a smile half
sweet, half bitter, " I have so much to thank you for, Mis.
Cameron."
" But you are not going already—just as I enter, too.
Hold ! Mrs. Cameron tells me you are lodging with my old
friend Jones. Come and stop a couple of days with us : we
can find you a room ; the room over your butterfly cage, eh.
Fairy?"
" Thank you, too. Thank you all. No ; I must be m
London by the first train."
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
309
Speaking thus, he had found his way to the door, bowed
with the quiet grace that characterized all his movements,
and was gone.
" Pardon his abruptness, Lily ; he too loves ; he too is im¬
patient to find a betrothed," said the artist, gayly: "but now
he knows my dearest secret, I think I have a right to know
his ; and I will try."
He had scarcely uttered the words before he too had quitted
the room and overtaken Kenelm just at the threshold.
" If you are going back to Cromwell Lodge—to pack up, I
suppose—^let me walk with you as far as the bridge."
Kenelm inclined his head assentingly and tacitly as they
passed through the garden gate, winding backward through
the lane which skirted the garden pales ; when, at the very
spot in which the day after their first and only quarrel Lily's
face had been seen brightening through the evergreen, that
day on which the old woman, quitting her, said, " God bless
you !" and on which the vicar, walking with Kenelm, spoke
of her fairy charms ; well, just in that spot Lily's face appeared
again, not this time hrightening through the evergreens, unless
the palest gleam of the palest moon can be said to brighten.
Kenelm saw, started, halted. His companion, then in the
rush of a gladsome talk of which Kenelm had not heard a
word, neither saw nor halted; he walked on mechanically,
gladsome and talking.
Lily stretched forth her hand through the evergreens.
Kenelm took it reverentially. This time it was not his hand
that trembled.
"Good-bye," she said in a whisper, "good-bye forever in
310
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
this world. You understand—you do understand me. Say
that you do."
"I understand. Noble child—noble choice. God bless
you! God comfort me!" murmured Kenelm. Their eyes
met. Oh, the sadness, and, alas ! oh, the love, in the eyes of
both !
Kenelm passed on.
All said in an instant. How many Alls are said in an in¬
stant ! Melville was in the midst of some glovring sentence,
begun when Kenelm dropped from his side, and the end of
the sentence was this :
" Words cannot say how fair seems life, how easy seems
conquest of fame, dating from this day—this day"—and in
his turn he halted, looked round on the sunlit landscape and
breathed deep, as if to drink into his soul all of the earth's
joy and beauty which his gaze could compass and the arch
of the horizon bound.
" They who knew her even the best," resumed the artist,
striding on, " even her aunt, never could guess how serious
and earnest, under all her infantine prettiness of fancy, is that
girl's real nature. We were walking along the brook-side,
when I began to tell how solitary the world would be to me
if I could not win her to my side ; while I spoke she had
turned aside from the path we had taken, and it was not till
we were under the shadow of the church in which we shall be
married that she uttered the words that give to every cloud
in my fate the silver lining; implying thus how solemnly
connected in her mind was the thought of love with th«
sanctity of religion."
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
311
Kenelm shuddered—the church—the buriai-ground—ths
old gothic tomb—the flowers round the infant's grave I
" But I am talking a great deal too much about myself,"
resumed the artist. " Lovers are the most consummate of all
egotists, and the most garrulous of all gossips. You have
wished me joy on my destined nuptials, when shall I wish
you joy on yours? Since we have begun to confide in eaoh
other, you are in my debt as to a confidence."
They had now gained the bridge. Kenelm turned round
abruptly : " Good-day ; let us part here. I have nothing to
confide to you that might not seem to your ears a mockery
when I wish you joy." So saying, so obeying in spite of
himself the anguish of his heart, Kenelm wrung his com¬
panion's hand with the force of an uncontrollable agony, and
speeded over the bridge before Melville recovered his surprise-
The artist would have small claim to the essential attribute
of genius, viz., the intuitive sympathy of passion with passion,
if that secret of Kenelm's which he had so lightly said " he
had acquired the right to learn" was not revealed to him as
by an electric flash. " Poor fellow 1" he said to himself, pity-
ingly ; " how natural that he should fall in love with Fairy !
but happily he is so young, and such a philosopher, that it is
but one of those trials through which, at least ten times a year,
I have gone with wounds that leave not a scar."
Thus soliloquizing, the warm-blooded worshiper of Nature
returned homeward, too blest in the triumph of his own love
to feel more than a kindly compassion for the wounded heart,
consigned with no doubt of the healing result to the fickleness
of youth and the consolations of philosophy. Not for a
312
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
moment did the happier rival suspect that Kenelm's love waa
returned ; that an atom in the heart of the girl vrho had prom¬
ised to be his bride could take its light or shadow from any
love Vut his own. Yet, more from delicacy of respect to the
rival so suddenly self-betrayed, than from any more prudential
motive, he did not speak even to Mrs. Cameron of Kenelm's
secret and sorrow; and certainly neither she nor Lily was
disposed to ask any question that concerned the departed
visitor.
In fact, the name of Kenelm Chillingly was scarcely, if at
all, mentioned in that household during the few days which
elapsed before Walter Melville quitted Grasmere for the banks
of the Rhine, not to return till the autumn, when his mar¬
riage with Lily was to take place. Luring those days Lily
was calm and seemingly cheerful—her manner towards her
betrothed, if more subdued, not less affectionate than of old.
Mrs. Cameron congratulated herself on having so successfully
got rid of Kenelm Chillingly.
CHAPTER VIIL
So, then, but for that officious warning, uttered under tbe
balcony at Luscombe, Kenelm Chillingly might never have
bad a rival in Walter Melville. But ill would any reader
construe the character of Kenelm, did he think that such a
thought increased the bitterness of his sorrow. No sorrow in
kenelm chillingly.
313
the thought that a noble nature had been saved from the
temptation to a great sin.
The good man does good merely by living. And the good
he does may often mar the plans he formed for his own hap¬
piness. But he cannot regret that Heaven has permitted
him to do good.
What Kenelm did feel is perhaps best explained in the
letter to Sir Peter, which is here subjoined :
" My dearest Father,—Never till my dying day shall I
forget that tender desire for my happiness with which, over¬
coming all worldly considerations, no matter at what disap¬
pointment to your own cherished plans or ambition for the
heir to your name and race, you sent me away from your roof,
these words ringing in my ear like the sound of joy-bells,
' Choose as you will, with my blessing on your choice. T open
my heart to admit another child—your wife shall be my
daughter.' It is such an unspeakable comfort to me to recall
those words now. Of all human affections gratitude is surely
the holiest ; and it blends itself with the sweetness of religion
when it is gratitude to a father. And, therefore, do not grieve
too much for me, when I tell you that the hopes which
enchanted me when we parted are not to be fulfilled. Her
hand is pledged to another—another with claims upon her
preference to which mine cannot be compared ; and he is
himself, putting aside the accidents of birth and fortune,
immeasurably my superior. In that thought—I mean the
thought that the man she selects deserves her more than I
do, and that in his happiness she will blend her own—I shall
find comfort, so soon as I can fairly reason down the first all-
engrossing selfishness that follows the sense of unexpected and
irremediable loss. Meanwhile you will think it not unnatural
that I resort to such aids for change of heart as are afforded
vol. ii.—0
314
kenelm chillingly.
by change of scene. I start for the Continent to-night, and
shall not rest till I reach Venice, which I have not yet seen.
I feel irresistibly attracted towards still canals and gliding
gondolas. I will write to you and to my dear mother the day
I arrive. And I trust to write cheerfully, with full accounts
of all I see and encounter. Do not, dearest father, in your
letters to me revert or allude to that grief, which even the
tendcrest word from your own tender self might but chafe
into pain more sensitive. After all, a disappointed love is a
very common lot. And we meet every day men—ay, and
women too—who have known it, and are thoroughly cured.
" The manliest of our modern lyrical poets has said very
nobly and, no doubt, very justly.
To bear is to conquer our fate,'
" Ever your loving son,
"K. C."
CHAPTER IX.
Nearly a year and a half has elapsed since the date of
my last chapter. Two Englishmen were—the one seated,
the other reclined at length—on one of the mounds that
furrow the ascent of Posilippo. Before them spread the
noiseless sea, basking in the sunshine, without visible ripple ;
to the left there was a distant glimpse through gaps of bnish-
wood of the public gardens and white water of the Chiaja.
They were friends who had chanced to meet abroad,—unex¬
pectedly,—joined company, and traveled together for many
months, chiefly in the East. They had been but a few days
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
315
ta Naples. The elder of the two had important afifairs in
England which ought to have summoned him back long
since. But he did not let his friend know this ; his afifairs
seemed to him less important than the duties he owed to one
for vhom he entertained that deep and noble love which is
something stronger than brotherly, for with brotherly affection
it combines gratitude and reverence. He knew, too, that his
friend was oppressed by a haunting sorrow, of which the cause
was divined by one, not revealed by the other.
To leave him, so beloved, alone with that sorrow in strange
lands, was a thought not to be cherished by a friend so tender ;
for in the friendship of this man there was that sort of tender¬
ness which completes a nature thoroughly manlike, by giving
it a touch of the woman's.
It was a day which in our northern climates is that of
winter ; in the southern clime of Naples it was mild as an
English summer day lingering on the brink of autumn. The
sun was sloping towards the west, and already gathering
around it roseate and purple fleeces. Elsewhere, the deep-
blue sky was without a cloudlet.
Both had been for some minutes silent ; at length the man
reclined on the grass—it was the younger man—said sud¬
denly, and with no pievious hint of the subject introduced,
" Lay your hand on your heart, Tom, and answer me truly.
Are your thoughts as clear from regrets as the heavens above
ns are from a cloud ? Man takes regret from tears that have
ceased to flow, as the heaven takes cloud from the rains
that have ceased to fall."
" Regrets ? Ah, I understand, for the loss of the girl I
316
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
once loved to distraction ! No ; surely I made that clear to
you many, many, many months ago, when I was your guest
at Moleswich."
" Ay, but I have never, since then, spoken to you on that
subject. I did not dare. It seems to me so natural that a
man, in the earlier struggle between love and reason, should
say, ' reason shall conquer, and has conquered and yet—and
yet—as time glides on, feel that the conquerors who cannot
put down rebellion have a very uneasy reign. Answer me
not as at Moleswich, during the first struggle, but now, in
the after-day, when reaction from struggle comes."
" Upon my honor," answered the friend, " I have had no
reaction at all. I was cured entirely when I had once seen
Jessie again, another man's wife, mother to his child, happy
in her marriage, and—^whether she was changed or not—very
different from the sort of wife I should like to marry, now
that I am no longer a village farrier."
" And, I remember, you spoke of some other girl whom it
would suit you to marry. Tou have been long abroad from
her. Do you ever think of her—think of her still as your
future wife ? Can you love her ? Can you, who have once
loved so faithfully, love again ?"
" I am sure of that. I love Emily better than I did when
I left England. We eorrespond. She writes such nice
letters." Tom hesitated, blushed, and continued timidly, " I
should like to show you one of her letters."
" Do."
Tom drew forth the last of such letters from his breast-
KENELM CHILLINGLY,
317
Kenolm raised himself from the grass, took the letter, and
read slowly, carefully, while Tom watched in vain foi some
approving smile to brighten up the dark beauty of that melan¬
choly iace.
Certainly it vas the letter a man in love might show with
pride to a friend ; the letter of a lady, well educated, well
brought up, evincing affection modestly, intelligence modestly
foo; the sort of letter in which a mother who loved her
daughter, and approved the daughter's choice, could not have
suggested a correction.
As Kenelm gave back the letter, his eyes met his friend's.
Those were eager eyes—eyes hungering for praise. Kenelm's
heart smote him for that worst of sins in friendshio—want of
sympathy ; and that uneasy heart forced to his lips congratu¬
lations, not perhaps quite sincere, but which amply satisfied
the lover. In uttering them, Kenelm rose to his feet, threw
his arm round his friend's shoulder, and said, " Are you not
tired of this place, Tom ? I am. Let us go back to England
to-morrow." Tom's honest face brightened vividly. " How
selfish and egotistical I have been !" continued Kenelm ; " I
ought to have thought more of you, your career, your mar¬
riage—pardon me "
'' Pardon you—pardon ! Don't I owe to you all—owe lo
you Emily herself? If you had never come to Graveleigh,
never said, ' Be my friend,' what should I have been now ?
what—what ?"
The next day the two friends quitted Naples, en route for
England, not exchanging many words by the way. The old
loquacious crotchety humor of Kenelm had deserted him. A
318
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
duller companion than he was you could not have conceived.
He might have been the hero of a young lady's novel.
It Wiis only when they parted in London that Kenelm
evinced more secret purpose, more external emotion than one
of his heraldic Daces shifting from the bed to the surface of a
waveless pond.
" If I have rightly understood you, Tom, all this change in
you, all this cure of torturing regret, was wrought—wrought
lastingly—wrought so as to leave you heart-free for the world's
actions and a home's peace, on that eve when you saw her
whose face till then had haunted you, another man's happy
wife, and, in so seeing her, either her faee was changed, or
your heart became so."
" Quite true. I might express it otherwise, hut the fact
remains the same."
" God bless you, Tom ; bless you in your career without, in
your home within," said Kenelm, wringing his friend's hand
at the door of the carriage that was to whirl to love, and
wealth, and station, the whilom bully of a village, along the
iron groove of that contrivance which, though now the tritest
of prosaic realities, seemed once too poetical for a poet's
wildest visions.
kenels! cnillinqlt
CHAPTER X.
A 'W inter's eirening 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,
clear 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 round
about 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 was again
visible the old haughtiness of the indifferentism that keeps
itself aloof from the turbulent emotions and conventional
fjivolities 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 I shall exor¬
cise 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
320
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
to him—for the smiles and the tears of it had become tha
property of another man—^how much more should I he left
without a scar 1 I, the heir of the Chillinglys ! I, the kins¬
man of a Mivers 1 I, the pupil of a Welby ! I—I, Kenelm
Chillingly, to be thus—thus " Here, in the midst of hif»
boastfid 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 hia
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 win¬
dows 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.
hie'ville, in dressing-robe and slippers, was seated alone by
the fireside His dog was lazily stretched on the hearth-ru§^
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
32i
One by one the features of the room, as the scene of his
vanished happiness, grew out from its stillness ; the ddieately-
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
fafr 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 hal 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 firstborn."
Just then Blanche, who had not been visible before,
emerged from under the table, and, as Melville re-seated him-
Vol. II.—0* 9)
323
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
self 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 con¬
jectured rightly, that the letter which had evidently so glad¬
dened 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 build¬
ing 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 fragilo
tenement was not closed against the winds and snows; its
doors were drearily open ; gaps in the delicate wire-work ; of
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
¿23
Itt 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 desoía^
tion 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 houghs 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. Wrapt
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
•he train of his thoughts, led him along the path with which
324
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
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 1" 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 gothio 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 color ; 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 graye-mqund. His sight had
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
325
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 star-lit 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 hy those who
most mourn and miss her.
Isabel Cajieeox,
Walter Melville.
" Suffer the little children to come onto m«.*
326
kenelm chillinqlt.
CHAPTER XL
Tue next morning Mr. Emlyn, passing from his garden
to the town of Moleswich, descried a human form stretched
on the burial-ground, stirring restlessly but very slightly, a»
if with an involuntary shiver, and uttering broken sounds,
very faintly heard, like the moans that a man in pain strives
to suppress and cannot.
The rector hastened to the spot. The man was lying, his
face downward, on a grave-mound, not dead, not asleep.
" Poor fellow 1 overtaken by drink, I fear," thought the
gentle pastor ; and as it was the habit of his mind to com¬
passionate error even more than grief, he accosted the supposed
sinner in very soothing tones—trying to raise him from the
ground—and with very kindly words.
Then the man lifted his face from its pillow on the grave-
mound, looked round him dreamily into the gray, blank air
of the cheerless morn, and rose to his feet quietly and slowly.
The vicar was startled ; he recognized the face of him he
had last seen in the magnificent affluence of health and
strength. But the character of the face was changed—so
changed 1 its old serenity of expression, at once grave and
sweet, succeeded by a wild trouble in the heavy eyelids and
trembling lips.
" Mr. Chillingly—you ! Is it possible?"
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
327
"Varus, Varus," exclaimed Kenelm, passionately, "what
hast thou done with my legions ?"
At that quotation of the well-known greeting of Augustus
to his unfortunate general, the scholar recoiled. Had his young
fir.end's mind deserted him—dazed, perhaps, by over-study?
He was soon reassured ; Kenelm's face settled back into
calm, though a dreary calm, like that of the wintry day. -
" I beg pardon, Mr. Emlyn ; I had not quite shaken off
the hold of a strange dream. I dreamed that I was worse
off than Augustus ; he did not lose the world when the legions
he had trusted to another vanished into a grave."
Here Kenelm linked his arm in that of the rector—on
which he leaned rather heavily—and drew him on from the
burial-ground into the open space where the two paths met.
"But how long have you returned to Moleswich?" asked
Emlyn ; " and how come you to choose so damp a bed for
your morning slumbers?"
" The wintry cold crept into my veins when I stood in the
burial-ground, and I was very weary ; I had no sleep at night.
Do not let me take you out of your way ; I am going on to
Grasmere. So I sqe, by the record on a grave-stone, that it is
more than a year ago since Mr. Melville lost his wife."
" Wife? He never married."
"What!" cried Kenelm. "Whose, then, is that grave¬
stone—' L. M.' ?"
" Alas ! it is our poor Lily's."
" And she died unmarried ?"
As Kenelm said this he looked up, and the sun broke out
from the gloomy haze of the morning. " I may claim thee,
328
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
then," he thought within himself—" claim thee as mine when
we meet again."
" Unmarried—yea," resumed the vicar. " She was indeed
betrothed to her guardian ; they were to have been married
in the autumn, on his return from the Rhine. He went there
to paint on the spot itself his great picture, which is now so
famous—' Roland, the Hermit Knight, looking towards the
convent lattice for a sight of the Holy Nun.' Melville had
scarcely gone before the symptoms of the disease which
proved fatal to poor Lily betrayed themselves ; they baffled
all medical skill—rapid decline. She was always very deli¬
cate, hut no one detected in her the seeds of consumption
Melville only returned a day or two before her death. Hear
childlike Lily ! how we all mourned for her !—not least tho
poor, who believed in her fairy charms."
" And least of all, it appears, the man she was to have
married."
" He ?—Melville ? How can you wrong him so ? His
grief was intense—overpowering—for the time."
" For the time ! what time ?" muttered Kenelm, in tones
too low for the pastor's ear.
They moved on silently. Mr. Emlyn resumed :
"You noticed the text on Lily's grave-stone—'Sufferthe
little children to come unto me'? She dictated it herself
the day before she died. I was with her then, so I was at
the last."
" Were you—were you—at the last—the last? Good-day,
Mr. Emlyn ; we are just in sight of the garden gat(\ And—
excuse me—I wish to see Mr. Melville alone."
kenelm chillingly.
323
" Well, then, good-day ; but if you are making any stay
in the neighborhood, will you not be our guest ? We have a
room at your service."
" T thank you gratefully ; hut I return to London in an
hour or so. Hold, a moment. You were with her at the
la.st ? She was resigned to die ?"
" Eesigned ! that is scarcely the word. The smile- left
upon her lips was not that of human resignation ; it was the
smiîe of a divine joy."
CHAPTER XIL
" Yes, sir, Mr. Melville is at home, in his studio."
Kenelm followed the maid across the hall into a room not
built at the date of Kenelm's former visits to the house : the
artist, making Grasmere his chief residence after Lily's death,
had added it at the back of the neglected place wherein Lily
had encaged "the souls of infants unbaptized."
A lofty room, with a casement, partially darkened, to the
bleak north ; various sketches on the walls ; gaunt specimens
of antique furniture, and of gorgeous Italian silks, scattered
about in confused disorder; one large picture on its easel
curtained ; another as large, and half finished, before which
stood the painter. He turned quickly as Kenelm entered the
room unannounced, let fall brush and palette, came up to him
eagerly, grasped his hand, drooped his head on Kenelm's
330
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
shoulder, and said, in a voice struggling with evident and
strong emotion :
" Since we parted, such grief! such a loss !"
" I know it ; I have seen her grave. Let us not speak of
it. Why so needlessly revive your sorrow ? So—so—^your
sanguine hopes are fulfilled—the world at last has done yon
justice? Emlyn tells me that you have painted a very
famous picture."
Kenelm had seated himself as he thus spoke. The painter
still stood with dejected attitude on the middle of the floor,
and brushed his hand over his moistened eyes once or twice
before he answered, "Yes : wait a moment, don't talk of fame
yet. Bear with me : the sudden sight of you unnerved me."
The artist here seated himself also on an old worm-eaten
gothic chest, rumpling and chafing the golden or tinseled
threads of the embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn,
flung over the gothic chest, so rare also, and so worm-eaten.
Kenelm looked through half-closed lids at the artist, and
his lips, before slightly curved with a secret scorn, became
gravely compressed. In Melville's struggle to conceal emo¬
tion the strong man recognized a strong man—recognized,
and yet only wondered ; wondered how such a man, to whom
Lily had pledged her hand, could so soon after the loss of
Lily go on painting pictures, and care for any praise bestowed
on a yard of canvas.
In a very few minutes Melville recommenced conversation
'—no more reference to Lily than if she had never existed.
" Yes, my last picture has been indeed a success, a reward
complete, if tardy, for all the bitterness of former struggles
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
331
made in vain, for the galling sense of injustice, the anguish
of which only an artist knows, when unworthy rivals are
ranked before him.
' Foes quick to blame, and friends afraid to praise.'
True, that I have still much to encounter, the cliques still seek
to disparage me, but between me and the cliques there stands
at last the giant form of the public, and at last critics of graver
weight than the cliques have deigned to accord to me a higher
rank than even the public yet acknowledge. Ah ! Mr. Chil¬
lingly, you do not profess to be a judge of paintings, but,
excuse me, just look at this letter. I received it only last
night from the greatest connoisseur of my art, ceitainly in
England, perhaps in Europe." Here Melville drew, from
the side pocket of his picturesque moyen âge surtout, a letter
signed by a name authoritative to all who—^being painters
themselves—acknowledge authority in one who could no more
paint a picture himself than Addison, the ablest critic of the
greatest poem modern Europe has produced, could have
written ten lines of the Paradise Lost—and thrust the letter
into Kenelm's hand. Kenelm read it listlessly, with an in¬
creased contempt for an artist who could so find in gratified
vanity consolation for the life gone from earth. But, listlessly
as he read the letter, the sincere and fervent enthusiasm of
the laudatory contents impressed him, and the pre-eminent
authority of the signature eould not be denied.
The letter was written on the occasion of Melville's recent
election to the dignity of R.A., successor to a very great artist
whose death had created a vacancy in the Academy. He re-
332
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
turned the letter to Melville, saying, " This is the letter I saw
you reading last night as I looked in at your window. In¬
deed, for a man who cares for the opinion of other men, this
letter is very flattering ; and for the painter who cares for
money, it must be very pleasant to know by how many
guineas every inch of his canvas may be covered." Unable
longer to control his passions of rage, of scorn, of agonizing
grief, Kenelm then burst forth, " Man, Man, whom I once
accepted as a teacher on human life, a teacher to warm, to
brighten, to exalt mine own indifferent, dreamy, slow-pulsed
self 1 has not the one woman whom thou didst select out of
this over-crowded world to be bone of thy bone, flesh of thy
flesh, vanished evermore from the earth—little more than a
year since her voice was silenced, her heart ceased to beat ?
But how slight is such loss to thy life, compared to the worth
of a compliment that flatters thy vanity !"
The artist rose to his feet with an indignant impulse. But
the angry flush faded from his cheek as he looked on the
countenance of his rebuker. He walked up to him, and
attempted to take his hand, but Kenelm snatched it scornfully
from his grasp.
" Poor friend," said Melville, sadly and soothingly, " I did
not think you loved her thus deeply. Pardon me." lie
drew a chair close to Kenelm's, and after a brief paxsc- went
on thus, in very earnest tones : " I am not so heartless, not so
forgetful of my loss, as you suppose. But reflect, you have
but just learned of her death, you are under the first shock of
giief. More than a year has been given to me for gradual
submission to the decree of Heaven. Now listen to me, and
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
J33
try te listen calmly. I am many years older than you, J
ought to know better the conditions on which man holds the
tenure of life. Life is composite, many-sided, nature does not
permit it to be lastingly monopolized by a single passion, or,
while yet in the prime of its strength, to be lastingly blighted
by a single sorrow. Survey the great mass of our common
race, engaged in the various callings, some the humblest, some
the loftiest, by which the business of the world is carried on,
—can you justly despise as heartless the poor trader, or the
great statesman, when, it may be but a few days after the loss
of some one nearest and dearest to his heart, the trader re¬
opens his shop, the statesman reappears in his oflSce ? But
in me, the votary of art, in me you behold but the weakness
of gratified vanity—if I feel joy in the hope that my art may
triumph, and my country may add my name to the list of
those who contribute to her renown—where and when ever
lived an artist not sustained by that hope, in privation, in
sickness, in the sorrows he must share with his kind ? N or
is this hope that of a feminine vanity, a sicklier craving for
applause: it identifies itself with glorious services to our
land, to our race, to the children of all after-time. Our art
cannot triumph, our name cannot live, unless we achieve a
something that tends to beautify or ennoble the world in
which we accept the common heritage of toil and of sorrow,
in order, therefrom, to work out for successive multitudes a
recreation and a joy."
While the artist thus spoke, Kenelm lifted towards his face
eyes charged with suppressed tears. And the face, kindling
as the artist vindicated himself from the young man's bitter
334
kenblm chillinqly.
charge, became touchingly sweet in its grave expression at the
close of the not ignoble defense.
" Enough," said Kenelm, rising. " There is a ring of truth
in what you say. I can conceive the artist's, the poet's, escape
from this world when all therein is death and winter, into the
world he creates and colors at his will with the hues of sum¬
mer. So, too, I can conceive how the man whose life is
sternly fitted into the grooves of a trader's calling, or a states¬
man's duties, is home on by the force of custom afar from such
brief halting-spot as a grave. But I am no poet, no artist, no
trader, no statesman ; I have no calling, my life is fixed into
no grooves. Adieu."
" Hold a moment. Not now, but somewhat later, ask your¬
self whether any life can be permitted to wander in space, a
monad detached from the lives of others. Into some groove
or other, sooner or later, it must settle, and be borne on
obedient to the laws of nature and the responsibility to God."
CHAPTER XIII.
Kenelm went hack aJone, and with downcast looks, through
ihe desolate flowerless garden, when at the other side of the
gate a light touch was laid on his arm. He looked up, and
recognized Mrs. Cameron.
"I saw you," she said, "from my window ccming to the
house, and I have been waiting for you here. I wished to
speak to you alone. Allow me to walk beside you "
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
335
Kenelm inclined his head assentingly, but made no
answer.
They were nearly midway between the cottage and the
burial-ground when Mrs. Cameron resumed, her tones quick
and agitated contrasting her habitual languid quietude :
" I have a great weight on my mind ; it ought not to be
remorse. I acted as I thought in my conscience for the best.
But oh, Mr. Chillingly, if I erred—if I judged wrongly, do
say you at least forgive me." She seized his hand, pressing
it convulsively. Kenelm muttered inaudibly—a sort of dreary
stupor had succeeded to the intense excitement of grief. Mrs.
Cameron went on :
" You could not have married Lily—^you know you could
not. The secret of her birth could not, in honor, have been
concealed from your parents. They could not have con¬
sented to your marriage; and even if you had persisbnl,
without that consent and in spite of that secret, to press for
it—even had she been yours "
" Might she not be living now ?" cried Kenelm, fiercely,
"No—no; the secret must have come out. The cruel
world would have discovered it; it would have reached her
ears. The shame of it would have killed her. How bitter
then would have been her short interval of life ! As it is,
she passed away—resigned and happy. But I own that 1
did not, could not, understand her, could not believe her feel¬
ing for you to be so deep. I did think that, when she knew
her own heart, she would find that love for her guardian was
its strongest affection. She assented, apparently without a
pang, to become his wife ; and she seemed always so fond of
336
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
him, and what girl would not be ? But I was mistaken—
deceived. From the day you saw her last, she began to fade
away ; but then Walter left a few days after, and I thought
that it was his absence she mourned. She never owned to
me that it was yours—never till too late—too late—just when
jay sad letter had summoned him back only three days before
she died. Had I known eajlier while yet there was hope of
recovery, I must have written to you, even though the ob¬
stacles to your union with her remained the same. Oh, again
Í implore you, say that if I erred you forgive me. She did,
kissing me so tenderly. She did forgive me. WiU not you ?
It would have been her wish."
" Her wish ? Do you think I could disobey it ? I know
not if I have anything to forgive. If I have, how could I
not forgive one who loved her ? God comfort us both !"
He bent down and kissed Mrs. Cameron's forehead. The
poor woman threw her arms gratefully, lovingly round him,
and burst into tears.
When she had recovered her emotion, she said :
" And now, it is with so much lighter a heart that I can
fulfill her commission to you. But, before I place this in
your hands, can you make me one promise? Never tell Mel¬
ville how she loved you. She was so careful he should never
guess that. And if he knew it was the thought of union
with him which had killed her, he would never smile again."
" You would not ask such a promise if you could guesœ
how sacred from all the world I hold the secret that you eon-
fide to me. By that secret the grave is changed into an altar.
Our bridals now are only awhile deferred."
kenelm chillingly
337
Mrs. Cameron placed a letter in Kenelm's Land, and, mur¬
muring in accents broken by a sob, " Sbe gave it to me tbe
day before ber last," left bim, and witb quick vacillating steps
Lurried back towards tbe cottage. Sbe now understood him,
at last, too well not to feel tbat on opening tbat letter be must
be alone with tbe dead.
It is strange tbat we need Lave so little practical bousebold
knowledge of each other to be in love. Never till then bad
Kenelm's eyes rested upon Lily's handwriting. And be now
gazed at the formal address on tbe envelope with a sort of
awe. Unknown handwriting coming to bim from an unknown
world—delicate, tremulous handwriting—^handwriting not of
one grown up, yet not of a child who bad long to live.
He turned tbe envelope over and over—not impatiently as
does tbe lover whose heart beats at tbe sound of tbe approach¬
ing footstep, but lingeringly, timidly. He would not break
tbe seal.
He was now so near tbe burial-ground. Where should tbe
first letter ever received from ber—tbe sole letter be ever
could receive—be so reverentially, lovingly read, as at her
grave ?
He walked on to tbe burial-ground, sat down by tbe grave,
broke tbe envelope ; a poor little ring, witb a poor little single
turquoise, rolled out and rested at bis feet. The letter con¬
tained only these words :
" Tbe ring comes back to you. I could not live to marry
another. I never knew bow I loved you—till, till I began
to pray tbat you might not love me too much. Darling!
darling ! good-bye, darling !
"Lily.
vol. ii.—p 22
338
kenelm chillingly.
" Don't let Lion ever see this, or ever know what it says to
you. He is so good, and deserves to be so happy. Do you
remember the day of the ring ? Darling ! darling I"
CHAPTER XIY.
Somewhat more than another year has rolled away. It
is early spring in London. The trees in the parks and squares
are budding into leaf and blossom. Leopold Travers has had
a brief but serious conversation with his daughter, and is
now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful still,
Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself
scarcely less the fashion with the young then he was when
himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the
Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better look¬
ing, or talking with greater fluency on the topics which
interest his companions.
Cecilia is in the smaller drawing-room, which is exclusively
appropriated to her use—alone with Lady Glenalvon.
Lady Glenalvon.—" I own, my dear, dear Cecilia, that I
lunge myself at last on the side of your father. How earnestly
at one time I had hoped that Kenelm Chillingly might woo
and win the bride that seemed to me most fitted to adorn and
to cheer his life, I need not say. But when at Exmundham
he asked me to befriend his choice of another, to reconcile his
mother to that choice,—evidently not a suitable one,—I gave
kenelm chillingly.
339
him. up. And though that affair is at an end, he seems little
likely ever to settle down to practical duties and domestic
habits, an idle wanderer over the face of the earth, only heard
of in remote places and with strange companions. Perhaps
he may never return to England."
Cecilia.—" He is in England now, and in London."
Lady Glenalvon.—"You amaze me ! Who told you so ?"
Cecilia.—" His father, who is with him. Sir Peter called
yesterday, and spoke to me so kindly." Cecilia here turned
aside her face to conceal the tears that had started to her eyes.
Lady Glenalvon.—"Did Mr. Travers see Sir Peter? "
Cecilia.—" Yes; and I think it was something that passed
between them which made my father speak to me—for the
first time—^almost sternly."
Lady Glenalvon.—" In urging Gordon Chillingly's
suit."
Cecilia.—" Commanding me to reconsider my rejection
of it. He has contrived to fascinate my father."
Lady Glenalvon.—" So he has me. Of course you might
choose among other candidates for your hand one of much
higher worldly rank, of much larger fortune ; yet, as you have
already rejected them, Gordon's merits become still more
entitled to a fair hearing. He has already leapt into a posi¬
tion that mere rank and mere wealth cannot attain. Men of
all parties speak highly of his parliamentary abilities. He is
already marked in public opinion as a coming man—a future
minister of the highest grade. He has youth and good looks,
his moral character is without a blemish, yet his manners are
so free from affected austerity, so frank, so genial. Any
340
kenelm chillingly.
tfoman might be pleased with his companionship ; and you,
with your intellect, your culture ; you, so born for high station ;
you of all women might be proud to partake the anxieties of
his career and the rewards of his ambition."
Cecilia (clasping her hands tightly together).—" I cannot,
I cannot. He may be all you say—I know nothing against
Mr. Chillingly Gordon—but my whole nature is antagonistic
to his ; and even were it not so "
She stopped abruptly, a deep blush warming up her fair
face, and retreating to leave it coldly pale.
Lady Glenalvon (tenderly kissing her).—" You have
not, then, even yet conquered the first maiden fancy ; the un¬
grateful one is still remembered?"
Cecilia bowed her head on her friend's breast, and mur¬
mured imploringly, " Don't speak against him, he has been so
unhappy. How much he must have loved 1"
" But it is not you whom he loved."
" Something here, something at my heart, tells me that he
will love me yet ; and if not, I am contented to be his fnend."
CHAPTER XV.
While the conversation just related took place between
Cecilia and Lady Glenalvon, Gordon Chillingly was seated
alone with Mivers in the comfortable apartment of the cynical
old bachelor. Gordon had breakfasted with his kinsman, but
that meal was long o^er ; the two men having found much to
KENELM CHILLINGLT.
341
talk about on matters very interesting to the younger, nor
without interest to the elder one.
It is true that Chillingly Gordon had, within the very
short space of time that had elapsed since his entrance into
the House of Commons, achieved one of those reputations
which mark out a man for early admission into the progressive
career of office—not a very showy reputation, hut a very solid
one. He had none of the gifts of the genuine orator, no
enthusiasm, no imagination, no imprudent hursts of fiery
words from a passionate heart. But he had all the gifts of
an exceedingly telling speaker—clear, metallic voice ; well-
bred, appropriate action, not less dignified for being somewhat
too quiet; readiness for extempore replies; industry and
method for prepared expositions of principle or fact. But his
principal merit with the chiefs of the assembly was in the
strong good sense and worldly tact which made him a safe
speaker. For this merit he was largely indebted to his
frequent conferences with Chillingly Mivers. That gentle¬
man, owing whether to his social qualities or to the influence
of "The Londoner" on public opinion, enjoyed an intimate
acquaintance with the chiefs of all parties, and was up to his
ears in the wisdom of the world. "Nothing," he would say,
" hurts a young Parliamentary speaker like violence in
opinion, one way or the other. Shun it. Always allow that
much may he said on both sides. When the chiefs of your
own side suddenly adopt a violence, you can go with them or
against them, according as best suits your own book."
" So," said Mivers, reclined on his sofa, and approaching
the end of his second trabuco (he never allowed himself mora
342
KENEL» CHILLINGLY.
tïian two), " so I think we have pretty well settled the tone
you mLst take in your speech to-night. It is a great occa¬
sion."
" True. It is the ßrsf time in which the debate has been
arranged so that I may speak at ten o'clock or later. That in
itself is a great leap ; and it is a Cabinet minister whom I am
to answer—^luckily, he is a very dull fellow. Do you think I
might hazard a joke—at least a witticism ?"
" At his expense ? Decidedly not. Though his office
compels him to introduce this measure, he was by no means
in its favor when it was discussed in the Cabinet; and though,
as you say, he is dull, it is precisely that sort of dullness
which is essential to the formation of every respectable Cabi¬
net. Joke at him, indeed ! Learn that gentle dullness never
loves a joke—at its own expense. Vain man ! seize the occa¬
sion which your blame of his measure affords you to secure
his praise of yourself : compliment him. Enough of politics.
It never does to think too much over what one has already
decided to say. Brooding over it, one may become too much
in earnest, and commit an indiscretion. So Kenelm has come
back?"
"Yes. I heard that news last night, at White's, from
Travers. Sir Peter had called on Travers."
" Travers still favors your suit to the heiress ?"
"More, I think, than ever. Success in Parliament has
great effect on a man who has success in fashion and re¬
spects the opinion of clubs. But last night he was unusually
cordial. Between you and me, I think he is a little afraid
tliat Kenelm may yet be my rival. I gathered that from a
KENELM CHILLINaLY.
343
hint he let fall of the unwelcome nature of Sir Peter's talk to
him."
" Why has Travers conceived a dislike to poor Kenelm ?
He seemed partial enough to him once."
" Ay, but not as a son-in-law, even before I had a chance
oí becoming so. And when, after Kenelm appeared at Ex-
inundham while Travers was staying there. Travers learned,
I suppose from Lady Chillingly, that Kenelm had fallen in
love with and wanted to marry some other girl, who it seems
rejected him, and still more when he heard that Kenelm had
been subsequently traveling on the Continent in company
with a low-lived fellow, the drunken, riotous son of a farrier,
you may well conceive how so polished and sensible a man as
Leopold Travers would dislike the idea of giving his daughter
to one so little likely to make an agreeable son-in-law. Bah !
I have no fear of Kenelm. By the way, did Sir Peter say if
Kenelm bad quite recovered his health ? He was at death's
door some eighteen months ago, when Sir Peter and Lady
Chillingly were summoned to town by the doctors."
" My dear Gordon, I fear there is no chance of your suc¬
cession to Exmundham. Sir Peter says that his wandering
Hercules is as stalwart as ever, and more equable in tempera¬
ment, more taciturn and grave—in short, less odd. But when
you say you have no fear of Kenelm's rivalry, do you mean
only as to Cecilia Travers ?"
" Neither as to that nor as to anything in life ; and as to
the succession to Exmundham, it is his to leave as he pleases,
and I have cause to think he would never leave it to me.
More likely to Parson John or the parson's son—or why not
344 K^NELM CniLLINOLT.
to yourself? I often think that for the prizes immediately
set before my ambition I am better off without land : land is
a great obfuscator."
" Humph, there is some truth in that. Yet the fear of
land and obfuscation does not seem to operate against your
?uit to Cecilia Travers ?"
" Her father is likely enough to live till I may he contented
to ' rest and be thankful' in the upper house ; and I should
not like to be a landless peer."
"You are right there; but I should tell you that, now
Kenelm has come hack. Sir Peter has set his heart on his
son's being your rival."
" For Cecilia ?"
"Perhaps; hut certainly for Parliamentary reputation.
The senior member for the county means to retire, and Sir
Peter has been urged to allow his son to be brought forward—•
from what I hear, with the certainty of success."
" What ! in spite of that wonderful speech of his on coming
of age ?"
" Pooh ! that is now understood to have been but a had
joke on the new ideas and their organs, including ' The
Londoner But if Kenelm does come into the House, if
will not he on your side of the question ; and unless I greatly
overrate his abilities—which very likely I do—he will not be
a rival to despise. Except, indeed, that he may have one
fault which in the present day would he enough to unfit him
for public life."
" And what is that fault ?"
" Treasov to the blood of the Chillinglys. This is the age,
kenelm chillinglt.
345
in England, when one cannot be too mneh of a Chillingly. I
fear that if Kenelm does become bewildered by a political
abstraction—call it no matter what, say, ' love of his country,'
or some such old-fashioned crotchet—fear—greatly fear—
that he may be—in earnest."
CHAPTER THE LAST.
It was a field night in the House of Commons—an ad¬
journed debate, opened by George Belvoir, who had been,
the last two years, very slowly creeping on in the favor, or
rather the indulgence, of the House, and more than justifying
Kenelm's prediction of his career. Heir to a noble name and
vast estates, extremely hard-working, very well informed, it
was impossible that he should not creep on. That night he
spoke sensibly enough, assisting his memory by frequent
references to his notes ; listened to courteously, and greeted
with a faint " Hear 1 hear !" of relief when he had done.
Then the House gradually thinned till nine o'clock, at
which hour it became very rapidly crowded. A Cabinet min¬
ister had solemnly risen, deposited on the table before him a
formidable array of printed papers, including a corpulent blue
book. Leaning his arm on the red box, he commenced with
this awe-compelling sentence ;
"Sir,—I join issue with the right honorable gentleman
opposite. He says this is not raised as a party question. I
r*
34G
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
deny it. Her Majesty's Government are put upon theh
trial."
Here there were cheers, so loud, and so rarely greeting a
speech from that Cabinet minister, that he was put out, and
had much to "hum" and to "ha," before he could recover
the thread of his speech. Then he went on, with unbroken
but lethargic fluency; read long extracts from the public
papers, inflicted a whole page from the blue hook, wound up
with a peroration of respectable platitudes, glanced at the
clock, saw that he had completed the hour which a Cabinet
minister who does not profess to be oratorical is expected to
speak, but not to exceed, and sat down.
Up rose a crowd of eager faces, from which the Speaker, as
previously arranged with the party whips, selected one—a
young face, hardy, intelligent, emotionless.
I need not say that it was the face of Chillingly Gordon.
His position that night was one that required dexterous
management and delicate tact. He habitually supported the
Government ; his speeches had been hitherto in their favor.
On this occasion he differed from the Government. The
difference was known to the chiefs of the opposition, and
hence the arrangement of the whips, that he should speak for
the first time after ten o'clock, and for the first time in reply
to a Cabinet minister. It is a position in which a young
party man makes or mars his future. Chillingly Gordon
spoke from the third row behind the Government ; he had
been duly cautioned by Mivers not to affect a conceited in¬
dependence, or an adhesion to " violence" in ultra-liberal
opinions, by seating himself below the gangway. Speaking
KENELM CHILLINÖLT.
347
thus, amid the rank and file of the Ministerial supporters,
any opinion at variance with the mouth-pieces of the Treasury
bench would be sure to produce a more effective sensation
than if delivered from the ranks of the mutinous Bashi
Bazouks divided by the gangway from better disciplined
forces. His first brief sentences enthralled the House, con¬
ciliated the Ministerial side, kept the opposition side in
suspense. The whole speech was, indeed, felicitously adroit,
an(î especially in this, that while in opposition to the Govern-
ment as a whole, it expressed the opinions of a powerful
section of the Cabinet, which, though at present a minority,
yet, being the most enamored of a New Idea, the progress
of the age would probably render a safe investment for the
confidence which honest Gordon reposed in its chance of
beating its colleagues.
It was not, however, till Gordon had concluded, that the
cheers of his audience—impulsive and hearty as are the cheers
of that assembly when the evidence of intellect is unmis¬
takable—made manifest to the Gallery and the reporters the
full effect of the speech he had delivered. The chief of the
opposition whispered to his next neighbor, " I wish we could
get that man." The Cabinet minister whom Gordon had
answered—^more pleased with a personal compliment to him¬
self than displeased with an attack on the measure his oflice
compelled him to advocate—whispered to his chief, " That is
a man we must not lose."
Two gentlemen in the Speaker's gallery, who had sat there
from the opening of the debate, nuw quitted their places.
Coming into the lobby, they found themselves commingled
348
KENELM CHILLINQLT.
with a crowd of members who had also quitted their seats,
after Gordon's speech, in order to discuss its merits, as they
gathered round the refreshment-table for oranges or soda-
water. Among them was George Belvoir, who on sight of
the younger of the two gentlemen issuing from the Speaker's
gallery, accosted him with friendly greeting :
" Ha ! Chillingly, how are you? Did not know you were
in town. Been here all the evening? Yes ; very good debate.
How did you like Gordon's speech?"
" I liked yours much better."
" Mine 1" cried George, very much flattered and very much
surprised. " Oh I mine was a mere humdrum aflair, a plain
statement of the reasons for the vote I should give. And
Gordon's was anything but that. You did not like his
opinions?"
" I don't know what his opinions are. But I did not like
his ideas."
" I don't quite understand you. What ideas ?"
" The new ones ; by which it is shown how rapidly a great
State can be made small."
Here Mr. Belvoir was taken aside by a brother member,
on an important matter to be brought before the committee
on salmon-fisheries, on which they both served ; and Kenelm,
with his companion. Sir Peter, threaded his way through the
crowded lobby, and disappeared. Emerging into the broad
space, with its lofty clock-tower. Sir Peter halted, and, point¬
ing towards the old Abbey, half in shadow, half in light,
under the tranquil moonbeams, said :
" It tells much for the duration of a people, when it accorda
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
349
with the instinct of immortality in a man ; when an honored
tomb is deemed recompense for the toils and dangers of a noble
life. How much of the history of England Nelson summed
up in the simple words, ' Victory or Westminster Abbey.' 1"
" Admirably expressed, my dear father," said Kenelm briefly.
" I agree with your remark, which I overheard, on Gor¬
don's speech," resumed Sir Peter. " It was wonderfully
clever; yet I should have been sorry to hear you speak
it. It is not by such sentiments that Nelsons become great.
If such sentiments should ever be national, the cry will not
be ' Victory or Westminster Abbey !' but ' Defeat and the
Three per Cents !' "
Pleased with his own unwonted animation, and with the
sympathizing half-smile on his son's taciturn lips. Sir Peter
then proceeded more immediately to the subjects which pressed
upon his heart. Gordon's success in Parliament, Gordon's
suit to Cecilia Travers, favored, as Sir Peter had learned, by
her father, rejected as yet by herself, were somehow insepara¬
bly mixed up in Sir Peter's mind and his words, as he sought
to kindle his son's emulation. He dwelt on the obligations
which a country imposed on its citizens, especially on the
young and vigorous generation to which the destinies of those
to follow were intrusted ; and with these stern obligations ho
combined all the cheering and tender associations which an
English public man connects with an English home: the
wife with a smile to soothe the cares, and a mind to share the
aspirations, of a life that must go through labor to achieve r^
nown ; thus, in all he said, binding together, as if they could
not be disparted. Ambition and Cecilia.
350
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
His son did not interrupt him by a word ; Sir Peter in his
eagerness not noticing that Kenelm had drawn him "aside from
the direct thoroughfare, and had now made halt in the middle
of Westminster Bridge, bending over the massive parapet and
gazing abstractedly upon the waves of the starlit river. On
the right the stately length of the people's legislative palace,
«) new in its date, so elaborately in each detail ancient in its
form, stretching on towards the lowly and jagged roofs of
penury and crime. Well might these he so near to the halls
of a people's legislative palace ;—near to the heart of every
legislator for a people must be the mighty problem how to in¬
crease a people's splendor and its virtue, and how to diminish
its penury and its crime.
" How strange it is," said Kenelm, still bending over the
parapet, " that throughout all my desultory wanderings I
have ever been attracted towards the sight and the sound of
running waters, even those of the humblest rill ! Of what
thoughts, of what dreams, of what memories, coloring the
history of my past, the waves of the humblest rill could speak,
were the waves themselves not such supreme philosophers—'
roused indeed on their surface, vexed by a check to their own
course, but so indifierent to all that makes gloom or death to
the mortals who think and dream and feel beside their banks."
" Bless me," said Sir Peter to himself, " the boy has got back
to his old vein of humors and melancholies. He has not heard
a word I have been saying. Travers is right. He will never
do anything in life. Why did I.christen him Kenelm ? he
might as well have been christened Peter." Still, loath to own
that his eloquence had been expended in vain, and that tho
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
351
wish of his heart was doomed to expire disappointed, Sii
Peter said aloud, "You have not listened to what I said;
Kenelm, you grieve me."
" Grieve you 1 you ! do not say that, father, dear father.
Listen to you ! Every word you have said has sunk into the
deepest deep of my heart. Pardon my foolish purposeless
snatch of talk to myself : it is but my way, only my way, dear
father !"
" Boy, boy," cried Sir Peter, with tears in his voice, " if
you could get out of those odd ways of yours I should be s«
thankful. But if you cannot, nothing you can do shall grieve
me. Only, let me say this : running waters have had a great
charm for you. With a humble rill you associate thoughts,
dreams, memories in your past. But now you halt by the
stream of the mighty river—^before you the senate of an
empire wider than Alexander's, behind you the market of a
commerce to which that of Tyre was a pitiful trade. Look
farther down, those squalid hovels, how much there to redeem
or to remedy ; and out of sight, but not very distant, the
nation's Walhalla: 'Victory or Westminster Abbey I' The
humble rill has witnessed your past. Has the mighty river no
effect on your future? The rill keeps no record of your past,
shall the river keep no record of your future ? Ah, boy, boy, I
see you are dreaming still—no use talking. Let us go home."
" I was not dreaming ; I was telling myself that the time
had come to replace the old Kenelm with the new ideas, by a
New Kenelm with the Ideas of Old. Ah ! perhaps we must
—at whatever cost to ourselves,—we must go through the
romance of life before we clearly detect what is grand in its
352
KENELM CHILLINGLY.
realities. I can no longer lament that I stand estranged from
the objects and pursuits .of my race. I have learned how
much I have with them in common. I have known love ; I
have known sorrow."
Kcnelm paused a moment, only a moment, then lifted the
head which, during that pause, had drooped, and stood erect
at the full height of his stature ; startling his father by the
change that had passed over his face ; lip—eye—^his whole
aspect eloquent with a resolute enthusiasm, too grave to be
the flash of a passing moment.
"Ay, ay," he said, " Victory or "Westminster Abbey ! The
world is a battle-field in which the worst wounded are the
deserters, stricken as they seek to fly, and hushing the groans
that would betray the secret of their inglorious hiding-place.
The pain of wounds received in the thick of the fight is
scarcely felt in the joy of service to some honored cause, and
is amply atoned by the reverence for noble scars. My choice
is made. Not that of deserter, that of soldier in the ranks."
" It will not be long before you rise from the ranks, my
boy, if you hold fast to the Idea of Old, symbolized in the
English battle-ciy : ' Victory or Westminster Abbey.' "
So saying. Sir Peter took his son's arm, leaning on it
proudly; and so, into the crowded thoroughfares, from the
halting-place on the modern bridge that spans the legendary
river, passes the Man of the Young Generation to fates be¬
yond the verge of the horizon to which the eyes of my genera¬
tion must limit their wistful gaze.
THE END.
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