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KENELM CHILLINGLY
HIS ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS
BY
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(LORD LYTTON)
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.R.S. and F.A.S., was
the 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, but 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 respects 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
rounding 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 honours, 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
/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-colours--well enough to amuse herself. She knew French and
Italian with an elegance 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 accomplished 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 years Lady Chillingly
gave way to Sir Peter; households so managed go on regularly. The
exception to their connubial happiness was, after all, but of a
negative description. Their affection was such that they sighed for a
pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady Chillingly remained
unvisited by the little stranger.
Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter's estates passed to a distant
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 neighbouring
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 Sir Peter Chillingly
lamented the absence of the little stranger. Although belonging to
that class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners
deny the intelligence vouchsafed 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 till 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 declared 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 entbroned 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 a thriving baby, a fine baby.
Nevertheless, its aspect awed the father as already it had awed the
nurse. The creature looked so unutterably solemn. It fixed its eyes
upon Sir Peter with a melancholy reproachful stare; its lips were
compressed and drawn downward as if discontentedly meditating its
future destinies. The nurse declared in a frightened whisper that it
had uttered no cry on facing the light. It had taken possession of
its cradle in all the dignity of silent sorrow. A more saddened and a
more thoughtful countenance 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 solitude 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 neighbouring 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."
CHAPTER II.
A FAMILY council was held at Exmundham 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 with out 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 Charterhouse School, at
which illustrious academy he obtained no remarkable distinction.
Nevertheless, as soon as he left it the State took him under its
special care, and appointed him to a clerkship in a public office.
From that moment he continued to get on in the world, and was now a
Commissioner of Customs, with a salary of L1500 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 L2000 a year.
A few months after his marriage, Chillingly Gordon effected insurances
on his wife's life, so as to secure himself an annuity of L1000 a year
in case of her decease. As she appeared to be 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-sacrifice 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 affectionately 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
L2500 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.
He had 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 rudeness, so he was seldom contradicted.
Mr. Chillingly Mivers, another cadet of the house, was also
distinguished, but in a different way. He was a bachelor, now about
the 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 journal called "The Londoner," which had
lately been set up on that principle of contempt, and we need not say,
was exceedingly popular with those leading members of the community
who admire nobody and believe in nothing. Mr. Chillingly 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, Shakspeare,
Cervantes, 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;
namely, a very clever man, and by no means an unpleasant one in
general society.
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was a decided adherent 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 intervenes 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 purpose of arguing with them on
the truths of Christianity, and a certain knight, who was at that time
crippled, and supporting himself on crutches, asked and obtained
permission to be present at the debate. The Jews flocked to the
summons, when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him
the leading question whether he owned the divine conception of our
Lord. "Certainly not," replied the rabbi; whereon the pious knight,
shocked by such blasphemy, uplifted his crutch and felled the rabbi,
and then flung himself among the other misbelievers, whom he soon
dispersed in ignominious flight and in a very belaboured condition.
The conduct of the knight was reported to the sainted king, with a
request that it should be properly reprimanded; but the sainted king
delivered himself of this wise judgment:--
"If a pious knight is a very learned clerk, 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 Saint
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 some might have
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 Pope was 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
German, and was inclined to bore one about the "Hermann and Dorothea"
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, by 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 be 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 favourite colour 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 affectionate to each other and
their relations or favourites; very good to the poor, whom they looked
upon as a different order of creation, and treated with that sort of
benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals. 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 specimen
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 "were novels a father might allow his
daughters to read." But though an ordinary observer might have failed
to recognize any distinction between 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
commanding one of the three; it was she who regulated their household
(they all lived together), kept the joint purse, 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.
Miss Sibyl was of milder nature and more melancholy temperament; she
had a poetic turn of mind, and occasionally 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 characterized 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 sufficiently
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 diminutive
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-fashioned, red-brick house, with a large garden at the back, in
the principal street of the capital of their native county. They had
each L10,000 for portion; and if he could have married all three, the
heir-at-law would have married them, and settled the aggregate L30,000
on himself. But we have 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 prejudices of
our ancestors may not be achieved by the wisdom of our descendants!
CHAPTER III.
SIR PETER stood on his hearthstone, surveyed the guests 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. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--"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 course we 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! he!"
MISS MARGARET.--"For shame, you giddy thing!"
The Baby enters in the nurse's arms. All rise and gather round the
Baby with one exception,--Mr. Gordon, who has ceased to be
heir-at-law.
The Baby returned the gaze of its relations with the most contemptuous
indifference. Miss Sibyl was the first to pronounce 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 REV. 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! 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 affairs of a
family who had so ill-treated him in the birth of that Baby, had taken
up the "Times" newspaper and concealed 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 off! I never kissed my own baby: I shall not kiss
another man's. Take the thing away, sir: it is ugly; it has black
eyes."
Sir Peter, who 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 Chillingly that ever had black
eyes."
"Its mamma has black eyes," said Miss Margaret: "it takes after its
mamma; it has not the fair beauty of the Chillinglys, but it is not
ugly."
"Sweet infant!" 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."
She took the Baby from the Parson's arms, and smoothed back the frill
of its cap, which had got ruffled.
"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 the 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 into his
titular designation, disappears. In the case of a Mister, if his
baptismal be cacophonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not
ostentatiously parade it: he may drop it altogether on his visiting
cards, and may be imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezer
Jones. In his signature, save where the forms of the law demand
Ebenezer in full, he 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 hypocrite; 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
thoughtfully considered: the effect that his name produces on the 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-born 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,
distinguished 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 Peter, except Sir Peter
Teazle, and he only exists on the comic stage."
MISS SIBYL.--"Sir Peter Lely?"
SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.--"That painter was not an Englishman. He was
born 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 extinguisher 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 Englishman, he could
have been the father of European tragedy as Peter Crow?"
MISS SIBYL.--"Impossible!"
MISS SALLY.--"He! he!"
MISS MARGARET.--"There is nothing to laugh at, you giddy child!"
SIR PETER.--"My son shall not be petrified into Peter."
MR. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--"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 turn 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 crush him beneath the weight. If a poet were
called John Milton or William Shakspeare, he could not dare to publish
even a sonnet. No: the choice of a name lies between the two extremes
of ludicrous insignificance and oppressive renown. For this reason I
have ordered the family pedigree to be suspended on yonder wall. Let
us examine it with care, and see whether, among the Chillinglys
themselves or their alliances, we can discover a name that can be
borne with becoming 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 /azure/; the crest a mermaid'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
Rev. John Stalworth. "They are certainly not pike which formed the
emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to
frighten future Shakspeares 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, Mivers; the fishes are dace, a fish that, once
introduced into any pond, never can be got out again. 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
Heptarchy have left the Chillinglys the same race in the same place.
Somehow or other the Norman Conquest did not despoil them; they held
fiefs under Eudo Dapifer as peacefully 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 the First and the
Parliament. As the dace sticks to the water and the water sticks by
the dace, so the Chillinglys stuck to the land and the land stuck by
the Chillinglys. Perhaps I am wrong to wish that the new Chillingly
may be a little less like a dace."
"Oh!" cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had been
inspecting the pedigree through an eye-glass, "I don't see a fine
Christian name from the beginning, except Oliver."
SIR PETER.--"That Chillingly was born in Oliver Cromwell's
Protectorate, and named Oliver in compliment to him, as his father,
born 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 Kenelm!"
"A sweet name," said Miss Sibyl: "it breathes of romance."
"Sir Kenelm Chillingly! It sounds well,--imposing!" said Miss
Margaret.
"And," remarked Mr. Mivers, "it has this advantage--that while it has
sufficient association with honourable distinction 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 accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his
silly superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays
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 be; and I
should wish my heir not to be led away by beauty but wed a woman of
respectable character and decorous conduct."
Miss MARGARET.--"A British matron, of course!"
THREE SISTERS (in chorus).--"Of course! of course!"
"But," resumed Sir Peter, "I am crotchety myself, and crotchets 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 any family might be proud of; and, as you say, sister
Margaret, Kenelm Chillingly does not sound amiss: Kenelm Chillingly it
shall be!"
The Baby was accordingly christened Kenelm, after which ceremony its
face grew longer than before.
CHAPTER V.
BEFORE his relations dispersed, Sir Peter summoned Mr. Gordon into his
library.
"Cousin," 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 exhibit 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 income; 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 something 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 his 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 infants
die before attaining the age of twenty-one."
"Nay, but I am told your son is an uncommonly fine healthy child."
"My son, Cousin Peter! 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 will excuse me if I still keep a watchful eye on my rights;
and, however painful to my feelings, I must still dispute your right
to cut a stick of the field timber."
"That is nonsense, Gordon. I am tenant for life without 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 for me
and mine to be influenced by a decree of the Court of Chancery. But
my fly is waiting. I must not miss the train."
"Well, good-by, Gordon. Shake hands."
"Shake hands!--of course, of course. By the by, as I came through the
lodge, it seemed to me sadly out of repair. I believe you are liable
for dilapidations. Good-by."
"The man is a hog in armour," 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 armour 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 Gordon; poor fellow! poor fellow! Still I hope he will not go to
law with me. I hate law. And a worm will turn, especially a worm
that is put into Chancery."
CHAPTER VI.
DESPITE the sinister semi-predictions of the /ci-devant/ heir-at-law,
the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed with dignity,
through the infant stages of existence. He 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 humanity. 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 reflect the
more. He observed closely and pondered deeply over what he observed.
At the age of eight he began to converse more freely, and it was in
that year that he startled his mother with the question, "Mamma, are
you not sometimes 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 question 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 talking 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.'"
CHAPTER VII.
SIR PETER ordered his carriage and drove 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 of the cousins with whom
Sir Peter habitually communed on his domestic affairs.
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 exercise of single-stick;
cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up the 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 book-cases containing miscellaneous works very handsomely
bound; at the open window, a stand of flower-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 Kenelm Chillingly. "You see
the name begins to work on him rather too much. He must go to school;
and now what school shall it be? Private or public?"
THE REV. 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 altogether. 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
development 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 reckless 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 drawbacks. 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
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 which 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 learning embraces all
literature, ancient and modern. He is a good writer and a fine
critic; admires Wordsworth. He winks at fighting: his boys know how
to use their fists; and they are not in the habit of signing
post-obits before they are fifteen. Merton 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 irresolute 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."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Merton School, 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 reverend 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 my 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 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, I 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 challenge 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! Pooh! 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 astounded 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
Christianity 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, but took
that opportunity to put on his coat, and said, "We'll begin again
to-morrow. Now, come to breakfast." But during breakfast Kenelm's
face still betrayed dejection, and he talked little and ate less.
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 me your hand, my boy!" cried the Parson, transported. "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 to 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 multiplication 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 applies equally to the
use of your fists. Do you comprehend me?"
"Yes, sir; I do now."
"In the time of your namesake, Sir Kenelm Digby, gentlemen wore
swords, and they learned how to use them, because, in case of quarrel,
they had to fight with them. 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 knowledge is power. Come and
take another lesson on boxing to-morrow."
Kenelm remounted his pony and returned home. He found his father
sauntering in the garden with a book in his hand. "Papa," said
Kenelm, "how does 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 honour, 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, if he had not,
I should not have exercised the right. As he 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 lordship 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 of 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,--
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 Reverend John,--
DEAR SIR,--I have licked Butt. Knowledge is power.
Your affectionate KENELM.
P. S.--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 himself, 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 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 be will do nothing. Excuse the freedom with which I
write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which your son has
inspired me. I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,
Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.
Upon the 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 disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not
exactly in those words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly.
But Sir Peter invited Mr. Mivers for a week's shooting, and requested
the Reverend John to meet him.
Mr. Mivers arrived. The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was
first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his
appearance. It was one of his maxims 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 that
art in these words: "Begin your wig early, thus you never become
gray."
Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his
precepts; and while in the prime of youth inaugurated a wig in a
fashion that defied the flight of time, not curly and hyacinthine, but
straight-haired and unassuming. He looked 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 himself."
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
clockwork." 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 at a time in the country.
Take two men of similar constitution 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-grained and perhaps jowly."
A third axiom was, "Don't be 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 contents of a lady's imperials and
bonnet-boxes, and the travelling /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 off those of yesterday.
As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day."
Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivers 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 its varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks.
He drank even his 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 parlour, the
Parson in an armchair 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 a 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."
MIVERS (languidly).--"Ay."
SIR PETER.--"I ask you, as a man of the world, what you think I had
best 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's oddities are fine things in their way, and should
not be prematurely 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 tumbler of
toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great
Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, 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 cynicism," said the
Parson, "why did you ask to hear me?"
"That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you
were going to commence in that florid style? Morning of life indeed!
bosh!"
"Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing John's style
in 'The Londoner;' and I will beg you to remember that my son's
morning of life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped
in its bud by a cousin. Proceed, John!"
Quoth the Parson, good-humouredly, "I will adapt my style to the taste
of my critic. When a fellow is at the age of sixteen, 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 a while 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 standard when he goes into the world as
man. There are two schools of thought for the formation of
character,--the Real and the Ideal. I would form the character in the
Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and grander and lovelier when
it takes its place in that every-day life which is called 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 Mivers 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 of shoes, I decide
beforehand what kind of shoes 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 different purposes of locomotion to which leather can
be 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 50 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 yourself by saying how anything
can be done better."
"That is true," said Mivers, candidly. "The destructive order 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 turn rubbish into a building. We are
critics, and, as you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the
proposition of amendments that can be criticised by others.
Nevertheless, 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, as 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
comprehend, 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 generation 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 conceived 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, 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 unconsciously. 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 competent to select
it. There, I have talked myself out of breath. And you had better
decide at once in favour 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 argumentative
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 necessary reaction from the
special theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of
Christians to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists
will 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 Kenelm, as one of a family
all of whose members belong to the Established 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, Puseyite Church,
Ritualistic Church, or any other Established Church that may be coming
into fashion?"
"Pshaw!" 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,
eying Sir Peter sternly, and mechanically turning up his cuffs, "I
should /like/ to thrash him."
"Gently, John," said Sir Peter, recoiling; "gently, my dear kinsman.
My heir shall not be 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 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 difficulties; the estate was transferred to trustees for
the benefit of creditors, and on the payment of L400 a year to
himself. By this time he was married and had two children. He found
the necessity of employing his pen in order to add to his income, and
is one of the ablest contributors to the periodical press. He is an
elegant scholar, an effective 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 metaphysical
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."
CHAPTER X.
MR. WELBY arrived, and pleased everybody. A man of the happiest
manners, easy and courteous. There was no 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 by his comments
on Saint Chrysostom; he dazzled Sir Peter with his lore in the
antiquities of ancient Britain; he captivated Kenelm by 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, but not less instructive. Equally
at home in novels and in good books, he gave to the spinsters a list
of innocent works in either; while for Lady Chillingly he sparkled
with anecdotes of fashionable life, the newest /bons mots/, the latest
scandals. In fact, Mr. Welby 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 concealed by an even serenity
of spirits; he had entertained high and justifiable hopes of a
brilliant career and a lasting reputation 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 by his
own genial temperament into that lesser but pleasanter kind of
ambition which contents itself with social successes and enjoys the
present hour. When his circumstances compelled him to eke out his
income by literary profits, he slid into the grooves of periodical
composition, and resigned all thoughts of the labour required for any
complete work, which might take much time and be attended with scanty
profits. He still remained very popular in society, and perhaps his
general reputation 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 indifferent though
good-natured spectator regards the thronging streets from a
drawing-room window. He could not be called /blase/, but he was
thoroughly /desillusionne/. Once over-romantic, his character now was
so entirely imbued with the neutral tints of life that romance
offended his taste as an obtrusion of violent colour 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 polished
cruelty of sarcasm.
He came off with flying colours through an examination into his Church
orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir Peter. Amid a cloud of
ecclesiastical erudition, his own opinions vanished in those of the
Fathers. In truth, he was a Realist, in religion as in everything
else. He regarded Christianity as a type of existent civilization,
which ought to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types
of that civilization; such as the liberty of the press, the
representative system, white neckcloths and black coats of an evening,
etc. He belonged, therefore, to what he himself called the school of
Eclectical Christiology; and accommodated the reasonings of Deism to
the doctrines of the Church, if not as a creed, at least as an
institution. Finally, he united all the Chillingly votes in his
favour; and when he departed from the Hall carried off Kenelm for his
initiation into the new ideas that were to govern his generation.
CHAPTER XI.
KENELM remained a year and a half with this distinguished 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, counselled
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 at Merton School, and Kenelm had saved
his life from drowning. The poor boy died of consumption later, and
her grief for his loss made her affection for Kenelm yet more tender.
Lady Glenalvon was one of the queens of the London world. Though in
the fiftieth year she was still very handsome: she was also very
accomplished, very clever, and very kind-hearted, as some of such
queens are; just one of those women invaluable in forming the manners
and elevating the character 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 regular, but
picturesque, peculiar, with large dark expressive eyes, and a certain
indescribable combination of sweetness and melancholy in his quiet
smile. He never laughed audibly, 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 humour; but, save
for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said them 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 poetry 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
regularly, as the best gentleman boxer about town.
He made many acquaintances, but still formed no friendships. Yet
every one who saw him much conceived affection for him. If he did not
return that affection, he did not repel it. He was exceedingly gentle
in voice and manner, and had all his father's placidity of temper:
children and dogs took to him as by instinct.
On leaving Mr. Welby's, Kenelm 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 pugilistic renown; and on certain 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
distinction. 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 Merton School.
He had woven a solitude round him out of his own heart, and in that
solitude he sat still and watchful as a spider sits in his web.
Whether from natural temperament or from his educational 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, Kenelm'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 ambition,
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 aberration 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 youthful mind that, had he
been a Roman Catholic, he might have become a monk. Where he most
evinced ardour it was a logician's ardour 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, I entreat thee,
O candid reader (not that any reader ever is candid), to remember that
he is brimful of new ideas, which, met by a deep and hostile
undercurrent of old ideas, become more provocatively billowy and
surging.
CHAPTER XII.
THERE had been great festivities at Exmundham, in celebration of the
honour 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 revellers, 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 honours 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.
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 Chillinglys 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 born 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 born 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 with serene
analysis on the eulogies lavished on his father as man and landlord.
"As man," he said, "my father no doubt deserves all that can be said
by man in favour of man. But what, at the best, is man? A crude,
struggling, undeveloped embryo, of whom it is the highest attribute
that he feels a vague consciousness that he is only an embryo, and
cannot complete himself till he ceases to be a man; that is, until he
becomes another being in another form of existence. We can praise a
dog as a dog, because a dog is a completed /ens/, 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 examination of a mental
construction evidently designed for purposes that he can never fulfil
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 probability is that, some day or other, we
shall be 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 bestowed 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 he can possibly get from responsible competitors. Competitive
examination is the enlightened order of the day, even in professions
in which the best men would have qualities that defy examination. In
agriculture, happily, the principle of competitive examination is not
so hostile to the choice of the best man as it must be, for instance,
in diplomacy, where a Talleyrand 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,--barring those still more liberal who
deny that property in land is any property at all,--by this mode of
procedure, I say, a landlord does his duty to his country. He secures
tenants who can produce the most to the community by their capital,
tested through competitive examination in 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 induce 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 maximum of corn to the
consumer?
"With respect to myself," continued the orator, warming 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 contracted course of education, I have
obtained what are called 'honours' at the University of Cambridge; but
you must not regard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future
passage through life. Some of the most useless persons--especially
narrow-minded and bigoted--have acquired far higher honours at the
University than have fallen to my lot.
"I thank you no less for the civil things you have said of me and of
my family; but I shall endeavour 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
increase with our years that good health is scarcely compatible with
the decaying faculties of old age. Gentlemen, your good healths!"
CHAPTER XIII.
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 century. 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 boy?" 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 be found in these words, my dear; he needs amusement.
Voltaire says truly, 'Amusement is one of the wants of man.' And if
Kenelm could be amused like other people, he would be like other
people."
"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 animation 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 have
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, delivery, delivery,
is the art of oratory; and your delivery is 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,'--the art by which a man delivers a speech in a feigned
character, whence we get the word hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy,
hypocrisy! 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 by metaphor that you can twist the word 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 debut 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
commend to your son the adoption of deliberate falsehood for the gain
of a selfish advantage?"
"Deliberate falsehood! you impertinent puppy!"
"Puppy!" 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, unfolded her
parasol, and stalked away speechless.
"Now, look you, Kenelm," said Sir Peter, as soon as he had composed
himself. "These quips and humours of yours are amusing enough to an
eccentric man like myself, but they will not do for the world; and how
at your age, and with the rare advantages you have had in an early
introduction to the best intellectual society, under the guidance of a
tutor acquainted with the new ideas which are to influence the conduct
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
find 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 dare say it is very
pleasant. Real life is not; on the contrary--dull," and Kenelm yawned
again.
"Have you no young friends among your fellow-collegians?"
"Friends! 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?"
"No, I lived a good deal with Aristophanes, and a little with Conic
Sections and Hydrostatics."
"Books. Dry company."
"More innocent, at least, than moist company. Did you 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 succeeded, but I woke with
a headache. Real 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 travelling 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! 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 women?"
"Certainly. Do you object to my catching another trout?"
"Trout be--blessed, 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? 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! 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 apartments."
"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 running after
them."
"Very few fellows run after the females. I mean--rather avoid them."
"So much the better."
"No, my father, so much the worse; without an intimate 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 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?"
"Real 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 quarrelling."
"As you please. But you cannot go quite alone: I will find you a good
travelling-servant. I must write to town to-day about your
preparations, and in another week or so I hope all will be ready.
Your allowance will be whatever you like to fix it at; you have never
been extravagant, and--boy--I love you. Amuse yourself, enjoy
yourself, and come back cured of your oddities, but preserving your
honour."
Sir Peter bent down and kissed his son's brow. Kenelm 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.
CHAPTER 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 belvidere, 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 belvidere, and leaned his chin on his hand
in a thoughtful attitude. It was rarely that the building was
honoured by a human visitor: its habitual occupants were spiders. Of
those industrious insects it was a well-populated colony. Their webs,
darkened with dust and ornamented with the wings and legs and
skeletons of many an unfortunate traveller, clung thick to angle and
window-sill, festooned the rickety table on which the young man leaned
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 sure 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 creatures forms a community or
class, a secret element of disunion enters into the hearts of the
individuals forming the congregation, 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, I 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 more 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 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 difference of
race, creed, intellect, individual propensities and interests into the
construction of a single web, stocked as a larder in common!" 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 turn pikes at every eight miles.
A pleasant greensward bordered it on either side, and under the
belvidere the benevolence of some mediaeval Chillingly had placed a
little drinking-fountain for the refreshment of wayfarers. Close to
the fountain stood a rude stone bench, overshadowed by a large willow,
and commanding from the high table-ground on which it was placed a
wide view of cornfields, 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; then 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 colour. "'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 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:--
"Black 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 harmonize with the idea of a Ritter 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 proficient 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. He then called the dog by the name of
Max, and held the ladle for him to drink. Not till the animal had
satisfied his thirst did the master assuage his own. Then, lifting
his hat and bathing his temples and face, the pedestrian seated
himself 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 endeavouring to remember or to invent, 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-luck was too strong for me,
'And has galloped my steed away.'
That will do: good!"
"Good indeed! 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 wayfarer and beneath the bowery willow.
The 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 revery, which is common to the
temperaments of those who indulge in verse-making. But the loveliness
of the scene before him had caught his eye, and fixed it into an
intent gaze 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:
"but 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 present day,
considered very good, are uncommonly bad 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 very brief."
"That is much in their favour, and very unlike the poetry in fashion.
You do not belong, I think, to this neighbourhood. Are you and your
dog travelling far?"
"It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the summer. I am
travelling far, for I travel till September. Life amid summer fields
is a very joyous thing."
"Is it indeed?" said Kenelm, with much /naivete/. "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 absorbing occupation to those who practise it,--from our old
friend Horace, kneading laboured Alcaics into honey in his summer
rambles among the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal Richelieu,
employing himself on French rhymes in the intervals between chopping
off noblemen's heads. It does not seem to signify much whether the
verses be good or bad, so far as the pleasure of the verse-maker
himself is concerned; 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 education--"
"Say culture; that's the word in fashion nowadays."
"Well, 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."
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 summer walks, when you have Nature all to
yourself,--enjoyment in marking all the mobile evanescent changes in
her face,--her 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 machinery as if it were a
person of the feminine gender,--/her/ 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, therefore, that you have
some practical occupation which consumes 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 difference
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.
"I should be a churl indeed if your question could have given me
offence. 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-traveller 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 Nature,--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 contemplates: science turns all that is
already gifted with soul into matter. Good-day, sir."
Here Kenelm turned back abruptly, and the traveller 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 wanderer he had quitted. But the
man addicted to revery forms his own landscapes and colours his own
skies.
"It is," soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, "a strange yearning 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 can't get into another man's skin, the next best thing is to get as
unlike myself as I possibly 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 Kenelm 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:
you and I can but try."
For 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 travelling in style. The proud father was in active
correspondence with his great London friends, seeking letters of
introduction for Kenelm to 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 Kenelm 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 commence that search in my own way. I
have seen enough of ladies and gentlemen for the present: they must be
all very much alike in every part of the world. You desired me to be
amused. I go to try if that be possible. Ladies and gentlemen are
not amusing; the more ladylike or gentlemanlike 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 Blas, like Roderick Random;
like, in short, the only 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 dare say inexperience will do me out of it in a month, so
we will count it as nothing. 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 checks to the amount of five
pounds, and to the same amount monthly; namely, 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 neighbourhood
talking, by any mention either 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 you tell her the 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 I 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 required 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 I have
said, a learned man; he was also in some things a sensible 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 /she-baronety/.
Any one seeing her for the first time would intuitively say, "Your
ladyship." Was this a matron to be suppressed in 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
absconded with the family dignity invested in his very name, no
marital authority short of such abuses of power as constitute the
offence of cruelty in a wife's action for divorce from social board
and nuptial bed could prevent Lady Chillingly from summoning 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
hand-bills, "Strayed from his home," etc.; the police would be
telegraphing private instructions 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 DISAPPEARED." 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 on the terrace sufficed for the conception and
maturing of the fib selected; a proof that Sir Peter was a practised
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 Eugenie,--a good match indeed for Kenelm."
"I am glad you agree with me. Would it not be a favourable step
towards that alliance, and an excellent thing for Kenelm generally, if
he were to visit the Continent as one of the Duke's travelling 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."
Sir Peter stole softly from the room, and summoning his valet, said,
"I have sent Mr. Chillingly to London. Pack up the clothes he is
likely to want, so that he can have them sent at once, whenever he
writes for them."
And thus, by a judicious violation of truth on the part of his father,
that exemplary truth-teller Kenelm Chillingly saved the honour 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 DISAPPEARED."
BOOK II.
CHAPTER I.
KENELM CHILLINGLY had quitted the paternal home 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
itinerant 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 instance; that was the way in which he
got to heaven, as a foot-traveller. How solitary the world is at this
hour! 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. Up rose from the green blades of 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.
CHAPTER II.
ABOUT 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 observation. He had selected for his travelling costume a
shooting-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 labourer 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 game-keeper 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 woollen 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 the town,
and stopped at a humble inn at the outskirt, to which he was attracted
by the notice, "Refreshment for man and beast." He entered a little
sanded parlour, 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.
Thus 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 Suppression 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."
With light step and elated crest, the wanderer, thus transformed,
sprang from the wood into the dusty thoroughfare. He had travelled on
for about an hour, meeting but few other passengers, when he heard to
the right a loud shrill young voice, "Help! help! I 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 practised 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 worst
of it: the blow was parried, returned with a dexterous manoeuvre of
Kenelm's right foot in Cornish fashion, and /procumbit humi bos/; 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! save me! save me!" 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 and 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, whither 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 boy! I suppose that burly brute is your schoolmaster, and you
are running away home for fear of a flogging."
The boy burst 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 Richard III. was the only scholar in his family."
"Eh! classical and Richard III.!" 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 amused. What a blessing it is
to get into another man's skin, and another man's gig too!" Aloud,
"Here we are at the fingerpost. 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 fingerpost. 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 L10 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 your road."
"I have no road in particular, and would as soon go to Tor-Hadham,
which I have never seen, as anywhere else. I 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."
"Little gentleman," said Kenelm, gravely, "I am just of age, and you,
I suppose, are about fourteen."
"What fun!" 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 L10. 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 evidently in your confidence."
"Villain! he is the most honourable, 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 experience of real life in the skin of another had placed in
some peril his own. He had knocked down a man evidently respectable
and well to do, had carried off that man's nephew, and made free with
that man's goods and chattels; namely, his gig and horse. All this
might be explained satisfactorily to a justice of the peace, but how?
By returning to his former skin; by avowing himself to be Kenelm
Chillingly, a distinguished university medalist, heir to no ignoble
name and some L10,000 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 classic authorities in the
English language. He would have to explain how he came to be found
disguised, carefully disguised, 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 gold-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 /azure/, 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 entrance 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 /him/, a man who thought
himself so much wiser than his parents,--a man who had gained honours
at the University,--a man of the gravest temperament,--a man of so
nicely critical a turn of mind that there was not a law of art or
nature in which he did not detect 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 time, became
impish and Will-of-the-Wisp-ish. Sometimes he 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, withdrawing
his arm from the nudge, had answered dreamily, "Hush! 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-by."
"No, not good-by. 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 windings of his whimsical
humour, 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 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 am sure I can't say: I never was here before. Let us go 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 Triumphal Car up the Sacred Hill, presented an animated
appearance. The shops had handsome facades and plate-glass windows;
the pavements exhibited a lively concourse, evidently not merely of
business, but of pleasure, for a large 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!"
"There what is?" asked Kenelm,--"the inn?" His companion did not
answer, but Kenelm following the boy's eye perceived an immense
hand-bill.
"TO-MORROW NIGHT THEATRE OPENS.
"RICHARD III. Mr. COMPTON."
"Do 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 directed 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 questionable looking
public-house was apparent, until at a distance 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 funereal 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," replied Kenelm.
The boy put his hand upon the reins and stopped the cob. 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 comforting
drinks associated with the /beau ideal/ of a bar, but which displayed
instead two large decanters of cold water with tumblers /a 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 private room and a dinner?"
"Dinner!" echoed the hostess,--"dinner!"
"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 are 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 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 fermented liquors? Water will do very
well. And as for dinner,--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!" 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 indicated, 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 brute 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 intoxicating liquors upon sundry specimens of
mankind,--some resembling ghosts, others fiends, and all with a
general aspect of beggary and perdition; contrasted 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 Kenelm'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 ablution had refreshed from heat and dust the
delicate bloom of his complexion. There 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 dinner? and what are
they going to give us? No one seems to answer the bell here. As it
is a Temperance Hotel, probably 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, snivelling 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 Saint Augustine labelling
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 Saint Augustine, take my word
for it, that both those personages were very good fellows; and with a
little difference of training and experience, Burns might have written
the 'Confessions' and Augustine the poems. Powers above! 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 Saint
Augustine, now replied, with rather a deprecatory and shamefaced
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
something about--" here the boy hesitated.
"Yes. 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 Hyrcanian tiger. He turned his
countenance now on the boy, and murmuring "Cauliflower!--Starvation!"
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/ ungrateful. I'll run down and
see what there is;" and, suiting 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 preternaturally resolved. The appetite of all
men of powerful muscular development is of a nature far exceeding the
properties of any reasonable number of cauliflowers and rice-puddings
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.
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!" 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!"
At the word "philosophers" Kenelm's crest rose as that of a practised
hunter at the cry of "Yoiks! Tally-ho!" "Philosophers!" said he,
"philosophers indeed! O 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
riddance 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 trivial
evidence of man as compared with his teeth. Look at his teeth!"--here
Kenelm expanded his jaws from ear to ear and 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,"
continued Kenelm, closing his jaws, but advancing upon the infant, 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 formation 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!" 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!" clapping his hands
with a sensation of gleeful relief, "here come the mutton-chops!"
A wonderfully clean, well-washed, indeed well-washed-out, middle-aged
parlour-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 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, he is principally carnivorous. Tell
her that though a swine eats cabbages and such like, 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 parlour-maid paused a moment
and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably
sad and profound, and said mournfully, "I should be so sorry for the
baby. Bring the chops!" The parlour-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."
The parlour-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 animal; and stretching himself
indolently out, appeared to be as innocently ruminative as the most
domestic of animals graminivorous.
Then said the boy, rather timidly, "May I ask you another favour?"
"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 address of a
friend here; and when found to give him a note from me."
"Does the commission press? 'After dinner, rest a while,' 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 interesting! No, my
commission does not press for an hour or so. Do you think, sir, they
had any drama before the Deluge?"
"Drama! 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 Macbeth, from his youth to his old age, into an
absurd epitome of three hours. One cannot trace a touch of real human
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 sear and yellow leaf, he was
lopped off by Macduff."
"Do you think Macbeth was young when he murdered Duncan?"
"Certainly. 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 commencing 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,--Iago's age.
Twenty-eight is the usual close of the active season for getting 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 boy, evidently interested. "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!"
Kenelm, who had been hitherto rather talking to himself 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 became very flushed,
but set and defiant in its expression.
"And what if it were? would not you give it?"
"What! 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; but 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; but 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 boy had risen while he spoke, and he stood erect beside the
recumbent Kenelm, his lips quivering, his eyes suffused 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."
CHAPTER IV.
KENELM took his way to the theatre, and inquired of the door-keeper
for Mr. Herbert Compton. That functionary replied, "Mr. Compton does
not act to-night, and is not in the house."
"Where does he lodge?"
The door-keeper 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 Kenelm, 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 savoury 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 somewhat faded complexion, but still pretty, with good stage
features and a profusion of blond ringlets.
"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!" replied Kenelm; and then deepening his naturally
mournful voice into tones ominous and tragic, continued, "By whom you
are wanted let this explain;" therewith he placed in Mr. Compton's
hand the letter with which he was charged, and stretching his arms and
interlacing his fingers in the /pose/ of Talma as Julius Caesar,
added, "'Qu'en dis-tu, Brute?'"
Whether it was from the sombre aspect and awe-inspiring delivery 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 blond ringlets, in a tone of
stinging affability: "read your /billet-doux/; don't keep the young
man waiting, love!"
"Nonsense, Matilda, nonsense! /billet-doux/ indeed! more likely a bill
from Duke the tailor. Excuse me for a moment, my dear. Follow me,
sir," and rising, still with shirtsleeves uncovered, he quitted the
room, closing the door after him, motioned Kenelm into a small parlour
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, how
very absurd! what's to be done?" Then, thrusting the letter into his
trousers-pocket, he fixed upon Kenelm a very 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."
Mr. 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
bell-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 from the house."
"Certainly not, certainly not; quite the contrary," exclaimed 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 the
scene." With these words Kenelm left the player standing aghast.
Gaining the street-door, a lad with a band-box 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, sententiously, and striding
on.
CHAPTER V.
"I HAVE fulfilled my mission," said Kenelm, on rejoining his
travelling companion. "Mr. Compton said he would be here in half an
hour."
"You saw him?"
"Of course: I promised to give your letter into his own hands."
"Was he alone?"
"No; at supper with his wife."
"His 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.
A suspicion which during his absence had suggested itself to Kenelm's
inquiring mind now took strong confirmation. He approached softly,
drew a chair close to the companion whom fate had forced upon him, and
said in a gentle whisper,--
"This is no boy's agitation. If 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 gentlemen."
The boy started to his feet, and paced the room with disordered 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 be alone. Alone,
too, I must face this man. There may be some mistake yet; go."
"You will promise not to leave the house till I return?"
"Yes, I promise that."
"And if it be as I fear, you will then let me counsel with and advise
you?"
"Heaven help me, if so! Whom else should I trust to? 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 milestone, indulged in these meditations:--
"Kenelm, my friend, you are in a still worse scrape than I 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 off with somebody else--such are the crosses and contradictions
in human destiny--has run off 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 the 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 fulness 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 semicircle bordered partly by shops,
partly by the tea-gardens of a pretty cottage-like tavern. Round the
tables scattered throughout the gardens were grouped quiet customers,
evidently 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 persons at the
shop-doors and at the windows of upper rooms. On the sward, a little
in advance of the tree, but beneath its shadow, 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
generally 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 himself 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 honoured with the commencement of a general
subscription, gravely approached Kenelm, stood on his hind legs,
stared at him, and presented the tray.
Kenelm dropped a shilling into that depository, and the dog, looking
gratified, 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 singer.
"And the air?"
"Mine too."
"Accept my compliments. I hope you find these manifestations 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. Hist! 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 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 travelling 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 for such idle
phantasies; for, as it is well observed by Ovid, a poet who wrote much
on that subject, and professed 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 humour in the grave face he contemplated, was rather
puzzled how to reply, and therefore remained silent.
"I perceive," resumed Kenelm, "that my observations surprise 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 has the lion's share of the government;
and if a poet is really to do what he pretends to do,--namely,
represent nature,--the greater part of his lays should be addressed to
the stomach." Here, warming with his subject, Kenelm familiarly laid
his band 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. 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 energetic
advance of the orator, sank into the seat by the elm-tree and said
pathetically, "Sir, you have fairly argued me down. Will 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 aggrieved 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 audience in
the tea-garden. They wanted another song for their money.
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!" muttered Kenelm, "I don't think there is much
triumph in that face. I suspect he has been scolded."
The boy--if Kenelm's travelling 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 honour 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 assuming 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 profession 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! 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 have 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 despatch 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 be saved. Leave me to explain all 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 encounter his reproaches, every fault must undergo its
punishment. A brave nature undergoes it cheerfully, as a part of
atonement. You are brave. Submit, and in submitting rejoice!"
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, she 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 spoke, 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 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, now 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 practise 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 corner of the
room, inquired for the telegraph-office, despatched a telegram to Mr.
Bovill, obtained a bedroom at the Commercial Hotel, and fell asleep,
muttering these sensible words,--
"Rouchefoucauld 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 Morpheus. He turned towards the stables
in which he had left the gray cob, and had the pleasure to see that
ill-used animal in the healthful process of rubbing down.
"That's right," said he to the hostler. "I am glad to see you are so
early a riser."
"Why," quoth the hostler, "the gentleman as owns the pony knocked me
up at two o'clock in the morning, and pleased enough he was to see the
creature again lying down 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 Temperance and then knocked up me to
see for the pony, and was much put out as he could not get any grog at
the Temperance."
"I dare say he was. I wish he had got his grog: it might have put him
in better humour. 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. Bovill
rose from the table with a beaming countenance, and extending his hand
to Kenelm, said,--
"Sir, you are a gentleman; sit down, sit down and take breakfast."
Then, as soon as the maid was out of the room, the uncle continued,--
"I have heard all your good conduct from this young simpleton. 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 she not? and
a good girl, in spite of her nonsense. 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 to 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 forehead.
"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 his look was that of an intelligent man not
unaccustomed to observe 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 whenever you can get them
for nothing,--ha, ha!--excuse me,--a joke."
Herewith Mr. Bovill, still in excellent good-humour, 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 Chillinglys 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 risen from his seat as she rose, and advanced some paces as
if to 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 unknown
tongue to Kenelm Chillingly.
When the two men were alone, Mr. Bovill reseated himself 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 carried 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 L20,000. So just confide in me; and if you don't like your
parents to know about it till the thing's done and they be 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 L20,000 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!"
"Mr. Bovill," said Kenelm, recovering his wonted equanimity, "I am
inexpressibly flattered by the honour 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 Saint Paul,--and I think that liberty may be
permitted to a simple 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 prefer burning. With
these sentiments it would ill become any one entitled to that
distinction of 'gentleman' which you confer 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 foamed 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 back
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
back into a formidable attitude of defence, which cooled the pugnacity
of his accuser. Mr. 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 humour, Mr. Bovill, you
will see how much your very excusable desire to 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 impostor 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 born a gentleman, in order to give me your niece
and her L20,000. 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 dare say 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 honour, 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 figure drawn up to its fullest
height, her cheeks glowing, her lips quivering, exclaimed,--
"Uncle, for shame!" Then addressing Kenelm in a sharp tone of
anguish, "Oh, do not believe I knew anything of this!" she covered her
face with both hands and stood mute.
All of chivalry that Kenelm had received with his baptismal
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 your charge."
"I have! I have!" cried Elsie; "my lost mother's sister: let me go to
her."
"The woman who keeps a school!" said Mr. Bovill sneeringly.
"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! fool! 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 mad man you thought me. I was at the festive
meeting held when you 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! If she
had not put her spoke into my wheel, she would 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 grace of one honourable combatant 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 you
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!" 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."
CHAPTER VIII.
"BY the powers that guard innocence and celibacy," soliloquized Kenelm
Chillingly, "but I have had a narrow escape! 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-ears 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 temptations and trials had befallen
him, he took his solitary way along a footpath that wound through
meads and cornfields, and shortened by three miles the distance to a
cathedral town at which he proposed to rest for the night.
He had travelled 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 some crusts of bread with which he had wisely provided
himself, 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 banquet in return for the appetite of youth.
Then, reclining along the bank, and crushing the wild thyme that grows
best and sweetest in wooded coverts, provided they be neighboured by
water, no matter whether in pool or rill, he resigned himself to that
intermediate state between thought and dream-land which we call
"revery." 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 turning lazily
round, saw a good-humoured jovial face upon a pair of massive
shoulders, and heard a hearty and winning voice 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 while 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, followed by Kenelm, into a large meadow,
one-third of which was still under the scythe, the rest being occupied
with persons 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 neatness with which he performed his work. Something--it
might be in his countenance or in the charm of his being a
stranger--attracted the attention of the feminine section of
haymakers, and one very pretty girl who was nearer to him than the
rest attempted to 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!" 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 vigorous 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.
"Be n't it eno'?" said the farmer, nettled.
"Pardon me," answered Kenelm. "But, to tell you the truth, it is the
first money I ever earned by my own bodily labour; 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 dare say my good woman can find you a better bed than you'll get in
the village inn; if, indeed, you can get one there at all."
"You are very kind. But before I accept your hospitality 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 newfangled 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 sound in
his mental as he evidently was in his physical conformation, 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 a comely middle-aged
dame, who, with a stout girl, was intent on culinary operations,
"Hulloa! old woman, I have brought you a guest who has well earned his
supper, for he has done 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 courtesy, and resumed, with a change of tone,
"The gentleman 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 odour.
"Where are the girls?" asked the farmer.
"They have been in these five minutes, and gone upstairs to tidy
themselves."
"What girls?" faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. "I
thought you said you had no nieces."
"But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you are not 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 his dame
smiled and blushed, "come, that's as nicely said as if you 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 betters or his worsers,
the chances are that he'll never see it again."
At this aphorism 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 commonplace 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 produce cream and butter. The best cows are 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 Reformed Parliament and a Liberal Administration. In the
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
somebody."
"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 more 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 he calls instinct. But as instincts
are unerring and thoughts 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
Yorkshire. 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 parlour."
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 parlour than his kitchen. Meanwhile, 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."
Kenelm, who was now hard at work at the pump-handle, only replied by a
gracious nod. But as he seldom lost an opportunity for reflection, he
said to himself, while he laved his face 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 well go 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 parlour 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 arbour 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 presiding genius of feminine
taste. There were shelves suspended 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 Chillingly 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 attentions were so equally divided between the three daughters as
to prevent all suspicion of a particular preference. "There is safety
in numbers," thought he, especially in odd numbers. The three Graces
never married, neither did the nine Muses."
"I presume, young ladies, that you are fond of music," said Kenelm,
glancing at the piano.
"Yes, I love it dearly," said the eldest girl, speaking for 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 boy; then it
was only great tenant-farmers who 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 emphasis 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, tells me that complaints formerly reserved
to what is called aristocracy (though what that word means in plain
English I don't know) are equally shared by the commonalty--
/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 grasshopper 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 his audience. But
the son, taking them as a slur upon the enlightened spirit of the age,
coloured up and said, with a knitted brow, "I hope, sir, that you are
not an enemy to progress."
"That depends: for instance, I prefer staying here, where I am well
off, to going farther and faring worse."
"Well said!" 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 but 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!"
"Oh, no," said Kenelm, modestly. "But I honestly think Mr. Bob would
be a wiser man, and a weightier man, and more removed from the
grasshopper state, if he would think less and eat more pudding."
When the supper was over the farmer offered Kenelm a 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 honeysuckle arbour: the girls and the
advocate of progress stood without among the garden flowers. It was a
still and lovely night, the moon at her full. The farmer, seated
facing his hayfields, smoked on placidly. Kenelm, at the third whiff,
laid aside his pipe, and glanced furtively at the three Graces. They
formed a pretty group, all clustered together near the silenced
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 girls 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 pikestaff. I wonder whether
that bucolical grasshopper, who is so enamoured 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 favour 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 dozen a good one
may be found. And then, too, a whole nosegay of variegated blooms,
with a faded leaf here and there, must be more agreeable to the eye
than the same monotonous solitary lady's smock. But I fear these
reflections are naughty; let us change them. Farmer," he said aloud,
"I suppose your handsome daughters are too fine to assist you 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 never 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 occur, I 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 without doing
mischief to somebody or other."
"And good, too," said the jovial farmer, thumping his fist on the
table. "What should we be without women?"
"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 love 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 accomplished, his voice took a
somewhat more respectful tone, as he 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. Be n'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 along 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 proffered 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. 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! Bless you, she don't live with him! 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 a 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 accident, and whom Tom Bowles could brain with his
little finger."
"This is really interesting," cried Kenelm, showing something 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 are 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 not necessarily
slow."
"Girls,--the governor been talking about girls? You 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-oil. You 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 jocularity,--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 didascular
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! the terror of the whole neighbourhood! Ah, I
guess the old gentleman is afraid lest Tom may fall foul upon me. But
Jessie Wiles is not worth a quarrel with that brute. It is a crying
shame in the Government--"
"What! has the Government failed to appreciate the heroism of Tom
Bowles, or rather to restrain the excesses of its ardour?"
"Stuff! 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."
"Yes, in the towns, but not in these obsolete rural districts; 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 favour, 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 Manchester 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 driven 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, will you show me the
room in which I am to sleep, and forget for 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 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 when 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 prominence in the upper
part which is vulgarly called the ball. Satisfied apparently with the
size and the firmness of that pugilistic protuberance, he gently
sighed forth, "I fear I shall have to lick Thomas Bowles." In five
minutes more he was asleep.
CHAPTER X.
THE next day the hay-mowing was completed, and a large portion of the
hay already made carted away to be 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 from the
proposition.
"Are you afraid that your neighbours will think it wrong?"
Jessie curled up her lips with a pretty scorn, and said, "I don't much
care what other folks say, but is n't it wrong?"
"Not in the least. Let me make your mind easy. I am here 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 doubtless 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 coloured as he gazed on her, and,
lifting her eyes, gave him one gentle, trustful glance, which might
have bewitched a philosopher and deceived a /roue/. 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, perhaps unconscious,
was conjoined with an innocence of anything 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.
"Certainly," he 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 be 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 thorn-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 still; 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.
CHAPTER XI.
"AND now," said Kenelm, as the two young persons, having 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! 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, but plucked a daffodil 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 prevent his losing his wits for you."
"No; I was n't so bad as that," said Jessie, looking, nevertheless,
rather ashamed of herself; "but 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 /Mr./) is higher
up than a poor girl like me. He is a tradesman, and I am only a
shepherd's daughter; though, indeed, Father is more like Mr.
Saunderson's foreman 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 insulted 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! But
Mr. Bowles is a dangerous, 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 will not."
"Jessie," 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 one,
contented herself with a bluebell, 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, inexpressible human fondness,
for which philosophers of his school have no excuse. Had ordinary
mortals, like you or myself, for instance, peered through the leaves
of the thorn-trees, we should have sighed or frowned, according to our
several temperaments; but we should all have said, whether spitefully
or envyingly, "Happy young lovers!" and should all have blundered
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 be reasonably doubted whether, had
Jessie Wiles been endowed by nature with a snub nose and a squint,
Kenelm would have volunteered 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 which 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 you treat a daffodil and a
bluebell. Who and what is the young man whom the bluebell represents?
Come, confide."
"We were much brought up together," said Jessie, still looking down,
and still smoothing the leaves of the bluebell. "His mother lived in
the next cottage; 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 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 drink?"
"No, no, no; he's as steady and good a lad as ever lived. But--but--"
"Yes; but--"
"He is 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 scaffolding, 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 effects of the accident--he was not
only crippled for life, but of health so delicate and weakly that he
was no longer fit for outdoor labour 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 neighbourhood. And, alas!
even if Jessie's father would consent to give his daughter to the poor
cripple, how could the poor cripple earn enough to maintain a wife?
"And," said 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 dare n'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 disobeying 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 cottage and Mr. Bowles's
shop or forge."
"But you'll not say anything to Mr. Bowles. He would n'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."
CHAPTER XII.
KENELM spoke no more to his new friend in the hayfields; but when the
day's work was over he looked round for the farmer to make an excuse
for not immediately joining the family supper. However, he did not
see either Mr. Saunderson 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
bordered 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 splendour, 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 say very rich.
But his place is a good way from this village. You can see it if you
stay, for he gives a harvest-home supper on Saturday, and Mr.
Saunderson and all his tenants are going. It is a beautiful park, and
Miss Travers is a sight to look at. Oh, she is lovely!" continued
Jessie, with an unaffected burst of admiration; for women are more
sensible of the charm of each other's beauty than men give them credit
for.
"As pretty as yourself?"
"Oh, pretty is not the word. She is a thousand times handsomer!"
"Humph!" 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 something 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!"
"Where? I see no shop."
"But it is /the/ shop of the village,--the only one,--where the
post-office is."
"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 L8 a year for it; but the shop can well
afford 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 was 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 limbs not in equal
proportion,--a sort of slouching, shambling 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-coloured, with aquiline features; his age apparently about six
or seven and twenty. Coming nearer and nearer, whatever favourable
impression the first glance at his physiognomy might have made on
Kenelm was dispelled, for the expression of his face changed and
became fierce and lowering.
Kenelm 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 swallowed up for
the moment every other sentiment. Mechanically he loosened his hold
of Jessie, who fled off like a bird released. But evidently she
thought of her new friend's danger more than her own escape; for
instead of sheltering herself in her father's cottage, she ran towards
a group of labourers 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, overcame their awe of
Tom Bowles, and arrived at the place half running, half striding, in
time, they hoped, to interpose between 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 levelled 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 dexterously 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 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 skilful trick of a wrestler, and 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? We don't fight with
our heels hereabouts, like Cornishers and donkeys: we fight with our
fists, youngster; 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 preparation than he had at first designed, he now deliberately
disencumbered 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 labourers, led by Jessie, had arrived at the spot,
and were about to crowd in between the combatants, when Kenelm waved
them back and said in a calm and impressive 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. He is
big enough to scorn what is little. And now, Mr. Bowles, just a word
with you in the presence of your neighbours. I am not going to say
anything uncivil. If you are rather rough and hasty, a man is not
always master of himself--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 even 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 pressed round
in silent wonder.
"What's all that soft-sawder about?" said Tom Bowles, somewhat
falteringly.
"Simply this: if in the fight between us I beat you, I ask you to
promise before your neighbours that you will not by word or deed
molest or interfere again with Miss Jessie Wiles."
"Eh!" roared Tom. "Is it that you are after her?"
"Suppose I am, if that pleases you; and on my side, I 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?"
"You! I'd smash a dozen of you to powder."
"In that case, you are safe to promise. Come, 'tis a fair bargain.
Is n't it, neighbours?"
Won over by Kenelm's easy show of good temper, and by the sense of
justice, the bystanders joined in a common exclamation 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, neighbours; 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 topheavy.
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, still unreturned. 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.
Perhaps 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. Accordingly, 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 "pueris," but "virginibus." Ladies, "a
mill,"--using with reluctance and contempt for myself that slang in
which ladywriters indulge, and Girls of the Period know much better
than they do their Murray,--"a mill,"--speaking not to ladywriters,
not to Girls of the Period, but to innocent damsels, and in
explanation to those foreigners who only understand the English
language as taught by Addison and Macaulay,--a "mill" periphrastically
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 be 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 disciplined 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
round 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-humoured
abnegation of the advantage which the position gave to the adversary
seemed so generous, that the labourers actually hurrahed. Tom,
himself felt as if treated like a child; and alas, and alas for him!
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 the 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 prizefighter, so
never yet had Kenelm encountered a strength which, but for the lack of
that teaching, would have conquered 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 felt that did
they alight on his head he was a lost man. He 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 vigour,--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 restrained 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 honour
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 /can/ drink."
"I thought so. Too much flesh for that muscle. Go for the nearest
doctor. You, my lad? good; off with you; quick. No danger, but
perhaps it may be a case for the lancet."
Tom Bowles was lifted tenderly by four of the stoutest men present and
borne into his home, evincing no sign of consciousness; but his face,
where not clouted with blood, was very pale, very calm, with a slight
froth at the lips.
Kenelm 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 but 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 consider 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 I should have been past the help of a surgeon."
"Oh!" groaned Jessie, shuddering, and covering her face with both
hands.
"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. So good-night to you, Jessie,
and forgive me for preaching."
CHAPTER XIII.
KENELM knocked at the cottage door; a voice said faintly, "Come in."
He stooped his head, and stepped over the threshold.
Since his encounter 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 predisposed to favour Jessie's preference
for a sickly cripple.
Yet, when two bright, soft, dark eyes, and a pale intellectual
countenance, with that nameless aspect of refinement which delicate
health so often gives, especially to the young, greeted his quiet
gaze, his heart was at once 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 courtesy,--a little thin woman, with a mild, patient face.
The cottage was very tidily kept, as it is in most village 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 coloured prints, chiefly Scriptural subjects from the New
Testament, such as the Return of the Prodigal Son, in a blue coat and
yellow inexpressibles, 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 coloured
prints and gleaming crockery.
All this, of course, Kenelm could not at a glance comprehend in
detail. But as the mind of a man accustomed to generalization is
marvellously quick in forming a sound judgment, whereas a mind
accustomed to dwell only on detail is wonderfully 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
favourable specimen of that class."
"I beg your pardon for intruding at this hour, Mrs. Somers," 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 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 more time for
pretty work-baskets, and such like; 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 something 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 contained woodcuts
of the implements and ornaments, mosaics and frescos, found in that
memorable little city.
"I see this is your model," said Kenelm; "what they call a /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 doves perched on the brim. You can't manage
that ornamental addition."
"Mrs. Lethbridge thought of putting there two little stuffed
canary-birds."
"Did she? Good heavens!" exclaimed Kenelm.
"But somehow," continued Will, "I did not like that, and I made bold
to say so."
"Why did not you do it?"
"Well, I don't know; but I did not think it would be the right thing."
"It would have been very bad taste, and spoiled the effect of your
basket-work; and I'll endeavour to explain why. You see here, in the
next page, a drawing of a very beautiful statue. Of course this
statue is intended to be a representation 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 something in nature. That something in nature must, of course, have
been carefully studied before the man can work out anything in art by
which it is faithfully represented. The artist, 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 am puzzled a little still."
"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 laughably
unnatural, by forcing insensibly upon the mind of him who looked at it
the contrast between the real life, represented by a wig of actual
hair, and the artistic life, represented 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 pondering,--"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 his 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 favoured his
congregation.
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 if they would condescend to do so, which
is not likely--perceived 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, interrogatively.
"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-labourer."
Will sighed. "Not in this neighbourhood, sir; I might in a town."
"Why not move to a town, then?"
The young man coloured, and shook his head.
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
checked herself, and a tear trickled silently down her cheeks.
Will resumed, in a more cheerful tone, "I am getting a little known
now, and work will 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 long
summer-day's work in the open air. He therefore, rather abruptly, now
took his leave, saying that he should be 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
philosophical vagrant 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 had 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 immediately preceding it: and so,
as you say, it was an ugly blow that he received. But if it cures him
of the habit of giving ugly blows 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 he flogged you."
"Bless my soul! are you the man who fought with him,--you? I can't
believe it."
"Why not?"
"Why not! 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 according 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; but 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 quarrels 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 pitiful sandwiches, 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 parlour, the family party, though they had long since
finished supper, were still seated round the table. They all rose at
the sight of Kenelm. The fame of his achievements 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 honours 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 supper."
CHAPTER XIV.
KENELM rose betimes the next morning somewhat stiff and uneasy, but
sufficiently recovered to feel ravenous. Fortunately, one of the
young ladies, who attended specially to the dairy, was already up, and
supplied the starving hero with a vast bowl of bread and milk. He
then strolled into the hayfield, 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 completing the
ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a round of visits. He
called first at the village shop kept by Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie
had pointed out to him, on pretence of buying a gaudy neckerchief; and
soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with
the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as
with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered
mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. 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 neighbouring 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 wearisome. 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,--L45.
"You be n'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 your 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 office when a lad."
"Why did he leave a lawyer's office to keep a little shop?"
"Well, he was born a farmer's son in this neighbourhood, and he always
had a hankering after the country, and--and besides that--"
"Yes."
"I'll tell you the truth; he had got into a way of drinking speerrits,
and he was a good young man, and wanted to break himself of it, and he
took the temperance oath; but it was too hard on him, for he could not
break himself of the company that led him into liquor. And so, one
time when he came into the neighbourhood 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 eddyeated, and much thought of, and never being tempted to
drink, now that he had a missis 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 bookkeeping 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 husband 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 parlour, with a pretty though confined 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 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 important points which are common to most
men who have gone through some disciplined training of intellect, and
been accustomed to extract the pith and marrow out of many books on
many subjects. The result of his examination was satisfactory; there
appeared to him a clear balance of gain from the shop alone of
somewhat over L40 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 neighbouring grass field. Both were,
indeed, much neglected; the trees wanted pruning, the field manure.
But the soil was evidently of rich loam, and the fruit-trees 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 unconsciously,
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 increased.
Not thinking it necessary to return at present to Mrs. Bawtrey'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 respectably in black, her brown hair braided
simply under a neat tight-fitting cap. Her features were aquiline and
very regular: altogether there was something about her majestic 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 somewhat stern voice.
"Ma'am," answered Kenelm, uncovering, "I have called to 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 be kept quiet."
"May I then ask you the favour 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; but 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 parlour, requested 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 beat my boy?"
"No, ma'am, do not say I beat him. He is not beaten. He is so brave
and so strong that he would easily have beaten me if I had not, by
good luck, knocked him down before he had time 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-like bosom, and with
a superbly haughty expression of countenance 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 assumption?"
"My son is of hasty temper," replied Mrs. Bowles, reluctantly, "and
people should not aggravate him."
"You grant the fact, then?" said Kenelm, 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 tho 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,--he has no more
malice than a baby: he'd go and make it up with any man, however badly
he had beaten him."
"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 Kenelm, "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!" 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 ungovernable 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 be no witness by to prove that the violence
was not premeditated, 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 fears. If you will
help me I feel sure that I can save your 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 he is worth saving." And 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 to 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! My Tom kill a woman!"
"Do you never read in your newspaper of a man who kills his
sweetheart, or the girl who refuses to be his sweetheart? 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 the 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 Luscombe, would take him into partnership; for he has no
son of his own, and he knows how clever Tom is: there be n't a man who
knows more about horses; and cows, too, for the matter of that."
"And if Luscombe 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 further 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."
"Courage! 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."
"But--"
"'But,' Mrs. Bowles, is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles
many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed.
Nobody would ever love his neighbour as himself if he listened to all
the Buts that could be said 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 honour 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 quite 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 affairs."
Mr. Lethbridge stared, and, after a short pause, said, "I have heard
of a young man who has been staying at Mr. Saunderson's, and is indeed
at this moment the talk of the village. You are--"
"That young man. Alas! 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 persecution,
and administering, though in a rough way, a lesson to a savage brute
who has long been the disgrace and terror of the neighbourhood, I
cannot honestly say that it has my condemnation. The moral sense of a
community 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!"
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 impetuosity 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 human heart, I am
surprised, and--oh, my dear young friend, surely your education might
fit you for something better!"
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 bestowed 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
practises 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."
"Reverend sir," said Kenelm, with his unutterable seriousness 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 honour the first as the citizen of a grand republic
trying his 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 honour 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 gentlemen, 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 sufficient demand here for his baskets, and
he would, no doubt, do better in some neighbouring 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 Jessie 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?"
"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 comfortably.
"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."
"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! 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 the business, but still she retains a good
custom."
"Will Somers seems in delicate health. Perhaps if he had a 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 condition 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 exuberant 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! 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 arrangements, Mrs. Grundy will have nothing to say against
any one."
Mr. Lethbridge gazed with amaze at the solemn countenance before him.
"Sir," he said, after a long pause, "I scarcely know how to express my
admiration of a generosity so noble, so thoughtful, 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 matters 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 L45, for which Mrs. Bawtrey has agreed to sell
the remainder of her lease and stock-in-hand; but, of course, you will
not make anything public 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 honours me with his
confidence, and has bestowed so much happiness on members of my
flock?"
"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!"
"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.
CHAPTER XVI.
AFTER the family dinner, at which the farmer's guest displayed more
than his usual powers of appetite, Kenelm followed 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
merrymakings 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."
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 banks of the rivulet not far from the
spot on which the farmer had first found him. There he sat down, and
leaned his cheek on his hand, with eyes fixed on the still and
darkened 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? If 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 woful ballad,
made to his mistress's 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 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
/battue/. 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 phantasmal crotchet of Goethe, 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,--conglomerated 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
insignificant 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 Vale of Tears."
Kenelm had just arrived at that conjectural solution of his
perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to
that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly
effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in
this instance, and Kenelm's ear caught every 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'
"O my son, 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 enclose content."
As the voice ceased Kenelm lifted his head. But the 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 commended the praises of a beefsteak, instead of those which
minstrelsy in its immemorial error dedicates to love.
"Sir," said Kenelm, half rising, "well met once more. 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 question 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, wagging his tail, reposed on his
haunches, intent with ear erect on a stir in the neighbouring 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 from 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 inconsiderately 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 than man can utter, if you had rightly
construed the 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 different 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 surgeon, is
the man who considers that study merely as the necessary A B C, 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 man who fills 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 Rhine 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 (namely, 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 palpable 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 instils into Nature that which is not there,--the
reason and the soul of man."
"I am not much disposed," said the minstrel, "to acknowledge any one
form of poetry to be practically higher than another; that is, so far
as to elevate the poet who cultivates 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,
dramatic poetry may be higher than lyric, and 'Venice Preserved' is a
very successful drama; but 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 experiments 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
falsehoods which preceding minds conceived to be the correct answers
they received from Nature. It is the supernatural within us,--namely,
Mind,--which can alone guess at the mechanism of the natural, namely,
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--
"'Rapiamus, amici,
Occasionem de die, dumque virent genua,
Et decet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus!'"
"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 endeavoured
to gain some 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 advantage 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 intelligent 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 understand, 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
were assailed or ridiculed it might seriously injure me in my
practical vocation. That last consideration, were I quite 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 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 popularity, 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. I 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 indisposes one to disputation; and I own
that a petticoat, provided it be red, is not without the interest of
colour in a picture."
"Well, young gentleman," said the minstrel, rising, "the day is
wearing on, and I must wish you good-by; 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 wandering 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 forwarded to me
from town to town under a borrowed name, together with other raiment
that 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.
CHAPTER XVIII.
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 lawless anarchy; in which the Evil One
seems to enter and direct the storm; in which a rude untutored mind,
never before harbouring 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 looks back to the moment "that trembled between 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.
CHAPTER XIX.
KENELM CHILLINGLY drew a chair close to his antagonist'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,--
"What do you want with me now?"
"I want to ask you a favour."
"Favour?"
"The greatest which man can ask from man,--friendship. You see, my
dear Tom," continued Kenelm, 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 thistles. 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 difficulty 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 be
such a friend to you."
Tom was so thoroughly "taken aback" by this address that he remained
dumfounded. But he felt 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 be n't after her?"
"Certainly not; I am going to Luscombe, 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!--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.'"
The wretched man sprang up erect, menacing, and, meeting Kenelm's
calm, steadfast, pitying gaze, dropped no less suddenly,--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 forever."
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 Luscombe 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 towards the farmhouse, Kenelm encountered 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 the
premises were originally let on very low terms to a favoured and
responsible tenant, Mr. Travers cannot be expected to sanction the
transfer of the lease to a poor basket-marker: in fact, though he will
accept Mrs. Bawtrey's resignation, it must be in favour of an
applicant whom he desires to oblige. On hearing this, I rode over to
the Park and saw Mr. Travers 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, sympathizing
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," said
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 does n't get very
quickly round the women when one carries the weight of years on one's
back. 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."
"/Dii meliora/!" said Kenelm, gravely. "Some ills are too serious to
be 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 haranguing against benevolent
girls, Mr. Lethbridge had paused before it, and was furtively looking
in at the window. "Hist! 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 unutterably 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."
"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 ever 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 arbour: 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 argument; "you see it
now, don't you?"
"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 premises you deduce the illogical and
irrational conclusion that therefore 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,
however wise and skilful, prefer taking another doctor's opinion about
himself, even though that other doctor has just 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."
"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
pipe. "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 dare say 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."
"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 somebody 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 he 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 'pothecary'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 wilful 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 are 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 you!'"
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.
The lad looked up sulkily, and said, on encountering Kenelm's
melancholic visage, "Ah! I see you have talked with the old governor,
and he'll not hear of it."
"In the first 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 maintained 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 education, 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 affection; and
few fathers make such sacrifices with a good grace. I have thus kept
my promise to you, and enforced your wishes on Mr. Saunderson's
judgment, because I am sure you would have been a very bad farmer. It
now remains for you to show that you can be a very good tradesman.
You are bound in honour to me and to your father to try your best to
be so; and meanwhile leave the task of upsetting the 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/, Saunderson 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 reappeared at the door,
and said in a conciliatory whisper, "Don't take it to heart that I
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 I.
IF there were a woman in the world who might be formed and 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 childhood, 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 gentleness
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 of 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-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to the
inflicting on polite audiences the 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
accomplishments than those by which the sempstress 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 favoured 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. Campion, 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 pleasantest in London, she was
popular enough to be invited by numerous friends 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, and 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 companionship with a woman of richly cultivated
mind, accustomed to hear the best criticisms on the best books, and
adding to no small accomplishment in literature the refinement of
manners and that sort of prudent judgment which result from habitual
intercourse with an intellectual and gracefully 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 converse on equal terms; from whom he gains as
much as he can impart to her; while a man who, not caring much about
books, is still gentleman enough to value good breeding, felt a relief
in exchanging the forms of his native language without the shock 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 struggling, would encourage, sustain, and soothe him,
take her own share of his burdens, and temper the bitterness of life
with the all-recompensing sweetness of her smile.
Little, indeed, as yet had she ever thought of love or of lovers. She
had not even 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 convinced: first, that she could never wed where she did
not love; and secondly, that where she did love it would be for life.
And now I close this sketch with a picture of the girl herself. 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 neighbours.
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 colours 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 sunlight. 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 expression 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.
CHAPTER II.
IT was a lovely summer evening for the Squire's rural entertainment.
Mr. Travers had some guests staying with him: 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 modern 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 ruins 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 character; not intersected with ancient
avenues, nor clothed with profitless fern as lairs for deer: but the
park of a careful 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 skilful husbandry, and the
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 where-ever honour 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 carefully 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 still 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
accumulations of his minority were gone; and his estate, which, when
he came of age, was scarcely three thousand a year, but entirely at
his own disposal, was mortgaged up to its eyes.
His friends began to shake their heads and call him "poor fellow;"
but, with all his wild faults, Leopold Travers had been wholly pure
from the two vices out of which a man does 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; but though handsome and high-born, she had no taste for
extravagance, and no desire for other society 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
common 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 invalid, and died single, leaving to his
sister all in his power to save from the distant kinsman who succeeded
to his lands and title,--a goodly sum, which not only sufficed to pay
off the mortgages 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; bought or
pensioned off certain slovenly 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 neighbouring arables
by obstructing sun and air and harbouring 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
previous poverty had compelled, took an active part in county
business, proved himself an excellent speaker at public meetings,
subscribed liberally to the hunt, and occasionally joined in it,--a
less bold but a wiser rider than of yore. In short, as Themistocles
boasted that he could make a small state great, so Leopold Travers
might boast with equal truth, that, by his energies, his judgment, and
the weight of his personal character, he had made the owner of a
property which had been at his accession to it of third-rate rank in
the county a personage so considerable that no knight of the shire
against whom he declared could have been elected, and if he had
determined to stand himself he would have been chosen free of expense.
But he said, on being solicited to become a candidate, "When a man
once gives himself up to the care and improvement of a landed estate,
he has no time and no heart for anything else. An estate is an income
or a kingdom, according as the owner chooses to take it. I take it as
a kingdom, and I cannot be /roi faineant/, with a steward for /maire
du palais/. A king does not go into the House of Commons."
Three years after this rise in the social ladder, Mrs. Travers was
seized with congestion of the lungs followed by pleurisy, 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 notions 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 not
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 consideration. But when
she had been solicited by some offending out-of-door dependant or some
petty defaulting tenant to use her good offices in favour 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 justice 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.
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 be 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 yourself, "Not at all the sort of man I expected." In
that slender form, somewhat below the middle height; in that fair
countenance which still, at the age of forty-eight, retains a delicacy
of feature and of colouring which is of almost womanlike beauty, and,
from the quiet placidity of its expression, conveys at first glance
the notion of almost womanlike mildness,--it would be difficult to
recognize a man who in youth had been renowned for reckless daring, in
maturer years more honourably distinguished for steadfast prudence and
determined purpose, and who, alike in faults or in merits, was as
emphatically masculine as a biped in trousers can possibly be.
Mr. 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 son intended to succeed to the representation of an
honourable name and the responsibilities of high station. If eldest
sons do not often make as great a figure in the world as their younger
brothers, it is not because their minds are less cultivated, but
because they have less motive power for action. George Belvoir was
well read, especially in that sort of reading 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 assertion 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
neighbouring squires. Cecilia stood a little apart from them, bending
over a long-backed Skye terrier, 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: vans, carts,
and farmers' chaises were seen in crowded procession along the winding
road; foot-passengers were swarming towards the house in all
directions. The herds and flocks in the various enclosures stopped
grazing to stare at the unwonted invaders of their pasture: yet the
orderly nature of their 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 Belvoir: "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 ear!'"
"At least," said George, after a laugh at this sample of eloquence
unadorned, "Mr. Steen does not err on the side 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!--in spirit, no! He says that all expensive
experiments should be left to gentlemen farmers. He is an authority
with other tenants: firstly, because he is a very keen censor of their
landlords; secondly, because he holds himself thoroughly independent
of his own; thirdly, because he is supposed to have studied the
political bearings of questions that affect 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: firstly, that you confess utter
ignorance of practical farming; nothing enrages him like the
presumption of a gentleman farmer like myself: secondly, 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 business involve principles
opposed to the British Constitution. And on all that he may say as to
the shortcomings of landlords 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.
"No, sir!" vociferates Steen, putting both his own hands behind him.
"No offence, 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!" cries George, with vehement
earnestness. Mr. Travers gave him a nudge, as much 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 neighbouring gentry and clergy.
It was not a supper intended to include the labouring class; for Mr.
Travers had an especial dislike to the custom of exhibiting 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: 'abiit, evasit, erupit.' I was looking
round for him in vain when you accosted me."
"I hope he has not seen some guest of mine whom he wants to fight."
"I hope not," answered the Parson, doubtfully. "He's a 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; (turning to
Saunderson junior), "I suppose you are fond of dancing. Get 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 appearance), "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 honour his own
father and mother I can't pretend to say, but he seems bent upon
teaching me not to honour mine. Having taken away my father's moral
character upon the 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 conferred it on a Papist."
"Those are favourable signs, Mr. Belvoir. Mr. Steen always prefaces a
kindness by a great deal of incivility. I asked him once to lend me a
pony, my own being suddenly taken lame, and he seized that opportunity
to tell me that my father was an impostor in pretending to be a judge
of cattle; that he was a tyrant, screwing his 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 him, not for a pony,
but for parochial relief. I went away indignant. But he sent me the
pony. I am sure he will give you his vote."
"Meanwhile," said George, with a timid attempt at gallantry, as they
now commenced the quadrille, "I take encouragement from the belief
that I have the good wishes of Miss Travers. If ladies had votes, as
Mr. Mill recommends, why, then--"
"Why, then, I should vote as Papa does," said Miss Travers, simply.
"And if women had votes, I suspect there would be very little peace in
any household where they did not vote as the man at the head 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 tenements."
"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, 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, of 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 bearing me away down that plantation. From what you say, I
must suppose I was mistaken."
"Chillingly! But surely some persons were talking yesterday 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
subject or the examiners. It is a dangerous thing to set up as a
humourist in practical life,--especially public life. They say Mr.
Pitt had naturally a great deal of wit and humour, 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 honour 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."
"Misunderstood,--possibly; but taken by surprise,--no. The coolest
fellow I ever met. Not that I have met him very often. Latterly,
indeed, at Cambridge he 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 back from the
bunt. 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
face, 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 quietly he puts that
shy young farmer 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! and how young he still looks, and how monstrous
handsome!"
This last compliment was uttered as Travers, having made the old lady
comfortable, had joined the three Miss Saundersons, 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
characterizes the well-meant efforts of provincial magnates to
accommodate 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 advantage Leopold
Travers added the inborn qualities that please.
Later in the evening Travers, again accosting Mr. Lethbridge, 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."
"Do not press me; I feel so reluctant to refuse any request of yours.
But I have my own theory as to the management of an estate, and my
system does not allow of favour. I should wish to explain that to the
young stranger himself; for I hold courage in such honour 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
before him on a gray crag, and the moonlight full on his face, he saw
a solitary man, looking upwards with a still and mournful gaze,
evidently absorbed in abstract contemplation.
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 (for that itinerant it was) did not see him
advance, until he felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning round,
beheld 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 neighbourhood. 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 persons who do not
like to hear ill of their friends. Mr. Thomas Bowles is a particular
friend of mine."
"Eh!" cried Travers, aghast. "'Friend!' you are joking.
"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 provocative. 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 anticipating argument with a
skilful proprietor on the management of his own property. "I do not,
however, tell you my reasons for the sake of argument, but in
vindication of my seeming 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 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 incurred much unpopularity at first, I have at length
succeeded in reconciling the public opinion of my neighbourhood.
People began by saying I was hard; they now acknowledge I am just. If
I once give way to favour 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 an excellent canvasser, and has always voted straight with the
party. Mrs. Fourstars, a most benevolent woman, entreats me not to
dismiss another tenant, because he is in distressed circumstances and
has a large family; very 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 L8
a year. She asks L45 for its transfer, but she can't transfer the
lease without my consent; and I can get L12 a year as a moderate
rental from a large choice of competent tenants. It will better
answer me to pay her the L45 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 equivocal
tenants instead of substantial ones, and at a rent one-third 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 invited all manner of solicitations on the part of
friends and neighbours, 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 shopkeepers), and find themselves, with a
family of children, dependent solely, not on the arm of a strong
labourer, but the ten fingers of a sickly cripple, who makes clever
baskets, for which there is but slight and precarious demand in the
neighbourhood, 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 difficult 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
mechanical something through which the world is ruled by 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, nevertheless, 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
solitary gudgeon out of the jaws of a pike. Here am I doing what I
thought the simplest thing in the world, asking a gentleman, 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!" 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."
"But if he left, 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 he 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
recollections. 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 affair now, not mine, Mr. Travers. I no longer presume to
interfere. I leave the neighbourhood to-morrow: see if you can
negotiate with Mr. Bowles. I have the honour 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 privilege of being the older man, do not
think I take an unwarrantable 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 designating 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. Suppose I were an
anonymous contributor, say, to 'The Londoner,' 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; /We/ are so upon system; /We/ salute you, Mr. Travers, and
depart unassailable."
Here Kenelm rose, doffed 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 exclaimed, "Chillingly! I thought I could not be
mistaken."
"Chillingly!" echoed Leopold Travers from behind. "Are 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 Travers, who 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 gallant conduct on behalf of your
protegee Jessie Wiles we have heard so much, but the eloquent arguer
who has conquered my better judgment in a matter on which I thought
myself infallible. Tell Mr. Lethbridge 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 contrary!"
"Mr. Chillingly, give your arm to my daughter. You will not now
object to join the dancers?"
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
supposed 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
travelling by himself; 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 travelling
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."
He released Cecilia's arm, and bowed.
"Let us sit here a while, 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 election. My
father takes a warm interest in his success, and thinks he 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 following years he
will be considered a sensible man in committees, and a necessary
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 be 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
husband will show his sense of wedded happiness by choosing another
lady, equally fitted to wear the family diamonds and to maintain the
family consequences."
In spite of her laughter, Cecilia felt a certain awe at the solemnity
of voice and manner with which Kenelm delivered these oracular
sentences, and the whole prediction seemed strangely in unison with
her own impressions of the character 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 cross with a shilling."
"Will you tell me my fortune?"
"No; I never tell the fortunes of ladies, because your sex is
credulous, and a lady might believe what I tell her. 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. We are young; we are
listening to music; there is no cloud over the summer stars; our
conscience is clear; our hearts untroubled: why look forward in search
of happiness? shall we ever be happier than we are at this moment?"
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 not pass a
few days among his equals? Realities or shams might be studied with
squires no less than with farmers; besides, 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. Kenelm
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."
"Agreed; and, hark! the supper-bell."
"Supper," said Kenelm, offering his arm to Miss Travers,--"supper is a
word truly interesting, truly poetical. It associates itself with the
entertainments of the ancients, with the Augustan age, with Horace and
Maecenas; with the only elegant but too fleeting period of the modern
world; with the nobles and wits of Paris, when Paris had wits and
nobles; with Moliere and the warm-hearted Duke who is said to have
been the original of Moliere's Misanthrope; with Madame de Sevigne and
the Racine whom that inimitable letter-writer denied to be a poet;
with Swift and Bolingbroke; with Johnson, Goldsmith, and Garrick.
Epochs are signalized by their eatings. I honour him who revives the
Golden Age of suppers." So saying, his face brightened.
CHAPTER VI.
KENELM CHILLINGLY, ESQ., TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., ETC.
MY DEAR FATHER,--I am alive and unmarried. Providence 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 labourer, 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 undertake 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 is worth better than I do. I dare say you will be more pleased
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 I 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 portmanteau full 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 minutia 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,
practising as he preached, wrote some very nice verses, to which the
Lake school 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 vapour may consolidate by
motion, as some old-fashioned astronomers held that the nebula does
consolidate into a matter-of-fact world. Is it Rochefoucauld 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 me on the second.
Your affectionate son,
KENELM.
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 next chapter.
SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., TO KENELM CHILLINGLY, ESQ.
MY DEAR Boy,--With this I despatch the portmanteau you require to the
address that you give. I remember well Leopold Travers when he was in
the Guards,--a very handsome and a very wild young fellow. But he had
much more sense than people gave him credit for, and frequented
intellectual society; at least I met him very often at my friend
Campion's, whose house was then the favourite 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 observe that a man who contracts
a taste for low company may indeed often marry, but 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 be better employed than earning two, or even six
shillings as a day-labourer.
I have not given your love to your mother, as you requested. 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
Clairville and his family. It is easy to tell a fib, but it is very
difficult to untell it. However, as soon as you have made up 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 his 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 subject upon which I have for three years
meditated the consideration of a critical paper. But having lately
read a controversy 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 narrow 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
much 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 honour,
that you will not propose to any young lady before you come first to
me and submit the case to my examination and approval. You know me
too well to suppose that I 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,
marriage 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 opportunely. 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 your protege.
Keep me informed of your proceedings as much as your anomalous
character will permit; so that nothing may diminish my confidence that
the man who had the honour to be christened Kenelm will not disgrace
his name, but acquire the distinction denied to a Peter.
Your affectionate father.
CHAPTER VII.
VILLAGERS lie abed on Sundays later than on workdays, 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 glinting chestnut leaves; and diving thence into a narrow
lane or by-road, winding deep between lofty banks all tangled with
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 those creatures whose minds
glide easily into the dreamy monologue of revery, he was not
displeased to muse on undisturbed, 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 of
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 revery, "what do you say to
breakfast?"
Answered Tom sullenly, "I am not hungry; but as you like."
"Thank you, then we will stop here a while. 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 of Hercules: you
know the saying 'as strong as Hercules'?"
"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 melancholic 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 Providence 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 honeysuckle
arbour 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 rustic club had held there the day before.
Tom ate little at first; but example is contagious, and gradually he
vied with 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 arbour, 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 Kenelm 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
offended if suffered to be treated as an inferior; so each paid his
due share, and the 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 a while and listen," said Kenelm, seating 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.
"O 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 muttered,--
"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 we should now be
within yon church itself rather than listening 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 our prayers at the knees of a mother, that we were lifted
beyond 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 understand."
"Nature never gives to a living thing capacities not practically 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 we 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
receive 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
civilization, by obedience to a lie, which Nature falsified herself in
giving us the capacity to believe. You still understand me?"
"Yes; it bothers me a little, for you see I am not 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, He 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 nature!--"
"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 so 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 colour 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! the bell is hushed; but not your heart, Tom,--that
speaks still."
Tom was weeping like a child.
CHAPTER VIII.
NOW when our two travellers 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 scoffer
at love all the passionate humanities of love,--its hope, its anguish,
its jealousy, its wrath,--the all that links the gentlest of emotions
to tragedy and terror. And Kenelm, listening tenderly, with softened
eyes, uttered not one cynic word,--nay, not one playful jest. He,
felt that the gravity of all he heard was too solemn for mockery, too
deep even for comfort. True love of this sort was a thing he had
never known, never wished to know, never thought he could know, but he
sympathized in it not the less. Strange, indeed, how much we do
sympathize, on the stage, for instance, or in a book, with passions
that have never agitated ourselves! Had Kenelm jested or reasoned or
preached, Tom would have shrunk at once into dreary silence; but
Kenelm said nothing, save now and then, as he rested his arm,
brother-like, on the strong man's shoulder, he murmured, "Poor
fellow!" 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 artful diplomacy, or by that
insight into human passions vouchsafed unconsciously 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 himself, "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 cornfields, 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
out of commonplace itself; so that from time to time Tom was startled
into the mirth of laughter. This big fellow had one very agreeable
gift, which is only granted, I think, to men of genuine character and
affectionate dispositions,--a spontaneous 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
day on which his love 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 needed,
to span it, a mighty bridge fit for the convenience of civilized
traffic. 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 dare say, 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 fields,--a
respectable, staid, elderly couple, who had 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
unheeding him, he winced, and his face changed. Even after they had
passed, Kenelm saw on the face that pain lingered there: the lips were
tightly 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! 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 recognize an acquaintance. You
will like him." Tom desired no new acquaintance at that moment, but
he followed Kenelm submissively.
CHAPTER IX.
"YOU 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! 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; namely, 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 connoisseur to
judge whether the pencilled jottings in an impromptu 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 be 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. "From this height there is a
beautiful view, as it presents itself to me; a beautiful view of the
town, its meadows, its river, harmonized by the sunset; for sunset,
like gilding, unites conflicting colours, 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 child."
"Hist! there she stands. Hist! 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 distinguish what), and
catching it as it fell. She seemed standing on the very verge of the
upland, backed by rose-clouds gathered round the setting sun; below
lay in confused outlines the great town. In the sketch those outlines
seemed infinitely 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 at 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?"
"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 which
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
became interested, and as she came near me I spoke to her, and we soon
made friends. 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, and 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 minstrel continued: "While the child was talking to me I
mechanically took the flower-chains from her hands, and not thinking
what I was about, gathered them up into a ball. Suddenly she 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 plaything. She ran off with the ball, 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 sheepishly, "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,
Proffering all who pass her choice of knitted sweets,
Tempting Age with heart's-ease, courting Youth with roses.
"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.
"Ill, 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 approbation, nor
look modestly down, as do most people who recite their own verses, but
unaffectedly thinking much more of his art than his audience, hurried
on somewhat disconsolately,--
"I see with great grief that I am better at sketching than rhyming.
Can you" (appealing to Kenelm) "even comprehend 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, however, 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."
"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, be 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 heavenward, and following them with heavenward eyes."
"Good!" muttered Kenelm, "good!" and then, after a long pause, he
added, in a still lower mutter, "Pardon me that remark of mine the
other day about a beefsteak. 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 Kenelm
declined. He entertained a strong persuasion that it would be better
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 veterinary 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 like 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 first 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 neighbourhood 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 absolute
necessity; and I have been trudging without it for so many days that I
can scarcely tell you how my thoughts seemed to shake off 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. He 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 poetland;
but do not sing or talk of love to him."
"I honour 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 the one facing us,--The Golden
Lamb. I have heard it recommended for the attributes of civil people
and good fare."
Kenelm felt that he here received his /conge/, and well comprehended
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.
"But one word more," said Kenelm. "Your host or hostess, if resident
here, can, no doubt, from your description of the little girl and the
old man her protector, learn the child's address. If so, I should
like my companion to make friends with her. Petticoat interest there
at least will be innocent and safe. And I know nothing so likely to
keep a big, passionate heart like Tom's, now aching with a horrible
void, occupied and softened, and turned to directions pure and gentle,
as an affectionate interest in a little child."
The minstrel changed colour: he even started. "Sir, are you a wizard
that you say that to me?"
"I am not a wizard, but 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, engaged 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 himself up, and, seeking a distraction from
thought, sauntered forth into the gaslit streets.
It was a large handsome town,--handsomer than Tor-Hadham, 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 venerable old houses, the residences of the clergy or of
the quiet lay gentry with mediaeval tastes. The main street was
thronged with passengers,--some soberly returning home from the
evening service; some, the younger, lingering in pleasant promenade
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 inattentive 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 doorsteps gossiping, while noisy
children were playing or quarrelling in the kennel. The whole did not
present the indolent side of an English Sabbath in the pleasantest 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.
"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?"
The girl released his arm, and he walked on. She stood some moments
gazing after him till out of sight, then she drew her hand suddenly
across her eyes, and retracing her steps, was, in her turn, caught
hold of by a rougher hand than hers, as she passed the gin-palace.
She shook off the grasp with a passionate scorn, and went straight
home. Home! is that the right word? Poor sister mortal!
CHAPTER XI.
AND now Kenelm found himself at the extremity of the town, and on the
banks of the river. Small squalid houses still lined the bank for
some way, till, nearing the bridge, they abruptly ceased, and he
passed through a broad square again into the main street. On the
other side of the street there was a row of villa-like mansions, with
gardens stretching towards the river.
All around in the thoroughfare was silent and deserted. By this time
the passengers had gone home. The scent of night-flowers from the
villa-gardens came sweet on the starlit air. Kenelm paused to inhale
it, and then lifting his eyes, hitherto downcast, as are the eyes of
men in meditative moods, he beheld, on the balcony of the nearest
villa, a 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 Kenelm, 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 a 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 Raphael's Fornarina, dark, with warm tints.
Now there appeared at the open window a stout, burly, middle-aged
gentleman, looking every inch of him a family man, a moneyed man,
sleek and prosperous. He was bald, fresh-coloured, and with light
whiskers.
"Holloa," he said, in an accent very slightly foreign, and with a loud
clear voice, which Kenelm heard distinctly, "is it not 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 they lord it over. "Your friend has been sulking the whole
evening, and is only just beginning to be pleasant as the moon rises."
"The moon has a good effect on poets and other mad folks, I dare say,"
said the bald man, with a good-humoured 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' time,--not more, mind."
"Tyrant!" said the minstrel.
The balcony now held only 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 fitted up with cost and in a taste not
English. He could 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 euchre 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 Luscombe on
pecuniary business. Doubtless his host is a merchant, and the
verse-maker in some commercial firm. That accounts for his
concealment 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 the auburn locks of her companion.
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 inaudibly.
"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, gazing on the river,
See it paved with starbeams,--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 back."
When he had finished, still with face turned aside, the lady did not,
indeed, whisper "Forgiven," nor put her arms around 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. "Did 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, between 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 looked rather sad, but not sullen,
and his face brightened wonderfully at first sight of Kenelm. That
oddity made himself as pleasant and as much like other people as he
could in conversing with the old widower and the old maid, and took
leave, engaging Tom to be at his inn at half past twelve, and 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 witnessed, 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 craft."
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 coloured high, and his lip quivered: he was very
sensitive to praise; most singers are.
Kenelm resumed, "I have been educated in the Realistic 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, 'Sing of
beefsteak, 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 a lie?"
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 MINSTREL.--"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 colour 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. Therefore, O singer! 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, you leave
youth 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 magnificent 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 parlour where this dialogue had
been held, and the three men sallied forth, taking the shortest cut
from the town into the fields and woodlands.
CHAPTER XIII.
WHETHER or not his spirits were raised by Kenelm's praise and
exhortations, the minstrel that day talked with a charm that
spellbound Tom, and Kenelm was satisfied with brief remarks on his
side tending to draw out the principal performer.
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 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 humour 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 a while, in a bosky nook soft with mosses
and sweet with wild thyme.
There, as they lay stretched at their ease, the birds hymning 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 poetry?"
"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-collegian, which I put into my pocket meaning to read them to
you both. They are not verses like yours, which evidently burst from
you spontaneously, 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 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; I should warn you that
the ballad is long. Patience!"
"Attention!" said the minstrel.
"Fire!" added Tom.
Kenelm began to read,--and he read well.
LORD RONALD'S BRIDE.
PART I.
"WHY gathers the crowd in the market-place
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 Rome 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.
"But hush, and come nearer to see the sight,
Sheriff, halberds, and torchmen,--look!
That's the witch standing mute in her garb of white,
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 brave,
But his manhood had scarce begun,
When 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 board when that lady sate
Hungry men could not eat for fear.
And the tones of her voice had that deadly growl
Of the bloodhound that 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 sold,
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!"
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 appals 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 silver groat,
Is a Scot who has lost his soul.
"It were wise to have done with this demon tree
Which has teemed with such caukered 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 know
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 the bridegroom here
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.
"Lord Ronald, the knights of thy race and mine
Should 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 young 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 cheek;
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 woe,
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 what he most wished to win,
And, fixing his eye on that grewsome 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 that had curdled his veins with awe
Was the coo of the woodland dove.
Each heart was on flame for the peerless dame
At the price of the husband's life;
Bright claymores flash out, and loud voices shout,
"In thy widow shall be my wife."
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 lattice-pane stole once 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 said,
"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 the 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 upturned to his own,
with open lips, an intent stare, and paled cheeks, and a look of that
higher sort of terror which belongs to awe. The man, then recovering
himself, tried to speak, and attempted 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 his 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 remembered her."
The minstrel again looked hard at Kenelm, this time without dropping
his eyes. Kenelm's expression of face was so simply quiet that it
might be almost called vacant.
Kenelm and Tom continued to walk on towards the veterinary surgeon's
house, for some minutes silently. Then Tom said in a whisper, "Did
you not mean those rhymes to hit me here--/here/?" and he struck his
breast.
"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 gentleman 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!--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 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!" 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 interim 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 large
party,--they had been asked with an eye to the approaching
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 his part in this society with a resignation that 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 disappointed. "I feel," he whispered to Mrs.
Campion, "like poor Lord Pomfret, who, charmed with Punch's lively
conversation, 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,--namely, men of his own party,--and anathemas on bad
men,--namely, men of the other party.
Now and then he appealed to Kenelm, and Kenelm always returned the
same answer, "There is much in what you say."
The first 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 monosyllables, and made with the air of a man who says in his
heart, "If this creature would but leave me alone!"
Cecilia, for the first time in her life, was piqued, and, strange to
say, began to feel more interest about this indifferent stranger than
about the popular, animated, pleasant George 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 ever looked there before;
and, tired though she was, stood at the window gazing into the moonlit
night for a good hour after the maid 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 book-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 humour which generally accompanies a strong practical
understanding (no man, for instance, has more practical understanding
than a Scot, and no man has a keener susceptibility to humour), and
not only enjoyed Kenelm's odd way of expressing himself, but very
often mistook Kenelm's irony for opinion spoken in earnest.
Since his early removal from the capital and his devotion to
agricultural pursuits, it was so seldom that Leopold Travers 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 unconsciously, 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; but, 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 charm 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 sufficiently feminine and playful to seize the
sportive side of realities, 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, sometimes
in her presence and sometimes when alone, he fell into abstracted
consultations with himself, saying, "Kenelm Chillingly, 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 Adam, if thou couldst win for thy mate so
faultless a descendant of Eve as now flits before thee?" But he could
not abstract from himself any satisfactory answer to the question he
had addressed to himself.
Once he said abruptly to Travers, as, on their return from 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 monotonous."
"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 fire."
"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 collection of family
portraits, few of them well painted, but the Squire was evidently
proud of such evidences of ancestry. They not only occupied a
considerable space on the walls of the reception rooms, but swarmed
into the principal sleeping-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 those 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 Kenelm, as
Cecilia paused beside |
