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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Kenelm Chillingly, by E. B. Lytton, Book 7
+#84 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: Kenelm Chillingly, Book 7.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7656]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 25, 2004]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, BOOK 7 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+KENELM did not return home till dusk, and just as he was sitting down
+to his solitary meal there was a ring at the bell, and Mrs. Jones
+ushered in Mr. Thomas Bowles.
+
+Though that gentleman had never written to announce the day of his
+arrival, he was not the less welcome.
+
+"Only," said Kenelm, "if you preserve the appetite I have lost, I fear
+you will find meagre fare to-day.  Sit down, man."
+
+"Thank you, kindly, but I dined two hours ago in London, and I really
+can eat nothing more."
+
+Kenelm was too well-bred to press unwelcome hospitalities.  In a very
+few minutes his frugal repast was ended; the cloth removed, the two
+men were left alone.
+
+"Your room is here, of course, Tom; that was engaged from the day I
+asked you, but you ought to have given me a line to say when to expect
+you, so that I could have put our hostess on her mettle as to dinner
+or supper.  You smoke still, of course: light your pipe."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Chillingly, I seldom smoke now; but if you will excuse
+a cigar," and Tom produced a very smart cigar-case.
+
+"Do as you would at home.  I shall send word to Will Somers that you
+and I sup there to-morrow.  You forgive me for letting out your
+secret.  All straightforward now and henceforth.  You come to their
+hearth as a friend, who will grow dearer to them both every year.  Ah,
+Tom, this love for woman seems to me a very wonderful thing.  It may
+sink a man into such deeps of evil, and lift a man into such heights
+of good."
+
+"I don't know as to the good," said Tom, mournfully, and laying aside
+his cigar.
+
+"Go on smoking: I should like to keep you company; can you spare me
+one of your cigars?"
+
+Tom offered his case.  Kenelm extracted a cigar, lighted it, drew a
+few whiffs, and, when he saw that Tom had resumed his own cigar,
+recommenced conversation.
+
+"You don't know as to the good; but tell me honestly, do you think if
+you had not loved Jessie Wiles, you would be as good a man as you are
+now?"
+
+"If I am better than I was, it is not because of my love for the
+girl."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"The loss of her."
+
+Kenelm started, turned very pale, threw aside the cigar, rose, and
+walked the room to and fro with very quick but very irregular strides.
+
+Tom continued quietly.  "Suppose I had won Jessie and married her, I
+don't think any idea of improving myself would have entered my head.
+My uncle would have been very much offended at my marrying a
+day-labourer's daughter, and would not have invited me to Luscombe.  I
+should have remained at Graveleigh, with no ambition of being more
+than a common farrier, an ignorant, noisy, quarrelsome man; and if I
+could not have made Jessie as fond of me as I wished, I should not
+have broken myself of drinking, and I shudder to think what a brute I
+might have been, when I see in the newspapers an account of some
+drunken wife-beater.  How do we know but what that wife-beater loved
+his wife dearly before marriage, and she did not care for him?  His
+home was unhappy, and so he took to drink and to wife-beating."
+
+"I was right, then," said Kenelm, halting his strides, when I told you
+it would be a miserable fate to be married to a girl whom you loved to
+distraction, and whose heart you could never warm to you, whose life
+you could never render happy."
+
+"So right!"
+
+"Let us drop that part of the subject at present," said Kenelm,
+reseating himself, "and talk about your wish to travel.  Though
+contented that you did not marry Jessie, though you can now, without
+anguish, greet her as the wife of another, still there are some
+lingering thoughts of her that make you restless; and you feel that
+you could more easily wrench yourself from these thoughts in a marked
+change of scene and adventure, that you might bury them altogether in
+the soil of a strange land.  Is it so?"
+
+"Ay, something of that, sir."
+
+Then Kenelm roused himself to talk of foreign lands, and to map out a
+plan of travel that might occupy some months.  He was pleased to find
+that Tom had already learned enough of French to make himself
+understood at least upon commonplace matters, and still more pleased
+to discover that he had been not only reading the proper guide-books
+or manuals descriptive of the principal places in Europe worth
+visiting, but that he had acquired an interest in the places; interest
+in the fame attached to them by their history in the past, or by the
+treasures of art they contained.
+
+So they talked far into the night; and when Tom retired to his room,
+Kenelm let himself out of the house noiselessly, and walked with slow
+steps towards the old summer-house in which he had sat with Lily.  The
+wind had risen, scattering the clouds that had veiled the preceding
+day, so that the stars were seen in far chasms of the sky
+beyond,--seen for a while in one place, and, when the swift clouds
+rolled over them there, shining out elsewhere.  Amid the varying
+sounds of the trees, through which swept the night gusts, Kenelm
+fancied he could distinguish the sigh of the willow on the opposite
+lawn of Grasmere.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+KENELM despatched a note to Will Somers early the next morning,
+inviting himself and Mr. Bowles to supper that evening.  His tact was
+sufficient to make him aware that in such social meal there would be
+far less restraint for each and all concerned than in a more formal
+visit from Tom during the day-time; and when Jessie, too, was engaged
+with customers to the shop.
+
+But he led Tom through the town and showed him the shop itself, with
+its pretty goods at the plate-glass windows, and its general air of
+prosperous trade; then he carried him off into the lanes and fields of
+the country, drawing out the mind of his companion, and impressed with
+great admiration of its marked improvement in culture, and in the
+trains of thought which culture opens out and enriches.
+
+But throughout all their multiform range of subject Kenelm could
+perceive that Tom was still preoccupied and abstracted: the idea of
+the coming interview with Jessie weighed upon him.
+
+When they left Cromwell Lodge at nightfall, to repair to the supper at
+Will's; Kenelm noticed that Bowles had availed himself of the contents
+of his carpet-bag to make some refined alterations in his dress.  The
+alterations became him.
+
+When they entered the parlour, Will rose from his chair with the
+evidence of deep emotion on his face, advanced to Tom, took his hand
+and grasped and dropped it without a word.  Jessie saluted both guests
+alike, with drooping eyelids and an elaborate curtsy.  The old mother
+alone was perfectly self-possessed and up to the occasion.
+
+"I am heartily glad to see you, Mr. Bowles," said she, "and so all
+three of us are, and ought to be; and if baby was older, there would
+be four."
+
+"And where on earth have you hidden baby?" cried Kenelm.  "Surely he
+might have been kept up for me to-night, when I was expected; the last
+time I supped here I took you by surprise, and therefore had no right
+to complain of baby's want of respect to her parents' friends."
+
+Jessie raised the window-curtain, and pointed to the cradle behind it.
+Kenelm linked his arm in Tom's, led him to the cradle, and, leaving
+him alone to gaze on the sleeping inmate, seated himself at the table,
+between old Mrs. Somers and Will.  Will's eyes were turned away
+towards the curtain, Jessie holding its folds aside, and the
+formidable Tom, who had been the terror of his neighbourhood, bending
+smiling over the cradle: till at last he laid his large hand on the
+pillow, gently, timidly, careful not to awake the helpless sleeper,
+and his lips moved, doubtless with a blessing; then he, too, came to
+the table, seating himself, and Jessie carried the cradle upstairs.
+
+Will fixed his keen, intelligent eyes on his bygone rival; and
+noticing the changed expression of the once aggressive countenance,
+the changed costume in which, without tinge of rustic foppery, there
+was the token of a certain gravity of station scarcely compatible with
+a return to old loves and old habits in the village world, the last
+shadow of jealousy vanished from the clear surface of Will's
+affectionate nature.
+
+"Mr. Bowles," he exclaimed, impulsively, "you have a kind heart, and a
+good heart, and a generous heart.  And your corning here to-night on
+this friendly visit is an honour which--which"--"Which," interrupted
+Kenelm, compassionating Will's embarrassment, "is on the side of us
+single men.  In this free country a married man who has a male baby
+may be father to the Lord Chancellor or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
+But--well, my friends, such a meeting as we have to-night does not
+come often; and after supper let us celebrate it with a bowl of punch.
+If we have headaches the next morning none of us will grumble."
+
+Old Mrs. Somers laughed out jovially.  "Bless you, sir, I did not
+think of the punch; I will go and see about it," and, baby's socks
+still in her hands, she hastened from the room.
+
+What with the supper, what with the punch, and what with Kenelm's art
+of cheery talk on general subjects, all reserve, all awkwardness, all
+shyness between the convivialists, rapidly disappeared.  Jessie
+mingled in the talk; perhaps (excepting only Kenelm) she talked more
+than the others, artlessly, gayly, no vestige of the old coquetry;
+but, now and then, with a touch of genteel finery, indicative of her
+rise in life, and of the contact of the fancy shopkeeper with noble
+customers.  It was a pleasant evening; Kenelm had resolved that it
+should be so.  Not a hint of the obligations to Mr. Bowles escaped
+until Will, following his visitor to the door, whispered to Tom, "You
+don't want thanks, and I can't express them.  But when we say our
+prayers at night, we have always asked God to bless him who brought us
+together, and has since made us so prosperous,--I mean Mr. Chillingly.
+To-night there will be another besides him, for whom we shall pray,
+and for whom baby, when he is older, will pray too."
+
+Therewith Will's voice thickened; and he prudently receded, with no
+unreasonable fear lest the punch might make him too demonstrative of
+emotion if he said more.
+
+Tom was very silent on the return to Cromwell Lodge; it did not seem
+the silence of depressed spirits, but rather of quiet meditation, from
+which Kenelm did not attempt to rouse him.
+
+It was not till they reached the garden pales of Grasmere that Tom,
+stopping short, and turning his face to Kenelm, said, "I am very
+grateful to you for this evening,--very."
+
+"It has revived no painful thoughts then?"
+
+"No; I feel so much calmer in mind than I ever believed I could have
+been, after seeing her again."
+
+"Is it possible!"  said Kenelm, to himself.  "How should I feel if I
+ever saw in Lily the wife of another man, the mother of his child?"
+At that question he shuddered, and an involuntary groan escaped from
+his lips.  Just then having, willingly in those precincts, arrested
+his steps when Tom paused to address him, something softly touched the
+arm which he had rested on the garden pale.  He looked, and saw that
+it was Blanche.  The creature, impelled by its instincts towards
+night-wanderings, had, somehow or other, escaped from its own bed
+within the house, and hearing a voice that had grown somewhat familiar
+to its ear, crept from among the shrubs behind upon the edge of the
+pale.  There it stood, with arched back, purring low as in pleased
+salutation.
+
+Kenelm bent down and covered with kisses the blue ribbon which Lily's
+hand had bound round the favourite's neck.  Blanche submitted to the
+caress for a moment, and then catching a slight rustle among the
+shrubs made by some awaking bird, sprang into the thick of the
+quivering leaves and vanished.
+
+Kenelm moved on with a quick impatient stride, and no further words
+were exchanged between him and his companion till they reached their
+lodging and parted for the night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE next day, towards noon, Kenelm and his visitor, walking together
+along the brook-side, stopped before Izaak Walton's summer-house, and,
+at Kenelm's suggestion, entered therein to rest, and more at their
+ease to continue the conversation they had begun.
+
+"You have just told me," said Kenelm, "that you feel as if a load were
+taken off your heart, now that you have again met Jessie Somers, and
+that you find her so changed that she is no longer the woman you
+loved.  As to the change, whatever it be, I own, it seems to me for
+the better, in person, in manners, in character; of course I should
+not say this, if I were not convinced of your perfect sincerity when
+you assured me that you are cured of the old wound.  But I feel so
+deeply interested in the question how a fervent love, once entertained
+and enthroned in the heart of a man so earnestly affectionate and so
+warm-blooded as yourself, can be, all of a sudden, at a single
+interview, expelled or transferred into the calm sentiment of
+friendship, that I pray you to explain."
+
+"That is what puzzles me, sir," answered Tom, passing his hand over
+his forehead.  "And I don't know if I can explain it.
+
+"Think over it, and try."
+
+Tom mused for some moments and then began.  "You see, sir, that I was
+a very different man myself when I fell in love with Jessie Wiles, and
+said, 'Come what may, that girl shall be my wife.  Nobody else shall
+have her.'"
+
+"Agreed; go on."
+
+"But while I was becoming a different man, when I thought of her--and
+I was always thinking of her--I still pictured her to myself as the
+same Jessie Wiles; and though, when I did see her again at Graveleigh,
+after she had married--the day--"
+
+"You saved her from the insolence of the Squire."
+
+"She was but very recently married.  I did not realize her as married.
+I did not see her husband, and the difference within myself was only
+then beginning.  Well, so all the time I was reading and thinking, and
+striving to improve my old self at Luscombe, still Jessie Wiles
+haunted me as the only girl I had ever loved, ever could love; I could
+not believe it possible that I could ever marry any one else.  And
+lately I have been much pressed to marry some one else; all my family
+wish it: but the face of Jessie rose up before me, and I said to
+myself, 'I should be a base man if I married one woman, while I could
+not get another woman out of my head.'  I must see Jessie once more,
+must learn whether her face is now really the face that haunts me when
+I sit alone; and I have seen her, and it is not that face: it may be
+handsomer, but it is not a girl's face, it is the face of a wife and a
+mother.  And, last evening, while she was talking with an
+open-heartedness which I had never found in her before, I became
+strangely conscious of the difference in myself that had been silently
+at work within the last two years or so.  Then, sir, when I was but an
+ill-conditioned, uneducated, petty village farrier, there was no
+inequality between me and a peasant girl; or, rather, in all things
+except fortune, the peasant girl was much above me.  But last evening
+I asked myself, watching her and listening to her talk, 'If Jessie
+were now free, should I press her to be my wife?' and I answered
+myself, 'No.'"
+
+Kenelm listened with rapt attention, and exclaimed briefly, but
+passionately, "Why?"
+
+"It seems as if I were giving myself airs to say why.  But, sir,
+lately I have been thrown among persons, women as well as men, of a
+higher class than I was born in; and in a wife I should want a
+companion up to their mark, and who would keep me up to mine; and ah,
+sir, I don't feel as if I could find that companion in Mrs. Somers."
+
+"I understand you now, Tom.  But you are spoiling a silly romance of
+mine.  I had fancied the little girl with the flower face would grow
+up to supply the loss of Jessie; and, I am so ignorant of the human
+heart, I did think it would take all the years required for the little
+girl to open into a woman, before the loss of the old love could be
+supplied.  I see now that the poor little child with the flower face
+has no chance."
+
+"Chance?  Why, Mr. Chillingly," cried Tom, evidently much nettled,
+"Susey is a dear little thing, but she is scarcely more than a mere
+charity girl.  Sir, when I last saw you in London you touched on that
+matter as if I were still the village farrier's son, who might marry a
+village labourer's daughter.  But," added Tom, softening down his
+irritated tone of voice, "even if Susey were a lady born I think a man
+would make a very great mistake, if he thought he could bring up a
+little girl to regard him as a father; and then, when she grew up,
+expect her to accept him as a lover."
+
+"Ah, you think that!" exclaimed Kenelm, eagerly, and turning eyes that
+sparkled with joy towards the lawn of Grasmere.  "You think that; it
+is very sensibly said,--well, and you have been pressed to marry, and
+have hung back till you had seen again Mrs. Somers.  Now you will be
+better disposed to such a step; tell me about it?"
+
+"I said, last evening, that one of the principal capitalists at
+Luscombe, the leading corn-merchant, had offered to take me into
+partnership.  And, sir, he has an only daughter, she is a very amiable
+girl, has had a first-rate education, and has such pleasant manners
+and way of talk, quite a lady.  If I married her I should soon be the
+first man in Luscombe, and Luscombe, as you are no doubt aware,
+returns two members to Parliament; who knows, but that some day the
+farrier's son might be--" Tom stopped abruptly, abashed at the
+aspiring thought which, while speaking, had deepened his hardy colour
+and flashed from his honest eyes.
+
+"Ah!" said Kenelm, almost mournfully, "is it so? must each man in his
+life play many parts?  Ambition succeeds to love, the reasoning brain
+to the passionate heart.  True, you are changed; my Tom Bowles is
+gone."
+
+"Not gone in his undying gratitude to you, sir," said Tom, with great
+emotion.  "Your Tom Bowles would give up all his dreams of wealth or
+of rising in life, and go through fire and water to serve the friend
+who first bid him be a new Tom Bowles!  Don't despise me as your own
+work: you said to me that terrible day, when madness was on my brow
+and crime within my heart, 'I will be to you the truest friend man
+ever found in man.' So you have been.  You commanded me to read; you
+commanded me to think; you taught me that body should be the servant
+of mind."
+
+"Hush, hush, times are altered; it is you who can teach me now.  Teach
+me, teach me; how does ambition replace love?  How does the desire to
+rise in life become the all-mastering passion, and, should it prosper,
+the all-atoning consolation of our life?  We can never be as happy,
+though we rose to the throne of the Caesars, as we dream that we could
+have been, had Heaven but permitted us to dwell in the obscurest
+village, side by side with the woman we love."
+
+Tom was exceedingly startled by such a burst of irrepressible passion
+from the man who had told him that, though friends were found only
+once in a life, sweethearts were as plentiful as blackberries.
+
+Again he swept his hand over his forehead, and replied hesitatingly: I
+can't pretend to say what maybe the case with others.  But to judge by
+my own case, it seems to me this: a young man who, out of his own
+business, has nothing to interest or excite him, finds content,
+interest, and excitement when he falls in love; and then, whether for
+good or ill, he thinks there is nothing like love in the world, he
+don't care a fig for ambition then.  Over and over again did my poor
+uncle ask me to come to him at Luscombe, and represent all the worldly
+advantage it would be to me; but I could not leave the village in
+which Jessie lived, and, besides, I felt myself unfit to be anything
+higher than I was.  But when I had been some time at Luscombe, and
+gradually got accustomed to another sort of people, and another sort
+of talk, then I began to feel interest in the same objects that
+interested those about me; and when, partly by mixing with better
+educated men, and partly by the pains I took to educate myself, I felt
+that I might now more easily rise above my uncle's rank of life than
+two years ago I could have risen above a farrier's forge, then the
+ambition to rise did stir in me, and grew stronger every day.  Sir, I
+don't think you can wake up a man's intellect but what you wake with
+it emulation.  And, after all, emulation is ambition."
+
+"Then, I suppose, I have no emulation in me, for certainly I have no
+ambition."
+
+"That I can't believe, sir; other thoughts may cover it over and keep
+it down for a time.  But sooner or later, it will force its way to the
+top, as it has done with me.  To get on in life, to be respected by
+those who know you, more and more as you grow older, I call that a
+manly desire.  I am sure it comes as naturally to an Englishman
+as--as--"
+
+"As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who stands in his way
+does.  I perceive now that you were always a very ambitious man, Tom;
+the ambition has only taken another direction.  Caesar might have been
+
+
+     "'But the first wrestler on the green.'
+
+
+"And now, I suppose, you abandon the idea of travel: you will return to
+Luscombe, cured of all regret for the loss of Jessie; you will marry
+the young lady you mention, and rise, through progressive steps of
+alderman and mayor, into the rank of member for Luscombe."
+
+"All that may come in good time," answered Tom, not resenting the tone
+of irony in which he was addressed, "but I still intend to travel: a
+year so spent must render me all the more fit for any station I aim
+at.  I shall go back to Luscombe to arrange my affairs, come to terms
+with Mr. Leland the corn-merchant, against my return, and--"
+
+"The young lady is to wait till then."
+
+"Emily--"
+
+"Oh, that is the name?  Emily! a much more elegant name than Jessie."
+
+"Emily," continued Tom, with an unruffled placidity,--which,
+considering the aggravating bitterness for which Kenelm had exchanged
+his wonted dulcitudes of indifferentism, was absolutely saintlike,
+"Emily knows that if she were my wife I should be proud of her, and
+will esteem me the more if she feels how resolved I am that she shall
+never be ashamed of me."
+
+"Pardon me, Tom," said Kenelm softened, and laying his hand on his
+friend's shoulder with brotherlike tenderness.  "Nature has made you a
+thorough gentleman; and you could not think and speak more nobly if
+you had come into the world as the head of all the Howards."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TOM went away the next morning.  He declined to see Jessie again,
+saying curtly, "I don't wish the impression made on me the other
+evening to incur a chance of being weakened."
+
+Kenelm was in no mood to regret his friend's departure.  Despite all
+the improvement in Tom's manners and culture, which raised him so much
+nearer to equality with the polite and instructed heir of the
+Chillinglys, Kenelm would have felt more in sympathy and rapport with
+the old disconsolate fellow-wanderer who had reclined with him on the
+grass, listening to the minstrel's talk or verse, than he did with the
+practical, rising citizen of Luscombe.  To the young lover of Lily
+Mordaunt there was a discord, a jar, in the knowledge that the human
+heart admits of such well-reasoned, well-justified transfers of
+allegiance; a Jessie to-day, or an Emily to-morrow; "La reine est
+morte: vive la reine"
+
+An hour or two after Tom had gone, Kenelm found himself almost
+mechanically led towards Braefieldville.  He had instinctively divined
+Elsie's secret wish with regard to himself and Lily, however skilfully
+she thought she had concealed it.
+
+At Braefieldville he should hear talk of Lily, and in the scenes where
+Lily had been first beheld.
+
+He found Mrs. Braefield alone in the drawing-room, seated by a table
+covered with flowers, which she was assorting and intermixing for the
+vases to which they were destined.
+
+It struck him that her manner was more reserved than usual and
+somewhat embarrassed; and when, after a few preliminary matters of
+small talk, he rushed boldly /in medias res/ and asked if she had seen
+Mrs. Cameron lately, she replied briefly, "Yes, I called there the
+other day," and immediately changed the conversation to the troubled
+state of the Continent.
+
+Kenelm was resolved not to be so put off, and presently returned to
+the charge.
+
+"The other day you proposed an excursion to the site of the Roman
+villa, and said you would ask Mrs. Cameron to be of the party.
+Perhaps you have forgotten it?"
+
+"No; but Mrs. Cameron declines.  We can ask the Emlyns instead.  He
+will be an excellent /cicerone/."
+
+"Excellent!  Why did Mrs. Cameron decline?"
+
+Elsie hesitated, and then lifted her clear brown eyes to his face,
+with a sudden determination to bring matters to a crisis.
+
+"I cannot say why Mrs. Cameron declined, but in declining she acted
+very wisely and very honourably.  Listen to me, Mr. Chillingly.  You
+know how highly I esteem, and how cordially I like you, and judging by
+what I felt for some weeks, perhaps longer, after we parted at Tor
+Hadham--"  Here again she hesitated, and, with a half laugh and a
+slight blush, again went resolutely on.  "If I were Lily's aunt or
+elder sister, I should do as Mrs. Cameron does; decline to let Lily
+see much more of a young gentleman too much above her in wealth and
+station for--"
+
+"Stop," cried Kenelm, haughtily, "I cannot allow that any man's wealth
+or station would warrant his presumption in thinking himself above
+Miss Mordaunt."
+
+"Above her in natural grace and refinement, certainly not.  But in the
+world there are other considerations which, perhaps, Sir Peter and
+Lady Chillingly might take into account."
+
+"You did not think of that before you last saw Mrs. Cameron."
+
+"Honestly speaking, I did not.  Assured that Miss Mordaunt was a
+gentlewoman by birth, I did not sufficiently reflect upon other
+disparities."
+
+"You know, then, that she is by birth a gentlewoman?"
+
+"I only know it as all here do, by the assurance of Mrs. Cameron, whom
+no one could suppose not to be a lady.  But there are different
+degrees of lady and of gentleman, which are little heeded in the
+ordinary intercourse of society, but become very perceptible in
+questions of matrimonial alliance; and Mrs. Cameron herself says very
+plainly that she does not consider her niece to belong to that station
+in life from which Sir Peter and Lady Chillingly would naturally wish
+their son should select his bride.  Then (holding out her hand) pardon
+me if I have wounded or offended you.  I speak as a true friend to you
+and to Lily both.  Earnestly I advise you, if Miss Mordaunt be the
+cause of your lingering here, earnestly I advise you to leave while
+yet in time for her peace of mind and your own."
+
+"Her peace of mind," said Kenelm, in low faltering tones, scarcely
+hearing the rest of Mrs. Braefield's speech.  "Her peace of mind?  Do
+you sincerely think that she cares for me,--could care for me,--if I
+stayed?"
+
+"I wish I could answer you decidedly.  I am not in the secrets of her
+heart.  I can but conjecture that it might be dangerous for the peace
+of any young girl to see too much of a man like yourself, to divine
+that he loved her, and not to be aware that he could not, with the
+approval of his family, ask her to become his wife."
+
+Kenelm bent his face down, and covered it with his right hand.  He did
+not speak for some moments.  Then he rose, the fresh cheek very pale,
+and said,--
+
+"You are right.  Miss Mordaunt's peace of mind must be the first
+consideration.  Excuse me if I quit you thus abruptly.  You have given
+me much to think of, and I can only think of it adequately when
+alone."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+FROM KENELM CHILLINGLY TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.
+
+
+MY FATHER, MY DEAR FATHER,--This is no reply to your letters.  I know
+not if itself can be called a letter.  I cannot yet decide whether it
+be meant to reach your hands.  Tired with talking to myself, I sit
+down to talk to you.  Often have I reproached myself for not seeing
+every fitting occasion to let you distinctly know how warmly I love,
+how deeply I reverence you; you, O friend, O father.  But we
+Chillinglys are not a demonstrative race.  I don't remember that you,
+by words, ever expressed to me the truth that you loved your son
+infinitely more than he deserves.  Yet, do I not know that you would
+send all your beloved old books to the hammer rather than I should
+pine in vain for some untried, if sinless, delight on which I had set
+my heart?  And do you not know equally well, that I would part with
+all my heritage, and turn day-labourer, rather than you should miss
+the beloved old books?
+
+That mutual knowledge is taken for granted in all that my heart yearns
+to pour forth to your own.  But, if I divine aright, a day is coming
+when, as between you and me, there must be a sacrifice on the part of
+one to the other.  If so, I implore that the sacrifice may come from
+you.  How is this?  How am I so ungenerous, so egotistical, so
+selfish, so ungratefully unmindful of all I already owe to you, and
+may never repay?  I can only answer, "It is fate, it is nature, it is
+love "--
+
+  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+Here I must break off.  It is midnight, the moon halts opposite to the
+window at which I sit, and on the stream that runs below there is a
+long narrow track on which every wave trembles in her light; on either
+side of the moonlit track all the other waves, running equally to
+their grave in the invisible deep, seem motionless and dark.  I can
+write no more.
+
+  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+          (Dated two days later.)
+
+They say she is beneath us in wealth and station.  Are we, my
+father--we, two well-born gentlemen--coveters of gold or lackeys of
+the great?  When I was at college, if there were any there more
+heartily despised than another it was the parasite and the
+tuft-hunter; the man who chose his friends according as their money or
+their rank might be of use to him.  If so mean where the choice is so
+little important to the happiness and career of a man who has
+something of manhood in him, how much more mean to be the parasite and
+tuft-hunter in deciding what woman to love, what woman to select as
+the sweetener and ennobler of one's everyday life!  Could she be to my
+life that sweetener, that ennobler?  I firmly believe it.  Already
+life itself has gained a charm that I never even guessed in it before;
+already I begin, though as yet but faintly and vaguely, to recognize
+that interest in the objects and aspirations of my fellow-men which is
+strongest in those whom posterity ranks among its ennoblers.  In this
+quiet village it is true that I might find examples enough to prove
+that man is not meant to meditate upon life, but to take active part
+in it, and in that action to find his uses.  But I doubt if I should
+have profited by such examples; if I should not have looked on this
+small stage of the world as I have looked on the large one, with the
+indifferent eyes of a spectator on a trite familiar play carried on by
+ordinary actors, had not my whole being suddenly leaped out of
+philosophy into passion, and, at once made warmly human, sympathized
+with humanity wherever it burned and glowed.  Ah, is there to be any
+doubt of what station, as mortal bride, is due to her,--her, my
+princess, my fairy?  If so, how contented you shall be, my father,
+with the worldly career of your son! how perseveringly he will strive
+(and when did perseverance fail?) to supply all his deficiencies of
+intellect, genius, knowledge, by the energy concentrated on a single
+object which--more than intellect, genius, knowledge, unless they
+attain to equal energy equally concentrated--commands what the world
+calls honours.
+
+Yes, with her, with her as the bearer of my name, with her to whom I,
+whatever I might do of good or of great, could say, "It is thy work,"
+I promise that you shall bless the day when you took to your arms a
+daughter.
+
+  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+"Thou art in contact with the beloved in all that thou feelest
+elevated above thee."  So it is written by one of those weird Germans
+who search in our bosoms for the seeds of buried truths, and conjure
+them into flowers before we ourselves were even aware of the seeds.
+
+Every thought that associates itself with my beloved seems to me born
+with wings.
+
+  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+I have just seen her, just parted from her.  Since I had been
+told--kindly, wisely told--that I had no right to hazard her peace of
+mind unless I were privileged to woo and to win her, I promised myself
+that I would shun her presence until I had bared my heart to you, as I
+am doing now, and received that privilege from yourself; for even had
+I never made the promise that binds my honour, your consent and
+blessing must hallow my choice.  I do not feel as if I could dare to
+ask one so innocent and fair to wed an ungrateful, disobedient son.
+But this evening I met her, unexpectedly, at the vicar's, an excellent
+man, from whom I have learned much; whose precepts, whose example,
+whose delight in his home, and his life at once active and serene, are
+in harmony with my own dreams when I dream of her.
+
+I will tell you the name of the beloved; hold it as yet a profound
+secret between you and me.  But oh for the day when I may hear you
+call her by that name, and print on her forehead the only kiss by man
+of which I should not be jealous.
+
+It is Sunday, and after the evening service it is my friend's custom
+to gather his children round him, and, without any formal sermon or
+discourse, engage their interests in subjects harmonious to
+associations with the sanctity of the day; often not directly bearing
+upon religion; more often, indeed, playfully starting from some little
+incident or some slight story-book which had amused the children in
+the course of the past week, and then gradually winding into reference
+to some sweet moral precept or illustration from some divine example.
+It is a maxim with him that, while much that children must learn they
+can only learn well through conscious labour, and as positive
+task-work, yet Religion should be connected in their minds not with
+labour and task-work, but should become insensibly infused into their
+habits of thought, blending itself with memories and images of peace
+and love; with the indulgent tenderness of the earliest teachers, the
+sinless mirthfulness of the earliest home; with consolation in after
+sorrows, support through after trials, and never parting company with
+its twin sister, Hope.
+
+I entered the vicar's room this evening just as the group had
+collected round him.  By the side of his wife sat a lady in whom I
+feel a keen interest.  Her face wears that kind of calm which speaks
+of the lassitude bequeathed by sorrow.  She is the aunt of my beloved
+one.  Lily had nestled herself on a low ottoman, at the good pastor's
+feet, with one of his little girls, round whose shoulder she had wound
+her arm.  She is much more fond of the companionship of children than
+that of girls of her own age.  The vicar's wife, a very clever woman,
+once, in my hearing, took her to task for this preference, asking her
+why she persisted in grouping herself with mere infants who could
+teach her nothing?  Ah! could you have seen the innocent, angel-like
+expression of her face when she answered simply, "I suppose because
+with them I feel safer, I mean nearer to God."
+
+Mr. Emlyn--that is the name of the vicar--deduced his homily this
+evening from a pretty fairy tale which Lily had been telling to his
+children the day before, and which he drew her on to repeat.
+
+Take, in brief, the substance of the story:--
+
+"Once on a time, a king and queen made themselves very unhappy because
+they had no heir to their throne; and they prayed for one; and lo, on
+some bright summer morning, the queen, waking from sleep, saw a cradle
+beside her bed, and in the cradle a beautiful sleeping babe.  Great
+day throughout the kingdom!  But as the infant grew up, it became very
+wayward and fretful: it lost its beauty; it would not learn its
+lessons; it was as naughty as a child could be.  The parents were very
+sorrowful; the heir, so longed for, promised to be a great plague to
+themselves and their subjects.  At last one day, to add to their
+trouble, two little bumps appeared on the prince's shoulders.  All the
+doctors were consulted as to the cause and the cure of this deformity.
+Of course they tried the effect of back-bands and steel machines,
+which gave the poor little prince great pain, and made him more
+unamiable than ever.  The bumps, nevertheless, grew larger, and as
+they increased, so the prince sickened and pined away.  At last a
+skilful surgeon proposed, as the only chance of saving the prince's
+life, that the bumps should be cut out; and the next morning was fixed
+for that operation.  But at night the queen saw, or dreamed she saw, a
+beautiful shape standing by her bedside.  And it said to her
+reproachfully, 'Ungrateful woman!  How wouldst thou repay me for the
+precious boon that my favour bestowed on thee!  In me behold the Queen
+of the Fairies.  For the heir to thy kingdom, I consigned to thy
+charge an infant from Fairyland, to become a blessing to thee and to
+thy people; and thou wouldst inflict upon it a death of torture by the
+surgeon's knife.' And the queen answered, 'Precious indeed thou mayest
+call the boon,--a miserable, sickly, feverish changeling.'
+
+"'Art thou so dull,' said the beautiful visitant, 'as not to
+comprehend that the earliest instincts of the fairy child would be
+those of discontent, at the exile from its native home? and in that
+discontent it would have pined itself to death, or grown up, soured
+and malignant, a fairy still in its power but a fairy of wrath and
+evil, had not the strength of its inborn nature sufficed to develop
+the growth of its wings.  That which thy blindness condemns as the
+deformity of the human-born, is to the fairy-born the crowning
+perfection of its beauty.  Woe to thee, if thou suffer not the wings
+of the fairy child to grow.'
+
+"And the next morning the queen sent away the surgeon when he came
+with his horrible knife, and removed the back-board and the steel
+machines from the prince's shoulders, though all the doctors predicted
+that the child would die.  And from that moment the royal heir began
+to recover bloom and health.  And when at last, out of those deforming
+bumps, budded delicately forth the plumage of snow-white wings, the
+wayward peevishness of the prince gave place to sweet temper.  Instead
+of scratching his teachers, he became the quickest and most docile of
+pupils, grew up to be the joy of his parents and the pride of their
+people; and people said, 'In him we shall have hereafter such a king
+as we have never yet known.'"
+
+Here ended Lily's tale.  I cannot convey to you a notion of the
+pretty, playful manner in which it was told.  Then she said, with a
+grave shake of the head, "But you do not seem to know what happened
+afterwards.  Do you suppose that the prince never made use of his
+wings?  Listen to me.  It was discovered by the courtiers who attended
+on His Royal Highness that on certain nights, every week, he
+disappeared.  In fact, on these nights, obedient to the instinct of
+the wings, he flew from palace halls into Fairyland; coming back
+thence all the more lovingly disposed towards the human home from
+which he had escaped for a while."
+
+"Oh, my children," interposed the preacher earnestly, "the wings would
+be given to us in vain if we did not obey the instinct which allures
+us to soar; vain, no less, would be the soaring, were it not towards
+the home whence we came, bearing back from its native airs a stronger
+health, and a serener joy; more reconciled to the duties of earth by
+every new flight into heaven."
+
+As he thus completed the moral of Lily's fairy tale, the girl rose
+from her low seat, took his hand, kissed it reverently, and walked
+away towards the window.  I could see that she was affected even to
+tears, which she sought to conceal.  Later in the evening, when we
+were dispersed on the lawn, for a few minutes before the party broke
+up, Lily came to my side timidly and said, in a low whisper,--
+
+"Are you angry with me? what have I done to displease you?"
+
+"Angry with you; displeased?  How can you think of me so unjustly?"
+
+"It is so many days since you have called, since I have seen you," she
+said so artlessly, looking up at me with eyes in which tears still
+seemed to tremble.
+
+Before I could trust myself to reply, her aunt approached, and
+noticing me with a cold and distant "Good-night," led away her niece.
+
+I had calculated on walking back to their home with them, as I
+generally have done when we met at another house.  But the aunt had
+probably conjectured I might be at the vicarage that evening, and in
+order to frustrate my intention had engaged a carriage for their
+return.  No doubt she has been warned against permitting further
+intimacy with her niece.
+
+My father, I must come to you at once, discharge my promise, and
+receive from your own lips your consent to my choice; for you will
+consent, will you not?  But I wish you to be prepared beforehand, and
+I shall therefore put up these disjointed fragments of my commune with
+my own heart and with yours, and post them to-morrow.  Expect me to
+follow them after leaving you a day free to consider them
+alone,--alone, my dear father: they are meant for no eye but yours.
+
+K. C.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE next day Kenelm walked into the town, posted his voluminous letter
+to Sir Peter, and then looked in at the shop of Will Somers, meaning
+to make some purchases of basket-work or trifling fancy goods in
+Jessie's pretty store of such articles, that might please the taste of
+his mother.
+
+On entering the shop his heart beat quicker.  He saw two young forms
+bending over the counter, examining the contents of a glass case.  One
+of these customers was Clemmy; in the other there was no mistaking the
+slight graceful shape of Lily Mordaunt.  Clemmy was exclaiming, "Oh,
+it is so pretty, Mrs. Somers! but," turning her eyes from the counter
+to a silk purse in her hand, she added sorrowfully, "I can't buy it.
+I have not got enough, not by a great deal."
+
+"And what is it, Miss Clemmy?" asked Kenelm.
+
+The two girls turned round at his voice, and Clemmy's face brightened.
+
+"Look here," she said, "is it not too lovely?"
+
+The object thus admired and coveted was a little gold locket, enriched
+by a cross composed of small pearls.
+
+"I assure you, miss," said Jessie, who had acquired all the coaxing
+arts of her trade, "it is really a great bargain.  Miss Mary Burrows,
+who was here just before you came, bought one not nearly so pretty and
+gave ten shillings more for it."
+
+Miss Mary Burrows was the same age as Miss Clementina Emlyn, and there
+was a rivalry as to smartness between those youthful beauties.  "Miss
+Burrows!" sighed Clemmy, very scornfully.
+
+But Kenelm's attention was distracted from Clemmy's locket to a little
+ring which Lily had been persuaded by Mrs. Somers to try on, and which
+she now drew off and returned with a shake of the head.  Mrs. Somers,
+who saw that she had small chance of selling the locket to Clemmy, was
+now addressing herself to the elder girl more likely to have
+sufficient pocket-money, and whom, at all events, it was quite safe to
+trust.
+
+"The ring fits you so nicely, Miss Mordaunt, and every young lady of
+your age wears at least one ring; allow me to put it up."  She added
+in a lower voice, "Though we only sell the articles in this case on
+commission, it is all the same to us whether we are paid now or at
+Christmas."
+
+"'Tis no use tempting me, Mrs. Somers," said  Lily, laughing, and then
+with a grave air, "I promised Lion, I mean my guardian, never to run
+into debt, and I never will."
+
+Lily turned resolutely from the perilous counter, taking up a paper
+that contained a new ribbon she had bought for Blanche, and Clemmy
+reluctantly followed her out of the shop.
+
+Kenelm lingered behind and selected very hastily a few trifles, to be
+sent to him that evening with some specimens of basket-work left to
+Will's tasteful discretion; then purchased the locket on which Clemmy
+had set her heart; but all the while his thoughts were fixed on the
+ring which Lily had tried on.  It was no sin against etiquette to give
+the locket to a child like Clemmy, but would it not be a cruel
+impertinence to offer a gift to Lily?
+
+Jessie spoke: "Miss Mordaunt took a great fancy to this ring, Mr.
+Chillingly.  I am sure her aunt would like her to have it.  I have a
+great mind to put it by on the chance of Mrs. Cameron's calling here.
+It would be a pity if it were bought by some one else."
+
+"I think," said Kenelm, "that I will take the liberty of showing it to
+Mrs. Cameron.  No doubt she will buy it for her niece.  Add the price
+of it to my bill."  He seized the ring and carried it off; a very poor
+little simple ring, with a single stone shaped as a heart, not half
+the price of the locket.
+
+Kenelm rejoined the young ladies just where the path split into two,
+the one leading direct to Grasmere, the other through the churchyard
+to the vicarage.  He presented the locket to Clemmy with brief kindly
+words which easily removed any scruple she might have had in accepting
+it; and, delighted with her acquisition, she bounded off to the
+vicarage, impatient to show the prize to her mamma and sisters, and
+more especially to Miss Mary Burrows, who was coming to lunch with
+them.
+
+Kenelm walked on slowly by Lily's side.
+
+"You have a good heart, Mr. Chillingly," said she, somewhat abruptly.
+"How it must please you to give such pleasure!  Dear little Clemmy!"
+
+This artless praise, and the perfect absence of envy or thought of
+self evinced by her joy that her friend's wish was gratified, though
+her own was not, enchanted Kenelm.
+
+"If it pleases to give pleasure," said he, "it is your turn to be
+pleased now; you can confer such pleasure upon me."
+
+"How?" she asked, falteringly, and with quick change of colour.
+
+"By conceding to me the same right your little friend has allowed."
+
+And he drew forth the ring.
+
+Lily reared her head with a first impulse of haughtiness.  But when
+her eyes met his the head drooped down again, and a slight shiver ran
+through her frame.
+
+"Miss Mordaunt," resumed Kenelm, mastering his passionate longing to
+fall at her feet and say, "But, oh! in this ring it is my love that I
+offer,--it is my troth that I pledge!"  "Miss Mordaunt, spare me the
+misery of thinking that I have offended you; least of all would I do
+so on this day, for it may be some little while before I see you
+again.  I am going home for a few days upon a matter which may affect
+the happiness of my life, and on which I should be a bad son and an
+unworthy gentleman if I did not consult him who, in all that concerns
+my affections, has trained me to turn to him, the father; in all that
+concerns my honour to him, the gentleman."
+
+A speech more unlike that which any delineator of manners and morals
+in the present day would put into the mouth of a lover, no critic in
+"The Londoner" could ridicule.  But, somehow or other, this poor
+little tamer of butterflies and teller of fairy tales comprehended on
+the instant all that this most eccentric of human beings thus frigidly
+left untold.  Into her innermost heart it sank more deeply than would
+the most ardent declaration put into the lips of the boobies or the
+scamps in whom delineators of manners in the present day too often
+debase the magnificent chivalry embodied in the name of "lover."
+
+Where these two had, while speaking, halted on the path along the
+brook-side, there was a bench, on which it so happened that they had
+seated themselves weeks before.  A few moments later on that bench
+they were seated again.
+
+And the trumpery little ring with its turquoise heart was on Lily's
+finger, and there they continued to sit for nearly half an hour; not
+talking much, but wondrously happy; not a single vow of troth
+interchanged.  No, not even a word that could be construed into "I
+love."  And yet when they rose from the bench, and went silently along
+the brook-side, each knew that the other was beloved.
+
+When they reached the gate that admitted into the garden of Grasmere,
+Kenelm made a slight start.  Mrs. Cameron was leaning over the gate.
+Whatever alarm at the appearance Kenelm might have felt was certainly
+not shared by Lily; she advanced lightly before him, kissed her aunt
+on the cheek, and passed on across the lawn with a bound in her step
+and the carol of a song upon her lips.
+
+Kenelm remained by the gate, face to face with Mrs. Cameron.  She
+opened the gate, put her arm in his, and led him back along the
+brook-side.
+
+"I am sure, Mr. Chillingly," she said, "that you will not impute to my
+words any meaning more grave than that which I wish them to convey,
+when I remind you that there is no place too obscure to escape from
+the ill-nature of gossip, and you must own that my niece incurs the
+chance of its notice if she be seen walking alone in these by-paths
+with a man of your age and position, and whose sojourn in the
+neighbourhood, without any ostensible object or motive, has already
+begun to excite conjecture.  I do not for a moment assume that you
+regard my niece in any other light than that of an artless child,
+whose originality of tastes or fancy may serve to amuse you; and still
+less do I suppose that she is in danger of misrepresenting any
+attentions on your part.  But for her sake I am bound to consider what
+others may say.  Excuse me, then, if I add that I think you are also
+bound in honour and in good feeling to do the same.  Mr. Chillingly,
+it would give me a great sense of relief if it suited your plans to
+move from the neighbourhood."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Cameron," answered Kenelm, who had listened to this
+speech with imperturbable calm of visage, "I thank you much for your
+candour, and I am glad to have this opportunity of informing you that
+I am about to move from this neighbourhood, with the hope of returning
+to it in a very few days and rectifying your mistake as to the point
+of view in which I regard your niece.  In a word," here the expression
+of his countenance and the tone of his voice underwent a sudden
+change, "it is the dearest wish of my heart to be empowered by my
+parents to assure you of the warmth with which they will welcome your
+niece as their daughter, should she deign to listen to my suit and
+intrust me with the charge of her happiness."
+
+Mrs. Cameron stopped short, gazing into his face with a look of
+inexpressible dismay.
+
+"No!  Mr. Chillingly," she exclaimed, "this must not be,--cannot be.
+Put out of your mind an idea so wild.  A young man's senseless
+romance.  Your parents cannot consent to your union with my niece; I
+tell you beforehand they cannot."
+
+"But why?" asked Kenelm, with a slight smile, and not much impressed
+by the vehemence of Mrs. Cameron's adjuration.
+
+"Why?" she repeated passionately; and then recovering something of her
+habitual weariness of quiet.  "The why is easily explained.  Mr.
+Kenelm Chillingly is the heir of a very ancient house and, I am told,
+of considerable estates.  Lily Mordaunt is a nobody, an orphan,
+without fortune, without connection, the ward of a humbly born artist,
+to whom she owes the roof that shelters her; she is without the
+ordinary education of a gentlewoman; she has seen nothing of the world
+in which you move.  Your parents have not the right to allow a son so
+young as yourself to throw himself out of his proper sphere by a rash
+and imprudent alliance.  And, never would I consent, never would
+Walter Melville consent, to her entering into any family reluctant to
+receive her.  There,--that is enough.  Dismiss the notion so lightly
+entertained.  And farewell."
+
+"Madam," answered Kenelm very earnestly, "believe me, that had I not
+entertained the hope approaching to conviction that the reasons you
+urge against my presumption will not have the weight with my parents
+which you ascribe to them, I should not have spoken to you thus
+frankly.  Young though I be, still I might fairly claim the right to
+choose for myself in marriage.  But I gave to my father a very binding
+promise that I would not formally propose to any one till I had
+acquainted him with my desire to do so, and obtained his approval of
+my choice; and he is the last man in the world who would withhold that
+approval where my heart is set on it as it is now.  I want no fortune
+with a wife, and should I ever care to advance my position in the
+world, no connection would help me like the approving smile of the
+woman I love.  There is but one qualification which my parents would
+deem they had the right to exact from my choice of one who is to bear
+our name.  I mean that she should have the appearance, the manners,
+the principles, and--my mother at least might add--the birth of a
+gentlewoman.  Well, as to appearance and manners, I have seen much of
+fine society from my boyhood, and found no one among the highest born
+who can excel the exquisite refinement of every look, and the inborn
+delicacy of every thought, in her of whom, if mine, I shall be as
+proud as I shall be fond.  As to defects in the frippery and tinsel of
+a boarding-school education, they are very soon remedied.  Remains
+only the last consideration,--birth.  Mrs. Braefield informs me that
+you have assured her that, though circumstances into which as yet I
+have no right to inquire, have made her the ward of a man of humble
+origin, Miss Mordaunt is of gentle birth.  Do you deny that?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Cameron, hesitating, but with a flash of pride in her
+eyes as she went on.  "No.  I cannot deny that my niece is descended
+from those who, in point of birth, were not unequal to your own
+ancestors.  But what of that?" she added, with a bitter despondency of
+tone.  "Equality of birth ceases when one falls into poverty,
+obscurity, neglect, nothingness!"
+
+"Really this is a morbid habit on your part.  But, since we have thus
+spoken so confidentially, will you not empower me to answer the
+question which will probably be put to me, and the answer to which
+will, I doubt not, remove every obstacle in the way of my happiness?
+Whatever the reasons which might very sufficiently induce you to
+preserve, whilst living so quietly in this place, a discreet silence
+as to the parentage of Miss Mordaunt and your own,--and I am well
+aware that those whom altered circumstances of fortune have compelled
+to altered modes of life may disdain to parade to strangers the
+pretensions to a higher station than that to which they reconcile
+their habits,--whatever, I say, such reasons for silence to strangers,
+should they preclude you from confiding to me, an aspirant to your
+niece's hand, a secret which, after all, cannot be concealed from her
+future husband?"
+
+"From her future husband? of course not," answered Mrs. Cameron.  "But
+I decline to be questioned by one whom I may never see again, and of
+whom I know so little.  I decline, indeed, to assist in removing any
+obstacle to a union with my niece, which I hold to be in every way
+unsuited to either party.  I have no cause even to believe that my
+niece would accept you if you were free to propose to her.  You have
+not, I presume, spoken to her as an aspirant to her hand.  You have
+not addressed to her any declaration of your attachment, or sought to
+extract from her inexperience any words that warrant you in thinking
+that her heart will break if she never sees you again."
+
+"I do not merit such cruel and taunting questions," said Kenelm,
+indignantly.  "But I will say no more now.  When we again meet let me
+hope you will treat me less unkindly.  Adieu!"
+
+"Stay, sir.  A word or two more.  You persist in asking your father
+and Lady Chillingly to consent to your proposal to Miss Mordaunt?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"And you will promise me, on your word as a gentleman, to state fairly
+all the causes which might fairly operate against their consent,--the
+poverty, the humble rearing, the imperfect education of my niece,--so
+that they might not hereafter say you had entrapped their consent, and
+avenge themselves for your deceit by contempt for her?"
+
+"Ah, madam, madam, you really try my patience too far.  But take my
+promise, if you can hold that of value from one whom you can suspect
+of deliberate deceit."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Chillingly.  Bear with my rudeness.  I have
+been so taken by surprise, I scarcely know what I am saying.  But let
+us understand each other completely before we part.  If your parents
+withhold their consent you will communicate it to me; me only, not to
+Lily. I repeat I know nothing of the state of her affections.  But it
+might embitter any girl's life to be led on to love one whom she could
+not marry."
+
+"It shall be as you say.  But if they do consent?"
+
+"Then you will speak to me before you seek an interview with Lily, for
+then comes another question: Will her guardian consent?--and--and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"No matter.  I rely on your honour in this request, as in all else.
+Good-day."
+
+She turned back with hurried footsteps, muttering to herself, "But
+they will not consent.  Heaven grant that they will not consent, or if
+they do, what--what is to be said or done?  Oh, that Walter Melville
+were here, or that I knew where to write to him!"
+
+On his way back to Cromwell Lodge, Kenelm was overtaken by the vicar.
+
+"I was coming to you, my dear Mr. Chillingly, first to thank you for
+the very pretty present with which you have gladdened the heart of my
+little Clemmy, and next to ask you to come with me quietly to-day to
+meet Mr. -----, the celebrated antiquarian, who came to Moleswich this
+morning at my request to examine that old Gothic tomb in our
+churchyard.  Only think, though he cannot read the inscription any
+better than we can, he knows all about its history.  It seems that a
+young knight renowned for feats of valour in the reign of Henry IV.
+married a daughter of one of those great Earls of Montfichet who were
+then the most powerful family in these parts.  He was slain in
+defending the church from an assault by some disorderly rioters of the
+Lollard faction; he fell on the very spot where the tomb is now
+placed.  That accounts for its situation in the churchyard, not within
+the fabric.  Mr. ----- discovered this fact in an old memoir of the
+ancient and once famous family to which the young knight Albert
+belonged, and which came, alas! to so shameful an end, the Fletwodes,
+Barons of Fletwode and Malpas.  What a triumph over pretty Lily
+Mordaunt, who always chose to imagine that the tomb must be that of
+some heroine of her own romantic invention!  Do come to dinner; Mr.
+-----  is a most agreeable man, and full of interesting anecdotes."
+
+"I am so sorry I cannot.  I am obliged to return home at once for a
+few days.  That old family of Fletwode!  I think I see before me,
+while we speak, the gray tower in which they once held sway; and the
+last of the race following Mammon along the Progress of the Age,--a
+convicted felon!  What a terrible satire on the pride of birth!"
+
+Kenelm left Cromwell Lodge that evening, but he still kept on his
+apartments there, saying he might be back unexpectedly any day in the
+course of the next week.
+
+He remained two days in London, wishing all that he had communicated
+to Sir Peter in writing to sink into his father's heart before a
+personal appeal to it.
+
+The more he revolved the ungracious manner in which Mrs. Cameron had
+received his confidence, the less importance he attached to it.  An
+exaggerated sense of disparities of fortune in a person who appeared
+to him to have the pride so common to those who have known better
+days, coupled with a nervous apprehension lest his family should
+ascribe to her any attempt to ensnare a very young man of considerable
+worldly pretensions into a marriage with a penniless niece, seemed to
+account for much that had at first perplexed and angered him.  And if,
+as he conjectured, Mrs. Cameron had once held a much higher position
+in the world than she did now,--a conjecture warranted by a certain
+peculiar conventional undeniable elegance which characterized her
+habitual manner,--and was now, as she implied, actually a dependant on
+the bounty of a painter who had only just acquired some professional
+distinction, she might well shrink from the mortification of becoming
+an object of compassion to her richer neighbours; nor, when he came to
+think of it, had he any more right than those neighbours to any
+confidence as to her own or Lily's parentage, so long as he was not
+formally entitled to claim admission into her privity.
+
+London seemed to him intolerably dull and wearisome.  He called
+nowhere except at Lady Glenalvon's; he was glad to hear from the
+servants that she was still at Exmundham.  He relied much on the
+influence of the queen of the fashion with his mother, whom he knew
+would be more difficult to persuade than Sir Peter, nor did he doubt
+that he should win to his side that sympathizing and warm-hearted
+queen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IT is somewhere about three weeks since the party invited by Sir Peter
+and Lady Chillingly assembled at Exmundham, and they are still there,
+though people invited to a country house have seldom compassion enough
+for the dulness of its owner to stay more than three days.  Mr.
+Chillingly Mivers, indeed, had not exceeded that orthodox limit.
+Quietly observant, during his stay, of young Gordon's manner towards
+Cecilia, and hers towards him, he had satisfied himself that there was
+no cause to alarm Sir Peter, or induce the worthy baronet to regret
+the invitation he had given to that clever kinsman.  For all the
+visitors remaining Exmundham had a charm.
+
+To Lady Glenalvon, because in the hostess she met her most familiar
+friend when both were young girls, and because it pleased her to note
+the interest which Cecilia Travers took in the place so associated
+with memories of the man to whom it was Lady Glenalvon's hope to see
+her united.  To Chillingly Gordon, because no opportunity could be so
+favourable for his own well-concealed designs on the hand and heart of
+the heiress.  To the heiress herself the charm needs no explanation.
+
+To Leopold Travers the attractions of Exmundham were unquestionably
+less fascinating.  Still even he was well pleased to prolong his stay.
+His active mind found amusement in wandering over an estate the
+acreage of which would have warranted a much larger rental, and
+lecturing Sir Peter on the old-fashioned system of husbandry which
+that good-natured easy proprietor permitted his tenants to adopt, as
+well as on the number of superfluous hands that were employed on the
+pleasure-grounds and in the general management of the estate, such as
+carpenters, sawyers, woodmen, bricklayers, and smiths.
+
+When the Squire said, "You could do just as well with a third of those
+costly dependants," Sir Peter, unconsciously plagiarizing the answer
+of the old French grand seigneur, replied, "Very likely.  But the
+question is, could the rest do just as well without me?"
+
+Exmundham, indeed, was a very expensive place to keep up.  The house,
+built by some ambitious Chillingly three centuries ago, would have
+been large for an owner of thrice the revenues; and though the
+flower-garden was smaller than that at Braefieldville, there were
+paths and drives through miles of young plantations and old woodlands
+that furnished lazy occupation to an army of labourers.  No wonder
+that, despite his nominal ten thousand a year, Sir Peter was far from
+being a rich man.  Exmundham devoured at least half the rental.  The
+active mind of Leopold Travers also found ample occupation in the
+stores of his host's extensive library.
+
+Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser of
+learning, and he soon took to historical and archaeological researches
+with the ardour of a man who must always throw energy into any pursuit
+that occasion presents as an escape from indolence.  Indolent Leopold
+Travers never could be.  But, more than either of these resources of
+occupation, the companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his
+interest and quickened the current of his thoughts.  Always fond of
+renewing his own youth in the society of the young, and of the
+sympathizing temperament which belongs to cordial natures, he had, as
+we have seen, entered very heartily into the ambition of George
+Belvoir, and reconciled himself very pliably to the humours of Kenelm
+Chillingly.  But the first of these two was a little too commonplace,
+the second a little too eccentric, to enlist the complete
+good-fellowship which, being alike very clever and very practical,
+Leopold Travers established with that very clever and very practical
+representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon.  Between
+them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great
+contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the
+mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt--which would have been
+complete, but that the contempt admitted dread--of harmful
+new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, threatened
+ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of existent society,
+and which, interpreted by his language, tamed itself into the man of
+the world's phrase, "Going too far for me."  Notions which, by the
+much more cultivated intellect and the immeasurably more soaring
+ambition of Chillingly Gordon, might be viewed and criticised thus:
+"Could I accept these doctrines?  I don't see my way to being Prime
+Minister of a country in which religion and capital are still powers
+to be consulted.  And, putting aside religion and capital, I don't see
+how, if these doctrines passed into law, with a good coat on my back I
+should not be a sufferer.  Either I, as having a good coat, should
+have it torn off my back as a capitalist, or, if I remonstrated in the
+name of moral honesty, be put to death as a religionist."
+
+Therefore when Leopold Travers said, "Of course we must go on,"
+Chillingly Gordon smiled and answered, "Certainly, go on."  And when
+Leopold Travers added, "But we may go too far," Chillingly Gordon
+shook his dead, and replied, "How true that is!  Certainly too far."
+
+Apart from the congeniality of political sentiment, there were other
+points of friendly contact between the older and younger man.  Each
+was an exceedingly pleasant man of the world; and, though Leopold
+Travers could not have plumbed certain deeps in Chillingly Gordon's
+nature,--and in every man's nature there are deeps which his ablest
+observer cannot fathom,--yet he was not wrong when he said to himself,
+"Gordon is a gentleman."
+
+Utterly would my readers misconceive that very clever young man, if
+they held him to be a hypocrite like Blifil or Joseph Surface.
+Chillingly Gordon, in every private sense of the word, was a
+gentleman.  If he had staked his whole fortune on a rubber at whist,
+and an undetected glance at his adversary's hand would have made the
+difference between loss and gain, he would have turned away his head
+and said, "Hold up your cards."  Neither, as I have had occasion to
+explain before, was he actuated by any motive in common with the
+vulgar fortune-hunter in his secret resolve to win the hand of the
+heiress.  He recognized no inequality of worldly gifts between them.
+He said to himself, "Whatever she may give me in money, I shall amply
+repay in worldly position if I succeed, and succeed I certainly shall.
+If I were as rich as Lord Westminster, and still cared about being
+Prime Minister, I should select her as the most fitting woman I have
+seen for a Prime Minister's wife."
+
+It must be acknowledged that this sort of self-commune, if not that of
+a very ardent lover, is very much that of a sensible man setting high
+value on himself, bent on achieving the prizes of a public career, and
+desirous of securing in his wife a woman who would adorn the station
+to which he confidently aspired.  In fact, no one so able as
+Chillingly Gordon would ever have conceived the ambition of being
+Minister of England if in all that in private life constitutes the
+English gentleman he could be fairly subject to reproach.
+
+He was but in public life what many a gentleman honest in private life
+has been before him, an ambitious, resolute egotist, by no means
+without personal affections, but holding them all subordinate to the
+objects of personal ambition, and with no more of other principle than
+that of expediency in reference to his own career than would cover a
+silver penny.  But expediency in itself he deemed the statesman's only
+rational principle.  And to the consideration of expediency he brought
+a very unprejudiced intellect, quite fitted to decide whether the
+public opinion of a free and enlightened people was for turning St.
+Paul's Cathedral into an Agapemone or not.
+
+During the summer weeks he had thus vouchsafed to the turfs and groves
+of Exmundham, Leopold Travers was not the only person whose good
+opinion Chillingly Gordon had ingratiated.  He had won the warmest
+approbation from Mrs. Campion.  His conversation reminded her of that
+which she had enjoyed in the house of her departed spouse.  In talking
+with Cecilia she was fond of contrasting him to Kenelm, not to the
+favour of the latter, whose humours she utterly failed to understand,
+and whom she pertinaciously described as "so affected."  "A most
+superior young man Mr. Gordon, so well informed, so sensible,--above
+all, so natural."  Such was her judgment upon the unavowed candidate
+to Cecilia's hand; and Mrs. Campion required no avowal to divine the
+candidature.  Even Lady Glenalvon had begun to take friendly interest
+in the fortunes of this promising young man.  Most women can
+sympathize with youthful ambition.  He impressed her with a deep
+conviction of his abilities, and still more with respect for their
+concentration upon practical objects of power and renown.  She too,
+like Mrs. Campion, began to draw comparisons unfavourable to Kenelm
+between the two cousins: the one seemed so slothfully determined to
+hide his candle under a bushel, the other so honestly disposed to set
+his light before men.  She felt also annoyed and angry that Kenelm was
+thus absenting himself from the paternal home at the very time of her
+first visit to it, and when he had so felicitous an opportunity of
+seeing more of the girl in whom he knew that Lady Glenalvon deemed he
+might win, if he would properly woo, the wife that would best suit
+him.  So that when one day Mrs. Campion, walking through the gardens
+alone with Lady Glenalvon while from the gardens into the park went
+Chillingly Gordon, arm-in-arm with Leopold Travers, abruptly asked,
+"Don't you think that Mr. Gordon is smitten with Cecilia, though he,
+with his moderate fortune, does not dare to say so?  And don't you
+think that any girl, if she were as rich as Cecilia will be, would be
+more proud of such a husband as Chillingly Gordon than of some silly
+earl?"
+
+Lady Glenalvon answered curtly, but somewhat sorrowfully, "Yes."
+
+After a pause she added, "There is a man with whom I did once think
+she would have been happier than with any other.  One man who ought to
+be dearer to me than Mr. Gordon, for he saved the life of my son, and
+who, though perhaps less clever than Mr. Gordon, still has a great
+deal of talent within him, which might come forth and make him--what
+shall I say?--a useful and distinguished member of society, if married
+to a girl so sure of raising any man she marries as Cecilia Travers.
+But if I am to renounce that hope, and look through the range of young
+men brought under my notice, I don't know one, putting aside
+consideration of rank and fortune, I should prefer for a clever
+daughter who went heart and soul with the ambition of a clever man.
+But, Mrs. Campion, I have not yet quite renounced my hope; and, unless
+I do, I yet think there is one man to whom I would rather give
+Cecilia, if she were my daughter."
+
+Therewith Lady Glenalvon so decidedly broke off the subject of
+conversation that Mrs. Campion could not have renewed it without such
+a breach of the female etiquette of good breeding as Mrs. Campion was
+the last person to adventure.
+
+Lady Chillingly could not help being pleased with Gordon.  He was
+light in hand, served to amuse her guests, and made up a rubber of
+whist in case of need.
+
+There were two persons, however, with whom Gordon made no ground;
+namely, Parson John and Sir Peter.  When Travers praised him one day
+for the solidity of his parts and the soundness of his judgment, the
+Parson replied snappishly, "Yes, solid and sound as one of those
+tables you buy at a broker's; the thickness of the varnish hides the
+defects in the joints: the whole framework is rickety."  But when the
+Parson was indignantly urged to state the reason by which he arrived
+at so harsh a conclusion, he could only reply by an assertion which
+seemed to his questioner a declamatory burst of parsonic intolerance.
+
+"Because," said Parson John, "he has no love for man, and no reverence
+for God.  And no character is sound and solid which enlarges its
+surface at the expense of its supports."
+
+On the other hand, the favour with which Sir Peter had at first
+regarded Gordon gradually vanished, in proportion as, acting on the
+hint Mivers had originally thrown out but did not deem it necessary to
+repeat, he watched the pains which the young man took to insinuate
+himself into the good graces of Mr. Travers and Mrs. Campion, and the
+artful and half-suppressed gallantry of his manner to the heiress.
+
+Perhaps Gordon had not ventured thus "to feel his way" till after
+Mivers had departed; or perhaps Sir Peter's parental anxiety rendered
+him, in this instance, a shrewder observer than was the man of the
+world, whose natural acuteness was, in matters of affection, not
+unfrequently rendered languid by his acquired philosophy of
+indifferentism.
+
+More and more every day, every hour, of her sojourn beneath his roof,
+did Cecilia become dearer to Sir Peter, and stronger and stronger
+became his wish to secure her for his daughter-in-law.  He was
+inexpressibly flattered by her preference for his company: ever at
+hand to share his customary walks, his kindly visits to the cottages
+of peasants or the homesteads of petty tenants; wherein both were sure
+to hear many a simple anecdote of Master Kenelm in his childhood,
+anecdotes of whim or good-nature, of considerate pity or reckless
+courage.
+
+Throughout all these varieties of thought or feeling in the social
+circle around her, Lady Chillingly preserved the unmoved calm of her
+dignified position.  A very good woman certainly, and very ladylike.
+No one could detect a flaw in her character, or a fold awry in her
+flounce.  She was only, like the gods of Epicurus, too good to trouble
+her serene existence with the cares of us simple mortals.  Not that
+she was without a placid satisfaction in the tribute which the world
+laid upon her altars; nor was she so supremely goddess-like as to soar
+above the household affections which humanity entails on the dwellers
+and denizens of earth.  She liked her husband as much as most elderly
+wives like their elderly husbands.  She bestowed upon Kenelm a liking
+somewhat more warm, and mingled with compassion.  His eccentricities
+would have puzzled her, if she had allowed herself to be puzzled: it
+troubled her less to pity them.  She did not share her husband's
+desire for his union with Cecilia.  She thought that her son would
+have a higher place in the county if he married Lady Jane, the Duke of
+Clanville's daughter; and "that is what he ought to do," said Lady
+Chillingly to herself.  She entertained none of the fear that had
+induced Sir Peter to extract from Kenelm the promise not to pledge his
+hand before he had received his father's consent.  That the son of
+Lady Chillingly should make a /mesalliance/, however crotchety he
+might be in other respects, was a thought that it would have so
+disturbed her to admit that she did not admit it.
+
+Such was the condition of things at Exmundham when the lengthy
+communication of Kenelm reached Sir Peter's hands.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, BOOK 7 ***
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