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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Kenelm Chillingly,by Lytton, Complete
+#86 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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+Title: Kenelm Chillingly, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7658]
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+[This file was first posted on March 25, 2004]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, COMPLETE ***
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+This eBook was produced by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
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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 him; "but it strikes me that this picture is
+very much better than most of those to which places of honour are
+assigned in your collection.  And the face itself is so lovely that it
+would add an embellishment to the princeliest galleries."
+
+"Yes," said Cecilia, with a half-sigh.  "The face is lovely, and the
+portrait is considered one of Lely's rarest masterpieces.  It used to
+hang over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room.  My father had it
+placed here many years ago."
+
+"Perhaps because he discovered it was not a family portrait?"
+
+"On the contrary,--because it grieves him to think it is a family
+portrait.  Hush!  I hear his footstep: don't speak of it to him; don't
+let him see you looking at it.  The subject is very painful to him."
+
+Here Cecilia vanished into the china closet and Kenelm turned off to
+his own room.
+
+What sin committed by the original in the time of Charles II. but only
+discovered in the reign of Victoria could have justified Leopold
+Travers in removing the most pleasing portrait in the house from the
+honoured place it had occupied, and banishing it to so obscure a
+recess?  Kenelm said no more on the subject, and indeed an hour
+afterwards had dismissed it from his thoughts.  The next day he rode
+out with Travers and Cecilia.  Their way passed through quiet shady
+lanes without any purposed direction, when suddenly, at the spot where
+three of those lanes met on an angle of common ground, a lonely gray
+tower, in the midst of a wide space of grass-land which looked as if
+it had once been a park, with huge boles of pollarded oak dotting the
+space here and there, rose before them.
+
+"Cissy!" cried Travers, angrily reining in his horse and stopping
+short in a political discussion which he had forced upon Kenelm,
+"Cissy!  How comes this?  We have taken the wrong turn!  No matter, I
+see there," pointing to the right, "the chimney-pots of old Mondell's
+homestead.  He has not yet promised his vote to George Belvoir.  I'll
+go and have a talk with him.  Turn back, you and Mr. Chillingly,--meet
+me at Terner's Green, and wait for me there till I come.  I need not
+excuse myself to you, Chillingly.  A vote is a vote."  So saying, the
+Squire, whose ordinary riding-horse was an old hunter, halted, turned,
+and, no gate being visible, put the horse over a stiff fence and
+vanished in the direction of old Mondell's chimney-pots.  Kenelm,
+scarcely hearing his host's instructions to Cecilia and excuses to
+himself, remained still and gazing on the old tower thus abruptly
+obtruded on his view.
+
+Though no learned antiquarian like his father, Kenelm had a strange
+fascinating interest in all relics of the past; and old gray towers,
+where they are not church towers, are very rarely to be seen in
+England.  All around the old gray tower spoke with an unutterable
+mournfulness of a past in ruins: you could see remains of some large
+Gothic building once attached to it, rising here and there in
+fragments of deeply buttressed walls; you could see in a dry ditch,
+between high ridges, where there had been a fortified moat: nay, you
+could even see where once had been the bailey hill from which a baron
+of old had dispensed justice.  Seldom indeed does the most acute of
+antiquarians discover that remnant of Norman times on lands still held
+by the oldest of Anglo-Norman families.  Then, the wild nature of the
+demesne around; those ranges of sward, with those old giant
+oak-trunks, hollowed within and pollarded at top,--all spoke, in
+unison with the gray tower, of a past as remote from the reign of
+Victoria as the Pyramids are from the sway of the Viceroy of Egypt.
+
+"Let us turn back," said Miss Travers; "my father would not like me to
+stay here."
+
+"Pardon me a moment.  I wish my father were here; he would stay till
+sunset.  But what is the history of that old tower? a history it must
+have."
+
+"Every home has a history, even a peasant's hut," said Cecilia.  "But
+do pardon me if I ask you to comply with my father's request.  I at
+least must turn back."
+
+Thus commanded, Kenelm reluctantly withdrew his gaze from the ruin and
+regained Cecilia, who was already some paces in return down the lane.
+
+"I am far from a very inquisitive man by temperament," said Kenelm,
+"so far as the affairs of the living are concerned.  But I should not
+care to open a book if I had no interest in the past.  Pray indulge my
+curiosity to learn something about that old tower.  It could not look
+more melancholy and solitary if I had built it myself."
+
+"Its most melancholy associations are with a very recent past,"
+answered Cecilia.  "The tower, in remote times, formed the keep of a
+castle belonging to the most ancient and once the most powerful family
+in these parts.  The owners were barons who took active share in the
+Wars of the Roses.  The last of them sided with Richard III., and
+after the battle of Bosworth the title was attainted, and the larger
+portion of the lands was confiscated.  Loyalty to a Plantagenet was of
+course treason to a Tudor.  But the regeneration of the family rested
+with their direct descendants, who had saved from the general wreck of
+their fortunes what may be called a good squire's estate,--about,
+perhaps, the same rental as my father's, but of much larger acreage.
+These squires, however, were more looked up to in the county than the
+wealthiest peer.  They were still by far the oldest family in the
+county; and traced in their pedigree alliances with the most
+illustrious houses in English history.  In themselves too for many
+generations they were a high-spirited, hospitable, popular race,
+living unostentatiously on their income, and contented with their rank
+of squires.  The castle, ruined by time and siege, they did not
+attempt to restore.  They dwelt in a house near to it, built about
+Elizabeth's time, which you could not see, for it lies in a hollow
+behind the tower,--a moderate-sized, picturesque, country gentleman's
+house.  Our family intermarried with them,--the portrait you saw was a
+daughter of their house,--and very proud was any squire in the county
+of intermarriage with the Fletwodes."
+
+"Fletwode,--that was their name?  I have a vague recollection of
+having heard the name connected with some disastrous--oh, but it can't
+be the same family: pray go on."
+
+"I fear it is the same family.  But I will finish the story as I have
+heard it.  The property descended at last to one Bertram Fletwode,
+who, unfortunately, obtained the reputation of being a very clever man
+of business.  There was some mining company in which, with other
+gentlemen in the county, he took great interest; invested largely in
+shares; became the head of the direction--"
+
+"I see; and was of course ruined."
+
+"No; worse than that: he became very rich; and, unhappily, became
+desirous of being richer still.  I have heard that there was a great
+mania for speculations just about that time.  He embarked in these,
+and prospered, till at last he was induced to invest a large share of
+the fortune thus acquired in the partnership of a bank which enjoyed a
+high character.  Up to that time he had retained popularity and esteem
+in the county; but the squires who shared in the adventures of the
+mining company, and knew little or nothing about other speculations in
+which his name did not appear, professed to be shocked at the idea of
+a Fletwode of Fletwode being ostensibly joined in partnership with a
+Jones of Clapham in a London bank."
+
+"Slow folks, those country squires,--behind the progress of the age.
+Well?"
+
+"I have heard that Bertram Fletwode was himself very reluctant to take
+this step, but was persuaded to do so by his son.  This son, Alfred,
+was said to have still greater talents for business than the father,
+and had been not only associated with but consulted by him in all the
+later speculations which had proved so fortunate.  Mrs. Campion knew
+Alfred Fletwode very well.  She describes him as handsome, with quick,
+eager eyes; showy and imposing in his talk; immensely ambitious, more
+ambitious than avaricious,--collecting money less for its own sake
+than for that which it could give,--rank and power.  According to her
+it was the dearest wish of his heart to claim the old barony, but not
+before there could go with the barony a fortune adequate to the lustre
+of a title so ancient, and equal to the wealth of modern peers with
+higher nominal rank."
+
+"A poor ambition at the best; of the two I should prefer that of a
+poet in a garret.  But I am no judge.  Thank Heaven I have no
+ambition.  Still, all ambition, all desire to rise, is interesting to
+him who is ignominiously contented if he does not fall.  So the son
+had his way, and Fletwode joined company with Jones on the road to
+wealth and the peerage; meanwhile did the son marry?  if so, of course
+the daughter of a duke or a millionnaire.  Tuft-hunting, or
+money-making, at the risk of degradation and the workhouse.  Progress
+of the age!"
+
+"No," replied Cecilia, smiling at this outburst, but smiling sadly,
+"Fletwode did not marry the daughter of a duke or a millionnaire; but
+still his wife belonged to a noble family,--very poor, but very proud.
+Perhaps he married from motives of ambition, though not of gain.  Her
+father was of much political influence that might perhaps assist his
+claim to the barony.  The mother, a woman of the world, enjoying a
+high social position, and nearly related to a connection of
+ours,--Lady Glenalvon."
+
+"Lady Glenalvon, the dearest of my lady friends!  You are connected
+with her?"
+
+"Yes; Lord Glenalvon was my mother's uncle.  But I wish to finish my
+story before my father joins us.  Alfred Fletwode did not marry till
+long after the partnership in the bank.  His father, at his desire,
+had bought up the whole business, Mr. Jones having died.  The bank was
+carried on in the names of Fletwode and Son.  But the father had
+become merely a nominal or what I believe is called a 'sleeping'
+partner.  He had long ceased to reside in the county. The old house
+was not grand enough for him.  He had purchased a palatial residence
+in one of the home counties; lived there in great splendour; was a
+munificent patron of science and art; and in spite of his earlier
+addictions to business-like speculations he appears to have been a
+singularly accomplished, high-bred gentleman.  Some years before his
+son's marriage, Mr. Fletwode had been afflicted with partial
+paralysis, and his medical attendant enjoined rigid abstention from
+business.  From that time he never interfered with his son's
+management of the bank.  He had an only daughter, much younger than
+Alfred.  Lord Eagleton, my mother's brother, was engaged to be married
+to her.  The wedding-day was fixed,--when the world was startled by
+the news that the great firm of Fletwode and Son had stopped payment;
+is that the right phrase?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"A great many people were ruined in that failure.  The public
+indignation was very great.  Of course all the Fletwode property went
+to the creditors.  Old Mr. Fletwode was legally acquitted of all other
+offence than that of overconfidence in his son.  Alfred was convicted
+of fraud,--of forgery.  I don't, of course, know the particulars, they
+are very complicated.  He was sentenced to a long term of servitude,
+but died the day he was condemned; apparently by poison, which he had
+long secreted about his person.  Now you can understand why my father,
+who is almost gratuitously sensitive on the point of honour, removed
+into a dark corner the portrait of Arabella Fletwode,--his own
+ancestress, but also the ancestress of a convicted felon: you can
+understand why the whole subject is so painful to him.  His wife's
+brother was to have married the felon's sister; and though, of course,
+that marriage was tacitly broken off by the terrible disgrace that had
+befallen the Fletwodes, yet I don't think my poor uncle ever recovered
+the blow to his hopes.  He went abroad, and died in Madeira of a slow
+decline."
+
+"And the felon's sister, did she die too?"
+
+"No; not that I know of.  Mrs. Campion says that she saw in a
+newspaper the announcement of old Mr. Fletwode's death, and a
+paragraph to the effect that after that event Miss Fletwode had sailed
+from Liverpool to New York."
+
+"Alfred Fletwode's wife went back, of course, to her family?"
+
+"Alas! no,--poor thing!  She had not been many months married when the
+bank broke; and among his friends her wretched husband appears to have
+forged the names of the trustees to her marriage settlement, and sold
+out the sums which would otherwise have served her as a competence.
+Her father, too, was a great sufferer by the bankruptcy, having by his
+son-in-law's advice placed a considerable portion of his moderate
+fortune in Alfred's hands for investment, all of which was involved in
+the general wreck.  I am afraid he was a very hard-hearted man: at all
+events his poor daughter never returned to him.  She died, I think,
+even before the death of Bertram Fletwode.  The whole story is very
+dismal."
+
+"Dismal indeed, but pregnant with salutary warnings to those who live
+in an age of progress.  Here you see a family of fair fortune, living
+hospitably, beloved, revered, more looked up to by their neighbours
+than the wealthiest nobles; no family not proud to boast alliance with
+it.  All at once, in the tranquil record of this happy race, appears
+that darling of the age, that hero of progress,--a clever man of
+business.  He be contented to live as his fathers!  He be contented
+with such trifles as competence, respect, and love!  Much too clever
+for that.  The age is money-making,--go with the age!  He goes with
+the age.  Born a gentleman only, he exalts himself into a trader.  But
+at least he, it seems, if greedy, was not dishonest.  He was born a
+gentleman, but his son was born a trader.  The son is a still cleverer
+man of business; the son is consulted and trusted.  Aha!  He too goes
+with the age; to greed he links ambition.  The trader's son wishes to
+return--what? to the rank of gentleman?--gentleman! nonsense!
+everybody is a gentleman nowadays,--to the title of Lord.  How ends it
+all!  Could I sit but for twelve hours in the innermost heart of that
+Alfred Fletwode; could I see how, step by step from his childhood, the
+dishonest son was avariciously led on by the honest father to depart
+from the old /vestigia/ of Fletwodes of Fletwode,--scorning The Enough
+to covet The More, gaining The More to sigh, 'It is not The
+Enough,'--I think I might show that the age lives in a house of glass,
+and had better not for its own sake throw stones on the felon!"
+
+"Ah, but, Mr. Chillingly, surely this is a very rare exception in the
+general--"
+
+"Rare!" interrupted Kenelm, who was excited to a warmth of passion
+which would have startled his most intimate friend,-if indeed an
+intimate friend had ever been vouchsafed to him,--"rare! nay, how
+common--I don't say to the extent of forgery and fraud, but to the
+extent of degradation and ruin--is the greed of a Little More to those
+who have The Enough! is the discontent with competence, respect, and
+love, when catching sight of a money-bag!  How many well-descended
+county families, cursed with an heir who is called a clever man of
+business, have vanished from the soil!  A company starts, the clever
+man joins it one bright day.  Pouf! the old estates and the old name
+are powder.  Ascend higher.  Take nobles whose ancestral titles ought
+to be to English ears like the sound of clarions, awakening the most
+slothful to the scorn of money-bags and the passion for renown.  Lo!
+in that mocking dance of death called the Progress of the Age, one who
+did not find Enough in a sovereign's revenue, and seeks The Little
+More as a gambler on the turf by the advice of blacklegs!  Lo!
+another, with lands wider than his greatest ancestors ever possessed,
+must still go in for The Little More, adding acre to acre, heaping
+debt upon debt!  Lo! a third, whose name, borne by his ancestors, was
+once the terror of England's foes,--the landlord of a hotel!  A
+fourth,--but why go on through the list?  Another and another still
+succeeds; each on the Road to Ruin, each in the Age of Progress.  Ah,
+Miss Travers! in the old time it was through the Temple of Honour that
+one passed to the Temple of Fortune.  In this wise age the process is
+reversed.  But here comes your father."
+
+"A thousand pardons!" said Leopold Travers.  "That numskull Mondell
+kept me so long with his old-fashioned Tory doubts whether liberal
+politics are favourable to agricultural prospects.  But as he owes a
+round sum to a Whig lawyer I had to talk with his wife, a prudent
+woman; convinced her that his own agricultural prospects were safest
+on the Whig side of the question; and, after kissing his baby and
+shaking his hand, booked his vote for George Belvoir,--a plumper."
+
+"I suppose," said Kenelm to himself, and with that candour which
+characterized him whenever he talked to himself, "that Travers has
+taken the right road to the Temple, not of Honour, but of honours, in
+every country, ancient or modern, which has adopted the system of
+popular suffrage."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE next day Mrs. Campion and Cecilia were seated under the veranda.
+They were both ostensibly employed on two several pieces of
+embroidery, one intended for a screen, the other for a sofa-cushion;
+but the mind of neither was on her work.
+
+MRS. CAMPION.--"Has Mr. Chillingly said when he means to take leave?"
+
+CECILIA.--"Not to me.  How much my dear father enjoys his
+conversation!"
+
+MRS. CAMPION.--"Cynicism and mockery were not so much the fashion
+among young men in your father's day as I suppose they are now, and
+therefore they seem new to Mr. Travers.  To me they are not new,
+because I saw more of the old than the young when I lived in London,
+and cynicism and mockery are more natural to men who are leaving the
+world than to those who are entering it."
+
+CECILIA.--"Dear Mrs. Campion, how bitter you are, and how unjust!  You
+take much too literally the jesting way in which Mr. Chillingly
+expresses himself.  There can be no cynicism in one who goes out of
+his way to make others happy."
+
+MRS. CAMPION.--"You mean in the whim of making an ill-assorted
+marriage between a pretty village flirt and a sickly cripple, and
+settling a couple of peasants in a business for which they are wholly
+unfitted."
+
+CECILIA.--"Jessie Wiles is not a flirt, and I am convinced that she
+will make Will Somers a very good wife, and that the shop will be a
+great success."
+
+MRS. CAMPION.--"We shall see.  Still, if Mr. Chillingly's talk belies
+his actions, he may be a good man, but he is a very affected one."
+
+CECILIA.--"Have I not heard you say that there are persons so natural
+that they seem affected to those who do not understand them?"
+
+Mrs. Campion raised her eyes to Cecilia's face, dropped them again
+over her work, and said, in grave undertones,--"Take care, Cecilia."
+
+"Take care of what?"
+
+"My dearest child, forgive me; but I do not like the warmth with which
+you defend Mr. Chillingly."
+
+"Would not my father defend him still more warmly if he had heard
+you?"
+
+"Men judge of men in their relations to men.  I am a woman, and judge
+of men in their relations to women.  I should tremble for the
+happiness of any woman who joined her fate with that of Kenelm
+Chillingly."
+
+"My dear friend, I do not understand you to-day."
+
+"Nay; I did not mean to be so solemn, my love.  After all, it is
+nothing to us whom Mr. Chillingly may or may not marry.  He is but a
+passing visitor, and, once gone, the chances are that we may not see
+him again for years."
+
+Thus speaking, Mrs. Campion again raised her eyes from her work,
+stealing a sidelong glance at Cecilia; and her mother-like heart sank
+within her, on noticing how suddenly pale the girl had become, and how
+her lips quivered.  Mrs. Campion had enough knowledge of life to feel
+aware that she had committed a grievous blunder.  In that earliest
+stage of virgin affection, when a girl is unconscious of more than a
+certain vague interest in one man which distinguishes him from others
+in her thoughts,--if she hears him unjustly disparaged, if some
+warning against him is implied, if the probability that he will never
+be more to her than a passing acquaintance is forcibly obtruded on
+her,--suddenly that vague interest, which might otherwise have faded
+away with many another girlish fancy, becomes arrested, consolidated;
+the quick pang it occasions makes her involuntarily, and for the first
+time, question herself, and ask, "Do I love?"  But when a girl of a
+nature so delicate as that of Cecilia Travers can ask herself the
+question, "Do I love?"  her very modesty, her very shrinking from
+acknowledging that any power over her thoughts for weal or for woe can
+be acquired by a man, except through the sanction of that love which
+only becomes divine in her eyes when it is earnest and pure and
+self-devoted, makes her prematurely disposed to answer "yes."  And
+when a girl of such a nature in her own heart answers "yes" to such a
+question, even if she deceive herself at the moment, she begins to
+cherish the deceit till the belief in her love becomes a reality.  She
+has adopted a religion, false or true, and she would despise herself
+if she could be easily converted.
+
+Mrs. Campion had so contrived that she had forced that question upon
+Cecilia, and she feared, by the girl's change of countenance, that the
+girl's heart had answered "yes."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+WHILE the conversation just narrated took place, Kenelm had walked
+forth to pay a visit to Will Somers.  All obstacles to Will's marriage
+were now cleared away; the transfer of lease for the shop had been
+signed, and the banns were to be published for the first time on the
+following Sunday.  We need not say that Will was very happy.  Kenelm
+then paid a visit to Mrs. Bowles, with whom he stayed an hour.  On
+reentering the Park, he saw Travers, walking slowly, with downcast
+eyes and his hands clasped behind him (his habit when in thought).  He
+did not observe Kenelm's approach till within a few feet of him, and
+he then greeted his guest in listless accents, unlike his usual
+cheerful tones.
+
+"I have been visiting the man you have made so happy," said Kenelm.
+
+"Who can that be?"
+
+"Will Somers.  Do you make so many people happy that your reminiscence
+of them is lost in their number?"
+
+Travers smiled faintly, and shook his head.
+
+Kenelm went on.  "I have also seen Mrs. Bowles, and you will be
+pleased to hear that Tom is satisfied with his change of abode: there
+is no chance of his returning to Graveleigh; and Mrs. Bowles took very
+kindly to my suggestion that the little property you wish for should
+be sold to you, and, in that case, she would remove to Luscombe to be
+near her son."
+
+"I thank you much for your thought of me," said Travers, "and the
+affair shall be seen to at once, though the purchase is no longer
+important to me.  I ought to have told you three days ago, but it
+slipped my memory, that a neighbouring squire, a young fellow just
+come into his property, has offered to exchange a capital farm, much
+nearer to my residence, for the lands I hold in Graveleigh, including
+Saunderson's farm and the cottages: they are quite at the outskirts of
+my estate, but run into his, and the exchange will be advantageous to
+both.  Still I am glad that the neighbourhood should be thoroughly rid
+of a brute like Tom Bowles."
+
+"You would not call him brute if you knew him; but I am sorry to hear
+that Will Somers will be under another landlord."
+
+"It does not matter, since his tenure is secured for fourteen years."
+
+"What sort of man is the new landlord?"
+
+"I don't know much of him.  He was in the army till his father died,
+and has only just made his appearance in the county.  He has, however,
+already earned the character of being too fond of the other sex: it is
+well that pretty Jessie is to be safely married."
+
+Travers then relapsed into a moody silence from which Kenelm found it
+difficult to rouse him.  At length the latter said kindly,--
+
+"My dear Mr. Travers, do not think I take a liberty if I venture to
+guess that something has happened this morning which troubles or vexes
+you.  When that is the case, it is often a relief to say what it is,
+even to a confidant so unable to advise or to comfort as myself."
+
+"You are a good fellow, Chillingly, and I know not, at least in these
+parts, a man to whom I would unburden myself more freely.  I am put
+out, I confess; disappointed unreasonably, in a cherished wish, and,"
+he added, with a slight laugh, "it always annoys me when I don't have
+my own way."
+
+"So it does me."
+
+"Don't you think that George Belvoir is a very fine young man?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"/I/ call him handsome; he is steadier, too, than most men of his age,
+and of his command of money; and yet he does not want spirit nor
+knowledge of life.  To every advantage of rank and fortune he adds the
+industry and the ambition which attain distinction in public life."
+
+"Quite true.  Is he going to withdraw from the election after all?"
+
+"Good heavens, no!"
+
+"Then how does he not let you have your own way?"
+
+"It is not he," said Travers, peevishly; "it is Cecilia.  Don't you
+understand that George is precisely the husband I would choose for
+her; and this morning came a very well written manly letter from him,
+asking my permission to pay his addresses to her."
+
+"But that is your own way so far."
+
+"Yes, and here comes the balk.  Of course I had to refer it to
+Cecilia, and she positively declines, and has no reasons to give; does
+not deny that George is good-looking and sensible, that he is a man of
+whose preference any girl might be proud; but she chooses to say she
+cannot love him, and when I ask why she cannot love him, has no other
+answer than that 'she cannot say.'  It is too provoking."
+
+"It is provoking," answered Kenelm; "but then Love is the most
+dunderheaded of all the passions; it never will listen to reason.  The
+very rudiments of logic are unknown to it.  'Love has no wherefore,'
+says one of those Latin poets who wrote love-verses called elegies,--a
+name which we moderns appropriate to funeral dirges.  For my own part,
+I can't understand how any one can be expected voluntarily to make up
+his mind to go out of his mind.  And if Miss Travers cannot go out of
+her mind because George Belvoir does, you could not argue her into
+doing so if you talked till doomsday."
+
+Travers smiled in spite of himself, but he answered gravely,
+"Certainly, I would not wish Cissy to marry any man she disliked, but
+she does not dislike George; no girl could: and where that is the
+case, a girl so sensible, so affectionate, so well brought up, is sure
+to love, after marriage, a thoroughly kind and estimable man,
+especially when she has no previous attachment,--which, of course,
+Cissy never had.  In fact, though I do not wish to force my daughter's
+will, I am not yet disposed to give up my own.  Do you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"I am the more inclined to a marriage so desirable in every way,
+because when Cissy comes out in London, which she has not yet done,
+she is sure to collect round her face and her presumptive inheritance
+all the handsome fortune-hunters and titled /vauriens/; and if in love
+there is no wherefore, how can I be sure that she may not fall in love
+with a scamp?"
+
+"I think you may be sure of that," said Kenelm.  "Miss Travers has too
+much mind."
+
+"Yes, at present; but did you not say that in love people go out of
+their mind?"
+
+"True! I forgot that."
+
+"I am not then disposed to dismiss poor George's offer with a decided
+negative, and yet it would be unfair to mislead him by encouragement.
+In fact, I'll be hanged if I know how to reply."
+
+"You think Miss Travers does not dislike George Belvoir, and if she
+saw more of him may like him better, and it would be good for her as
+well as for him not to put an end to that, chance?"
+
+"Exactly so."
+
+"Why not then write: 'My dear George,--You have my best wishes, but my
+daughter does not seem disposed to marry at present.  Let me consider
+your letter not written, and continue on the same terms as we were
+before.' Perhaps, as George knows Virgil, you might find your own
+schoolboy recollections of that poet useful here, and add, /Varium et
+mutabile semper femina/; hackneyed, but true."
+
+"My dear Chillingly, your suggestion is capital.  How the deuce at
+your age have you contrived to know the world so well?"
+
+Kenelm answered in the pathetic tones so natural to his voice, "By
+being only a looker-on; alas!"
+
+Leopold Travers felt much relieved after he had written his reply to
+George.  He had not been quite so ingenuous in his revelation to
+Chillingly as he may have seemed.  Conscious, like all proud and fond
+fathers, of his daughter's attractions, he was not without some
+apprehension that Kenelm himself might entertain an ambition at
+variance with that of George Belvoir: if so, he deemed it well to put
+an end to such ambition while yet in time: partly because his interest
+was already pledged to George; partly because, in rank and fortune,
+George was the better match; partly because George was of the same
+political party as himself,--while Sir Peter, and probably Sir Peter's
+heir, espoused the opposite side; and partly also because, with all
+his personal liking to Kenelm, Leopold Travers, as a very sensible,
+practical man of the world, was not sure that a baronet's heir who
+tramped the country on foot in the dress of a petty farmer, and
+indulged pugilistic propensities in martial encounters with stalwart
+farriers, was likely to make a safe husband and a comfortable
+son-in-law.  Kenelm's words, and still more his manner, convinced
+Travers that any apprehensions of rivalry that he had previously
+conceived were utterly groundless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE same evening, after dinner (during that lovely summer month they
+dined at Neesdale Park at an unfashionably early hour), Kenelm, in
+company with Travers and Cecilia, ascended a gentle eminence at the
+back of the gardens, on which there were some picturesque ivy-grown
+ruins of an ancient priory, and commanding the best view of a glorious
+sunset and a subject landscape of vale and wood, rivulet and distant
+hills.
+
+"Is the delight in scenery," said Kenelm, "really an acquired gift, as
+some philosophers tell us?  Is it true that young children and rude
+savages do not feel it; that the eye must be educated to comprehend
+its charm, and that the eye can be only educated through the mind?"
+
+"I should think your philosophers are right," said Travers.  "When I
+was a schoolboy, I thought no scenery was like the flat of a cricket
+ground; when I hunted at Melton, I thought that unpicturesque country
+more beautiful than Devonshire.  It is only of late years that I feel
+a sensible pleasure in scenery for its own sake, apart from
+associations of custom or the uses to which we apply them."
+
+"And what say you, Miss Travers?"
+
+"I scarcely know what to say," answered Cecilia, musingly.  "I can
+remember no time in my childhood when I did not feel delight in that
+which seemed to me beautiful in scenery, but I suspect that I vaguely
+distinguished one kind of beauty from another.  A common field with
+daisies and buttercups was beautiful to me then, and I doubt if I saw
+anything more beautiful in extensive landscapes."
+
+"True," said Kenelm: "it is not in early childhood that we carry the
+sight into distance: as is the mind so is the eye; in early childhood
+the mind revels in the present, and the eye rejoices most in the
+things nearest to it.  I don't think in childhood that we--
+
+
+  "'Watched with wistful eyes the setting sun.'"
+
+
+"Ah! what a world of thought in that word 'wistful'!"  murmured
+Cecilia, as her gaze riveted itself on the western heavens, towards
+which Kenelm had pointed as he spoke, where the enlarging orb rested
+half its disk on the rim of the horizon.
+
+She had seated herself on a fragment of the ruin, backed by the
+hollows of a broken arch.  The last rays of the sun lingered on her
+young face, and then lost themselves in the gloom of the arch behind.
+There was a silence for some minutes, during which the sun had sunk.
+Rosy clouds in thin flakes still floated, momently waning: and the
+eve-star stole forth steadfast, bright, and lonely,--nay, lonely not
+now; that sentinel has aroused a host.
+
+Said a voice, "No sign of rain yet, Squire.  What will become of the
+turnips?"
+
+"Real life again!  Who can escape it?"  muttered Kenelm, as his eye
+rested on the burly figure of the Squire's bailiff.
+
+"Ha!  North," said Travers, "what brings you here?  No bad news, I
+hope?"
+
+"Indeed, yes, Squire.  The Durham bull--"
+
+"The Durham bull!  What of him?  You frighten me."
+
+"Taken bad.  Colic."
+
+"Excuse me, Chillingly," cried Travers; "I must be off.  A most
+valuable animal, and no one I can trust to doctor him but myself."
+
+"That's true enough," said the bailiff, admiringly.  "There's not a
+veterinary in the county like the Squire."
+
+Travers was already gone, and the panting bailiff had hard work to
+catch him up.
+
+Kenelm seated himself beside Cecilia on the ruined fragment.
+
+"How I envy your father!" said he.
+
+"Why just at this moment,--because he knows how to doctor the bull?"
+said Cecilia, with a sweet low laugh.
+
+"Well, that is something to envy.  It is a pleasure to relieve from
+pain any of God's creatures,--even a Durham bull."
+
+"Indeed, yes.  I am justly rebuked."
+
+"On the contrary you are to be justly praised.  Your question
+suggested to me an amiable sentiment in place of the selfish one which
+was uppermost in my thoughts.  I envied your father because he creates
+for himself so many objects of interest; because while he can
+appreciate the mere sensuous enjoyment of a landscape and a sunset, he
+can find mental excitement in turnip crops and bulls.  Happy, Miss
+Travers, is the Practical Man."
+
+"When my dear father was as young as you, Mr. Chillingly, I am sure
+that he had no more interest in turnips and bulls than you have.  I do
+not doubt that some day you will be as practical as he is in that
+respect."
+
+"Do you think so--sincerely?"
+
+Cecilia made no answer.
+
+Kenelm repeated the question.
+
+"Sincerely, then, I do not know whether you will take interest in
+precisely the same things that interest my father; but there are other
+things than turnips and cattle which belong to what you call
+'practical life,' and in these you will take interest, as you took in
+the fortunes of Will Somers and Jessie Wiles."
+
+"That was no practical interest.  I got nothing by it.  But even if
+that interest were practical,--I mean productive, as cattle and turnip
+crops are,--a succession of Somerses and Wileses is not to be hoped
+for.  History never repeats itself."
+
+"May I answer you, though very humbly?"
+
+"Miss Travers, the wisest man that ever existed never was wise enough
+to know woman; but I think most men ordinarily wise will agree in
+this, that woman is by no means a humble creature, and that when she
+says she 'answers very humbly,' she does not mean what she says.
+Permit me to entreat you to answer very loftily."
+
+Cecilia laughed and blushed.  The laugh was musical; the blush
+was--what?  Let any man, seated beside a girl like Cecilia at starry
+twilight, find the right epithet for that blush.  I pass it by
+epithetless.  But she answered, firmly though sweetly,--
+
+"Are there not things very practical, and affecting the happiness, not
+of one or two individuals, but of innumerable thousands, in which a
+man like Mr. Chillingly cannot fail to feel interest, long before he
+is my father's age?"
+
+"Forgive me: you do not answer; you question.  I imitate you, and ask
+what are those things as applicable to a man like Mr. Chillingly?"
+
+Cecilia gathered herself up, as with the desire to express a great
+deal in short substance, and then said,--
+
+"In the expression of thought, literature; in the conduct of action,
+politics."
+
+Kenelm Chillingly stared, dumfounded.  I suppose the greatest
+enthusiast for woman's rights could not assert more reverentially than
+he did the cleverness of women; but among the things which the
+cleverness of woman did not achieve, he had always placed "laconics."
+"No woman," he was wont to say, "ever invented an axiom or a proverb."
+
+"Miss Travers," he said at last, "before we proceed further, vouchsafe
+to tell me if that very terse reply of yours is spontaneous and
+original; or whether you have not borrowed it from some book which I
+have not chanced to read?"
+
+Cecilia pondered honestly, and then said, "I don't think it is from
+any book; but I owe so many of my thoughts to Mrs. Campion, and she
+lived so much among clever men, that--"
+
+"I see it all, and accept your definition, no matter whence it came.
+You think I might become an author or a politician.  Did you ever read
+an essay by a living author called 'Motive Power'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That essay is designed to intimate that without motive power a man,
+whatever his talents or his culture, does nothing practical.  The
+mainsprings of motive power are Want and Ambition.  They are absent
+from my mechanism.  By the accident of birth I do not require bread
+and cheese; by the accident of temperament and of philosophical
+culture I care nothing about praise or blame.  But without want of
+bread and cheese, and with a most stolid indifference to praise and
+blame, do you honestly think that a man will do anything practical in
+literature or politics?  Ask Mrs. Campion."
+
+"I will not ask her.  Is the sense of duty nothing?"
+
+"Alas! we interpret duty so variously.  Of mere duty, as we commonly
+understand the word, I do not think I shall fail more than other men.
+But for the fair development of all the good that is in us, do you
+believe that we should adopt some line of conduct against which our
+whole heart rebels?  Can you say to the clerk, 'Be a poet'?  Can you
+say to the poet, 'Be a clerk'?  It is no more to the happiness of a
+man's being to order him to take to one career when his whole heart is
+set on another, than it is to order him to marry one woman when it is
+to another woman that his heart will turn."
+
+Cecilia here winced and looked away.  Kenelm had more tact than most
+men of his age,--that is, a keener perception of subjects to avoid;
+but then Kenelm had a wretched habit of forgetting the person he
+talked to and talking to himself.  Utterly oblivious of George
+Belvoir, he was talking to himself now.  Not then observing the effect
+his /mal-a-propos/ dogma had produced on his listener, he went on,
+"Happiness is a word very lightly used.  It may mean little; it may
+mean much.  By the word happiness I would signify, not the momentary
+joy of a child who gets a plaything, but the lasting harmony between
+our inclinations and our objects; and without that harmony we are a
+discord to ourselves, we are incompletions, we are failures.  Yet
+there are plenty of advisers who say to us, 'It is a duty to be a
+discord.'  I deny it."
+
+Here Cecilia rose and said in a low voice, "It is getting late.  We
+must go homeward."
+
+They descended the green eminence slowly, and at first in silence.
+The bats, emerging from the ivied ruins they left behind, flitted and
+skimmed before them, chasing the insects of the night.  A moth,
+escaping from its pursuer, alighted on Cecilia's breast, as if for
+refuge.
+
+"The bats are practical," said Kenelm; "they are hungry, and their
+motive power to-night is strong.  Their interest is in the insects
+they chase.  They have no interest in the stars; but the stars lure
+the moth."
+
+Cecilia drew her slight scarf over the moth, so that it might not fly
+off and become a prey to the bats.  "Yet," said she, "the moth is
+practical too."
+
+"Ay, just now, since it has found an asylum from the danger that
+threatened it in its course towards the stars."
+
+Cecilia felt the beating of her heart, upon which lay the moth
+concealed.  Did she think that a deeper and more tender meaning than
+they outwardly expressed was couched in these words?  If so, she
+erred.  They now neared the garden gate, and Kenelm paused as he
+opened it.  "See," he said, "the moon has just risen over those dark
+firs, making the still night stiller.  Is it not strange that we
+mortals, placed amid perpetual agitation and tumult and strife, as if
+our natural element, conceive a sense of holiness in the images
+antagonistic to our real life; I mean in images of repose?  I feel at
+the moment as if I suddenly were made better, now that heaven and
+earth have suddenly become yet more tranquil.  I am now conscious of a
+purer and sweeter moral than either I or you drew from the insect you
+have sheltered.  I must come to the poets to express it,--
+
+
+  "'The desire of the moth for the star,
+     Of the night for the morrow;
+    The devotion to something afar
+     From the sphere of our sorrow.'
+
+
+"Oh, that something afar! that something afar! never to be reached on
+this earth,--never, never!"
+
+There was such a wail in that cry from the man's heart that Cecilia
+could not resist the impulse of a divine compassion.  She laid her
+hand on his, and looked on the dark wildness of his upward face with
+eyes that Heaven meant to be wells of comfort to grieving man.  At the
+light touch of that hand Kenelm started, looked down, and met those
+soothing eyes.
+
+"I am happy to tell you that I have saved my Durham," cried out Mr.
+Travers from the other side of the gate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+AS Kenelm that night retired to his own room, he paused on the
+landing-place opposite to the portrait which Mr. Travers had consigned
+to that desolate exile.  This daughter of a race dishonoured in its
+extinction might well have been the glory of the house she had entered
+as a bride.  The countenance was singularly beautiful, and of a
+character of beauty eminently patrician; there was in its expression a
+gentleness and modesty not often found in the female portraits of Sir
+Peter Lely, and in the eyes and in the smile a wonderful aspect of
+innocent happiness.
+
+"What a speaking homily," soliloquized Kenelm, addressing the picture,
+"against the ambition thy fair descendant would awake in me, art thou,
+O lovely image!  For generations thy beauty lived in this canvas, a
+thing of joy, the pride of the race it adorned.  Owner after owner
+said to admiring guests, 'Yes, a fine portrait, by Lely; she was my
+ancestress,--a Fletwode of Fletwode.'  Now, lest guests should
+remember that a Fletwode married a Travers thou art thrust out of
+sight; not even Lely's art can make thee of value, can redeem thine
+innocent self from disgrace.  And the last of the Fletwodes, doubtless
+the most ambitious of all, the most bent on restoring and regilding
+the old lordly name, dies a felon; the infamy of one living man is so
+large that it can blot out the honour of the dead."  He turned his
+eyes from the smile of the portrait, entered his own room, and,
+seating himself by the writing-table, drew blotting-book and
+note-paper towards him, took up the pen, and instead of writing fell
+into deep revery.  There was a slight frown on his brow, on which
+frowns were rare.  He was very angry with himself.
+
+"Kenelm," he said, entering into his customary dialogue with that
+self, "it becomes you, forsooth, to moralize about the honour of races
+which have no affinity with you.  Son of Sir Peter Chillingly, look at
+home.  Are you quite sure that you have not said or done or looked a
+something that may bring trouble to the hearth on which you are
+received as guest?  What right had you to be moaning forth your
+egotisms, not remembering that your words fell on compassionate ears,
+and that such words, heard at moonlight by a girl whose heart they
+move to pity, may have dangers for her peace?  Shame on you, Kenelm!
+shame! knowing too what her father's wish is; and knowing too that you
+have not the excuse of desiring to win that fair creature for
+yourself. What do you mean, Kenelm?  I don't hear you; speak out.  Oh,
+'that I am a vain coxcomb to fancy that she could take a fancy to me:'
+well, perhaps I am; I hope so earnestly; and at all events, there has
+been and shall be no time for much mischief.  We are off to-morrow,
+Kenelm; bestir yourself and pack up, write your letters, and then 'put
+out the light,--put out /the/ light!'"
+
+But this converser with himself did not immediately set to work, as
+agreed upon by that twofold one.  He rose and walked restlessly to and
+fro the floor, stopping ever and anon to look at the pictures on the
+walls.
+
+Several of the worst painted of the family portraits had been
+consigned to the room tenanted by Kenelm, which, though both the
+oldest and largest bed-chamber in the house, was always appropriated
+to a bachelor male guest, partly because it was without dressing-room,
+remote, and only approached by the small back-staircase, to the
+landing-place of which Arabella had been banished in disgrace; and
+partly because it had the reputation of being haunted, and ladies are
+more alarmed by that superstition than men are supposed to be.  The
+portraits on which Kenelm now paused to gaze were of various dates,
+from the reign of Elizabeth to that of George III., none of them by
+eminent artists, and none of them the effigies of ancestors who had
+left names in history,--in short, such portraits as are often seen in
+the country houses of well-born squires.  One family type of features
+or expression pervaded most of these portraits; features clear-cut and
+hardy, expression open and honest.  And though not one of those dead
+men had been famous, each of them had contributed his unostentatious
+share, in his own simple way, to the movements of his time.  That
+worthy in ruff and corselet had manned his own ship at his own cost
+against the Armada; never had been repaid by the thrifty Burleigh the
+expenses which had harassed him and diminished his patrimony; never
+had been even knighted.  That gentleman with short straight hair,
+which overhung his forehead, leaning on his sword with one hand, and a
+book open in the other hand, had served as representative of his
+county town in the Long Parliament, fought under Cromwell at Marston
+Moor, and, resisting the Protector when he removed the "bauble," was
+one of the patriots incarcerated in "Hell hole."  He, too, had
+diminished his patrimony, maintaining two troopers and two horses at
+his own charge, and "Hell hole" was all he got in return.  A third,
+with a sleeker expression of countenance, and a large wig, flourishing
+in the quiet times of Charles II., had only been a justice of the
+peace, but his alert look showed that he had been a very active one.
+He had neither increased nor diminished his ancestral fortune.  A
+fourth, in the costume of William III.'s reign, had somewhat added to
+the patrimony by becoming a lawyer.  He must have been a successful
+one.  He is inscribed "Sergeant-at-law."  A fifth, a lieutenant in the
+army, was killed at Blenheim; his portrait was that of a very young
+and handsome man, taken the year before his death.  His wife's
+portrait is placed in the drawing-room because it was painted by
+Kneller.  She was handsome too, and married again a nobleman, whose
+portrait, of course, was not in the family collection.  Here there was
+a gap in chronological arrangement, the lieutenant's heir being an
+infant; but in the time of George II. another Travers appeared as the
+governor of a West India colony.  His son took part in a very
+different movement of the age.  He is represented old, venerable, with
+white hair, and underneath his effigy is inscribed, "Follower of
+Wesley."  His successor completes the collection.  He is in naval
+uniform; he is in full length, and one of his legs is a wooden one.
+He is Captain, R.N., and inscribed, "Fought under Nelson at
+Trafalgar."  That portrait would have found more dignified place in
+the reception-rooms if the face had not been forbiddingly ugly, and
+the picture itself a villanous daub.
+
+"I see," said Kenelm, stopping short, "why Cecilia Travers has been
+reared to talk of duty as a practical interest in life.  These men of
+a former time seem to have lived to discharge a duty, and not to
+follow the progress of the age in the chase of a money-bag,--except
+perhaps one, but then to be sure he was a lawyer.  Kenelm, rouse up
+and listen to me; whatever we are, whether active or indolent, is not
+my favourite maxim a just and a true one; namely, 'A good man does
+good by living'?  But, for that, he must be a harmony and not a
+discord.  Kenelm, you lazy dog, we must pack up."
+
+Kenelm then refilled his portmanteau, and labelled and directed it to
+Exmundham, after which he wrote these three notes:--
+
+
+NOTE I.
+
+TO THE MARCHIONESS OF GLENALVON.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND AND MONITRESS,--I have left your last letter a month
+unanswered.  I could not reply to your congratulations on the event of
+my attaining the age of twenty-one.  That event is a conventional
+sham, and you know how I abhor shams and conventions.  The truth is
+that I am either much younger than twenty-one or much older.  As to
+all designs on my peace in standing for our county at the next
+election, I wished to defeat them, and I have done so; and now I have
+commenced a course of travel.  I had intended on starting to confine
+it to my native country.  Intentions are mutable.  I am going abroad.
+You shall hear of my whereabout.  I write this from the house of
+Leopold Travers, who, I understand from his fair daughter, is a
+connection of yours; a man to be highly esteemed and cordially liked.
+
+No, in spite of all your flattering predictions, I shall never be
+anything in this life more distinguished than what I am now.  Lady
+Glenalvon allows me to sign myself her grateful friend,
+
+K. C.
+
+
+NOTE II.
+
+DEAR COUSIN MIVERS,--I am going abroad.  I may want money; for, in
+order to rouse motive power within me, I mean to want money if I can.
+When I was a boy of sixteen you offered me money to write attacks upon
+veteran authors for "The Londoner."  Will you give me money now for a
+similar display of that grand New Idea of our generation; namely, that
+the less a man knows of a subject the better he understands it?  I am
+about to travel into countries which I have never seen, and among
+races I have never known.  My arbitrary judgments on both will be
+invaluable to "The Londoner" from a Special Correspondent who shares
+your respect for the anonymous, and whose name is never to be
+divulged.  Direct your answer by return to me, /poste restante/,
+Calais.
+
+Yours truly,
+
+K. C.
+
+
+NOTE III.
+
+MY DEAR FATHER,--I found your letter here, whence I depart to-morrow.
+Excuse haste.  I go abroad, and shall write to you from Calais.
+
+I admire Leopold Travers very much.  After all, how much of
+self-balance there is in a true English gentleman!  Toss him up and
+down where you will, and he always alights on his feet,--a gentleman.
+He has one child, a daughter named Cecilia,--handsome enough to allure
+into wedlock any mortal whom Decimus Roach had not convinced that in
+celibacy lay the right "Approach to the Angels."  Moreover, she is a
+girl whom one can talk with.  Even you could talk with her.  Travers
+wishes her to marry a very respectable, good-looking, promising
+gentleman, in every way "suitable," as they say.  And if she does, she
+will rival that pink and perfection of polished womanhood, Lady
+Glenalvon.  I send you back my portmanteau.  I have pretty well
+exhausted my experience-money, but have not yet encroached on my
+monthly allowance.  I mean still to live upon that, eking it out, if
+necessary, by the sweat of my brow or brains.  But if any case
+requiring extra funds should occur,--a case in which that extra would
+do such real good to another that I feel /you/ would do it,--why, I
+must draw a check on your bankers.  But understand that is your
+expense, not mine, and it is /you/ who are to be repaid in Heaven.
+Dear father, how I do love and honour you every day more and more!
+Promise you not to propose to any young lady till I come first to you
+for consent!--oh, my dear father, how could you doubt it? how doubt
+that I could not be happy with any wife whom you could not love as a
+daughter?  Accept that promise as sacred.  But I wish you had asked me
+something in which obedience was not much too facile to be a test of
+duty.  I could not have obeyed you more cheerfully if you had asked me
+to promise never to propose to any young lady at all.  Had you asked
+me to promise that I would renounce the dignity of reason for the
+frenzy of love, or the freedom of man for the servitude of husband,
+then I might have sought to achieve the impossible; but I should have
+died in the effort!--and thou wouldst have known that remorse which
+haunts the bed of the tyrant.
+
+Your affectionate son,
+
+K. C.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE next morning Kenelm surprised the party at breakfast by appearing
+in the coarse habiliments in which he had first made his host's
+acquaintance.  He did not glance towards Cecilia when he announced his
+departure; but, his eye resting on Mrs. Campion, he smiled, perhaps a
+little sadly, at seeing her countenance brighten up and hearing her
+give a short sigh of relief.  Travers tried hard to induce him to stay
+a few days longer, but Kenelm was firm.  "The summer is wearing away,"
+said he, "and I have far to go before the flowers fade and the snows
+fall.  On the third night from this I shall sleep on foreign soil."
+
+"You are going abroad, then?" asked Mrs. Campion.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A sudden resolution, Mr. Chillingly.  The other day you talked of
+visiting the Scotch lakes."
+
+"True; but, on reflection, they will be crowded with holiday tourists,
+many of whom I shall probably know.  Abroad I shall be free, for I
+shall be unknown."
+
+"I suppose you will be back for the hunting season," said Travers.
+
+"I think not.  I do not hunt foxes."
+
+"Probably we shall at all events meet in London," said Travers.  "I
+think, after long rustication, that a season or two in the bustling
+capital may be a salutary change for mind as well as for body; and it
+is time that Cecilia were presented and her court-dress specially
+commemorated in the columns of the 'Morning Post.'"
+
+Cecilia was seemingly too busied behind the tea-urn to heed this
+reference to her debut.
+
+"I shall miss you terribly," cried Travers, a few moments afterwards,
+and with a hearty emphasis.  "I declare that you have quite unsettled
+me.  Your quaint sayings will be ringing in my ears long after you are
+gone."
+
+There was a rustle as of a woman's dress in sudden change of movement
+behind the tea-urn.
+
+"Cissy," said Mrs. Campion, "are we ever to have our tea?"
+
+"I beg pardon," answered a voice behind the urn.  "I hear Pompey" (the
+Skye terrier) "whining on the lawn.  They have shut him out.  I will
+be back presently."
+
+Cecilia rose and was gone.  Mrs. Campion took her place at the
+tea-urn.
+
+"It is quite absurd of Cissy to be so fond of that hideous dog," said
+Travers, petulantly.
+
+"Its hideousness is its beauty," returned Mrs. Campion, laughing.
+"Mr. Belvoir selected it for her as having the longest back and the
+shortest legs of any dog he could find in Scotland."
+
+"Ah, George gave it to her; I forgot that," said Travers, laughing
+pleasantly.
+
+It was some minutes before Miss Travers returned with the Skye
+terrier, and she seemed to have recovered her spirits in regaining
+that ornamental accession to the party; talking very quickly and
+gayly, and with flushed cheeks, like a young person excited by her own
+overflow of mirth.
+
+But when, half an hour afterwards, Kenelm took leave of her and Mrs.
+Campion at the hall-door, the flush was gone, her lips were tightly
+compressed, and her parting words were not audible.  Then, as his
+figure (side by side with her father, who accompanied his guest to the
+lodge) swiftly passed across the lawn and vanished amid the trees
+beyond, Mrs. Campion wound a mother-like arm around her waist and
+kissed her.  Cecilia shivered and turned her face to her friend
+smiling; but such a smile,--one of those smiles that seem brimful of
+tears.
+
+"Thank you, dear," she said meekly; and, gliding away towards the
+flower-garden, lingered a while by the gate which Kenelm had opened
+the night before.  Then she went with languid steps up the green
+slopes towards the ruined priory.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IT is somewhat more than a year and a half since Kenelm Chillingly
+left England, and the scene now is in London, during that earlier and
+more sociable season which precedes the Easter holidays,--season in
+which the charm of intellectual companionship is not yet withered away
+in the heated atmosphere of crowded rooms,--season in which parties
+are small, and conversation extends beyond the interchange of
+commonplace with one's next neighbour at a dinner-table,--season in
+which you have a fair chance of finding your warmest friends not
+absorbed by the superior claims of their chilliest acquaintances.
+
+There was what is called a /conversazione/ at the house of one of
+those Whig noblemen who yet retain the graceful art of bringing
+agreeable people together, and collecting round them the true
+aristocracy, which combines letters and art and science with
+hereditary rank and political distinction,--that art which was the
+happy secret of the Lansdownes and Hollands of the last generation.
+Lord Beaumanoir was himself a genial, well-read man, a good judge of
+art, and a pleasant talker.  He had a charming wife, devoted to him
+and to her children, but with enough love of general approbation to
+make herself as popular in the fashionable world as if she sought in
+its gayeties a refuge from the dulness of domestic life.
+
+Amongst the guests at the Beaumanoirs, this evening were two men,
+seated apart in a small room, and conversing familiarly.  The one
+might be about fifty-four; he was tall, strongly built, but not
+corpulent, somewhat bald, with black eyebrows, dark eyes, bright and
+keen, mobile lips round which there played a shrewd and sometimes
+sarcastic smile.
+
+This gentleman, the Right Hon. Gerard Danvers, was a very influential
+member of Parliament.  He had, when young for English public life,
+attained to high office; but--partly from a great distaste to the
+drudgery of administration; partly from a pride of temperament, which
+unfitted him for the subordination that a Cabinet owes to its chief;
+partly, also, from a not uncommon kind of epicurean philosophy, at
+once joyous and cynical, which sought the pleasures of life and held
+very cheap its honours--he had obstinately declined to re-enter
+office, and only spoke on rare occasions.  On such occasions he
+carried great weight, and, by the brief expression of his opinions,
+commanded more votes than many an orator infinitely more eloquent.
+Despite his want of ambition, he was fond of power in his own
+way,--power over the people who /had/ power; and, in the love of
+political intrigue, he found an amusement for an intellect very subtle
+and very active.  At this moment he was bent on a new combination
+among the leaders of different sections in the same party, by which
+certain veterans were to retire, and certain younger men to be
+admitted into the Administration.  It was an amiable feature in his
+character that he had a sympathy with the young, and had helped to
+bring into Parliament, as well as into office, some of the ablest of a
+generation later than his own.  He gave them sensible counsel, was
+pleased when they succeeded, and encouraged them when they
+failed,--always provided that they had stuff enough in them to redeem
+the failure; if not, he gently dropped them from his intimacy, but
+maintained sufficiently familiar terms with them to be pretty sure
+that he could influence their votes whenever he so desired.
+
+The gentleman with whom he was now conversing was young, about
+five-and-twenty; not yet in Parliament, but with an intense desire to
+obtain a seat in it, and with one of those reputations which a youth
+carries away from school and college, justified, not by honours purely
+academical, but by an impression of ability and power created on the
+minds of his contemporaries and endorsed by his elders.  He had done
+little at the University beyond taking a fair degree, except acquiring
+at the debating society the fame of an exceedingly ready and adroit
+speaker.  On quitting college he had written one or two political
+articles in a quarterly review, which created a sensation; and though
+belonging to no profession, and having but a small yet independent
+income, society was very civil to him, as to a man who would some day
+or other attain a position in which he could damage his enemies and
+serve his friends.  Something in this young man's countenance and
+bearing tended to favour the credit given to his ability and his
+promise.  In his countenance there was no beauty; in his bearing no
+elegance.  But in that countenance there was vigour, there was energy,
+there was audacity.  A forehead wide but low, protuberant in those
+organs over the brow which indicate the qualities fitted for
+perception and judgment,--qualities for every-day life; eyes of the
+clear English blue, small, somewhat sunken, vigilant, sagacious,
+penetrating; a long straight upper lip, significant of resolute
+purpose; a mouth in which a student of physiognomy would have detected
+a dangerous charm.  The smile was captivating, but it was artificial,
+surrounded by dimples, and displaying teeth white, small, strong, but
+divided from each other.  The expression of that smile would have been
+frank and candid to all who failed to notice that it was not in
+harmony with the brooding forehead and the steely eye; that it seemed
+to stand distinct from the rest of the face, like a feature that had
+learned its part.  There was that physical power in the back of the
+head which belongs to men who make their way in life,--combative and
+destructive.  All gladiators have it; so have great debaters and great
+reformers,--that is, reformers who can destroy, but not necessarily
+reconstruct.  So, too, in the bearing of the man there was a hardy
+self-confidence, much too simple and unaffected for his worst enemy to
+call it self-conceit.  It was the bearing of one who knew how to
+maintain personal dignity without seeming to care about it.  Never
+servile to the great, never arrogant to the little; so little
+over-refined that it was never vulgar,--a popular bearing.
+
+The room in which these gentlemen were seated was separated from the
+general suite of apartments by a lobby off the landing-place, and
+served for Lady Beaumanoir's boudoir.  Very pretty it was, but simply
+furnished, with chintz draperies.  The walls were adorned with
+drawings in water-colours, and precious specimens of china on fanciful
+Parian brackets.  At one corner, by a window that looked southward and
+opened on a spacious balcony, glazed in and filled with flowers, stood
+one of those high trellised screens, first invented, I believe, in
+Vienna, and along which ivy is so trained as to form an arbour.
+
+The recess thus constructed, and which was completely out of sight
+from the rest of the room, was the hostess's favourite writing-nook.
+The two men I have described were seated near the screen, and had
+certainly no suspicion that any one could be behind it.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Danvers, from an ottoman niched in another recess of
+the room, "I think there will be an opening at Saxboro' soon: Milroy
+wants a Colonial Government; and if we can reconstruct the Cabinet as
+I propose, he would get one.  Saxboro' would thus be vacant.  But, my
+dear fellow, Saxboro' is a place to be wooed through love, and only
+won through money.  It demands liberalism from a candidate,--two kinds
+of liberalism seldom united; the liberalism in opinion which is
+natural enough to a very poor man, and the liberalism in expenditure
+which is scarcely to be obtained except from a very rich one.  You may
+compute the cost of Saxboro' at L3000 to get in, and about L2000 more
+to defend your seat against a petition,--the defeated candidate nearly
+always petitions.  L5000 is a large sum; and the worst of it is, that
+the extreme opinions to which the member for Saxboro' must pledge
+himself are a drawback to an official career.  Violent politicians are
+not the best raw material out of which to manufacture fortunate
+placemen."
+
+"The opinions do not so much matter; the expense does.  I cannot
+afford L5000, or even L3000."
+
+"Would not Sir Peter assist?  He has, you say, only one son; and if
+anything happen to that son, you are the next heir."
+
+"My father quarrelled with Sir Peter, and harassed him by an imprudent
+and ungracious litigation.  I scarcely think I could apply to him for
+money to obtain a seat in Parliament upon the democratic side of the
+question; for, though I know little of his politics, I take it for
+granted that a country gentleman of old family and L10,000 a year
+cannot well be a democrat."
+
+"Then I presume you would not be a democrat if, by the death of your
+cousin, you became heir to the Chillinglys."
+
+"I am not sure what I might be in that case.  There are times when a
+democrat of ancient lineage and good estates could take a very high
+place amongst the aristocracy."
+
+"Humph! my dear Gordon, /vous irez loin/."
+
+"I hope to do so.  Measuring myself against the men of my own day, I
+do not see many who should outstrip me."
+
+"What sort of a fellow is your cousin Kenelm?  I met him once or twice
+when he was very young, and reading with Welby in London.  People then
+said that he was very clever; he struck me as very odd."
+
+"I never saw him, but from all I hear, whether he be clever or whether
+he be odd, he is not likely to do anything in life,--a dreamer."
+
+"Writes poetry perhaps?"
+
+"Capable of it, I dare say."
+
+Just then some other guests came into the room, amongst them a lady of
+an appearance at once singularly distinguished and singularly
+prepossessing, rather above the common height, and with a certain
+indescribable nobility of air and presence.  Lady Glenalvon was one of
+the queens of the London world, and no queen of that world was ever
+less worldly or more queen-like.  Side by side with the lady was Mr.
+Chillingly Mivers.  Gordon and Mivers interchanged friendly nods, and
+the former sauntered away and was soon lost amid a crowd of other
+young men, with whom, as he could converse well and lightly on things
+which interested them, he was rather a favourite, though he was not an
+intimate associate.  Mr. Danvers retired into a corner of the
+adjoining lobby, where he favoured the French ambassador with his
+views on the state of Europe and the reconstruction of Cabinets in
+general.
+
+"But," said Lady Glenalvon to Chillingly Mivers, "are you quite sure
+that my old young friend Kenelm is here?  Since you told me so, I have
+looked everywhere for him in vain.  I should so much like to see him
+again."
+
+"I certainly caught a glimpse of him half an hour ago; but before I
+could escape from a geologist who was boring me about the Silurian
+system, Kenelm had vanished."
+
+"Perhaps it was his ghost!"
+
+"Well, we certainly live in the most credulous and superstitious age
+upon record; and so many people tell me that they converse with the
+dead under the table that it seems impertinent in me to say that I
+don't believe in ghosts."
+
+"Tell me some of those incomprehensible stories about table-rapping,"
+said Lady Glenalvon.  "There is a charming, snug recess here behind
+the screen."
+
+Scarcely had she entered the recess when she drew back with a start
+and an exclamation of amaze.  Seated at the table within the recess,
+his chin resting on his hand, and his face cast down in abstracted
+revery, was a young man.  So still was his attitude, so calmly
+mournful the expression of his face, so estranged did he seem from all
+the motley but brilliant assemblage which circled around the solitude
+he had made for himself, that he might well have been deemed one of
+those visitants from another world whose secrets the intruder had
+wished to learn.  Of that intruder's presence he was evidently
+unconscious.  Recovering her surprise, she stole up to him, placed her
+hand on his shoulder, and uttered his name in a low gentle voice.  At
+that sound Kenelm Chillingly looked up.
+
+"Do you not remember me?" asked Lady Glenalvon.  Before he could
+answer, Mivers, who had followed the marchioness into the recess,
+interposed.
+
+"My dear Kenelm, how are you?  When did you come to London?  Why have
+you not called on me; and what on earth are you hiding yourself for?"
+
+Kenelm had now recovered the self-possession which he rarely lost long
+in the presence of others.  He returned cordially his kinsman's
+greeting, and kissed with his wonted chivalrous grace the fair hand
+which the lady withdrew from his shoulder and extended to his
+pressure.  "Remember you!" he said to Lady Glenalvon with the
+kindliest expression of his soft dark eyes; "I am not so far advanced
+towards the noon of life as to forget the sunshine that brightened its
+morning.  My dear Mivers, your questions are easily answered.  I
+arrived in England two weeks ago, stayed at Exmundham till this
+morning, to-day dined with Lord Thetford, whose acquaintance I made
+abroad, and was persuaded by him to come here and be introduced to his
+father and mother, the Beaumanoirs.  After I had undergone that
+ceremony, the sight of so many strange faces frightened me into
+shyness.  Entering this room at a moment when it was quite deserted, I
+resolved to turn hermit behind the screen."
+
+"Why, you must have seen your cousin Gordon as you came into the
+room."
+
+"But you forget I don't know him by sight.  However, there was no one
+in the room when I entered; a little later some others came in, for I
+heard a faint buzz, like that of persons talking in a whisper.
+However, I was no eavesdropper, as a person behind a screen is on the
+dramatic stage."
+
+This was true.  Even had Gordon and Danvers talked in a louder tone,
+Kenelm had been too absorbed in his own thoughts to have heard a word
+of their conversation.
+
+"You ought to know young Gordon; he is a very clever fellow, and has
+an ambition to enter Parliament.  I hope no old family quarrel between
+his bear of a father and dear Sir Peter will make you object to meet
+him."
+
+"Sir Peter is the most forgiving of men, but he would scarcely forgive
+me if I declined to meet a cousin who had never offended him."
+
+"Well said.  Come and meet Gordon at breakfast to-morrow,--ten
+o'clock.  I am still in the old rooms."
+
+While the kinsmen thus conversed, Lady Glenalvon had seated herself on
+the couch beside Kenelm, and was quietly observing his countenance.
+Now she spoke.  "My dear Mr. Mivers, you will have many opportunities
+of talking with Kenelm; do not grudge me five minutes' talk with him
+now."
+
+"I leave your ladyship alone in your hermitage.  How all the men in
+this assembly will envy the hermit!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"I AM glad to see you once more in the world," said Lady Glenalvon;
+"and I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which
+ought to be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your
+nature."
+
+KENELM.--"When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which
+appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,--an actor or
+a looker-on?"
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"My dear young friend, your question saddens me."
+(After a pause.)--"But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed
+my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is
+not really a theatre.  Life admits of no lookers-on.  Speak to me
+frankly, as you used to do.  Your face retains its old melancholy
+expression.  Are you not happy?"
+
+KENELM.--"Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be.  I do not think I am
+unhappy.  If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of
+its own.  Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be
+found on the /Penseroso/ side of it as there are on the /Allegro/."
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when,
+later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my
+care.  When at the age of sixteen, with a boy's years and a man's
+heart, you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a
+mother? and did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the
+secrets of your heart more readily than to any other?"
+
+"You were to me," said Kenelm, with emotion, "that most precious and
+sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of
+life,--a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the
+spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him
+from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of
+soul which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood.  Come, I
+will open my heart to you still.  I fear it is more wayward than ever.
+It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural
+to my age and station.  However, I have been seeking to brace and
+harden my nature, for the practical ends of life, by travel and
+adventure, chiefly among rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in
+drawing-rooms.  Now, in compliance with the duty I owe to my dear
+father's wishes, I come back to these circles, which under your
+auspices I entered in boyhood, and which even then seemed to me so
+inane and artificial.  Take a part in the world of these circles; such
+is your wish.  My answer is brief.  I have been doing my best to
+acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded.  I see nothing that I
+care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain.  The very times in
+which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and I am not born
+like Hamlet to set them right.  Ah! if I could look on society through
+the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in 'Gil Blas' looked on his
+meagre board,--spectacles by which cherries appear the size of
+peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys!  The imagination which is
+necessary to ambition is a great magnifier."
+
+"I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who at
+your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of
+others."
+
+"And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?"
+
+"That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious
+fusion of one's own being into other existences, which belong to home
+and marriage."
+
+"I don't object to home, but I do to marriage."
+
+"Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman."
+
+"Prettily said.  In that case I resign the home."
+
+"Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you
+could love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that
+you do not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married
+life?"
+
+"Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a
+home."
+
+"Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand.
+Listen to me.  It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable
+longing to see you again,--to know your address that I might write to
+you; for yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a
+week's visit, I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above
+all, the exact wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly."
+
+"Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left
+your house."
+
+"But she has not left London: she is here to-night.  She only stayed
+with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for
+the season was vacant; those events happened yesterday."
+
+"Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without
+danger."
+
+"Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young
+lady who appears to me so well suited to you?"
+
+"No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm."
+
+"Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this
+irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage.  Come, there
+are many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old
+acquaintance, and to some of whom I should like to make you known."
+
+"I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead
+me,--except to the altar with another."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE rooms were now full,--not overcrowded, but full,--and it was
+rarely even in that house that so many distinguished persons were
+collected together.  A young man thus honoured by so /grande/ a dame
+as Lady Glenalvon could not but be cordially welcomed by all to whom
+she presented him, Ministers and Parliamentary leaders, ball-givers,
+and beauties in vogue,--even authors and artists; and there was
+something in Kenelm Chillingly, in his striking countenance and
+figure, in that calm ease of manner natural to his indifference to
+effect, which seemed to justify the favour shown to him by the
+brilliant princess of fashion and mark him out for general
+observation.
+
+That first evening of his reintroduction to the polite world was a
+success which few young men of his years achieve.  He produced a
+sensation.  Just as the rooms were thinning, Lady Glenalvon whispered
+to Kenelm,--
+
+"Come this way: there is one person I must reintroduce you to; thank
+me for it hereafter."
+
+Kenelm followed the marchioness, and found himself face to face with
+Cecilia Travers.  She was leaning on her father's arm, looking very
+handsome, and her beauty was heightened by the blush which overspread
+her cheeks as Kenelm Chillingly approached.
+
+Travers greeted him with great cordiality; and Lady Glenalvon asking
+him to escort her to the refreshment-room, Kenelm had no option but to
+offer his arm to Cecilia.
+
+Kenelm felt somewhat embarrassed.  "Have you been long in town, Miss
+Travers?"
+
+"A little more than a week, but we only settled into our house
+yesterday."
+
+"Ah, indeed! were you then the young lady who--"  He stopped short,
+and his face grew gentler and graver in its expression.
+
+"The young lady who--what?" asked Cecilia with a smile.
+
+"Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon?"
+
+"Yes; did she tell you?"
+
+"She did not mention your name, but praised that young lady so justly
+that I ought to have guessed it."
+
+Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on entering the
+refreshment-room other young men gathered round her, and Lady
+Glenalvon and Kenelm remained silent in the midst of a general
+small-talk.  When Travers, after giving his address to Kenelm, and, of
+course, pressing him to call, left the house with Cecilia, Kenelm said
+to Lady Glenalvon, musingly, "So that is the young lady in whom I was
+to see my fate: you knew that we had met before?"
+
+"Yes, she told me when and where.  Besides, it is not two years since
+you wrote to me from her father's house.  Do you forget?"
+
+"Ah," said Kenelm, so abstractedly that he seemed to be dreaming, "no
+man with his eyes open rushes on his fate: when he does so his sight
+is gone.  Love is blind.  They say the blind are very happy, yet I
+never met a blind man who would not recover his sight if he could."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Mr. CHILLINGLY MIVERS never gave a dinner at his own rooms.  When he
+did give a dinner it was at Greenwich or Richmond.  But he gave
+breakfast-parties pretty often, and they were considered pleasant.  He
+had handsome bachelor apartments in Grosvenor Street, daintily
+furnished, with a prevalent air of exquisite neatness, a good library
+stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies
+from authors of the day, very beautifully bound.  Though the room
+served for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of
+the untidy litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose
+vocation it is to deal with books and papers.  Even the implements for
+writing were not apparent, except when required.  They lay concealed
+in a vast cylinder bureau, French made, and French polished.  Within
+that bureau were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers, and a
+profound well with a separate patent lock.  In the well were deposited
+the articles intended for publication in "The Londoner," proof-sheets,
+etc.; pigeon-holes were devoted to ordinary correspondence; secret
+drawers to confidential notes, and outlines of biographies of eminent
+men now living, but intended to be completed for publication the day
+after their death.
+
+No man wrote such funeral compositions with a livelier pen than that
+of Chillingly Mivers; and the large and miscellaneous circle of his
+visiting acquaintances allowed him to ascertain, whether by
+authoritative report or by personal observation, the signs of mortal
+disease in the illustrious friends whose dinners he accepted, and
+whose failing pulses he instinctively felt in returning the pressure
+of their hands; so that he was often able to put the finishing-stroke
+to their obituary memorials days, weeks, even months, before their
+fate took the public by surprise.  That cylinder bureau was in harmony
+with the secrecy in which this remarkable man shrouded the productions
+of his brain.  In his literary life Mivers had no "I," there he was
+ever the inscrutable, mysterious "We."  He was only "I" when you met
+him in the world, and called him Mivers.
+
+Adjoining the library on one side was a small dining or rather
+breakfast room, hung with valuable pictures,--presents from living
+painters.  Many of these painters had been severely handled by Mr.
+Mivers in his existence as "We,"--not always in "The Londoner."  His
+most pungent criticisms were often contributed to other intellectual
+journals conducted by members of the same intellectual clique.
+Painters knew not how contemptuously "We" had treated them when they
+met Mr. Mivers.  His "I" was so complimentary that they sent him a
+tribute of their gratitude.
+
+On the other side was his drawing-room, also enriched by many gifts,
+chiefly from fair hands,--embroidered cushions and table-covers, bits
+of Sevres or old Chelsea, elegant knick-knacks of all kinds.
+Fashionable authoresses paid great court to Mr. Mivers; and in the
+course of his life as a single man, he had other female adorers
+besides fashionable authoresses.
+
+Mr. Mivers had already returned from his early constitutional walk in
+the Park, and was now seated by the cylinder /secretaire/ with a
+mild-looking man, who was one of the most merciless contributors to
+"The Londoner" and no unimportant councillor in the oligarchy of the
+clique that went by the name of the "Intellectuals."
+
+"Well," said Mivers, languidly, "I can't even get through the book; it
+is as dull as the country in November.  But, as you justly say, the
+writer is an 'Intellectual,' and a clique would be anything but
+intellectual if it did not support its members.  Review the book
+yourself; mind and make the dulness of it the signal proof of its
+merit.  Say: 'To the ordinary class of readers this exquisite work may
+appear less brilliant than the flippant smartness of'--any other
+author you like to name; 'but to the well educated and intelligent
+every line is pregnant with,' etc.  By the way, when we come by and by
+to review the exhibition at Burlington House, there is one painter
+whom we must try our best to crush.  I have not seen his pictures
+myself, but he is a new man; and our friend, who has seen him, is
+terribly jealous of him, and says that if the good judges do not put
+him down at once, the villanous taste of the public will set him up as
+a prodigy.  A low-lived fellow too, I hear.  There is the name of the
+man and the subject of the pictures.  See to it when the time comes.
+Meanwhile, prepare the way for onslaught on the pictures by occasional
+sneers at the painter."  Here Mr. Mivers took out of his cylinder a
+confidential note from the jealous rival and handed it to his
+mild-looking /confrere/; then rising, he said, "I fear we must suspend
+our business till to-morrow; I expect two young cousins to breakfast."
+
+As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivers sauntered to his
+drawing-room window, amiably offering a lump of sugar to a canary-bird
+sent to him as a present the day before, and who, in the gilded cage
+which made part of the present, scanned him suspiciously and refused
+the sugar.
+
+Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chillingly Mivers.
+He scarcely looked a day older than when he was first presented to the
+reader on the birth of his kinsman Kenelm.  He was reaping the fruit
+of his own sage maxims.  Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was
+no sign of gray, no suspicion of dye.  Superiority to passion,
+abnegation of sorrow, indulgence of amusement, avoidance of excess,
+had kept away the crow's-feet, preserved the elasticity of his frame
+and the unflushed clearness of his gentlemanlike complexion.  The door
+opened, and a well-dressed valet, who had lived long enough with
+Mivers to grow very much like him, announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon.
+
+"Good morning," said Mivers; "I was much pleased to see you talking so
+long and so familiarly with Danvers: others, of course, observed it,
+and it added a step to your career.  It does you great good to be seen
+in a drawing-room talking apart with a Somebody.  But may I ask if the
+talk itself was satisfactory?"
+
+"Not at all: Danvers throws cold water on the notion of Saxboro', and
+does not even hint that his party will help me to any other opening.
+Party has few openings at its disposal nowadays for any young man.
+The schoolmaster being abroad has swept away the school for statesmen
+as he has swept away the school for actors,--an evil, and an evil of a
+far greater consequence to the destinies of the nation than any good
+likely to be got from the system that succeeded it."
+
+"But it is of no use railing against things that can't be helped.  If
+I were you, I would postpone all ambition of Parliament and read for
+the bar."
+
+"The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken.  I am resolved
+to find a seat in the House, and where there is a will there is a
+way."
+
+"I am not so sure of that."
+
+"But I am."
+
+"Judging by what your contemporaries at the University tell me of your
+speeches at the Debating Society, you were not then an ultra-Radical.
+But it is only an ultra-Radical who has a chance of success at
+Saxboro'."
+
+"I am no fanatic in politics.  There is much to be said on all sides:
+/coeteris paribus/, I prefer the winning side to the losing; nothing
+succeeds like success."
+
+"Ay, but in politics there is always reaction.  The winning side one
+day may be the losing side another.  The losing side represents a
+minority, and a minority is sure to comprise more intellect than a
+majority: in the long run intellect will force its way, get a majority
+and then lose it, because with a majority it will become stupid."
+
+"Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show you that a
+single individual can upset all theories as to the comparative wisdom
+of the few or the many?  Take the wisest few you can find, and one man
+of genius not a tithe so wise crushes them into powder.  But then that
+man of genius, though he despises the many, must make use of them.
+That done, he rules them.  Don't you see how in free countries
+political destinations resolve themselves into individual
+impersonations?  At a general election it is one name around which
+electors rally.  The candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on
+political principles, but all his talk will not win him votes enough
+for success, unless he says, 'I go with Mr. A.,' the minister, or with
+Mr. Z., the chief of the opposition.  It was not the Tories who beat
+the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dissolved Parliament.  It was Mr. Pitt who
+beat Mr. Fox, with whom in general political principle--slave-trade,
+Roman Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform--he certainly agreed
+much more than he did with any man in his own cabinet."
+
+"Take care, my young cousin," cried Mivers, in accents of alarm;
+"don't set up for a man of genius.  Genius is the worst quality a
+public man can have nowadays: nobody heeds it, and everybody is
+jealous of it."
+
+"Pardon me, you mistake; my remark was purely objective, and intended
+as a reply to your argument.  I prefer at present to go with the many
+because it is the winning side. If we then want a man of genius to
+keep it the winning side, by subjugating its partisans to his will, he
+will be sure to come.  The few will drive him to us, for the few are
+always the enemies of the one man of genius.  It is they who
+distrust,--it is they who are jealous,--not the many.  You have
+allowed your judgment, usually so clear, to be somewhat dimmed by your
+experience as a critic.  The critics are the few.  They have
+infinitely more culture than the many.  But when a man of real genius
+appears and asserts himself, the critics are seldom such fair judges
+of him as the many are.  If he be not one of their oligarchical
+clique, they either abuse, or disparage, or affect to ignore him;
+though a time at last comes when, having gained the many, the critics
+acknowledge him.  But the difference between the man of action and the
+author is this, that the author rarely finds this acknowledgment till
+he is dead, and it is necessary to the man of action to enforce it
+while he is alive.  But enough of this speculation: you ask me to meet
+Kenelm; is he not coming?"
+
+"Yes, but I did not ask him till ten o'clock.  I asked you at
+half-past nine, because I wished to hear about Danvers and Saxboro',
+and also to prepare you somewhat for your introduction to your cousin.
+I must be brief as to the last, for it is only five minutes to the
+hour, and he is a man likely to be punctual.  Kenelm is in all ways
+your opposite.  I don't know whether he is cleverer or less clever;
+there is no scale of measurement between you: but he is wholly void of
+ambition, and might possibly assist yours.  He can do what he likes
+with Sir Peter; and considering how your poor father--a worthy man,
+but cantankerous--harassed and persecuted Sir Peter, because Kenelm
+came between the estate and you, it is probable that Sir Peter bears
+you a grudge, though Kenelm declares him incapable of it; and it would
+be well if you could annul that grudge in the father by conciliating
+the goodwill of the son."
+
+"I should be glad so to annul it; but what is Kenelm's weak side?--the
+turf? the hunting-field? women? poetry?  One can only conciliate a man
+by getting on his weak side."
+
+"Hist!  I see him from the windows.  Kenelm's weak side was, when I
+knew him some years ago, and I rather fancy it still is--"
+
+"Well, make haste!  I hear his ring at your door-bell."
+
+"A passionate longing to find ideal truth in real life."
+
+"Ah!" said Gordon, "as I thought,--a mere dreamer"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KENELM entered the room.  The young cousins were introduced, shook
+hands, receded a step, and gazed at each other.  It is scarcely
+possible to conceive a greater contrast outwardly than that between
+the two Chillingly representatives of the rising generation.  Each was
+silently impressed by the sense of that contrast.  Each felt that the
+contrast implied antagonism, and that if they two met in the same
+arena it must be as rival combatants; still, by some mysterious
+intuition, each felt a certain respect for the other, each divined in
+the other a power that he could not fairly estimate, but against which
+his own power would be strongly tasked to contend.  So might exchange
+looks a thorough-bred deer-hound and a half-bred mastiff: the
+bystander could scarcely doubt which was the nobler animal; but he
+might hesitate which to bet on, if the two came to deadly quarrel.
+Meanwhile the thorough-bred deer-hound and the half-bred mastiff
+sniffed at each other in polite salutation.  Gordon was the first to
+give tongue.
+
+"I have long wished to know you personally," said he, throwing into
+his voice and manner that delicate kind of deference which a well-born
+cadet owes to the destined head of his house.  "I cannot conceive how
+I missed you last night at Lady Beaumanoir's, where Mivers tells me he
+met you; but I left early,"
+
+Here Mivers led the way to the breakfast-room, and, there seated, the
+host became the principal talker, running with lively glibness over
+the principal topics of the day,--the last scandal, the last new book,
+the reform of the army, the reform of the turf, the critical state of
+Spain, and the debut of an Italian singer.  He seemed an embodied
+Journal, including the Leading Article, the Law Reports, Foreign
+Intelligence, the Court Circular, down to the Births, Deaths, and
+Marriages.  Gordon from time to time interrupted this flow of soul
+with brief, trenchant remarks, which evinced his own knowledge of the
+subjects treated, and a habit of looking on all subjects connected
+with the pursuits and business of mankind from a high ground
+appropriated to himself, and through the medium of that blue glass
+which conveys a wintry aspect to summer landscapes.  Kenelm said
+little, but listened attentively.
+
+The conversation arrested its discursive nature, to settle upon a
+political chief, the highest in fame and station of that party to
+which Mivers professed--not to belong, he belonged to himself alone,
+but to appropinquate.  Mivers spoke of this chief with the greatest
+distrust, and in a spirit of general depreciation.  Gordon acquiesced
+in the distrust and the depreciation, adding, "But he is master of the
+position, and must, of course, be supported through thick and thin for
+the present."
+
+"Yes, for the present," said Mivers, "one has no option.  But you will
+see some clever articles in 'The Londoner' towards the close of the
+session, which will damage him greatly, by praising him in the wrong
+place, and deepening the alarm of important followers,--an alarm now
+at work, though suppressed."
+
+Here Kenelm asked, in humble tones, why Gordon thought that a minister
+he considered so untrustworthy and dangerous must for the present be
+supported through thick and thin.
+
+"Because at present a member elected so to support him would lose his
+seat if he did not: needs must when the devil drives."
+
+KENELM.--"When the devil drives, I should have thought it better to
+resign one's seat on the coach; perhaps one might be of some use, out
+of it, in helping to put on the drag."
+
+MIVERS.--"Cleverly said, Kenelm.  But, metaphor apart, Gordon is
+right.  A young politician must go with his party; a veteran
+journalist like myself is more independent.  So long as the journalist
+blames everybody, he will have plenty of readers."
+
+Kenelm made no reply, and Gordon changed the conversation from men to
+measures.  He spoke of some Bills before Parliament with remarkable
+ability, evincing much knowledge of the subject, much critical
+acuteness, illustrating their defects, and proving the danger of their
+ultimate consequences.
+
+Kenelm was greatly struck with the vigour of this cold, clear mind,
+and owned to himself that the House of Commons was a fitting place for
+its development.
+
+"But," said Mivers, "would you not be obliged to defend these Bills if
+you were member for Saxboro'?"
+
+"Before I answer your question, answer me this: dangerous as the Bills
+are, is it not necessary that they shall pass?  Have not the public so
+resolved?"
+
+"There can be no doubt of that."
+
+"Then the member for Saxboro' cannot be strong enough to go against
+the public."
+
+"Progress of the age!" said Kenelm, musingly.  "Do you think the class
+of gentlemen will long last in England?"
+
+"What do you call gentlemen?  The aristocracy by birth?--the
+/gentilshommes/?"
+
+"Nay, I suppose no laws can take away a man's ancestors, and a class
+of well-born men is not to be exterminated.  But a mere class of
+well-born men--without duties, responsibilities, or sentiment of that
+which becomes good birth in devotion to country or individual
+honour--does no good to a nation.  It is a misfortune which statesmen
+of democratic creed ought to recognize, that the class of the
+well-born cannot be destroyed: it must remain as it remained in Rome
+and remains in France, after all efforts to extirpate it, as the most
+dangerous class of citizens when you deprive it of the attributes
+which made it the most serviceable.  I am not speaking of that class;
+I speak of that unclassified order peculiar to England, which, no
+doubt, forming itself originally from the ideal standard of honour and
+truth supposed to be maintained by the /gentilshommes/, or well-born,
+no longer requires pedigrees and acres to confer upon its members the
+designation of gentleman; and when I hear a 'gentleman' say that he
+has no option but to think one thing and say another, at whatever risk
+to his country, I feel as if in the progress of the age the class of
+gentleman was about to be superseded by some finer development of
+species."
+
+Therewith Kenelm rose, and would have taken his departure, if Gordon
+had not seized his hand and detained him.
+
+"My dear cousin, if I may so call you," he said, with the frank manner
+which was usual to him, and which suited well the bold expression of
+his face and the clear ring of his voice, "I am one of those who, from
+an over-dislike to sentimentality and cant, often make those not
+intimately acquainted with them think worse of their principles than
+they deserve.  It may be quite true that a man who goes with his party
+dislikes the measures he feels bound to support, and says so openly
+when among friends and relations, yet that man is not therefore devoid
+of loyalty and honour; and I trust, when you know me better, you will
+not think it likely I should derogate from that class of gentlemen to
+which we both belong."
+
+"Pardon me if I seemed rude," answered Kenelm; "ascribe it to my
+ignorance of the necessities of public life.  It struck me that where
+a politician thought a thing evil, he ought not to support it as good.
+But I dare say I am mistaken."
+
+"Entirely mistaken," said Mivers, "and for this reason: in politics
+formerly there was a direct choice between good and evil.  That rarely
+exists now.  Men of high education, having to choose whether to accept
+or reject a measure forced upon their option by constituent bodies of
+very low education, are called upon to weigh evil against evil,--the
+evil of accepting or the evil of rejecting; and if they resolve on the
+first, it is as the lesser evil of the two."
+
+"Your definition is perfect," said Gordon, "and I am contented to rest
+on it my excuse for what my cousin deems insincerity."
+
+"I suppose that is real life," said Kenelm, with his mournful smile.
+
+"Of course it is," said Mivers.
+
+"Every day I live," sighed Kenelm, "still more confirms my conviction
+that real life is a phantasmal sham.  How absurd it is in philosophers
+to deny the existence of apparitions! what apparitions we, living men,
+must seem to the ghosts!
+
+
+           "'The spirits of the wise
+     Sit in the clouds and mock us.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CHILLINGLY GORDON did not fail to confirm his acquaintance with
+Kenelm.  He very often looked in upon him of a morning, sometimes
+joined him in his afternoon rides, introduced him to men of his own
+set who were mostly busy members of Parliament, rising barristers, or
+political journalists, but not without a proportion of brilliant
+idlers,--club men, sporting men, men of fashion, rank, and fortune.
+He did so with a purpose, for these persons spoke well of him,--spoke
+well not only of his talents, but of his honourable character.  His
+general nickname amongst them was "HONEST GORDON."  Kenelm at first
+thought this sobriquet must be ironical; not a bit of it.  It was
+given to him on account of the candour and boldness with which he
+expressed opinions embodying that sort of cynicism which is vulgarly
+called "the absence of humbug."  The man was certainly no hypocrite;
+he affected no beliefs which he did not entertain.  And he had very
+few beliefs in anything, except the first half of the adage, "Every
+man for himself,--and God for us all."
+
+But whatever Chillingly Gordon's theoretical disbeliefs in things
+which make the current creed of the virtuous, there was nothing in his
+conduct which evinced predilection for vices: he was strictly upright
+in all his dealings, and in delicate matters of honour was a favourite
+umpire amongst his coevals.  Though so frankly ambitious, no one could
+accuse him of attempting to climb on the shoulders of patrons.  There
+was nothing servile in his nature; and, though he was perfectly
+prepared to bribe electors if necessary, no money could have bought
+himself.  His one master-passion was the desire of power.  He sneered
+at patriotism as a worn-out prejudice, at philanthropy as a
+sentimental catch-word.  He did not want to serve his country, but to
+rule it.  He did not want to raise mankind, but to rise himself.  He
+was therefore unscrupulous, unprincipled, as hungerers after power for
+itself too often are; yet still if he got power he would probably use
+it well, from the clearness and strength of his mental perceptions.
+The impression he made on Kenelm may be seen in the following
+letter:--
+
+
+TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, BART., ETC.
+
+MY DEAR FATHER,--You and my dear mother will be pleased to hear that
+London continues very polite to me: that "arida nutrix leonum" enrolls
+me among the pet class of lions which ladies of fashion admit into the
+society of their lapdogs.  It is somewhere about six years since I was
+allowed to gaze on this peep-show through the loopholes of Mr. Welby's
+retreat.  It appears to me, perhaps erroneously, that even within that
+short space of time the tone of "society" is perceptibly changed.
+That the change is for the better is an assertion I leave to those who
+belong to the /progressista/ party.
+
+I don't think nearly so many young ladies six years ago painted their
+eyelids and dyed their hair: a few of them there might be, imitators
+of the slang invented by schoolboys and circulated through the medium
+of small novelists; they might use such expressions as "stunning,"
+"cheek," "awfully jolly," etc.  But now I find a great many who have
+advanced to a slang beyond that of verbal expressions,--a slang of
+mind, a slang of sentiment, a slang in which very little seems left of
+the woman and nothing at all of the lady.
+
+Newspaper essayists assert that the young men of the day are to blame
+for this; that the young men like it; and the fair husband-anglers
+dress their flies in the colours most likely to attract a nibble.
+Whether this excuse be the true one I cannot pretend to judge; but it
+strikes me that the men about my own age who affect to be fast are a
+more languid race than the men from ten to twenty years older, whom
+they regard as /slow/.  The habit of dram-drinking in the morning is a
+very new idea, an idea greatly in fashion at the moment.  Adonis calls
+for a "pick-me-up" before he has strength enough to answer a
+/billet-doux/ from Venus.  Adonis has not the strength to get nobly 
+drunk, but his delicate constitution requires stimulants, and he is
+always tippling.
+
+The men of high birth or renown for social success belonging, my dear
+father, to your time, are still distinguished by an air of good
+breeding, by a style of conversation more or less polished and not
+without evidences of literary culture, from men of the same rank in my
+generation, who appear to pride themselves on respecting nobody and
+knowing nothing, not even grammar.  Still we are assured that the
+world goes on steadily improving.  /That/ new idea is in full vigour.
+
+Society in the concrete has become wonderfully conceited as to its own
+progressive excellences, and the individuals who form the concrete
+entertain the same complacent opinion of themselves.  There are, of
+course, even in my brief and imperfect experience, many exceptions to
+what appear to me the prevalent characteristics of the rising
+generation in "society."  Of these exceptions I must content myself
+with naming the most remarkable.  /Place aux dames/, the first I name
+is Cecilia Travers.  She and her father are now in town, and I meet
+them frequently.  I can conceive no civilized era in the world which a
+woman like Cecilia Travers would not grace and adorn, because she is
+essentially the type of woman as man likes to imagine woman; namely,
+on the fairest side of the womanly character.  And I say "woman"
+rather than "girl," because among "Girls of the Period" Cecilia
+Travers cannot be classed.  You might call her damsel, virgin, maiden,
+but you could no more call her girl than you could call a well-born
+French demoiselle /fille/.  She is handsome enough to please the eye
+of any man, however fastidious, but not that kind of beauty which
+dazzles all men too much to fascinate one man; for--speaking, thank
+Heaven, from mere theory--I apprehend that the love for woman has in
+it a strong sense of property; that one requires to individualize
+one's possession as being wholly one's own, and not a possession which
+all the public are invited to admire.  I can readily understand how a
+rich man, who has what is called a show place, in which the splendid
+rooms and the stately gardens are open to all inspectors, so that he
+has no privacy in his own demesnes, runs away to a pretty cottage
+which he has all to himself, and of which he can say, "/This/ is home;
+/this/ is all mine."
+
+But there are some kinds of beauty which are eminently show
+places,--which the public think they have as much a right to admire as
+the owner has; and the show place itself would be dull and perhaps
+fall out of repair, if the public could be excluded from the sight of
+it.
+
+The beauty of Cecilia Travers is not that of a show place.  There is a
+feeling of safety in her.  If Desdemona had been like her, Othello
+would not have been jealous.  But then Cecilia would not have deceived
+her father; nor I think have told a blackamoor that she wished "Heaven
+had made her such a man."  Her mind harmonizes with her person: it is
+a companionable mind.  Her talents are not showy, but, take them
+altogether, they form a pleasant whole: she has good sense enough in
+the practical affairs of life, and enough of that ineffable womanly
+gift called tact to counteract the effects of whimsical natures like
+mine, and yet enough sense of the humouristic views of life not to
+take too literally all that a whimsical man like myself may say.  As
+to temper, one never knows what a woman's temper is--till one puts her
+out of it.  But I imagine hers, in its normal state, to be serene, and
+disposed to be cheerful.  Now, my dear father, if you were not one of
+the cleverest of men you would infer from this eulogistic mention of
+Cecilia Travers that I was in love with her.  But you no doubt will
+detect the truth that a man in love with a woman does not weigh her
+merits with so steady a hand as that which guides this steel pen.  I
+am not in love with Cecilia Travers.  I wish I were.  When Lady
+Glenalvon, who remains wonderfully kind to me, says, day after day,
+"Cecilia Travers would make you a perfect wife," I have no answer to
+give; but I don't feel the least inclined to ask Cecilia Travers if
+she would waste her perfection on one who so coldly concedes it.
+
+I find that she persisted in rejecting the man whom her father wished
+her to marry, and that he has consoled himself by marrying somebody
+else.  No doubt other suitors as worthy will soon present themselves.
+
+Oh, dearest of all my friends,--sole friend whom I regard as a
+confidant,--shall I ever be in love? and if not, why not?  Sometimes I
+feel as if, with love as with ambition, it is because I have some
+impossible ideal in each, that I must always remain indifferent to the
+sort of love and the sort of ambition which are within my reach.  I
+have an idea that if I did love, I should love as intensely as Romeo,
+and that thought inspires me with vague forebodings of terror; and if
+I did find an object to arouse my ambition, I could be as earnest in
+its pursuit as--whom shall I name?--Caesar or Cato?  I like Cato's
+ambition the better of the two.  But people nowadays call ambition an
+impracticable crotchet, if it be invested on the losing side.  Cato
+would have saved Rome from the mob and the dictator; but Rome could
+not be saved, and Cato falls on his own sword.  Had we a Cato now, the
+verdict at a coroner's inquest would be, "suicide while in a state of
+unsound mind;" and the verdict would have been proved by his senseless
+resistance to a mob and a dictator!  Talking of ambition, I come to
+the other exception to the youth of the day; I have named a
+/demoiselle/, I now name a /damoiseau/.  Imagine a man of about
+five-and-twenty, and who is morally about fifty years older than a
+healthy man of sixty,--imagine him with the brain of age and the
+flower of youth; with a heart absorbed into the brain, and giving warm
+blood to frigid ideas: a man who sneers at everything I call lofty,
+yet would do nothing that he thinks mean; to whom vice and virtue are
+as indifferent as they were to the Aesthetics of Goethe; who would
+never jeopardize his career as a practical reasoner by an imprudent
+virtue, and never sully his reputation by a degrading vice.  Imagine
+this man with an intellect keen, strong, ready, unscrupulous,
+dauntless,--all cleverness and no genius.  Imagine this man, and then
+do not be astonished when I tell you he is a Chillingly.
+
+The Chillingly race culminates in him, and becomes Chillinglyest.  In
+fact, it seems to me that we live in a day precisely suited to the
+Chillingly idiosyncrasies.  During the ten centuries or more that our
+race has held local habitation and a name, it has been as airy
+nothings.  Its representatives lived in hot-blooded times, and were
+compelled to skulk in still water with their emblematic daces.  But
+the times now, my dear father, are so cold-blooded that you can't be
+too cold-blooded to prosper.  What could Chillingly Mivers have been
+in an age when people cared twopence-halfpenny about their religious
+creeds, and their political parties deemed their cause was sacred and
+their leaders were heroes?  Chillingly Mivers would not have found
+five subscribers to "The Londoner."  But now "The Londoner" is the
+favourite organ of the intellectual public; it sneers away all the
+foundations of the social system, without an attempt at
+reconstruction; and every new journal set up, if it keep its head
+above water, models itself on "The Londoner."  Chillingly Mivers is a
+great man, and the most potent writer of the age, though nobody knows
+what he has written.  Chillingly Gordon is a still more notable
+instance of the rise of the Chillingly worth in the modern market.
+
+There is a general impression in the most authoritative circles that
+Chillingly Gordon will have high rank in the van of the coming men.
+His confidence in himself is so thorough that it infects all with whom
+he comes into contact,--myself included.
+
+He said to me the other day, with a /sang-froid/ worthy of the iciest
+Chillingly, "I mean to be Prime Minister of England: it is only a
+question of time."  Now, if Chillingly Gordon is to be Prime Minister,
+it will be because the increasing cold of our moral and social
+atmosphere will exactly suit the development of his talents.
+
+He is the man above all others to argue down the declaimers of
+old-fashioned sentimentalities,--love of country, care for its
+position among nations, zeal for its honour, pride in its renown.
+(Oh, if you could hear him philosophically and logically sneer away
+the word "prestige"!)  Such notions are fast being classified as
+"bosh."  And when that classification is complete,--when England has
+no colonies to defend, no navy to pay for, no interest in the affairs
+of other nations, and has attained to the happy condition of
+Holland,--then Chillingly Gordon will be her Prime Minister.
+
+Yet while, if ever I am stung into political action, it will be by
+abnegation of the Chillingly attributes, and in opposition, however
+hopeless, to Chillingly Gordon, I feel that this man cannot be
+suppressed, and ought to have fair play; his ambition will be
+infinitely more dangerous if it become soured by delay.  I propose, my
+dear father, that you should have the honour of laying this clever
+kinsman under an obligation, and enabling him to enter Parliament.  In
+our last conversation at Exmundham, you told me of the frank
+resentment of Gordon /pere/, when my coming into the world shut him
+out from the Exmundham inheritance; you confided to me your intention
+at that time to lay by yearly a sum that might ultimately serve as a
+provision for Gordon /fils/, and as some compensation for the loss of
+his expectations when you realized your hope of an heir; you told me
+also how this generous intention on your part had been frustrated by a
+natural indignation at the elder Gordon's conduct in his harassing and
+costly litigation, and by the addition you had been tempted to make to
+the estate in a purchase which added to its acreage, but at a rate of
+interest which diminished your own income, and precluded the
+possibility of further savings.  Now, chancing to meet your lawyer,
+Mr. Vining, the other day, I learned from him that it had been long a
+wish which your delicacy prevented your naming to me, that I, to whom
+the fee-simple descends, should join with you in cutting off the
+entail and resettling the estate.  He showed me what an advantage this
+would be to the property, because it would leave your hands free for
+many improvements in which I heartily go with the progress of the age,
+for which, as merely tenant for life, you could not raise the money
+except upon ruinous terms; new cottages for labourers, new buildings
+for tenants, the consolidation of some old mortgages and charges on
+the rent-roll, etc.  And allow me to add that I should like to make a
+large increase to the jointure of my dear mother.  Vining says, too,
+that there is a part of the outlying land which, as being near a town,
+could be sold to considerable profit if the estate were resettled.
+
+Let us hasten to complete the necessary deeds, and so obtain the
+L20,000 required for the realization of your noble and, let me add,
+your just desire to do something for Chillingly Gordon.  In the new
+deeds of settlement we could insure the power of willing the estate as
+we pleased, and I am strongly against devising it to Chillingly
+Gordon.  It may be a crotchet of mine, but one which I think you
+share, that the owner of English soil should have a son's love for the
+native land, and Gordon will never have that.  I think, too, that it
+will be best for his own career, and for the establishment of a frank
+understanding between us and himself, that he should be fairly told
+that he would not be benefited in the event of our death.  Twenty
+thousand pounds given to him now would be a greater boon to him than
+ten times the sum twenty years later.  With that at his command, he
+can enter Parliament, and have an income, added to what he now
+possesses, if modest, still sufficient to make him independent of a
+minister's patronage.
+
+Pray humour me, my dearest father, in the proposition I venture to
+submit to you.
+
+     Your affectionate son,  KENELM.
+
+
+FROM SIR PETER CHILLINGLY TO KENELM CHILLINGLY.
+
+MY DEAR BOY,--You are not worthy to be a Chillingly; you are decidedly
+warm-blooded: never was a load lifted off a man's mind with a gentler
+hand.  Yes, I have wished to cut off the entail and resettle the
+property; but, as it was eminently to my advantage to do so, I shrank
+from asking it, though eventually it would be almost as much to your
+own advantage.  What with the purchase I made of the Faircleuch
+lands--which I could only effect by money borrowed at high interest on
+my personal security, and paid off by yearly instalments, eating
+largely into income--and the old mortgages, etc., I own I have been
+pinched of late years.  But what rejoices me the most is the power to
+make homes for our honest labourers more comfortable, and nearer to
+their work, which last is the chief point, for the old cottages in
+themselves are not bad; the misfortune is, when you build an extra
+room for the children, the silly people let it out to a lodger.
+
+My dear boy, I am very much touched by your wish to increase your
+mother's jointure,--a very proper wish, independently of filial
+feeling, for she brought to the estate a very pretty fortune, which,
+the trustees consented to my investing in land; and though the land
+completed our ring-fence, it does not bring in two per cent, and the
+conditions of the entail limited the right of jointure to an amount
+below that which a widowed Lady Chillingly may fairly expect.
+
+I care more about the provision on these points than I do for the
+interests of old Chillingly Gordon's son.  I had meant to behave very
+handsomely to the father; and when the return for behaving handsomely
+is being put into Chancery--A Worm Will Turn.  Nevertheless, I agree
+with you that a son should not be punished for his father's faults;
+and, if the sacrifice of L20,000 makes you and myself feel that we are
+better Christians and truer gentlemen, we shall buy that feeling very
+cheaply.
+
+
+Sir Peter then proceeded, half jestingly, half seriously, to combat
+Kenelm's declaration that he was not in love with Cecilia Travers;
+and, urging the advantages of marriage with one whom Kenelm allowed
+would be a perfect wife, astutely remarked that unless Kenelm had a
+son of his own it did not seem to him quite just to the next of kin to
+will the property from him, upon no better plea than the want of love
+for his native country.  "He would love his country fast enough if he
+had 10,000 acres in it."
+
+Kenelm shook his head when he came to this sentence.
+
+"Is even then love for one's country but cupboard-love after all?"
+said he; and he postponed finishing the perusal of his father's
+letter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KENELM CHILLINGLY did not exaggerate the social position he had
+acquired when he classed himself amongst the lions of the fashionable
+world.  I dare not count the number of three-cornered notes showered
+upon him by the fine ladies who grow romantic upon any kind of
+celebrity; or the carefully sealed envelopes, containing letters from
+fair Anonymas, who asked if he had a heart, and would be in such a
+place in the Park at such an hour.  What there was in Kenelm
+Chillingly that should make him thus favoured, especially by the fair
+sex, it would be difficult to say, unless it was the two-fold
+reputation of being unlike other people, and of being unaffectedly
+indifferent to the gain of any reputation at all.  He might, had he so
+pleased, have easily established a proof that the prevalent though
+vague belief in his talents was not altogether unjustified.  For the
+articles he had sent from abroad to "The Londoner" and by which his
+travelling expenses were defrayed, had been stamped by that sort of
+originality in tone and treatment which rarely fails to excite
+curiosity as to the author, and meets with more general praise than
+perhaps it deserves.
+
+But Mivers was true to his contract to preserve inviolable the
+incognito of the author, and Kenelm regarded with profound contempt
+the articles themselves and the readers who praised them.
+
+Just as misanthropy with some persons grows out of benevolence
+disappointed, so there are certain natures--and Kenelm Chillingly's
+was perhaps one of them--in which indifferentism grows out of
+earnestness baffled.
+
+He had promised himself pleasure in renewing acquaintance with his old
+tutor, Mr. Welby,--pleasure in refreshing his own taste for
+metaphysics and casuistry and criticism.  But that accomplished
+professor of realism had retired from philosophy altogether, and was
+now enjoying a holiday for life in the business of a public office.  A
+minister in favour of whom, when in opposition, Mr. Welby, in a moment
+of whim, wrote some very able articles in a leading journal, had, on
+acceding to power, presented the realist with one of those few good
+things still left to ministerial patronage,--a place worth about
+L1,200 a year.  His mornings thus engaged in routine work, Mr. Welby
+enjoyed his evenings in a convivial way.
+
+"/Inveni portum/," he said to Kenelm; "I plunge into no troubled
+waters now.  But come and dine with me to-morrow, tete-a-tete.  My
+wife is at St. Leonard's with my youngest born for the benefit of
+sea-air."  Kenelm accepted the invitation.
+
+The dinner would have contented a Brillat-Savarin: it was faultless;
+and the claret was that rare nectar, the Lafitte of 1848.
+
+"I never share this," said Welby, "with more than one friend at a
+time."
+
+Kenelm sought to engage his host in discussion on certain new works in
+vogue, and which were composed according to purely realistic canons of
+criticism.  "The more realistic; these books pretend to be, the less
+real they are," said Kenelm.  "I am half inclined to think that the
+whole school you so systematically sought to build up is a mistake,
+and that realism in art is a thing impossible."
+
+"I dare say you are right.  I took up that school in earnest because I
+was in a passion with pretenders to the Idealistic school; and
+whatever one takes up in earnest is generally a mistake, especially if
+one is in a passion.  I was not in earnest and I was not in a passion
+when I wrote those articles to which I am indebted for my office."
+Mr. Welby here luxuriously stretched his limbs, and lifting his glass
+to his lips, voluptuously inhaled its bouquet.
+
+"You sadden me," returned Kenelm.  "It is a melancholy thing to find
+that one's mind was influenced in youth by a teacher who mocks at his
+own teachings."
+
+Welby shrugged his shoulders.  "Life consists in the alternate process
+of learning and unlearning; but it is often wiser to unlearn than to
+learn.  For the rest, as I have ceased to be a critic, I care little
+whether I was wrong or right when I played that part.  I think I am
+right now as a placeman.  Let the world go its own way, provided the
+world lets you live upon it.  I drain my wine to the lees, and cut
+down hope to the brief span of life.  Reject realism in art if you
+please, and accept realism in conduct.  For the first time in my life
+I am comfortable: my mind, having worn out its walking-shoes, is now
+enjoying the luxury of slippers.  Who can deny the realism of
+comfort?"
+
+"Has a man a right," Kenelm said to himself, as he entered his
+brougham, "to employ all the brilliancy of a rare wit, all the
+acquisitions of as rare a scholarship, to the scaring of the young
+generation out of the safe old roads which youth left to itself would
+take,--old roads skirted by romantic rivers and bowery trees,--
+directing them into new paths on long sandy flats, and then,
+when they are faint and footsore, to tell them that he cares not a pin
+whether they have worn out their shoes in right paths or wrong paths,
+for that he has attained the /summum bonum/ of philosophy in the
+comfort of easy slippers?"
+
+Before he could answer the question he thus put to himself, his
+brougham stopped at the door of the minister whom Welby had
+contributed to bring into power.
+
+That night there was a crowded muster of the fashionable world at the
+great man's house.  It happened to be a very critical moment for the
+minister.  The fate of his cabinet depended on the result of a motion
+about to be made the following week in the House of Commons.  The
+great man stood at the entrance of the apartments to receive his
+guests, and among the guests were the framers of the hostile motion
+and the leaders of the opposition.  His smile was not less gracious to
+them than to his dearest friends and stanchest supporters.
+
+"I suppose this is realism," said Kenelm to himself; "but it is not
+truth, and it is not comfort."  Leaning against the wall near the
+doorway, he contemplated with grave interest the striking countenance
+of his distinguished host.  He detected beneath that courteous smile
+and that urbane manner the signs of care.  The eye was absent, the
+cheek pinched, the brow furrowed.  Kenelm turned away his looks, and
+glanced over the animated countenances of the idle loungers along
+commoner thoroughfares in life.  Their eyes were not absent; their
+brows were not furrowed; their minds seemed quite at home in
+exchanging nothings.  Interest many of them had in the approaching
+struggle, but it was much such an interest as betters of small sums
+may have on the Derby day,--just enough to give piquancy to the race;
+nothing to make gain a great joy, or loss a keen anguish.
+
+"Our host is looking ill," said Mivers, accosting Kenelm.  "I detect
+symptoms of suppressed gout.  You know my aphorism, 'nothing so gouty
+as ambition,' especially Parliamentary ambition."
+
+"You are not one of those friends who press on my choice of life that
+source of disease; allow me to thank you."
+
+"Your thanks are misplaced.  I strongly advise you to devote yourself
+to a political career."
+
+"Despite the gout?"
+
+"Despite the gout.  If you could take the world as I do, my advice
+might be different.  But your mind is overcrowded with doubts and
+fantasies and crotchets, and you have no choice but to give them vent
+in active life."
+
+"You had something to do in making me what I am,--an idler; something
+to answer for as to my doubts, fantasies, and crotchets.  It was by
+your recommendation that I was placed under the tuition of Mr. Welby,
+and at that critical age in which the bent of the twig forms the shape
+of the tree."
+
+"And I pride myself on that counsel.  I repeat the reasons for which I
+gave it: it is an incalculable advantage for a young man to start in
+life thoroughly initiated into the New Ideas which will more or less
+influence his generation.  Welby was the ablest representative of
+these ideas.  It is a wondrous good fortune when the propagandist of
+the New Ideas is something more than a bookish philosopher,--when he
+is a thorough 'man of the world,' and is what we emphatically call
+'practical.'  Yes, you owe me much that I secured to you such tuition,
+and saved you from twaddle and sentiment, the poetry of Wordsworth and
+the muscular Christianity of Cousin John."
+
+"What you say that you saved me from might have done me more good than
+all you conferred on me.  I suspect that when education succeeds in
+placing an old head upon young shoulders the combination is not
+healthful: it clogs the blood and slackens the pulse.  However, I must
+not be ungrateful; you meant kindly.  Yes, I suppose Welby is
+practical: he has no belief, and he has got a place.  But our host, I
+presume, is also practical; his place is a much higher one than
+Welby's, and yet he is surely not without belief?"
+
+"He was born before the new ideas came into practical force; but in
+proportion as they have done so, his beliefs have necessarily
+disappeared.  I don't suppose that he believes in much now, except the
+two propositions: firstly, that if he accept the new ideas he will
+have power and keep it, and if he does not accept them power is out of
+the question; and, secondly, that if the new ideas are to prevail he
+is the best man to direct them safely,--beliefs quite enough for a
+minister.  No wise minister should have more."
+
+"Does he not believe that the motion he is to resist next week is a
+bad one?"
+
+"A bad one of course, in its consequences, for if it succeed it will
+upset him; a good one in itself I am sure he must think it, for he
+would bring it on himself if he were in opposition."
+
+"I see that Pope's definition is still true, 'Party is the madness of
+the many for the gain of the few.'"
+
+"No, it is not true.  Madness is a wrong word applied to the many: the
+many are sane enough; they know their own objects, and they make use
+of the intellect of the few in order to gain their objects.  In each
+party it is the many that control the few who nominally lead them.  A
+man becomes Prime Minister because he seems to the many of his party
+the fittest person to carry out their views.  If he presume to differ
+from these views, they put him into a moral pillory, and pelt him with
+their dirtiest stones and their rottenest eggs."
+
+"Then the maxim should be reversed, and party is rather the madness of
+the few for the gain of the many?
+
+"Of the two, that is the more correct definition."
+
+"Let me keep my senses and decline to be one of the few."
+
+Kenelm moved away from his cousin's side, and entering one of the less
+crowded rooms, saw Cecilia Travers seated there in a recess with Lady
+Glenalvon.  He joined them, and after a brief interchange of a few
+commonplaces, Lady Glenalvon quitted her post to accost a foreign
+ambassadress, and Kenelm sank into the chair she vacated.
+
+It was a relief to his eye to contemplate Cecilia's candid brow; to
+his ear to hearken to the soft voice that had no artificial tones, and
+uttered no cynical witticisms.
+
+"Don't you think it strange," said Kenelm, "that we English should so
+mould all our habits as to make even what we call pleasure as little
+pleasurable as possible?  We are now in the beginning of June, the
+fresh outburst of summer, when every day in the country is a delight
+to eye and ear, and we say, 'The season for hot rooms is beginning.'
+We alone of civilized races spend our summer in a capital, and cling
+to the country when the trees are leafless and the brooks frozen."
+
+"Certainly that is a mistake; but I love the country in all seasons,
+even in winter."
+
+"Provided the country house is full of London people?"
+
+"No; that is rather a drawback.  I never want companions in the
+country."
+
+"True; I should have remembered that you differ from young ladies in
+general, and make companions of books.  They are always more
+conversable in the country than they are in town; or rather, we listen
+there to them with less distracted attention.  Ha! do I not recognize
+yonder the fair whiskers of George Belvoir?  Who is the lady leaning
+on his arm?"
+
+"Don't you know?--Lady Emily Belvoir, his wife."
+
+"Ah!  I was told that he had married.  The lady is handsome.  She will
+become the family diamonds.  Does she read Blue-books?"
+
+"I will ask her if you wish."
+
+"Nay, it is scarcely worth while.  During my rambles abroad I saw but
+few English newspapers.  I did, however, learn that George had won his
+election.  Has he yet spoken in Parliament?"
+
+"Yes; he moved the answer to the Address this session, and was much
+complimented on the excellent tone and taste of his speech.  He spoke
+again a few weeks afterwards, I fear not so successfully."
+
+"Coughed down?"
+
+"Something like it."
+
+"Do him good; he will recover the cough, and fulfil my prophecy of his
+success."
+
+"Have you done with poor George for the present?  If so, allow me to
+ask whether you have quite forgotten Will Somers and Jessie Wiles?"
+
+"Forgotten them! no."
+
+"But you have never asked after them?"
+
+"I took it for granted that they were as happy as could be expected.
+Pray assure me that they are."
+
+"I trust so now; but they have had trouble, and have left Graveleigh."
+
+"Trouble! left Graveleigh!  You make me uneasy.  Pray explain."
+
+"They had not been three months married and installed in the home they
+owed to you, when poor Will was seized with a rheumatic fever.  He was
+confined to his bed for many weeks; and, when at last he could move
+from it, was so weak as to be still unable to do any work.  During his
+illness Jessie had no heart and little leisure to attend to the shop.
+Of course I--that is, my dear father--gave them all necessary
+assistance; but--"
+
+"I understand; they were reduced to objects of charity.  Brute that I
+am, never to have thought of the duties I owed to the couple I had
+brought together.  But pray go on."
+
+"You are aware that just before you left us my father received a
+proposal to exchange his property at Graveleigh for some lands more
+desirable to him?"
+
+"I remember.  He closed with that offer."
+
+"Yes; Captain Stavers, the new landlord of Graveleigh, seems to be a
+very bad man; and though he could not turn the Somerses out of the
+cottage so long as they paid rent, which we took care they did
+pay,--yet out of a very wicked spite he set up a rival shop in one of
+his other cottages in the village, and it became impossible for these
+poor young people to get a livelihood at Graveleigh."
+
+"What excuse for spite against so harmless a young couple could
+Captain Stavers find or invent?"
+
+Cecilia looked down and coloured.  "It was a revengeful feeling
+against Jessie."
+
+"Ah, I comprehend."
+
+"But they have now left the village, and are happily settled
+elsewhere.  Will has recovered his health, and they are prospering
+much more than they could ever have done at Graveleigh."
+
+"In that change you were their benefactress, Miss Travers?" said
+Kenelm, in a more tender voice and with a softer eye than he had ever
+before evinced towards the heiress.
+
+"No, it is not I whom they have to thank and bless."
+
+"Who, then, is it?  Your father?"
+
+"No.  Do not question me.  I am bound not to say.  They do not
+themselves know; they rather believe that their gratitude is due to
+you."
+
+"To me!  Am I to be forever a sham in spite of myself?  My dear Miss
+Travers, it is essential to my honour that I should undeceive this
+credulous pair; where can I find them?"
+
+"I must not say; but I will ask permission of their concealed
+benefactor, and send you their address."
+
+A touch was laid on Kenelm's arm, and a voice whispered, "May I ask
+you to present me to Miss Travers?"
+
+"Miss Travers," said Kenelm, "I entreat you to add to the list of your
+acquaintances a cousin of mine,--Mr. Chillingly Gordon."
+
+While Gordon addressed to Cecilia the well-bred conventionalisms with
+which acquaintance in London drawing-rooms usually commences, Kenelm,
+obedient to a sign from Lady Glenalvon, who had just re-entered the
+room, quitted his seat, and joined the marchioness.
+
+"Is not that young man whom you left talking with Miss Travers your
+clever cousin Gordon?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"She is listening to him with great attention.  How his face brightens
+up as he talks!  He is positively handsome, thus animated."
+
+"Yes, I could fancy him a dangerous wooer.  He has wit and liveliness
+and audacity; he could be very much in love with a great fortune, and
+talk to the owner of it with a fervour rarely exhibited by a
+Chillingly.  Well, it is no affair of mine."
+
+"It ought to be."
+
+Alas and alas! that "ought to be;" what depths of sorrowful meaning
+lie within that simple phrase!  How happy would be our lives, how
+grand our actions, how pure our souls, if all could be with us as it
+ought to be!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+WE often form cordial intimacies in the confined society of a country
+house, or a quiet watering-place, or a small Continental town, which
+fade away into remote acquaintanceship in the mighty vortex of London
+life, neither party being to blame for the estrangement.  It was so
+with Leopold Travers and Kenelm Chillingly.  Travers, as we have seen,
+had felt a powerful charm in the converse of the young stranger, so in
+contrast with the routine of the rural companionships to which his
+alert intellect had for many years circumscribed its range.  But on
+reappearing in London the season before Kenelm again met him, he had
+renewed old friendships with men of his own standing,--officers in the
+regiment of which he had once been a popular ornament, some of them
+still unmarried, a few of them like himself widowed, others who had
+been his rivals in fashion, and were still pleasant idlers about town;
+and it rarely happens in a metropolis that we have intimate
+friendships with those of another generation, unless there be some
+common tie in the cultivation of art and letters, or the action of
+kindred sympathies in the party strife of politics.  Therefore Travers
+and Kenelm had had little familiar communication with each other since
+they first met at the Beaumanoirs'.  Now and then they found
+themselves at the same crowded assemblies, and interchanged nods and
+salutations.  But their habits were different; the houses at which
+they were intimate were not the same, neither did they frequent the
+same clubs.  Kenelm's chief bodily exercise was still that of long and
+early rambles into rural suburbs; Leopold's was that of a late ride in
+the Row.  Of the two, Leopold was much more the man of pleasure.  Once
+restored to metropolitan life, a temper constitutionally eager,
+ardent, and convivial took kindly, as in earlier youth, to its light
+range of enjoyments.
+
+Had the intercourse between the two men been as frankly familiar as it
+had been at Neesdale Park, Kenelm would probably have seen much more
+of Cecilia at her own home; and the admiration and esteem with which
+she already inspired him might have ripened into much warmer feeling,
+had he thus been brought into clearer comprehension of the soft and
+womanly heart, and its tender predisposition towards himself.
+
+He had said somewhat vaguely in his letter to Sir Peter, that
+"sometimes he felt as if his indifference to love, as to ambition, was
+because he had some impossible ideal in each."  Taking that conjecture
+to task, he could not honestly persuade himself that he had formed any
+ideal of woman and wife with which the reality of Cecilia Travers was
+at war.  On the contrary, the more he thought over the characteristics
+of Cecilia, the more they seemed to correspond to any ideal that had
+floated before him in the twilight of dreamy revery; and yet he knew
+that he was not in love with her, that his heart did not respond to
+his reason; and mournfully he resigned himself to the conviction that
+nowhere in this planet, from the normal pursuits of whose inhabitants
+he felt so estranged, was there waiting for him the smiling playmate,
+the earnest helpmate.  As this conviction strengthened, so an
+increased weariness of the artificial life of the metropolis, and of
+all its objects and amusements, turned his thoughts with an intense
+yearning towards the Bohemian freedom and fresh excitements of his
+foot ramblings.  He often thought with envy of the wandering minstrel,
+and wondered whether, if he again traversed the same range of country,
+he might encounter again that vagrant singer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IT is nearly a week since Kenelm had met Cecilia, and he is sitting in
+his rooms with Lord Thetford at that hour of three in the afternoon
+which is found the most difficult to dispose of by idlers about town.
+Amongst young men of his own age and class with whom Kenelm assorted
+in the fashionable world, perhaps the one whom he liked the best, and
+of whom he saw the most, was this young heir of the Beaumanoirs; and
+though Lord Thetford has nothing to do with the direct stream of my
+story, it is worth pausing a few minutes to sketch an outline of one
+of the best whom the last generation has produced for a part that,
+owing to accidents of birth and fortune, young men like Lord Thetford
+must play on that stage from which the curtain is not yet drawn up.
+Destined to be the head of a family that unites with princely
+possessions and a historical name a keen though honourable ambition
+for political power, Lord Thetford has been care fully educated,
+especially in the new ideas of his time.  His father, though a man of
+no ordinary talents, has never taken a prominent part in public life.
+He desires his eldest son to do so.  The Beaumanoirs have been Whigs
+from the time of William III.  They have shared the good and the ill
+fortunes of a party which, whether we side with it or not, no
+politician who dreads extremes in the government of a State so
+pre-eminently artificial that a prevalent extreme at either end of the
+balance would be fatal to equilibrium, can desire to become extinct or
+feeble so long as a constitutional monarchy exists in England.  From
+the reign of George I. to the death of George IV., the Beaumanoirs
+were in the ascendant.  Visit their family portrait gallery, and you
+must admire the eminence of a house which, during that interval of
+less than a century, contributed so many men to the service of the
+State or the adornment of the Court,--so many Ministers, Ambassadors,
+Generals, Lord Chamberlains, and Masters of the Horse.  When the
+younger Pitt beat the great Whig Houses, the Beaumanoirs vanish into
+comparative obscurity; they reemerge with the accession of William
+IV., and once more produce bulwarks of the State and ornaments of the
+Crown.  The present Lord of Beaumanoir, /poco curante/ in politics
+though he be, has at least held high offices at Court; and, as a
+matter of course, he is Lord Lieutenant of his county, as well as
+Knight of the Garter.  He is a man whom the chiefs of his party have
+been accustomed to consult on critical questions.  He gives his
+opinions confidentially and modestly, and when they are rejected never
+takes offence.  He thinks that a time is coming when the head of the
+Beaumanoirs should descend into the lists and fight hand-to-hand with
+any Hodge or Hobson in the cause of his country for the benefit of the
+Whigs.  Too lazy or too old to do this himself, he says to his son,
+"You must do it: without effort of mine the thing may last my life.
+It needs effort of yours that the thing may last through your own."
+
+Lord Thetford cheerfully responds to the paternal admonition.  He
+curbs his natural inclinations, which are neither inelegant nor
+unmanly; for, on the one side, he is very fond of music and painting,
+an accomplished amateur, and deemed a sound connoisseur in both; and,
+on the other side, he has a passion for all field sports, and
+especially for hunting.  He allows no such attractions to interfere
+with diligent attention to the business of the House of Commons.  He
+serves in Committees, he takes the chair at public meetings on
+sanitary questions or projects for social improvement, and acquits
+himself well therein.  He has not yet spoken in debate, but he has
+only been two years in Parliament, and he takes his father's wise
+advice not to speak till the third.  But he is not without weight
+among the well-born youth of the party, and has in him the stuff out
+of which, when it becomes seasoned, the Corinthian capitals of a
+Cabinet may be very effectively carved.  In his own heart he is
+convinced that his party are going too far and too fast; but with that
+party he goes on light-heartedly, and would continue to do so if they
+went to Erebus.  But he would prefer their going the other way.  For
+the rest, a pleasant, bright-eyed young fellow, with vivid animal
+spirits; and, in the holiday moments of reprieve from public duty he
+brings sunshine into draggling hunting-fields, and a fresh breeze into
+heated ballrooms.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Lord Thetford, as he threw aside his cigar, "I
+quite understand that you bore yourself: you have nothing else to do."
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"Work."
+
+"Work!"
+
+"Yes, you are clever enough to feel that you have a mind; and mind is
+a restless inmate of body: it craves occupation of some sort, and
+regular occupation too; it needs its daily constitutional exercise.
+Do you give your mind that?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know, but my mind is always busying itself about
+something or other."
+
+"In a desultory way,--with no fixed object."
+
+"True."
+
+"Write a book, and then it will have its constitutional."
+
+"Nay, my mind is always writing a book (though it may not publish
+one), always jotting down impressions, or inventing incidents, or
+investigating characters; and between you and me, I do not think that
+I do bore myself so much as I did formerly.  Other people bore me more
+than they did."
+
+"Because you will not create an object in common with other people:
+come into Parliament, side with a party, and you have that object."
+
+"Do you mean seriously to tell me that you are not bored in the House
+of Commons?"
+
+"With the speakers very often, yes; but with the strife between the
+speakers, no.  The House of Commons life has a peculiar excitement
+scarcely understood out of it; but you may conceive its charm when you
+observe that a man who has once been in the thick of it feels forlorn
+and shelved if he lose his seat, and even repines when the accident of
+birth transfers him to the serener air of the Upper House.  Try that
+life, Chillingly."
+
+"I might if I were an ultra-Radical, a Republican, a Communist, a
+Socialist, and wished to upset everything existing, for then the
+strife would at least be a very earnest one."
+
+"But could not you be equally in earnest against those revolutionary
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Are you and your leaders in earnest against them?  They don't appear
+to me so."
+
+Thetford was silent for a minute.  "Well, if you doubt the principles
+of my side, go with the other side.  For my part, I and many of our
+party would be glad to see the Conservatives stronger."
+
+"I have no doubt they would.  No sensible man likes to be carried off
+his legs by the rush of the crowd behind him; and a crowd is less
+headlong when it sees a strong force arrayed against it in front.  But
+it seems to me that, at present, Conservatism can but be what it now
+is,--a party that may combine for resistance, and will not combine for
+inventive construction.  We are living in an age in which the process
+of unsettlement is going blindly at work, as if impelled by a Nemesis
+as blind as itself.  New ideas come beating into surf and surge
+against those which former reasoners had considered as fixed banks and
+breakwaters; and the new ideas are so mutable, so fickle, that those
+which were considered novel ten years ago are deemed obsolete to-day,
+and the new ones of to-day will in their turn be obsolete to-morrow.
+And, in a sort of fatalism, you see statesmen yielding way to these
+successive mockeries of experiment,--for they are experiments against
+experience,--and saying to each other with a shrug of the shoulders,
+'Bismillah! it must be so; the country will have it, even though it
+sends the country to the dogs.'  I don't feel sure that the country
+will not go there the sooner, if you can only strengthen the
+Conservative element enough to set it up in office, with the certainty
+of knocking it down again.  Alas!  I am too dispassionate a looker-on
+to be fit for a partisan: would I were not!  Address yourself to my
+cousin Gordon."
+
+"Ay, Chillingly Gordon is a coming man, and has all the earnestness
+you find absent in party and in yourself."
+
+"You call him earnest?"
+
+"Thoroughly, in the pursuit of one object,--the advancement of
+Chillingly Gordon.  If he get into the House of Commons, and succeed
+there, I hope he will never become my leader; for if he thought
+Christianity in the way of his promotion, he would bring in a bill for
+its abolition."
+
+"In that case would he still be your leader?"
+
+"My dear Kenelm, you don't know what is the spirit of party, and how
+easily it makes excuses for any act of its leader.  Of course, if
+Gordon brought in a bill for the abolition of Christianity, it would
+be on the plea that the abolition was good for the Christians, and his
+followers would cheer that enlightened sentiment."
+
+"Ah," said Kenelm, with a sigh, "I own myself the dullest of
+blockheads; for instead of tempting me into the field of party
+politics, your talk leaves me in stolid amaze that you do not take to
+your heels, where honour can only be saved by flight."
+
+"Pooh! my dear Chillingly, we cannot run away from the age in which we
+live: we must accept its conditions and make the best of them; and if
+the House of Commons be nothing else, it is a famous debating society
+and a capital club.  Think over it.  I must leave you now.  I am going
+to see a picture at the Exhibition which has been most truculently
+criticised in 'The Londoner,' but which I am assured, on good
+authority, is a work of remarkable merit.  I can't bear to see a man
+snarled and sneered down, no doubt by jealous rivals, who have their
+influence in journals, so I shall judge of the picture for myself.  If
+it be really as good as I am told, I shall talk about it to everybody
+I meet; and in matters of art I fancy my word goes for something.
+Study art, my dear Kenelm.  No gentleman's education is complete if he
+does n't know a good picture from a bad one.  After the Exhibition I
+shall just have time for a canter round the Park before the debate of
+the session, which begins to-night."
+
+With a light step the young man quitted the room, humming an air from
+the "Figaro" as he descended the stairs.  From the window Kenelm
+watched him swinging himself with careless grace into his saddle and
+riding briskly down the street,--in form and face and bearing a very
+model of young, high-born, high-bred manhood.  "The Venetians,"
+muttered Kenelm, "decapitated Marino Faliero for conspiring against
+his own order,--the nobles.  The Venetians loved their institutions,
+and had faith in them.  Is there such love and such faith among the
+English?"
+
+As he thus soliloquized he heard a shrilling sort of squeak; and a
+showman stationed before his window the stage on which Punch satirizes
+the laws and moralities of the world, "kills the beadle and defies the
+devil."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+KENELM turned from the sight of Punch and Punch's friend the cur, as
+his servant, entering, said a person from the country, who would not
+give his name, asked to see him.
+
+Thinking it might be some message from his father, Kenelm ordered the
+stranger to be admitted, and in another minute there entered a young
+man of handsome countenance and powerful frame, in whom, after a
+surprised stare, Kenelm recognized Tom Bowles.  Difficult indeed would
+have been that recognition to an unobservant beholder: no trace was
+left of the sullen bully or the village farrier; the expression of the
+face was mild and intelligent,--more bashful than hardy; the brute
+strength of the form had lost its former clumsiness, the simple dress
+was that of a gentleman,--to use an expressive idiom, the whole man
+was wonderfully "toned down."
+
+"I am afraid, sir, I am taking a liberty," said Tom, rather nervously,
+twiddling his hat between his fingers.
+
+"I should be a greater friend to liberty than I am if it were always
+taken in the same way," said Kenelm, with a touch of his saturnine
+humour; but then yielding at once to the warmer impulse of his nature,
+he grasped his old antagonist's hand and exclaimed, "My dear Tom, you
+are so welcome.  I am so glad to see you.  Sit down, man; sit down:
+make yourself at home."
+
+"I did not know you were back in England, sir, till within the last
+few days; for you did say that when you came back I should see or hear
+from you," and there was a tone of reproach in the last words.
+
+"I am to blame, forgive me," said Kenelm, remorsefully.  But how did
+you find me out? you did not then, I think, even know my name.  That,
+however, it was easy enough to discover; but who gave you my address
+in this lodging?"
+
+"Well, sir, it was Miss Travers; and she bade me come to you.
+Otherwise, as you did not send for me, it was scarcely my place to
+call uninvited."
+
+"But, my dear Tom, I never dreamed that you were in London.  One don't
+ask a man whom one supposes to be more than a hundred miles off to pay
+one an afternoon call.  You are still with your uncle, I presume? and
+I need not ask if all thrives well with you: you look a prosperous
+man, every inch of you, from crown to toe."
+
+"Yes," said Tom; "thank you kindly, sir, I am doing well in the way of
+business, and my uncle is to give me up the whole concern at
+Christmas."
+
+While Tom thus spoke Kenelm had summoned his servant, and ordered up
+such refreshments as could be found in the larder of a bachelor in
+lodgings.  "And what brings you to town, Tom?"
+
+"Miss Travers wrote to me about a little business which she was good
+enough to manage for me, and said you wished to know about it; and so,
+after turning it over in my mind for a few days, I resolved to come to
+town: indeed," added Tom, heartily, "I did wish to see your face
+again."
+
+"But you talk riddles.  What business of yours could Miss Travers
+imagine I wished to know about?"
+
+Tom coloured high, and looked very embarrassed.  Luckily, the servant
+here entering with the refreshment-tray allowed him time to recover
+himself.  Kenelm helped him to a liberal slice of cold pigeon-pie,
+pressed wine on him, and did not renew the subject till he thought his
+guest's tongue was likely to be more freely set loose; then he said,
+laying a friendly hand on Tom's shoulders, "I have been thinking over
+what passed between me and Miss Travers.  I wished to have the new
+address of Will Somers; she promised to write to his benefactor to ask
+permission to give it.  You are that benefactor?"
+
+"Don't say benefactor, sir.  I will tell how it came about if you will
+let me.  You see, I sold my little place at Graveleigh to the new
+Squire, and when Mother removed to Luscombe to be near me, she told me
+how poor Jessie had been annoyed by Captain Stavers, who seems to
+think his purchase included the young women on the property along with
+the standing timber; and I was half afraid that she had given some
+cause for his persecution, for you know she has a blink of those soft
+eyes of hers that might charm a wise man out of his skin and put a
+fool there instead."
+
+"But I hope she has done with those blinks since her marriage."
+
+"Well, and I honestly think she has.  It is certain she did not
+encourage Captain Stavers, for I went over to Graveleigh myself on the
+sly, and lodged concealed with one of the cottagers who owed me a
+kindness; and one day, as I was at watch, I saw the Captain peering
+over the stile which divides Holmwood from the glebe,--you remember
+Holmwood?"
+
+"I can't say I do."
+
+"The footway from the village to Squire Travers's goes through the
+wood, which is a few hundred yards at the back of Will Somers's
+orchard.  Presently the Captain drew himself suddenly back from the
+stile, and disappeared among the trees, and then I saw Jessie coming
+from the orchard with a basket over her arm, and walking quick towards
+the wood.  Then, sir, my heart sank.  I felt sure she was going to
+meet the Captain.  However, I crept along the hedgerow, hiding myself,
+and got into the wood almost as soon as Jessie got there, by another
+way.  Under the cover of the brushwood I stole on till I saw the
+Captain come out from the copse on the other side of the path, and
+plant himself just before Jessie.  Then I saw at once I had wronged
+her.  She had not expected to see him, for she hastily turned back,
+and began to run homeward; but he caught her up, and seized her by the
+arm.  I could not hear what he said, but I heard her voice quite sharp
+with fright and anger.  And then he suddenly seized her round the
+waist, and she screamed, and I sprang forward--"
+
+"And thrashed the Captain?"
+
+"No, I did not," said Tom; "I had made a vow to myself that I never
+would be violent again if I could help it.  So I took him with one
+hand by the cuff of the neck, and with the other by the waistband, and
+just pitched him on a bramble bush,--quite mildly.  He soon picked
+himself up, for he is a dapper little chap, and became very blustering
+and abusive.  But I kept my temper, and said civilly, 'Little
+gentleman, hard words break no bones; but if ever you molest Mrs.
+Somers again, I will carry you into her orchard, souse you into the
+duck-pond there, and call all the villagers to see you scramble out of
+it again; and I will do it now if you are not off.  I dare say you
+have heard of my name: I am Tom Bowles.'  Upon that his face, which
+was before very red, grew very white, and muttering something I did
+not hear, he walked away.
+
+"Jessie--I mean Mrs. Somers--seemed at first as much frightened at me
+as she had been at the Captain; and though I offered to walk with her
+to Miss Travers's, where she was going with a basket which the young
+lady had ordered, she refused, and went back home.  I felt hurt, and
+returned to my uncle's the same evening; and it was not for months
+that I heard the Captain had been spiteful enough to set up an
+opposition shop, and that poor Will had been taken ill, and his wife
+was confined about the same time, and the talk was that they were in
+distress and might have to be sold up.
+
+"When I heard all this, I thought that after all it was my rough
+tongue that had so angered the Captain and been the cause of his
+spite, and so it was my duty to make it up to poor Will and his wife.
+I did not know how to set about mending matters, but I thought I'd go
+and talk to Miss Travers; and if ever there was a kind heart in a
+girl's breast, hers is one."
+
+"You are right there, I guess.  What did Miss Travers say?"
+
+"Nay; I hardly know what she did say, but she set me thinking, and it
+struck me that Jessie--Mrs. Somers--had better move to a distance, and
+out of the Captain's reach, and that Will would do better in a less
+out-of-the-way place.  And then, by good luck, I read in the newspaper
+that a stationary and a fancywork business, with a circulating
+library, was to be sold on moderate terms at Moleswich, the other side
+of London.  So I took the train and went to the place, and thought the
+shop would just suit these young folks, and not be too much work for
+either; then I went to Miss Travers, and I had a lot of money lying by
+me from the sale of the old forge and premises, which I did not know
+what to do with; and so, to cut short a long story, I bought the
+business, and Will and his wife are settled at Moleswich, thriving and
+happy, I hope, sir."
+
+Tom's voice quivered at the last words, and he turned aside quickly,
+passing his hand over his eyes.
+
+Kenelm was greatly moved.
+
+"And they don't know what you did for them?"
+
+"To be sure not.  I don't think Will would have let him self be
+beholden to me.  Ah! the lad has a spirit of his own, and Jessie--Mrs.
+Somers--would have felt pained and humbled that I should even think of
+such a thing.  Miss Travers managed it all.  They take the money as a
+loan which is to be paid by instalments.  They have sent Miss Travers
+more than one instalment already, so I know they are doing well."
+
+"A loan from Miss Travers?"
+
+"No; Miss Travers wanted to have a share in it, but I begged her not.
+It made me happy to do what I did all myself; and Miss Travers felt
+for me and did not press.  They perhaps think it is Squire Travers
+(though he is not a man who would like to say it, for fear it should
+bring applicants on him), or some other gentleman who takes an
+interest in them."
+
+"I always said you were a grand fellow, Tom.  But you are grander
+still than I thought you."
+
+"If there be any good in me, I owe it to you, sir.  Think what a
+drunken, violent brute I was when I first met you.  Those walks with
+you, and I may say that other gentleman's talk, and then that long
+kind letter I had from you, not signed in your name, and written from
+abroad,--all these changed me, as the child is changed at nurse."
+
+"You have evidently read a good deal since we parted."
+
+"Yes; I belong to our young men's library and institute; and when of
+an evening I get hold of a book, especially a pleasant story-book, I
+don't care for other company."
+
+"Have you never seen any other girl you could care for, and wish to
+marry?"
+
+"Ah, sir," answered Tom, "a man does not go so mad for a girl as I did
+for Jessie Wiles, and when it is all over, and he has come to his
+senses, put his heart into joint again as easily as if it were only a
+broken leg.  I don't say that I may not live to love and to marry
+another woman: it is my wish to do so.  But I know that I shall love
+Jessie to my dying day; but not sinfully, sir,--not sinfully.  I would
+not wrong her by a thought."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+At last Kenelm said, "You promised to be kind to that little girl with
+the flower-ball; what has become of her?"
+
+"She is quite well, thank you, sir.  My aunt has taken a great fancy
+to her, and so has my mother.  She comes to them very often of an
+evening, and brings her work with her.  A quick, intelligent little
+thing, and full of pretty thoughts.  On Sundays, if the weather is
+fine, we stroll out together in the fields."
+
+"She has been a comfort to you, Tom."
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And loves you?"
+
+"I am sure she does; an affectionate, grateful child."
+
+"She will be a woman soon, Tom, and may love you as a woman then."
+
+Tom looked indignant and rather scornful at that suggestion, and
+hastened to revert to the subject more immediately at his heart.
+
+"Miss Travers said you would like to call on Will Somers and his wife;
+will you?  Moleswich is not far from London, you know."
+
+"Certainly, I will call."
+
+"I do hope you will find them happy; and if so, perhaps you will
+kindly let me know; and--and--I wonder whether Jessie's child is like
+her?  It is a boy; somehow or other I would rather it had been a
+girl."
+
+"I will write you full particulars.  But why not come with me?"
+
+"No, I don't think I could do that, just at present.  It unsettled me
+sadly when I did again see her sweet face at Graveleigh, and she was
+still afraid of me too! that was a sharp pang."
+
+"She ought to know what you have done for her, and will."
+
+"On no account, sir; promise me that.  I should feel mean if I humbled
+them,--that way."
+
+"I understand, though I will not as yet make you any positive promise.
+Meanwhile, if you are staying in town, lodge with me; my landlady can
+find you a room."
+
+"Thank you heartily, sir; but I go back by the evening train; and,
+bless me! how late it is now!  I must wish you good-by.  I have some
+commissions to do for my aunt, and I must buy a new doll for Susey."
+
+"Susey is the name of the little girl with the flower-ball?"
+
+"Yes.  I must run off now; I feel quite light at heart seeing you
+again and finding that you receive me still so kindly, as if we were
+equals."
+
+"Ah, Tom, I wish I was your equal,--nay, half as noble as Heaven has
+made you!"
+
+Tom laughed incredulously, and went his way.
+
+"This mischievous passion of love," said Kenelm to himself, "has its
+good side, it seems, after all.  If it was nearly making a wild beast
+of that brave fellow,--nay, worse than wild beast, a homicide doomed
+to the gibbet,--so, on the other hand, what a refined, delicate,
+chivalrous nature of gentleman it has developed out of the stormy
+elements of its first madness!  Yes, I will go and look at this
+new-married couple.  I dare say they are already snarling and spitting
+at each other like cat and dog.  Moleswich is within reach of a walk."
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+TWO days after the interview recorded in the last chapter of the
+previous Book, Travers, chancing to call at Kenelm's lodgings, was
+told by his servant that Mr. Chillingly had left London, alone, and
+had given no orders as to forwarding letters.  The servant did not
+know where he had gone, or when he would return.
+
+Travers repeated this news incidentally to Cecilia, and she felt
+somewhat hurt that he had not written her a line respecting Tom's
+visit.  She, however, guessed that he had gone to see the Somerses,
+and would return to town in a day or so.  But weeks passed, the season
+drew to its close, and of Kenelm Chillingly she saw or heard nothing:
+he had wholly vanished from the London world.  He had but written a
+line to his servant, ordering him to repair to Exmundham and await him
+there, and enclosing him a check to pay outstanding bills.
+
+We must now follow the devious steps of the strange being who has
+grown into the hero of this story.  He had left his apartment at
+daybreak long before his servant was up, with his knapsack, and a
+small portmanteau, into which he had thrust--besides such additional
+articles of dress as he thought he might possibly require, and which
+his knapsack could not contain--a few of his favourite books.  Driving
+with these in a hack-cab to the Vauxhall station, he directed the
+portmanteau to be forwarded to Moleswich, and flinging the knapsack on
+his shoulders, walked slowly along the drowsy suburbs that stretched
+far into the landscape, before, breathing more freely, he found some
+evidences of rural culture on either side of the high road.  It was
+not, however, till he had left the roofs and trees of pleasant
+Richmond far behind him that he began to feel he was out of reach of
+the metropolitan disquieting influences.  Finding at a little inn,
+where he stopped to breakfast, that there was a path along fields, and
+in sight of the river, through which he could gain the place of his
+destination, he then quitted the high road, and traversing one of the
+loveliest districts in one of our loveliest counties, he reached
+Moleswich about noon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON entering the main street of the pretty town, the name of Somers, in
+gilt capitals, was sufficiently conspicuous over the door of a very
+imposing shop.  It boasted two plate-glass windows, at one of which
+were tastefully exhibited various articles of fine stationery,
+embroidery patterns, etc.; at the other, no less tastefully, sundry
+specimens of ornamental basket-work.
+
+Kenelm crossed the threshold and recognized behind the counter--fair
+as ever, but with an expression of face more staid, and a figure more
+rounded and matron-like--his old friend Jessie.  There were two or
+three customers before her, between whom she was dividing her
+attention.  While a handsome young lady, seated, was saying, in a
+somewhat loud but cheery and pleasant voice, "Do not mind me, Mrs.
+Somers: I can wait," Jessie's quick eye darted towards the stranger,
+but too rapidly to distinguish his features, which, indeed, he turned
+away, and began to examine the baskets.
+
+In a minute or so the other customers were served and had departed;
+and the voice of the lady was again heard, "Now, Mrs. Somers, I want
+to see your picture-books and toys.  I am giving a little children's
+party this afternoon, and I want to make them as happy as possible."
+
+"Somewhere or other, on this planet, or before my Monad was whisked
+away to it, I have heard that voice," muttered Kenelm.  While Jessie
+was alertly bringing forth her toys and picture-books, she said, "I am
+sorry to keep you waiting, sir; but if it is the baskets you come
+about, I can call my husband."
+
+"Do," said Kenelm.
+
+"William, William," cried Mrs. Somers; and after a delay long enough
+to allow him to slip on his jacket, William Somers emerged from the
+back parlour.
+
+His face had lost its old trace of suffering and ill health; it was
+still somewhat pale, and retained its expression of intellectual
+refinement.
+
+"How you have improved in your art!" said Kenelm, heartily.
+
+William started, and recognized Kenelm at once.  He sprang forward and
+took Kenelm's outstretched hand in both his own, and, in a voice
+between laughing and crying, exclaimed, "Jessie, Jessie, it is he!--he
+whom we pray for every night.  God bless you!  God bless and make you
+as happy as He permitted you to make me!"
+
+Before this little speech was faltered out, Jessie was by her
+husband's side, and she added, in a lower voice, but tremulous with
+deep feeling, "And me too!"
+
+"By your leave, Will," said Kenelm, and he saluted Jessie's white
+forehead with a kiss that could not have been kindlier or colder if it
+had been her grandfather's.
+
+Meanwhile the lady had risen noiselessly and unobserved, and stealing
+up to Kenelm, looked him full in the face.
+
+"You have another friend here, sir, who has also some cause to thank
+you--"
+
+"I thought I remembered your voice," said Kenelm, looking puzzled.
+"But pardon me if I cannot recall your features.  Where have we met
+before?"
+
+"Give me your arm when we go out, and I will bring myself to your
+recollection.  But no: I must not hurry you away now.  I will call
+again in half an hour.  Mrs. Somers, meanwhile put up the things I
+have selected.  I will take them away with me when I come back from
+the vicarage, where I have left the pony-carriage."  So, with a
+parting nod and smile to Kenelm, she turned away, and left him
+bewildered.
+
+"But who is that lady, Will?"
+
+"A Mrs. Braefield.  She is a new comer."
+
+"She may well be that, Will," said Jessie, smiling, "for she has only
+been married six months."
+
+"And what was her name before she married?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know, sir.  It is only three months since we came
+here, and she has been very kind to us and an excellent customer.
+Everybody likes her.  Mr. Braefield is a city gentleman and very rich;
+and they live in the finest house in the place, and see a great deal
+of company."
+
+"Well, I am no wiser than I was before," said Kenelm.  "People who ask
+questions very seldom are."
+
+"And how did you find us out, sir?"  said Jessie.  "Oh! I guess," she
+added, with an arch glance and smile.  "Of course, you have seen Miss
+Travers, and she told you."
+
+"You are right.  I first learned your change of residence from her,
+and thought I would come and see you, and be introduced to the
+baby,--a boy, I understand?  Like you, Will?"
+
+"No, sir, the picture of Jessie."
+
+"Nonsense, Will; it is you all over, even to its little hands."
+
+"And your good mother, Will, how did you leave her?"
+
+"Oh, sir!" cried Jessie, reproachfully; "do you think we could have
+the heart to leave Mother,--so lone and rheumatic too?  She is tending
+baby now,--always does while I am in the shop."
+
+Here Kenelm followed the young couple into the parlour, where, seated
+by the window, they found old Mrs. Somers reading the Bible and
+rocking the baby, who slept peacefully in its cradle.
+
+"Will," said Kenelm, bending his dark face over the infant, "I will
+tell you a pretty thought of a foreign poet's, which has been thus
+badly translated:
+
+
+  "'Blest babe, a boundless world this bed so narrow seems to thee;
+    Grow man, and narrower than this bed the boundless world shall
+    be.'"[1]
+
+
+    [1] Schiller.
+
+
+"I don't think that is true, sir," said Will, simply; "for a happy
+home is a world wide enough for any man."
+
+Tears started into Jessie's eyes; she bent down and kissed--not the
+baby, but the cradle.  "Will made it."  She added blushing, "I mean
+the cradle, sir."
+
+Time flew past while Kenelm talked with Will and the old mother, for
+Jessie was soon summoned back to the shop; and Kenelm was startled
+when he found the half-hour's grace allowed to him was over, and
+Jessie put her head in at the door and said, "Mrs. Braefield is
+waiting for you."
+
+"Good-by, Will; I shall come to see you again soon; and my mother
+gives me a commission to buy I don't know how many specimens of your
+craft."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A SMART pony-phaeton, with a box for a driver in livery equally smart,
+stood at the shop-door.
+
+"Now, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Braefield, "it is my turn to run away
+with you; get in!"
+
+"Eh!" murmured Kenelm, gazing at her with large dreamy eyes.  "Is it
+possible?"
+
+"Quite possible; get in.  Coachman, home!  Yes, Mr. Chillingly, you
+meet again that giddy creature whom you threatened to thrash; it would
+have served her right.  I ought to feel so ashamed to recall myself to
+your recollection, and yet I am not a bit ashamed.  I am proud to show
+you that I have turned out a steady, respectable woman, and, my
+husband tells me, a good wife."
+
+"You have only been six months married, I hear," said Kenelm, dryly.
+"I hope your husband will say the same six years hence."
+
+"He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long."
+
+"How old is he now?"
+
+"Thirty-eight."
+
+"When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has
+learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little
+mind is left to him to know."
+
+"Don't be satirical, sir; and don't talk as if you were railing at
+marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun
+ever shone upon; and owing,--for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her
+marriage,--owing their happiness to you."
+
+"Their happiness to me! not in the least.  I helped them to marry, and
+in spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy."
+
+"You are still unmarried yourself?"
+
+"Yes, thank Heaven!"
+
+"And are you happy?"
+
+"No; I can't make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute."
+
+"Then why do you say 'thank Heaven'?"
+
+"Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else
+unhappy."
+
+"Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you, you should
+make her unhappy?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know; but I have not seen a woman whom I could love
+as a wife.  And we need not push our inquiries further.  What has
+become of that ill-treated gray cob?"
+
+"He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him."
+
+"And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if you had not so
+gallantly defended yourself?"
+
+"He is living where he did live, and has married his housekeeper.  He
+felt a delicate scruple against taking that step till I was married
+myself and out of the way."
+
+Here Mrs. Braefield, beginning to speak very hurriedly, as women who
+seek to disguise emotion often do, informed Kenelm how unhappy she had
+felt for weeks after having found an asylum with her aunt,--how she
+had been stung by remorse and oppressed by a sense of humiliation at
+the thought of her folly and the odious recollection of Mr.
+Compton,--how she had declared to herself that she would never marry
+any one now--never!  How Mr. Braefield happened to be on a visit in
+the neighbourhood, and saw her at church,--how he had sought an
+introduction to her,--and how at first she rather disliked him than
+not; but he was so good and so kind, and when at last he proposed--and
+she had frankly told him all about her girlish flight and
+infatuation--how generously he had thanked her for a candour which had
+placed her as high in his esteem as she had been before in his love.
+"And from that moment," said Mrs. Braefield, passionately, "my whole
+heart leaped to him.  And now you know all; and here we are at the
+Lodge."
+
+The pony-phaeton went with great speed up a broad gravel-drive,
+bordered with rare evergreens, and stopped at a handsome house with a
+portico in front, and a long conservatory at the garden side,--one of
+those houses which belong to "city gentlemen," and often contain more
+comfort and exhibit more luxury than many a stately manorial mansion.
+
+Mrs. Braefield evidently felt some pride as she led Kenelm through the
+handsome hall, paved with Malvern tiles and adorned with Scagliola
+columns, and into a drawing-room furnished with much taste and opening
+on a spacious flower-garden.
+
+"But where is Mr. Braefield?" asked Kenelm.
+
+"Oh, he has taken the rail to his office; but he will be back long
+before dinner, and of course you dine with us."
+
+"You're very hospitable, but--"
+
+"No buts: I will take no excuse.  Don't fear that you shall have only
+mutton-chops and a rice-pudding; and, besides, I have a children's
+party coming at two o'clock, and there will be all sorts of fun.  You
+are fond of children, I am sure?"
+
+"I rather think I am not.  But I have never clearly ascertained my own
+inclinations upon that subject."
+
+"Well, you shall have ample opportunity to do so to-day.  And oh! I
+promise you the sight of the loveliest face that you can picture to
+yourself when you think of your future wife."
+
+"My future wife, I hope, is not yet born," said Kenelm, wearily, and
+with much effort suppressing a yawn.  "But at all events, I will stay
+till after two o'clock; for two o'clock, I presume, means luncheon."
+
+"Mrs. Braefield laughed.  "You retain your appetite?"
+
+"Most single men do, provided they don't fall in love and become
+doubled up."
+
+At this abominable attempt at a pun, Mrs. Braefield disdained to
+laugh; but turning away from its perpetrator she took off her hat and
+gloves and passed her hands lightly over her forehead, as if to smooth
+back some vagrant tress in locks already sufficiently sheen and trim.
+She was not quite so pretty in female attire as she had appeared in
+boy's dress, nor did she look quite as young.  In all other respects
+she was wonderfully improved.  There was a serener, a more settled
+intelligence in her frank bright eyes, a milder expression in the play
+of her parted lips.  Kenelm gazed at her with pleased admiration.  And
+as now, turning from the glass, she encountered his look, a deeper
+colour came into the clear delicacy of her cheeks, and the frank eyes
+moistened.  She came up to him as he sat, and took his hand in both
+hers, pressing it warmly.  "Ah, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with
+impulsive tremulous tones, "look round, look round this happy,
+peaceful home!--the life so free from a care, the husband whom I so
+love and honour; all the blessings that I might have so recklessly
+lost forever had I not met with you, had I been punished as I
+deserved.  How often I thought of your words, that 'you would be proud
+of my friendship when we met again'!  What strength they gave me in my
+hours of humbled self-reproach!"  Her voice here died away as if in
+the effort to suppress a sob.
+
+She released his hand, and, before he could answer, passed quickly
+through the open sash into the garden.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English
+children generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine, and
+the flower lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning suspended
+between chestnut-trees, and carpeted with sward.
+
+No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to
+increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children
+listened eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.
+
+"The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braefield, "is not here
+yet.  I have a little note from the young lady to say that Mrs.
+Cameron does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to recover
+sufficiently to come later in the afternoon."
+
+"And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"
+
+"Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place.  Mrs. Cameron is
+the aunt with whom Lily resides.  Is it not a pretty name, Lily?"
+
+"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head
+and a thin stalk."
+
+"Then the name belies my Lily, as you will see."
+
+The children now finished their feast, and betook themselves to
+dancing in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground, and to the sound of
+a violin played by the old grandfather of one of the party.  While
+Mrs. Braefield was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm
+seized the occasion to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve
+who had sat next him at the banquet, and taken so great a fancy to him
+that he began to fear she would vow never to forsake his side, and
+stole away undetected.
+
+There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially
+the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet
+mood.  Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs
+were faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold
+of its clusters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and
+invited him to repose.  It was a circle, so formed artificially by
+slight trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and
+flowers.  In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring
+sound; at the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of
+stately trees, on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out
+all horizon beyond.  Even as in life do the great dominant
+passions--love, ambition, desire of power or gold or fame or
+knowledge--form the proud background to the brief-lived flowerets of
+our youth, lift our eyes beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the
+glint of a loftier sunbeam, and yet, and yet, exclude our sight from
+the lengths and the widths of the space which extends behind and
+beyond them.
+
+Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain.  From afar came
+the whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their
+dance.  At the distance their joy did not sadden him,--he marvelled
+why; and thus, in musing revcry, thought to explain the why to
+himself.
+
+"The poet," so ran his lazy thinking, "has told us that 'distance
+lends enchantment to the view,' and thus compares to the charm of
+distance the illusion of hope.  But the poet narrows the scope of his
+own illustration.  Distance lends enchantment to the ear as well as to
+the sight; nor to these bodily senses alone.  Memory no less than hope
+owes its charm to 'the far away.'
+
+"I cannot imagine myself again a child when I am in the midst of young
+noisy children.  But as their noise reaches me here, subdued and
+mellowed, and knowing, thank Heaven, that the urchins are not within
+reach of me, I could readily dream myself back into childhood, and
+into sympathy with the lost playfields of school.
+
+"So surely it must be with grief: how different the terrible agony for
+a beloved one just gone from earth, to the soft regret for one who
+disappeared into Heaven years ago!  So with the art of poetry: how
+imperatively, when it deals with the great emotions of tragedy, it
+must remove the actors from us, in proportion as the emotions are to
+elevate, and the tragedy is to please us by the tears it draws!
+Imagine our shock if a poet were to place on the stage some wise
+gentleman with whom we dined yesterday, and who was discovered to have
+killed his father and married his mother.  But when Oedipus commits
+those unhappy mistakes nobody is shocked.  Oxford in the nineteenth
+century is a long way off from Thebes three thousand or four thousand
+years ago.
+
+"And," continued Kenelm, plunging deeper into the maze of metaphysical
+criticism, "even where the poet deals with persons and things close
+upon our daily sight,--if he would give them poetic charm he must
+resort to a sort of moral or psychological distance; the nearer they
+are to us in external circumstance, the farther they must be in some
+internal peculiarities.  Werter and Clarissa Harlowe are described as
+contemporaries of their artistic creation, and with the minutest
+details of apparent realism; yet they are at once removed from our
+daily lives by their idiosyncrasies and their fates.  We know that
+while Werter and Clarissa are so near to us in much that we sympathize
+with them as friends and kinsfolk, they are yet as much remote from us
+in the poetic and idealized side of their natures as if they belonged
+to the age of Homer; and this it is that invests with charm the very
+pain which their fate inflicts on us.  Thus, I suppose, it must be in
+love.  If the love we feel is to have the glamour of poetry, it must
+be love for some one morally at a distance from our ordinary habitual
+selves; in short, differing from us in attributes which, however near
+we draw to the possessor, we can never approach, never blend, in
+attributes of our own; so that there is something in the loved one
+that always remains an ideal,--a mystery,--'a sun-bright summit
+mingling with the sky'!"
+
+Herewith the soliloquist's musings glided vaguely into mere revery.
+He closed his eyes drowsily, not asleep, nor yet quite awake; as
+sometimes in bright summer days when we recline on the grass we do
+close our eyes, and yet dimly recognize a golden light bathing the
+drowsy lids; and athwart that light images come and go like dreams,
+though we know that we are not dreaming.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FROM this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused
+slowly, reluctantly.  Something struck softly on his cheek,--again a
+little less softly; he opened his eyes, they fell first upon two tiny
+rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and
+then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised
+circle, a female child's laughing face.  Her hand was still uplifted
+charged with another rosebud, but behind the child's figure, looking
+over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as
+innocent but lovelier far,--the face of a girl in her first youth,
+framed round with the blossoms that festooned the trellise.  How the
+face became the flowers!  It seemed the fairy spirit of them.
+
+Kenelm started and rose to his feet.  The child, the one whom he had
+so ungallantly escaped from ran towards him through a wicket in the
+circle.  Her companion disappeared.
+
+"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child, "you who pelted me so cruelly?
+Ungrateful creature!  Did I not give you the best strawberries in the
+dish and all my own cream?"
+
+"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be
+dancing with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct
+of her sex, all answer to the reproach she had deserved.
+
+"I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to hide
+myself, since you so easily found me out.  But who was the young lady
+with you?  I suspect she pelted me too, for she seems to have run away
+to hide herself."
+
+"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have
+had another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my
+arm.  Don't you know her,--don't you know Lily?"
+
+"No; so that is Lily?  You shall introduce me to her."
+
+By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little
+wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at
+once on the lawn.  Here at some distance the children were grouped,
+some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval
+of the dance.
+
+In the space between the group and the trellise Lily was walking alone
+and quickly.  The child left Kenelm's side and ran after her friend,
+soon overtook, but did not succeed in arresting her steps.  Lily did
+not pause till she had reached the grassy ball-room, and here all the
+children came round her and shut out her delicate form from Kenelm's
+sight.
+
+Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.
+
+"Lily is come!"
+
+"I know it: I have seen her."
+
+"Is not she beautiful?"
+
+"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you
+introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"
+
+Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer
+was brief enough not to need much consideration.  "She is a Miss
+Mordaunt, an orphan; and, as I before told you, resides with her aunt,
+Mrs. Cameron, a widow.  They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw
+on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this
+place.  Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman.  As to
+Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet
+she is a mere child,--her mind quite unformed."
+
+"Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was
+formed?" muttered Kenelm.  "I am sure mine is not, and never will be
+on this earth."
+
+Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation.  She was
+looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who
+surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm's
+arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.
+
+Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer
+and the laugh of children.  In such scene and such circumstance
+formality does not last long.  I know not how it was, but in a very
+few minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other.
+They found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers,
+on the bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast
+eyes, the girl with mobile shifting glances now on earth, now on
+heaven, and talking freely; gayly,--like the babble of a happy stream,
+with a silvery dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.
+
+No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life, and
+conventional narrating thereof.  According to them, no doubt, it is
+for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as
+they were, honestly.  And Lily knew no more of the formalities of
+drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the
+song-teacher and the cage.  She was still so much of a child.  Mrs.
+Braefield was right: her mind was still so unformed.
+
+What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could
+make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not,
+at least I could not jot it down on paper.  I fear it was very
+egotistical, as the talk of children generally is,--about herself and
+her aunt, and her home and her friends; all her friends seemed
+children like herself, though younger,--Clemmy the chief of them.
+Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm.  And amidst all
+this ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a
+lively fancy,--nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment.  It
+might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child.  But
+as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round
+Lily.  Evidently she was the prime favourite of them all; and as her
+companion had now become tired of dancing, new sports were proposed,
+and Lily was carried off to "Prisoner's Base."
+
+"I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly," said a
+frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out
+his hand to Kenelm.
+
+"My husband," said Mrs. Braefield, with a certain pride in her look.
+
+Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the
+house, who had just returned from his city office, and left all its
+cares behind him.  You had only to look at him to see that he was
+prosperous, and deserved to be so.  There were in his countenance the
+signs of strong sense, of good-humour,--above all, of an active
+energetic temperament.  A man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel
+eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a happy contentment in himself, his
+house, the world in general, mantling over his genial smile, and
+outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.
+
+"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr. Braefield; "and,
+unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take
+a bed here."
+
+Kenelm hesitated.
+
+"Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield.  Kenelm
+hesitated still; and while hesitating his eye rested on Lily, leaning
+on the arm of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess,--
+evidently to take leave.
+
+"I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Kenelm, and he fell
+back a little behind Lily and her companion.
+
+"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs. Cameron to the
+hostess.  "Lily has enjoyed herself extremely.  I only regret we could
+not come earlier."
+
+"If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, "let me accompany you.
+I want to speak to your gardener about his heart's-ease: it is much
+finer than mine."
+
+"If so," said Kenelm to Lily, "may I come too?  Of all flowers that
+grow, heart's-ease is the one I most prize."
+
+A few minutes afterwards Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along
+the banks of a little stream, tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron
+and Mr. Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.
+
+Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly--I think it
+is called the Emperor of Morocco--that was sunning its yellow wings
+upon a group of wild reeds.  She succeeded in capturing this wanderer
+in her straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil.  After this
+notable capture she returned demurely to Kenelm's side.
+
+"Do you collect insects?" said that philosopher, as much surprised as
+it was his nature to be at anything.
+
+"Only butterflies," answered Lily; "they are not insects, you know;
+they are souls."
+
+"Emblems of souls you mean,--at least, so the Greeks prettily
+represented them to be."
+
+"No, real souls,--the souls of infants that die in their cradles
+unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and
+live a year then they pass into fairies."
+
+"It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence
+quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one
+creature into another.  Perhaps you can do what the philosophers
+cannot,--tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable
+fact?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled; "perhaps I
+learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it."
+
+"You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher.  But you
+talk of taking care of butterflies; how do you do that?  Do you impale
+them on pins stuck into a glass case?"
+
+"Impale them!  How can you talk so cruelly?  You deserve to be pinched
+by the fairies."
+
+"I am afraid," thought Kenelm, compassionately, "that my companion has
+no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called 'an innocent.'"
+
+He shook his head and remained silent.  Lily resumed,--
+
+"I will show you my collection when we get home; they seem so happy.
+I am sure there are some of them who know me: they will feed from my
+hand.  I have only had one die since I began to collect them last
+summer."
+
+"Then you have kept them a year: they ought to have turned into
+fairies."
+
+"I suppose many of them have.  Of course I let out all those that had
+been with me twelve months: they don't turn to fairies in the cage,
+you know.  Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn;
+the prettiest don't appear till the autumn."
+
+The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses
+shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner.  Then again
+she looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped, and exclaimed,--
+
+"How can people live in towns?  How can people say they are ever dull
+in the country?  Look," she continued, gravely and earnestly, "look at
+that tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see
+how, as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the
+shadow changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:--
+
+
+  "'Wave your tops, ye pines;
+    With every plant, in sign of worship wave.'
+
+
+"What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!"
+
+Kenelm was startled.  This "an innocent"!--this a girl who had no mind
+to be formed!  In that presence he could not be cynical; could not
+speak of Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the
+man poet.  He replied gravely,--
+
+"The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are
+the hearts that can interpret it.  Happy those to whom it is no
+foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a
+native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great
+mother.  To them the butterfly's wing may well buoy into heaven a
+fairy's soul!"
+
+When he had thus said Lily turned, and for the first time attentively
+looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light
+hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, "Talk on; talk thus: I like
+to hear you."
+
+But Kenelm did not talk on.  They had now arrived at the garden-gate
+of Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at
+the gate and walked with them to the house.
+
+It was a long, low, irregular cottage, without pretension to
+architectural beauty, yet exceedingly picturesque,--a flower-garden,
+large, but in proportion to the house, with parterres in which the
+colours were exquisitely assorted, sloping to the grassy margin of the
+rivulet, where the stream expanded into a lake-like basin, narrowed at
+either end by locks, from which with gentle sound flowed shallow
+waterfalls.  By the banks was a rustic seat, half overshadowed by the
+drooping boughs of a vast willow.
+
+The inside of the house was in harmony with the
+exterior,--cottage-like, but with an unmistakable air of refinement
+about the rooms, even in the little entrance-hall, which was painted
+in Pompeian frescos.
+
+"Come and see my butterfly-cage," said Lily, whisperingly.
+
+Kenelm followed her through the window that opened on the garden; and
+at one end of a small conservatory, or rather greenhouse, was the
+habitation of these singular favourites.  It was as large as a small
+room; three sides of it formed by minute wirework, with occasional
+draperies of muslin or other slight material, and covered at
+intervals, sometimes within, sometimes without, by dainty creepers; a
+tiny cistern in the centre, from which upsprang a sparkling jet.  Lily
+cautiously lifted a sash-door and glided in, closing it behind her.
+Her entrance set in movement a multitude of gossamer wings, some
+fluttering round her, some more boldly settling on her hair or dress.
+Kenelm thought she had not vainly boasted when she said that some of
+the creatures had learned to know her.  She released the Emperor of
+Morocco from her hat; it circled round her fearlessly, and then
+vanished amidst the leaves of the creepers.  Lily opened the door and
+came out.
+
+"I have heard of a philosopher who tamed a wasp," said Kenelm, "but
+never before of a young lady who tamed butterflies."
+
+"No," said Lily, proudly; "I believe I am the first who attempted it.
+I don't think I should have attempted it if I had been told that
+others had succeeded before me.  Not that I have succeeded quite.  No
+matter; if they don't love me, I love them."
+
+They re-entered the drawing-room, and Mrs. Cameron addressed Kenelm.
+
+"Do you know much of this part of the country, Mr. Chillingly?"
+
+"It is quite new to me, and more rural than many districts farther
+from London."
+
+"That is the good fortune of most of our home counties," said Mr.
+Braefield; "they escape the smoke and din of manufacturing towns, and
+agricultural science has not demolished their leafy hedgerows.  The
+walks through our green lanes are as much bordered with convolvulus
+and honeysuckle as they were when Izaak Walton sauntered through them
+to angle in that stream!"
+
+"Does tradition say that he angled in that stream?  I thought his
+haunts were rather on the other side of London."
+
+"Possibly; I am not learned in Walton or in his art, but there is an
+old summer-house, on the other side of the lock yonder, on which is
+carved the name of Izaak Walton, but whether by his own hand or
+another's who shall say?  Has Mr. Melville been here lately, Mrs.
+Cameron?"
+
+"No, not for several months."
+
+"He has had a glorious success this year.  We may hope that at last
+his genius is acknowledged by the world.  I meant to buy his picture,
+but I was not in time: a Manchester man was before me."
+
+"Who is Mr. Melville? any relation to you?" whispered Kenelm to Lily.
+
+"Relation,--I scarcely know.  Yes, I suppose so, because he is my
+guardian.  But if he were the nearest relation on earth, I could not
+love him more," said Lily, with impulsive eagerness, her cheeks
+flushing, her eyes filling with tears.
+
+"And he is an artist,--a painter?"  asked Kenelm.
+
+"Oh, yes; no one paints such beautiful pictures,--no one so clever, no
+one so kind."
+
+Kenelm strove to recollect if he had ever heard the name of Melville
+as a painter, but in vain.  Kenelm, however, knew but little of
+painters: they were not in his way; and he owned to himself, very
+humbly, that there might be many a living painter of eminent renown
+whose name and works would be strange to him.
+
+He glanced round the wall; Lily interpreted his look.  "There are no
+pictures of his here," said she; "there is one in my own room.  I will
+show it you when you come again."
+
+"And now," said Mr. Braefield, rising, "I must just have a word with
+your gardener, and then go home.  We dine earlier here than in London,
+Mr. Chillingly."
+
+As the two gentlemen, after taking leave, re-entered the hall, Lily
+followed them and said to Kenelm, "What time will you come to-morrow
+to see the picture?"
+
+Kenelm averted his head, and then replied, not with his wonted
+courtesy, but briefly and brusquely,--
+
+"I fear I cannot call to-morrow.  I shall be far away by sunrise."
+
+Lily made no answer, but turned back into the room.
+
+Mr. Braefield found the gardener watering a flower-border, conferred
+with him about the heart's-ease, and then joined Kenelm, who had
+halted a few yards beyond the garden-gate.
+
+"A pretty little place that," said Mr. Braefield, with a sort of
+lordly compassion, as became the owner of Braefieldville.  "What I
+call quaint."
+
+"Yes, quaint," echoed Kenelm, abstractedly.
+
+"It is always the case with houses enlarged by degrees.  I have heard
+my poor mother say that when Melville or Mrs. Cameron first bought it,
+it was little better than a mere labourer's cottage, with a field
+attached to it.  And two or three years afterwards a room or so more
+was built, and a bit of the field taken in for a garden; and then by
+degrees the whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving
+only the old cottage as a scullery and washhouse; and the whole field
+was turned into the garden, as you see.  But whether it was Melville's
+money or the aunt's that did it, I don't know.  More likely the
+aunt's.  I don't see what interest Melville has in the place: he does
+not go there often, I fancy; it is not his home."
+
+"Mr. Melville, it seems, is a painter, and, from what I heard you say,
+a successful one."
+
+"I fancy he had little success before this year.  But surely you saw
+his pictures at the Exhibition?"
+
+"I am ashamed to say I have not been to the Exhibition."
+
+"You surprise me.  However, Melville had three pictures there,--all
+very good; but the one I wished to buy made much more sensation than
+the others, and has suddenly lifted him from obscurity into fame."
+
+"He appears to be a relation of Miss Mordaunt's, but so distant a one
+that she could not even tell me what grade of cousinship he could
+claim."
+
+"Nor can I.  He is her guardian, I know.  The relationship, if any,
+must, as you say, be very distant; for Melville is of humble
+extraction, while any one can see that Mrs. Cameron is a thorough
+gentlewoman, and Lily Mordaunt is her sister's child.  I have heard my
+mother say that it was Melville, then a very young man, who bought the
+cottage, perhaps with Mrs. Cameron's money; saying it was for a
+widowed lady, whose husband had left her with very small means.  And
+when Mrs. Cameron arrived with Lily, then a mere infant, she was in
+deep mourning, and a very young woman herself,--pretty too.  If
+Melville had been a frequent visitor then, of course there would have
+been scandal; but he very seldom came, and when he did, he lodged in a
+cottage, Cromwell Lodge, on the other side of the brook; now and then
+bringing with him a fellow-lodger,--some other young artist, I
+suppose, for the sake of angling.  So there could be no cause for
+scandal, and nothing can be more blameless than poor Mrs. Cameron's
+life.  My mother, who then resided at Braefieldville, took a great
+fancy to both Lily and her aunt, and when by degrees the cottage grew
+into a genteel sort of place, the few gentry in the neighbourhood
+followed my mother's example and were very kind to Mrs. Cameron, so
+that she has now her place in the society about here, and is much
+liked."
+
+"And Mr. Melville?--does he still very seldom come here?"
+
+"To say truth, he has not been at all since I settled at
+Braefieldville.  The place was left to my mother for her life, and I
+was not much there during her occupation.  In fact, I was then a
+junior partner in our firm, and conducted the branch business in New
+York, coming over to England for my holiday once a year or so.  When
+my mother died, there was much to arrange before I could settle
+personally in England, and I did not come to settle at Braefieldville
+till I married.  I did see Melville on one of my visits to the place
+some years ago; but, between ourselves, he is not the sort of person
+whose intimate acquaintance one would wish to court.  My mother told
+me he was an idle, dissipated man, and I have heard from others that
+he was very unsteady.  Mr. -----, the great painter, told me that he
+was a loose fish; and I suppose his habits were against his getting
+on, till this year, when, perhaps, by a lucky accident, he has painted
+a picture that raises him to the top of the tree.  But is not Miss
+Lily wondrously nice to look at?  What a pity her education has been
+so much neglected!"
+
+"Has it?"
+
+"Have not you discovered that already?  She has not had even a
+music-master, though my wife says she has a good ear, and can sing
+prettily enough.  As for reading I don't think she has read anything
+but fairy tales and poetry, and such silly stuff.  However, she is
+very young yet; and now that her guardian can sell his pictures, it is
+to be hoped that he will do more justice to his ward.  Painters and
+actors are not so regular in their private lives as we plain men are,
+and great allowance is to be made for them; still, every one is bound
+to do his duty.  I am sure you agree with me?"
+
+"Certainly," said Kenelm, with an emphasis which startled the
+merchant.  "That is an admirable maxim of yours: it seems a
+commonplace, yet how often, when it is put into our heads, it strikes
+as a novelty!  A duty may be a very difficult thing, a very
+disagreeable thing, and, what is strange, it is often a very invisible
+thing.  It is present,--close before us, and yet we don't see it;
+somebody shouts its name in our ears, 'Duty,' and straight it towers
+before us a grim giant. Pardon me if I leave you: I can't stay to
+dine.  Duty summons me elsewhere.  Make my excuses to Mrs. Braefield."
+
+Before Mr. Braefield could recover his self-possession, Kenelm had
+vaulted over a stile and was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+KENELM walked into the shop kept by the Somerses, and found Jessie
+still at the counter.  "Give me back my knap sack.  Thank you," he
+said, flinging the knapsack across his shoulders.  "Now, do me a
+favour.  A portmanteau of mine ought to be at the station.  Send for
+it, and keep it till I give further directions.  I think of going to
+Oxford for a day or two.  Mrs. Somers, one more word with you.  Think,
+answer frankly, are you, as you said this morning, thoroughly happy,
+and yet married to the man you loved?"
+
+"Oh, so happy!"
+
+"And wish for nothing beyond?  Do not wish Will to be other than he
+is?"
+
+"God forbid!  You frighten me, sir."
+
+"Frighten you!  Be it so.  Everyone who is happy should be frightened
+lest happiness fly away.  Do your best to chain it, and you will, for
+you attach Duty to Happiness; and," muttered Kenelm, as he turned from
+the shop, "Duty is sometimes not a rose-coloured tie, but a heavy
+iron-hued clog."
+
+He strode on through the street towards the sign-post with "To Oxford"
+inscribed thereon.  And whether he spoke literally of the knapsack, or
+metaphorically of duty, he murmured, as he strode,--
+
+
+  "A pedlar's pack that bows the bearer down."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+
+KENELM might have reached Oxford that night, for he was a rapid and
+untirable pedestrian; but he halted a little after the moon rose, and
+laid himself down to rest beneath a new-mown haystack, not very far
+from the high road.
+
+He did not sleep.  Meditatingly propped on his elbow, he said to
+himself,--
+
+"It is long since I have wondered at nothing.  I wonder now: can this
+be love,--really love,--unmistakably love?  Pooh! it is impossible;
+the very last person in the world to be in love with.  Let us reason
+upon it,--you, myself, and I.  To begin with,--face!  What is face?
+In a few years the most beautiful face may be very plain.  Take the
+Venus at Florence.  Animate her; see her ten years after; a chignon,
+front teeth (blue or artificially white), mottled complexion, double
+chin,--all that sort of plump prettiness goes into double chin.  Face,
+bah!  What man of sense--what pupil of Welby, the realist--can fall in
+love with a face? and even if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty
+faces are as common as daisies.  Cecilia Travers has more regular
+features; Jessie Wiles a richer colouring.  I was not in love with
+them,--not a bit of it.  Myself, you have nothing to say there.  Well,
+then, mind?  Talk of mind, indeed! a creature whose favourite
+companionship is that of butterflies, and who tells me that
+butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized.  What an article for
+'The Londoner,' on the culture of young women!  What a girl for Miss
+Garrett and Miss Emily Faithfull!  Put aside Mind as we have done
+Face.  What rests?--the Frenchman's ideal of happy marriage? congenial
+circumstance of birth, fortune, tastes, habits.  Worse still.  Myself,
+answer honestly, are you not floored?"
+
+Whereon "Myself" took up the parable and answered, "O thou fool! why
+wert thou so ineffably blessed in one presence?  Why, in quitting that
+presence, did Duty become so grim?  Why dost thou address to me those
+inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has
+suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has
+become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart's dreams with
+romance and poesy and first love?  Why, instead of gazing on that
+uncomfortable orb, art thou not quickening thy steps towards a cozy
+inn and a good supper at Oxford?  Kenelm, my friend, thou art in for
+it.  No disguising the fact: thou art in love!"
+
+"I'll be hanged if I am," said the Second in the Dualism of Kenelm's
+mind; and therewith he shifted his knapsack into a pillow, turned his
+eyes from the moon, and still could not sleep.  The face of Lily still
+haunted his eyes; the voice of Lily still rang in his ears.
+
+Oh, my reader! dost thou here ask me to tell thee what Lily was
+like?--was she dark? was she fair? was she tall? was she short?  Never
+shalt thou learn these secrets from me.  Imagine to thyself the being
+to which thine whole of life, body and mind and soul, moved
+irresistibly as the needle to the pole.  Let her be tall or short,
+dark or fair, she is that which out of all womankind has suddenly
+become the one woman for thee.  Fortunate art thou, my reader, if thou
+chance to have heard the popular song of "My Queen" sung by the one
+lady who alone can sing it with expression worthy the verse of the
+poetess and the music of the composition, by the sister of the
+exquisite songstress.  But if thou hast not heard the verse thus sung,
+to an accompaniment thus composed, still the words themselves are, or
+ought to be, familiar to thee, if thou art, as I take for granted, a
+lover of the true lyrical muse.  Recall then the words supposed to be
+uttered by him who knows himself destined to do homage to one he has
+not yet beheld:--
+
+
+     "She is standing somewhere,--she I shall honour,
+        She that I wait for, my queen, my queen;
+      Whether her hair be golden or raven,
+        Whether her eyes be hazel or blue,
+      I know not now, it will be engraven
+        Some day hence as my loveliest hue.
+      She may be humble or proud, my lady,
+        Or that sweet calm which is just between;
+      But whenever she comes, she will find me ready
+        To do her homage, my queen, my queen."
+
+
+Was it possible that the cruel boy-god "who sharpens his arrows on the
+whetstone of the human heart" had found the moment to avenge himself
+for the neglect of his altars and the scorn of his power?  Must that
+redoubted knight-errant, the hero of this tale, despite the Three
+Fishes on his charmed shield, at last veil the crest and bow the knee,
+and murmur to himself, "She has come, my queen"?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE next morning Kenelm arrived at Oxford,--"Verum secretumque
+Mouseion."
+
+If there be a place in this busy island which may distract the passion
+of youth from love to scholarship, to Ritualism, to mediaeval
+associations, to that sort of poetical sentiment or poetical
+fanaticism which a Mivers and a Welby and an advocate of the Realistic
+School would hold in contempt,--certainly that place is Oxford,--home;
+nevertheless, of great thinkers and great actors in the practical
+world.
+
+The vacation had not yet commenced, but the commencement was near at
+hand.  Kenelm thought he could recognize the leading men by their
+slower walk and more abstracted expression of countenance.  Among the
+Fellows was the eminent author of that book which had so powerfully
+fascinated the earlier adolescence of Kenelm Chillingly, and who had
+himself been subject to the fascination of a yet stronger spirit.  The
+Rev. Decimus Roach had been ever an intense and reverent admirer of
+John Henry Newman,--an admirer, I mean, of the pure and lofty
+character of the man, quite apart from sympathy with his doctrines.
+But although Roach remained an unconverted Protestant of orthodox, if
+High Church, creed, yet there was one tenet he did hold in common with
+the author of the "Apologia."  He ranked celibacy among the virtues
+most dear to Heaven.  In that eloquent treatise, "The Approach to the
+Angels," he not only maintained that the state of single blessedness
+was strictly incumbent on every member of a Christian priesthood, but
+to be commended to the adoption of every conscientious layman.
+
+It was the desire to confer with this eminent theologian that had
+induced Kenelm to direct his steps to Oxford.
+
+Mr. Roach was a friend of Welby, at whose house, when a pupil, Kenelm
+had once or twice met him, and been even more charmed by his
+conversation than by his treatise.
+
+Kenelm called on Mr. Roach, who received him very graciously, and, not
+being a tutor or examiner, placed his time at Kenelm's disposal; took
+him the round of the colleges and the Bodleian; invited him to dine in
+his college-hall; and after dinner led him into his own rooms, and
+gave him an excellent bottle of Chateau Margeaux.
+
+Mr. Roach was somewhere about fifty,--a good-looking man and evidently
+thought himself so; for he wore his hair long behind and parted in the
+middle, which is not done by men who form modest estimates of their
+personal appearance.
+
+Kenelm was not long in drawing out his host on the subject to which
+that profound thinker had devoted so much meditation.
+
+"I can scarcely convey to you," said Kenelm, "the intense admiration
+with which I have studied your noble work, 'Approach to the Angels.'
+It produced a great effect on me in the age between boyhood and youth.
+But of late some doubts on the universal application of your doctrine
+have crept into my mind."
+
+"Ay, indeed?" said Mr. Roach, with an expression of interest in his
+face.
+
+"And I come to you for their solution."
+
+Mr. Roach turned away his head, and pushed the bottle to Kenelm.
+
+"I am quite willing to concede," resumed the heir of the Chillinglys,
+"that a priesthood should stand apart from the distracting cares of a
+family, and pure from all carnal affections."
+
+"Hem, hem," grunted Mr. Roach, taking his knee on his lap and
+caressing it.
+
+"I go further," continued Kenelm, "and supposing with you that the
+Confessional has all the importance, whether in its monitory or its
+cheering effects upon repentant sinners, which is attached to it by
+the Roman Catholics, and that it ought to be no less cultivated by the
+Reformed Church, it seems to me essential that the Confessor should
+have no better half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an
+unguarded moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female
+acquaintances."
+
+"I pushed that argument too far," murmured Roach.
+
+"Not a bit of it.  Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls with the
+Confessional.  Your argument there is as sound as a bell.  But when it
+comes to the layman, I think I detect a difference."
+
+Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied stoutly, "No; if celibacy be
+incumbent on the one, it is equally incumbent on the other.  I say
+'if.'"
+
+"Permit me to deny that assertion.  Do not fear that I shall insult
+your understanding by the popular platitude; namely, that if celibacy
+were universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct.
+As you have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, 'It is the
+duty of each human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of
+the spiritual state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race
+to the care of the Creator.' If celibacy be necessary to spiritual
+perfection, how do we know but that it may be the purpose and decree
+of the All Wise that the human race, having attained to that
+perfection, should disappear from earth?  Universal celibacy would
+thus be the euthanasia of mankind.  On the other hand, if the Creator
+decided that the human race, having culminated to this crowning but
+barren flower of perfection, should nevertheless continue to increase
+and multiply upon earth, have you not victoriously exclaimed,
+'Presumptuous mortal! how canst thou presume to limit the resources of
+the Almighty?  Would it not be easy for Him to continue some other
+mode, unexposed to trouble and sin and passion, as in the nuptials of
+the vegetable world, by which the generations will be renewed?  Can we
+suppose that the angels--the immortal companies of heaven--are not
+hourly increasing in number, and extending their population throughout
+infinity? and yet in heaven there is no marrying nor giving in
+marriage.'  All this, clothed by you in words which my memory only
+serves me to quote imperfectly,--all this I unhesitatingly concede."
+
+Mr. Roach rose and brought another bottle of the Chateau Margeaux from
+his cellaret, filled Kenelm's glass, reseated himself, and took the
+other knee into his lap to caress.
+
+"But," resumed Kenelm, "my doubt is this."
+
+"Ah!" cried Mr. Roach, "let us hear the doubt."
+
+"In the first place, is celibacy essential to the highest state of
+spiritual perfection; and, in the second place, if it were, are
+mortals, as at present constituted, capable of that culmination?"
+
+"Very well put," said Mr. Roach, and he tossed off his glass with more
+cheerful aspect than he had hitherto exhibited.
+
+"You see," said Kenelm, "we are compelled in this, as in other
+questions of philosophy, to resort to the inductive process, and draw
+our theories from the facts within our cognizance.  Now looking round
+the world, is it the fact that old maids and old bachelors are so much
+more spiritually advanced than married folks?  Do they pass their
+time, like an Indian dervish, in serene contemplation of divine
+excellence and beatitude?  Are they not quite as worldly in their own
+way as persons who have been married as often as the Wife of Bath,
+and, generally speaking, more selfish, more frivolous, and more
+spiteful?  I am sure I don't wish to speak uncharitably against old
+maids and old bachelors.  I have three aunts who are old maids, and
+fine specimens of the genus; but I am sure they would all three have
+been more agreeable companions, and quite as spiritually gifted, if
+they had been happily married, and were caressing their children,
+instead of lapdogs.  So, too, I have an old bachelor cousin,
+Chillingly Mivers, whom you know.  As clever as a man can be.  But,
+Lord bless you! as to being wrapped in spiritual meditation, he could
+not be more devoted to the things of earth if he had married as many
+wives as Solomon, and had as many children as Priam.  Finally, have
+not half the mistakes in the world arisen from a separation between
+the spiritual and the moral nature of man?  Is it not, after all,
+through his dealings with his fellow-men that man makes his safest
+'approach to the angels'?  And is not the moral system a very muscular
+system?  Does it not require for healthful vigour plenty of continued
+exercise, and does it not get that exercise naturally by the
+relationships of family, with all the wider collateral struggles with
+life which the care of family necessitates?
+
+"I put these questions to you with the humblest diffidence.  I expect
+to hear such answers as will thoroughly convince my reason, and I
+shall be delighted if so.  For at the root of the controversy lies the
+passion of love.  And love must be a very disquieting, troublesome
+emotion, and has led many heroes and sages into wonderful weaknesses
+and follies."
+
+"Gently, gently, Mr. Chillingly; don't exaggerate.  Love, no doubt,
+is--ahem--a disquieting passion.  Still, every emotion that changes
+life from a stagnant pool into the freshness and play of a running
+stream is disquieting to the pool.  Not only love and its
+fellow-passions, such as ambition, but the exercise of the reasoning
+faculty, which is always at work in changing our ideas, is very
+disquieting.  Love, Mr. Chillingly, has its good side as well as its
+bad.  Pass the bottle."
+
+KENELM (passing the bottle).--"Yes, yes; you are quite right in
+putting the adversary's case strongly, before you demolish it: all
+good rhetoricians do that.  Pardon me if I am up to that trick in
+argument.  Assume that I know all that can be said in favour of the
+abnegation of common-sense, euphoniously called 'love,' and proceed to
+the demolition of the case."
+
+THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH (hesitatingly).--"The demolition of the case?
+humph!  The passions are ingrafted in the human system as part and
+parcel of it, and are not to be demolished so easily as you seem to
+think.  Love, taken rationally and morally by a man of good education
+and sound principles, is--is--"
+
+KENELM.--"Well, is what?"
+
+THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH.--"A--a--a--thing not to be despised.  Like the
+sun, it is the great colourist of life, Mr. Chillingly.  And you are
+so right: the moral system does require daily exercise.  What can give
+that exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age
+in which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine
+essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into
+the wilds of Africa as a missionary?  At that age, Nature, which will
+be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights.  A sympathizing female
+companion by one's side; innocent little children climbing one's
+knee,--lovely, bewitching picture!  Who can be Goth enough to rub it
+out, who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon
+sitting alone on a pillar?  Take another glass.  You don't drink
+enough, Mr. Chillingly."
+
+"I have drunk enough," replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, "to think I
+see double.  I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of
+the insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock.  Now, I fancy I
+listen to a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the
+other Decimus Roach had already refuted.  Certainly either I see
+double, or you amuse yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom."
+
+"Not so, Mr. Chillingly.  But the fact is, that when I wrote that book
+of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and
+one-sided.  Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love
+may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when
+taken, as I before said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young
+friend.  At that period of life when the judgment is matured, the
+soothing companionship of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind,
+and prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and
+made rigid by increasing years.  In short, Mr. Chillingly, having
+convinced myself that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put
+forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my conversion
+known to the world.  And I am about next month to enter into the
+matrimonial state with a young lady who--"
+
+"Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach.  It must be a painful subject to
+you.  Let us drop it."
+
+"It is not a painful subject at all!" exclaimed Mr. Roach, with
+warmth.  "I look forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the
+pleasure which a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting a
+fallacious doctrine.  But you do me the justice to understand that of
+course I do not take this step I propose--for my personal
+satisfaction.  No, sir, it is the value of my example to others which
+purifies my motives and animates my soul."
+
+After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation drooped.
+Host and guest both felt they had had enough of each other.  Kenelm
+soon rose to depart.
+
+Mr. Roach, on taking leave of, him at the door, said, with marked
+emphasis,--
+
+"Not for my personal satisfaction,--remember that.  Whenever you hear
+my conversion discussed in the world, say that from my own lips you
+heard these words,--NOT FOR MY PERSONAL SATISFACTION.  No! my kind
+regards to Welby,--a, married man himself, and a father: he will
+understand me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ON quitting Oxford, Kenelm wandered for several days about the
+country, advancing to no definite goal, meeting with no noticeable
+adventure.  At last he found himself mechanically retracing his steps.
+A magnetic influence he could not resist drew him back towards the
+grassy meads and the sparkling rill of Moleswich.
+
+"There must be," said he to himself, "a mental, like an optical,
+illusion.  In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre.  If we dare
+not face the apparition,--dare not attempt to touch it,--run
+superstitiously away from it,--what happens?  We shall believe to our
+dying day that it was not an illusion, that it was a spectre; and so
+we may be crazed for life.  But if we manfully walk up to the phantom,
+stretch our hands to seize it, oh! it fades into thin air, the cheat
+of our eyesight is dispelled, and we shall never be ghost-ridden
+again.  So it must be with this mental illusion of mine.  I see an
+image strange to my experience: it seems to me, at first sight,
+clothed with a supernatural charm; like an unreasoning coward, I run
+away from it.  It continues to haunt me; I cannot shut out its
+apparition.  It pursues me by day alike in the haunts of men,--alike
+in the solitudes of nature; it visits me by night in my dreams.  I
+begin to say this must be a real visitant from another world: it must
+be love; the love of which I read in the Poets, as in the Poets I read
+of witchcraft and ghosts.  Surely I must approach that apparition as a
+philosopher like Sir David Brewster would approach the black cat
+seated on a hearth-rug, which he tells us that some lady of his
+acquaintance constantly saw till she went into a world into which
+black cats are not held to be admitted.  The more I think of it the
+less it appears to me possible that I can be really in love with a
+wild, half-educated, anomalous creature, merely because the apparition
+of her face haunts me.  With perfect safety, therefore, I can approach
+the creature; in proportion as I see more of her the illusion will
+vanish.  I will go back to Moleswich manfully."
+
+Thus said Kenelm to himself, and himself answered,--"Go; for thou
+canst not help it.  Thinkest thou that Daces can escape the net that
+has meshed a Roach?  No,--
+
+
+     'Come it will, the day decreed by fate,'
+
+
+when thou must succumb to the 'Nature which will be heard.' Better
+succumb now, and with a good grace, than resist till thou hast reached
+thy fiftieth year, and then make a rational choice not for thy
+personal satisfaction."
+
+Whereupon Kenelm answered to himself, indignantly, "Pooh! thou
+flippant.  My /alter ego/, thou knowest not what thou art talking
+about!  It is not a question of Nature; it is a question of the
+supernatural,--an illusion,--a phantom!"  Thus Kenelm and himself
+continued to quarrel with each other; and the more they quarrelled,
+the nearer they approached to the haunted spot in which had been seen,
+and fled from, the fatal apparition of first love.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SIR PETER had not heard from Kenelm since a letter informing him that
+his son had left town on an excursion, which would probably be short,
+though it might last a few weeks; and the good Baronet now resolved to
+go to London himself, take his chance of Kenelm's return, and if still
+absent, at least learn from Mivers and others how far that very
+eccentric planet had contrived to steer a regular course amidst the
+fixed stars of the metropolitan system.  He had other reasons for his
+journey.  He wished to make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon
+before handing him over the L20,000 which Kenelm had released in that
+resettlement of estates, the necessary deeds of which the young heir
+had signed before quitting London for Moleswich.  Sir Peter wished
+still more to see Cecilia Travers, in whom Kenelm's accounts of her
+had inspired a very strong interest.
+
+The day after his arrival in town Sir Peter breakfasted with Mivers.
+
+"Upon my word you are very comfortable here," said Sir Peter, glancing
+at the well-appointed table, and round the well-furnished rooms.
+
+"Naturally so: there is no one to prevent my being comfortable.  I am
+not married; taste that omelette."
+
+"Some men declare they never knew comfort till they were married,
+Cousin Miners."
+
+"Some men are reflecting bodies, and catch a pallid gleam from the
+comfort which a wife concentres on herself.  With a fortune so modest
+and secure, what comforts, possessed by me now, would not a Mrs.
+Chillingly Mivers ravish from my hold and appropriate to herself!
+Instead of these pleasant rooms, where should I be lodged?  In a dingy
+den looking on a backyard excluded from the sun by day and vocal with
+cats by night; while Mrs. Mivers luxuriated in two drawing-rooms with
+southern aspect and perhaps a boudoir.  My brougham would be torn from
+my uses and monopolized by 'the angel of my hearth,' clouded in her
+crinoline and halved by her chignon.  No! if ever I marry--and I never
+deprive myself of the civilities and needlework which single ladies
+waste upon me by saying I shall not marry--it will be when women have
+fully established their rights; for then men may have a chance of
+vindicating their own.  Then if there are two drawing-rooms in the
+house I shall take one; if not, we will toss up who shall have the
+back parlour; if we keep a brougham, it will be exclusively mine three
+days in the week; if Mrs. M. wants L200 a year for her wardrobe she
+must be contented with one, the other half will belong to my personal
+decoration; if I am oppressed by proof-sheets and printers' devils,
+half of the oppression falls to her lot, while I take my holiday on
+the croquet ground at Wimbledon.  Yes, when the present wrongs of
+women are exchanged for equality with men, I will cheerfully marry;
+and to do the thing generous, I will not oppose Mrs. M.'s voting in
+the vestry or for Parliament.  I will give her my own votes with
+pleasure."
+
+"I fear, my dear cousin, that you have infected Kenelm with your
+selfish ideas on the nuptial state.  He does not seem inclined to
+marry,--eh?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"What sort of girl is Cecilia Travers?"
+
+"One of those superior girls who are not likely to tower into that
+terrible giantess called a 'superior woman.' A handsome,
+well-educated, sensible young lady, not spoiled by being an heiress;
+in fine, just the sort of girl whom you could desire to fix on for a
+daughter-in-law."
+
+"And you don't think Kenelm has a fancy for her?"
+
+"Honestly speaking, I do not."
+
+"Any counter-attraction?  There are some things in which sons do not
+confide in their fathers.  You have never heard that Kenelm has been a
+little wild?"
+
+"Wild he is, as the noble savage who ran in the woods," said Cousin
+Mivers.
+
+"You frighten me!"
+
+"Before the noble savage ran across the squaws, and was wise enough to
+run away from them.  Kenelm has run away now somewhere."
+
+"Yes, he does not tell me where, nor do they know at his lodgings.  A
+heap of notes on his table and no directions where they are to be
+forwarded.  On the whole, however, he has held his own in London
+society,--eh?"
+
+"Certainly! he has been more courted than most young men, and perhaps
+more talked of.  Oddities generally are."
+
+"You own he has talents above the average?  Do you not think he will
+make a figure in the world some day, and discharge that debt to the
+literary stores or the political interests of his country, which alas,
+I and my predecessors, the other Sir Peters, failed to do; and for
+which I hailed his birth, and gave him the name of Kenelm?"
+
+"Upon my word," answered Mivers,--who had now finished his breakfast,
+retreated to an easy-chair, and taken from the chimney-piece one of
+his famous trabucos,--"upon my word, I can't guess; if some great
+reverse of fortune befell him, and he had to work for his livelihood,
+or if some other direful calamity gave a shock to his nervous system
+and jolted it into a fussy, fidgety direction, I dare say he might
+make a splash in that current of life which bears men on to the grave.
+But you see he wants, as he himself very truly says, the two
+stimulants to definite action,--poverty and vanity."
+
+"Surely there have been great men who were neither poor nor vain?"
+
+"I doubt it.  But vanity is a ruling motive that takes many forms and
+many aliases: call it ambition, call it love of fame, still its
+substance is the same,--the desire of applause carried into fussiness
+of action."
+
+"There may be the desire for abstract truth without care for
+applause."
+
+"Certainly.  A philosopher on a desert island may amuse himself by
+meditating on the distinction between light and heat.  But if, on
+returning to the world, he publish the result of his meditations,
+vanity steps in and desires to be applauded."
+
+"Nonsense, Cousin Mivers, he may rather desire to be of use and
+benefit to mankind.  You don't deny that there is such a thing as
+philanthropy."
+
+"I don't deny that there is such a thing as humbug.  And whenever I
+meet a man who has the face to tell me that he is taking a great deal
+of trouble, and putting himself very much out of his way, for a
+philanthropical object, without the slightest idea of reward either in
+praise or pence, I know that I have a humbug before me,--a dangerous
+humbug, a swindling humbug, a fellow with his pocket full of villanous
+prospectuses and appeals to subscribers."
+
+"Pooh, pooh; leave off that affectation of cynicism: you are not a
+bad-hearted fellow; you must love mankind; you must have an interest
+in the welfare of posterity."
+
+"Love mankind?  Interest in posterity?  Bless my soul, Cousin Peter, I
+hope you have no prospectuses in /your/ pockets; no schemes for
+draining the Pontine Marshes out of pure love to mankind; no
+propositions for doubling the income-tax, as a reserve fund for
+posterity, should our coal-fields fail three thousand years hence.
+Love of mankind!  Rubbish!  This comes of living in the country."
+
+"But you do love the human race; you do care for the generations that
+are to come."
+
+"I!  Not a bit of it.  On the contrary, I rather dislike the human
+race, taking it altogether, and including the Australian bushmen; and
+I don't believe any man who tells me that he would grieve half as much
+if ten millions of human beings were swallowed up by an earthquake at
+a considerable distance from his own residence, say Abyssinia, as he
+would for a rise in his butcher's bills.  As to posterity, who would
+consent to have a month's fit of the gout or tic-douloureux in order
+that in the fourth thousand year, A. D., posterity should enjoy a
+perfect system of sewage?"
+
+Sir Peter, who had recently been afflicted by a very sharp attack of
+neuralgia, shook his head, but was too conscientious not to keep
+silence.
+
+"To turn the subject," said Mivers, relighting the cigar which he had
+laid aside while delivering himself of his amiable opinions, "I think
+you would do well, while in town, to call on your old friend Travers,
+and be introduced to Cecilia.  If you think as favourably of her as I
+do, why not ask father and daughter to pay you a visit at Exmundham?
+Girls think more about a man when they see the place which he can
+offer to them as a home, and Exmundham is an attractive place to
+girls,--picturesque and romantic."
+
+"A very good idea," cried Sir Peter, heartily.  And I want also to
+make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon.  Give me his address."
+
+"Here is his card on the chimney-piece, take it; you will always find
+him at home till two o'clock.  He is too sensible to waste the
+forenoon in riding out in Hyde Park with young ladies."
+
+"Give me your frank opinion of that young kinsman.  Kenelm tells me
+that he is clever and ambitious."
+
+"Kenelm speaks truly.  He is not a man who will talk stuff about love
+of mankind and posterity.  He is of our day, with large, keen,
+wide-awake eyes, that look only on such portions of mankind as can be
+of use to him, and do not spoil their sight by poring through cracked
+telescopes to catch a glimpse of posterity.  Gordon is a man to be a
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, perhaps a Prime Minister."
+
+"And old Gordon's son is cleverer than my boy,--than the namesake of
+Kenelm Digby!" and Sir Peter sighed.
+
+"I did not say that.  I am cleverer than Chillingly Gordon, and the
+proof of it is that I am too clever to wish to be Prime
+Minister,--very disagreeable office, hard work, irregular hours for
+meals, much abuse and confirmed dyspepsia."
+
+Sir Peter went away rather down-hearted.  He found Chillingly Gordon
+at home in a lodging in Jermyn Street.  Though prepossessed against
+him by all he had heard, Sir Peter was soon propitiated in his favour.
+Gordon had a frank man-of-the-world way with him, and much too fine a
+tact to utter any sentiments likely to displease an old-fashioned
+country gentleman, and a relation who might possibly be of service in
+his career. He touched briefly, and with apparent feeling, on the
+unhappy litigation commenced by his father; spoke with affectionate
+praise of Kenelm; and with a discriminating good-nature of Mivers, as
+a man who, to parody the epigram on Charles II.,
+
+
+     "Never says a kindly thing
+      And never does a harsh one."
+
+
+Then he drew Sir Peter on to talk of the country and agricultural
+prospects.  Learned that among his objects in visiting town was the
+wish to inspect a patented hydraulic ram that might be very useful for
+his farm-yard, which was ill supplied with water.  Startled the
+Baronet by evincing some practical knowledge of mechanics; insisted on
+accompanying him to the city to inspect the ram; did so, and approved
+the purchase; took him next to see a new American reaping-machine, and
+did not part with him till he had obtained Sir Peter's promise to dine
+with him at the Garrick; an invitation peculiarly agreeable to Sir
+Peter, who had a natural curiosity to see some of the more recently
+distinguished frequenters of that social club.  As, on quitting
+Gordon, Sir Peter took his way to the house of Leopold Travers, his
+thoughts turned with much kindliness towards his young kinsman.
+"Mivers and Kenelm," quoth he to himself, "gave me an unfavourable
+impression of this lad; they represent him as worldly, self-seeking,
+and so forth.  But Mivers takes such cynical views of character, and
+Kenelm is too eccentric to judge fairly of a sensible man of the
+world.  At all events, it is not like an egotist to put himself out of
+his way to be so civil to an old fellow like me.  A young man about
+town must have pleasanter modes of passing his day than inspecting
+hydraulic rams and reaping-machines.  Clever they allow him to be.
+Yes, decidedly clever, and not offensively clever,--practical."
+
+Sir Peter found Travers in the dining-room with his daughter, Mrs.
+Campion, and Lady Glenalvon.  Travers was one of those men rare in
+middle age, who are more often to be found in their drawing-room than
+in their private study; he was fond of female society; and perhaps it
+was this predilection which contributed to preserve in him the charm
+of good breeding and winning manners.  The two men had not met for
+many years; not indeed since Travers was at the zenith of his career
+of fashion, and Sir Peter was one of those pleasant /dilettanti/ and
+half humoristic conversationalists who become popular and courted
+diners-out.
+
+Sir Peter had originally been a moderate Whig because his father had
+been one before him; but he left the Whig party with the Duke of
+Richmond, Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), and others, when it
+seemed to him that that party had ceased to be moderate.
+
+Leopold Travers had, as a youth in the Guards, been a high Tory, but,
+siding with Sir Robert Peel on the repeal of the Corn Laws, remained
+with the Peelites after the bulk of the Tory party had renounced the
+guidance of their former chief, and now went with these Peelites in
+whatever direction the progress of the age might impel their strides
+in advance of Whigs and in defiance of Tories.
+
+However, it is not the politics of these two gentlemen that are in
+question now.  As I have just said, they had not met for many years.
+Travers was very little changed.  Sir Peter recognized him at a
+glance; Sir Peter was much changed, and Travers hesitated before, on
+hearing his name announced, he felt quite sure that it was the right
+Sir Peter towards whom he advanced, and to whom he extended his
+cordial hand.  Travers preserved the colour of his hair and the neat
+proportions of his figure, and was as scrupulously well dressed as in
+his dandy days.  Sir Peter, originally very thin and with fair locks
+and dreamy blue eyes, had now become rather portly,--at least towards
+the middle of him,--and very gray; had long ago taken to spectacles;
+his dress, too, was very old-fashioned, and made by a country tailor.
+He looked quite as much a gentleman as Travers did; quite perhaps as
+healthy, allowing for difference of years; quite as likely to last his
+time.  But between them there was the difference of the nervous
+temperament and the lymphatic.  Travers, with less brain than Sir
+Peter, had kept his brain constantly active; Sir Peter had allowed his
+brain to dawdle over old books and lazily delight in letting the hours
+slip by.  Therefore Travers still looked young, alert,--up to his day,
+up to anything; while Sir Peter, entering that drawing-room, seemed a
+sort of Rip van Winkle who had slept through the past generation, and
+looked on the present with eyes yet drowsy.  Still, in those rare
+moments when he was thoroughly roused up, there would have been found
+in Sir Peter a glow of heart, nay, even a vigour of thought, much more
+expressive than the constitutional alertness that characterized
+Leopold Travers, of the attributes we most love and admire in the
+young.
+
+"My dear Sir Peter, is it you?  I am so glad to see you again," said
+Travers.  "What an age since we met, and how condescendingly kind you
+were then to me; silly fop that I was!  But bygones are bygones; come
+to the present.  Let me introduce to you, first, my valued friend,
+Mrs. Campion, whose distinguished husband you remember.  Ah, what
+pleasant meetings we had at his house!  And next, that young lady of
+whom she takes motherly charge, my daughter Cecilia.  Lady Glenalvon,
+your wife's friend, of course needs no introduction: time stands still
+with her."
+
+Sir Peter lowered his spectacles, which in reality he only wanted for
+books in small print, and gazed attentively on the three ladies,--at
+each gaze a bow.  But while his eyes were still lingeringly fixed on
+Cecilia, Lady Glenalvon advanced, naturally in right of rank and the
+claim of old acquaintance, the first of the three to greet him.
+
+"Alas, my dear Sir Peter!  time does not stand still for any of us;
+but what matter, if it leaves pleasant footprints?  When I see you
+again, my youth comes before me,--my early friend, Caroline
+Brotherton, now Lady Chillingly; our girlish walks with each other;
+wreaths and ball-dresses the practical topic; prospective husbands,
+the dream at a distance.  Come and sit here: tell me all about
+Caroline."
+
+Sir Peter, who had little to say about Caroline that could possibly
+interest anybody but himself, nevertheless took his seat beside Lady
+Glenalvon, and, as in duty bound, made the most flattering account of
+his She Baronet which experience or invention would allow.  All the
+while, however, his thoughts were on Kenelm, and his eyes on Cecilia.
+
+Cecilia resumes some mysterious piece of lady's work, no matter
+what,--perhaps embroidery for a music-stool, perhaps a pair of
+slippers for her father (which, being rather vain of his feet and
+knowing they looked best in plain morocco, he will certainly never
+wear).  Cecilia appears absorbed in her occupation; but her eyes and
+her thoughts are on Sir Peter.  Why, my lady reader may guess.  And
+oh, so flatteringly, so lovingly fixed!  She thinks he has a most
+charming, intelligent, benignant countenance.  She admires even his
+old-fashioned frock-coat, high neckcloth, and strapped trousers.  She
+venerates his gray hairs, pure of dye.  She tries to find a close
+resemblance between that fair, blue-eyed, plumpish, elderly gentleman
+and the lean, dark-eyed, saturnine, lofty Kenelm; she detects the
+likeness which nobody else would.  She begins to love Sir Peter,
+though he has not said a word to her.
+
+Ah! on this, a word for what it is worth to you, my young readers.
+You, sir, wishing to marry a girl who is to be deeply, lastingly in
+love with you, and a thoroughly good wife practically, consider well
+how she takes to your parents; how she attaches to them an
+inexpressible sentiment, a disinterested reverence; even should you
+but dimly recognize the sentiment, or feel the reverence, how if
+between you and your parents some little cause of coldness arise, she
+will charm you back to honour your father and your mother, even though
+they are not particularly genial to her: well, if you win that sort of
+girl as your wife think you have got a treasure.  You have won a woman
+to whom Heaven has given the two best attributes,--intense feeling of
+love, intense sense of duty.  What, my dear lady reader, I say of one
+sex, I say of another, though in a less degree; because a girl who
+marries becomes of her husband's family, and the man does not become
+of his wife's.  Still I distrust the depth of any man's love to a
+woman, if he does not feel a great degree of tenderness (and
+forbearance where differences arise) for her parents.  But the wife
+must not so put them in the foreground as to make the husband think he
+is cast in the cold of the shadow.  Pardon this intolerable length of
+digression, dear reader: it is not altogether a digression, for it
+belongs to my tale that you should clearly understand the sort of girl
+that is personified in Cecilia Travers.
+
+"What has become of Kenelm?" asked Lady Glenalvon.
+
+"I wish I could tell you," answered Sir Peter.  "He wrote me word that
+he was going forth on rambles into 'fresh woods and pastures new,'
+perhaps for some weeks.  I have not had a word from him since."
+
+"You make me uneasy," said Lady Glenalvon.  "I hope nothing can have
+happened to him: he cannot have fallen ill."
+
+Cecilia stops her work, and looks up wistfully.
+
+"Make your mind easy," said Travers with a laugh; "I am in this
+secret.  He has challenged the champion of England, and gone into the
+country to train."
+
+"Very likely," said Sir Peter, quietly: "I should not be in the least
+surprised; should you, Miss Travers?"
+
+"I think it more probable that Mr. Chillingly is doing some kindness
+to others which he wishes to keep concealed."
+
+Sir Peter was pleased with this reply, and drew his chair nearer to
+Cecilia's.  Lady Glenalvon, charmed to bring those two together, soon
+rose and took leave.
+
+Sir Peter remained nearly an hour talking chiefly with Cecilia, who
+won her way into his heart with extraordinary ease; and he did not
+quit the house till he had engaged her father, Mrs. Campion, and
+herself to pay him a week's visit at Exmundham, towards the end of the
+London season, which was fast approaching.
+
+Having obtained this promise, Sir Peter went away, and ten minutes
+after Mr. Chillingly Gordon entered the drawing-room.  He had already
+established a visiting acquaintance with the Traverses.  Travers had
+taken a liking to him.  Mrs. Campion found him an extremely
+well-informed, unaffected young man, very superior to young men in
+general.  Cecilia was cordially polite to Kenelm's cousin.  Altogether
+that was a very happy day for Sir Peter.  He enjoyed greatly his
+dinner at the Garrick, where he met some old acquaintance and was
+presented to some new "celebrities."  He observed that Gordon stood
+well with these eminent persons.  Though as yet undistinguished
+himself, they treated him with a certain respect, as well as with
+evident liking.  The most eminent of them, at least the one with the
+most solidly established reputation, said in Sir Peter's ear, "You may
+be proud of your nephew Gordon!"
+
+"He is not my nephew, only the son of a very distant cousin."
+
+"Sorry for that.  But he will shed lustre on kinsfolk, however
+distant.  Clever fellow, yet popular; rare combination,--sure to
+rise."
+
+Sir Peter suppressed a gulp in the throat.  "Ah, if some one as
+eminent had spoken thus of Kenelm!"
+
+But he was too generous to allow that half-envious sentiment to last
+more than a moment.  Why should he not be proud of any member of the
+family who could irradiate the antique obscurity of the Chillingly
+race?  And how agreeable this clever young man made himself to Sir
+Peter!
+
+The next day Gordon insisted on accompanying him to see the latest
+acquisitions in the British Museum, and various other exhibitions, and
+went at night to the Prince of Wales's Theatre, where Sir Peter was
+infinitely delighted with an admirable little comedy by Mr. Robertson,
+admirably placed on the stage by Marie Wilton.  The day after, when
+Gordon called on him at his hotel, he cleared his throat, and thus
+plunged at once into the communication he had hitherto delayed.
+
+"Gordon, my boy, I owe you a debt, and I am now, thanks to Kenelm,
+able to pay it."
+
+Gordon gave a little start of surprise, but remained silent.
+
+"I told your father, shortly after Kenelm was born, that I meant to
+give up my London house, and lay by L1000 a year for you, in
+compensation for your chance of succeeding to Exmundham should I have
+died childless.  Well, your father did not seem to think much of that
+promise, and went to law with me about certain unquestionable rights
+of mine.  How so clever a man could have made such a mistake would
+puzzle me, if I did not remember that he had a quarrelsome temper.
+Temper is a thing that often dominates cleverness,--an uncontrollable
+thing; and allowances must be made for it.  Not being of a quarrelsome
+temper myself (the Chillinglys are a placid race), I did not make the
+allowance for your father's differing, and (for a Chillingly)
+abnormal, constitution.  The language and the tone of his letter
+respecting it nettled me.  I did not see why, thus treated, I should
+pinch myself to lay by a thousand a year.  Facilities for buying a
+property most desirable for the possessor of Exmundham presented
+themselves.  I bought it with borrowed money, and though I gave up the
+house in London, I did not lay by the thousand a year."
+
+"My dear Sir Peter, I have always regretted that my poor father was
+misled--perhaps out of too paternal a care for my supposed
+interests--into that unhappy and fruitless litigation, after which no
+one could doubt that any generous intentions on your part would be
+finally abandoned.  It has been a grateful surprise to me that I have
+been so kindly and cordially received into the family by Kenelm and
+yourself.  Pray oblige me by dropping all reference to pecuniary
+matters: the idea of compensation to a very distant relative for the
+loss of expectations he had no right to form, is too absurd, for me at
+least, ever to entertain."
+
+"But I am absurd enough to entertain it, though you express yourself
+in a very high-minded way.  To come to the point, Kenelm is of age,
+and we have cut off the entail.  The estate of course remains
+absolutely with Kenelm to dispose of, as it did before, and we must
+take it for granted that he will marry; at all events he cannot fall
+into your poor father's error: but whatever Kenelm hereafter does with
+his property, it is nothing to you, and is not to be counted upon.
+Even the title dies with Kenelm if he has no son.  On resettling the
+estate, however, sums of money have been realized which, as I stated
+before, enable me to discharge the debt which Kenelm heartily agrees
+with me is due to you.  L20,000 are now lying at my bankers' to be
+transferred to yours; meanwhile, if you will call on my solicitor, Mr.
+Vining, Lincoln's-inn, you can see the new deed and give to him your
+receipt for the L20,000, for which he holds my cheque.  Stop! stop!
+stop!  I will not hear a.  word: no thanks; they are not due."
+
+Here Gordon, who had during this speech uttered various brief
+exclamations, which Sir Peter did not heed, caught hold of his
+kinsman's hand, and, despite of all struggles, pressed his lips on it.
+"I must thank you; I must give some vent to my emotions," cried
+Gordon.  "This sum, great in itself, is far more to me than you can
+imagine: it opens my career; it assures my future."
+
+"So Kenelm tells me; he said that sum would be more use to you now
+than ten times the amount twenty years hence."
+
+"So it will,--it will.  And Kenelm consents to this sacrifice?"
+
+"Consents! urges it."
+
+Gordon turned away his face, and Sir Peter resumed: "You want to get
+into Parliament; very natural ambition for a clever young fellow.  I
+don't presume to dictate politics to you.  I hear you are what is
+called a Liberal; a man may be a Liberal, I suppose, without being a
+Jacobin."
+
+"I hope so, indeed.  For my part I am anything but a violent man."
+
+"Violent, no!  Who ever heard of a violent Chillingly?  But I was
+reading in the newspaper to-day a speech addressed to some popular
+audience, in which the orator was for dividing all the lands and all
+the capital belonging to other people among the working class, calmly
+and quietly, without any violence, and deprecating violence: but
+saying, perhaps very truly, that the people to be robbed might not
+like it, and might offer violence; in which case woe betide them; it
+was they who would be guilty of violence; and they must take the
+consequences if they resisted the reasonable, propositions of himself
+and his friends!  That, I suppose, is among the new ideas with which
+Kenelm is more familiar than I am.  Do you entertain those new ideas?"
+
+"Certainly not: I despise the fools who do."
+
+"And you will not abet revolutionary measures if you get into
+Parliament?"
+
+"My dear Sir Peter, I fear you have heard very false reports of my
+opinions if you put such questions.  Listen," and therewith Gordon
+launched into dissertations very clever, very subtle, which committed
+him to nothing, beyond the wisdom of guiding popular opinions into
+right directions: what might be right directions he did not define; he
+left Sir Peter to guess them.  Sir Peter did guess them, as Gordon
+meant he should, to be the directions which he, Sir Peter, thought
+right; and he was satisfied.
+
+That subject disposed of, Gordon said, with much apparent feeling,
+"May I ask you to complete the favours you have lavished on me?  I
+have never seen Exmundham, and the home of the race from which I
+sprang has a deep interest for time.  Will you allow me to spend a few
+days with you, and under the shade of your own trees take lessons in
+political science from one who has evidently reflected on it
+profoundly?"
+
+"Profoundly, no; a little,--a little, as a mere bystander," said Sir
+Peter, modestly, but much flattered.  "Come, my dear boy, by all
+means; you will have a hearty welcome.  By the by, Travers and his
+handsome daughter promised to visit me in about a fortnight, why not
+come at the same time?"
+
+A sudden flash lit up the young man's countenance.
+
+"I shall be so delighted," he cried.  "I am but slightly acquainted
+with Mr. Travers, but I like him much, and Mrs. Campion is so well
+informed."
+
+"And what say you to the girl?"
+
+"The girl, Miss Travers.  Oh, she is very well in her way.  But I
+don't talk with young ladies more than I can help."
+
+"Then you are like your cousin Kenelm?"
+
+"I wish I were like him in other things."
+
+"No, one such oddity in a family is quite enough.  But though I would
+not have you change to a Kenelm, I would not change Kenelm for the
+most perfect model of a son that the world can exhibit."  Delivering
+himself of this burst of parental fondness, Sir Peter shook hands with
+Gordon, and walked off to Mivers, who was to give him luncheon and
+then accompany him to the station.  Sir Peter was to return to
+Exmundham by the afternoon express.
+
+Left alone, Gordon indulged in one of those luxurious guesses into the
+future which form the happiest moments in youth when so ambitious as
+his.  The sum Sir Peter placed at his disposal would insure his
+entrance in Parliament.  He counted with confidence on early successes
+there.  He extended the scope of his views.  With such successes he
+might calculate with certainty on a brilliant marriage, augmenting his
+fortune, and confirming his position.  He had previously fixed his
+thoughts on Cecilia Travers.  I will do him the justice to say not
+from mercenary motives alone, but not certainly with the impetuous
+ardour of youthful love.  He thought her exactly fitted to be the wife
+of an eminent public man, in person, acquirement, dignified yet
+popular manners.  He esteemed her, he liked her, and then her fortune
+would add solidity to his position.  In fact, he had that sort of
+rational attachment to Cecilia which wise men, like Lord Bacon and
+Montaigne, would commend to another wise man seeking a wife.  What
+opportunities of awaking in herself a similar, perhaps a warmer,
+attachment the visit to Exmundham would afford!  He had learned when
+he had called on the Traverses that they were going thither, and hence
+that burst of family sentiment which had procured the invitation to
+himself.
+
+But he must be cautious, he must not prematurely awaken Travers's
+suspicions.  He was not as yet a match that the squire could approve
+of for his heiress.  And, though he was ignorant of Sir Peter's
+designs on that, young lady, he was much too prudent to confide his
+own to a kinsman of whose discretion he had strong misgivings.  It was
+enough for him at present that way was opened for his own resolute
+energies.  And cheerfully, though musingly, he weighed its obstacles,
+and divined its goal, as he paced his floor with bended head and
+restless strides, now quick, now slow.
+
+Sir Peter, in the meanwhile, found a very good luncheon prepared for
+him at Mivers's rooms, which he had all to himself, for his host never
+"spoilt his dinner and insulted his breakfast" by that intermediate
+meal.  He remained at his desk writing brief notes of business, or of
+pleasure, while Sir Peter did justice to lamb cutlets and grilled
+chicken.  But he looked up from his task, with raised eyebrows, when
+Sir Peter, after a somewhat discursive account of his visit to the
+Traverses, his admiration of Cecilia, and the adroitness with which,
+acting on his cousin's hint, he had engaged the family to spend a few
+days at Exmundham, added, "And, by the by, I have asked young Gordon
+to meet them."
+
+"To meet them! meet Mr. and Miss Travers! you have?  I thought you
+wished Kenelm to marry Cecilia.  I was mistaken, you meant Gordon!"
+
+"Gordon," exclaimed Sir Peter, dropping his knife and fork.
+"Nonsense, you don't suppose that Miss Travers prefers him to Kenelm,
+or that he has the presumption to fancy that her father would sanction
+his addresses?"
+
+"I indulge in no suppositions of the sort.  I content myself with
+thinking that Gordon is clever, insinuating, young; and it is a very
+good chance of bettering himself that you have thrown in his way.
+However, it is no affair of mine; and though on the whole I like
+Kenelm better than Gordon, still I like Gordon very well, and I have
+an interest in following his career which I can't say I have in
+conjecturing what may be Kenelm's--more likely no career at all."
+
+"Mivers, you delight in provoking me; you do say such uncomfortable
+things.  But, in the first place, Gordon spoke rather slightingly of
+Miss Travers."
+
+"Ah, indeed; that's a bad sign," muttered Mivers.
+
+Sir Peter did not hear him, and went on.
+
+"And, besides, I feel pretty sure that the dear girl has already a
+regard for Kenelm which allows no room for a rival. However, I shall
+not forget your hint, but keep a sharp lookout; and, if I see the
+young man wants to be too sweet on Cecilia, I shall cut short his
+visit."
+
+"Give yourself no trouble in the matter; it will do no good.
+Marriages are made in heaven.  Heaven's will be done.  If I can get
+away I will run down to you for a day or two.  Perhaps in that case
+you can ask Lady Glenalvon.  I like her, and she likes Kenelm.  Have
+you finished?  I see the brougham is at the door, and we have to call
+at your hotel to take up your carpet-bag."
+
+Mivers was deliberately sealing his notes while he thus spoke.  He now
+rang for his servant, gave orders for their delivery, and then
+followed Sir Peter down stairs and into the brougham.  Not a word
+would he say more about Gordon, and Sir Peter shrank from telling him
+about the L20,000.  Chillingly Mivers was perhaps the last person to
+whom Sir Peter would be tempted to parade an act of generosity.
+Mivers might not unfrequently do a generous act himself, provided it
+was not divulged; but he had always a sneer for the generosity of
+others.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WANDERING back towards Moleswich, Kenelm found himself a little before
+sunset on the banks of the garrulous brook, almost opposite to the
+house inhabited by Lily Mordaunt.  He stood long and silently by the
+grassy margin, his dark shadow falling over the stream, broken into
+fragments by the eddy and strife of waves, fresh from their leap down
+the neighbouring waterfall.  His eyes rested on the house and the
+garden lawn in the front.  The upper windows were open.  "I wonder
+which is hers," he said to himself.  At last he caught a glimpse of
+the gardener, bending over a flower border with his watering-pot, and
+then moving slowly through the little shrubbery, no doubt to his own
+cottage.  Now the lawn was solitary, save that a couple of thrushes
+dropped suddenly on the sward.
+
+"Good evening, sir," said a voice.  "A capital spot for trout this."
+
+Kenelm turned his head, and beheld on the footpath, just behind him, a
+respectable elderly man, apparently of the class of a small retail
+tradesman, with a fishing-rod in his hand and a basket belted to his
+side.
+
+"For trout," replied Kenelm; "I dare say.  A strangely attractive spot
+indeed."
+
+"Are you an angler, sir, if I may make bold to inquire?" asked the
+elderly man, somewhat perhaps puzzled as to the rank of the stranger;
+noticing, on the one hand, his dress and his mien, on the other, slung
+to his shoulders, the worn and shabby knapsack which Kenelm had
+carried, at home and abroad, the preceding year.
+
+"Ay, I am an angler."
+
+"Then this is the best place in the whole stream.  Look, sir, there is
+Izaak Walton's summer-house; and further down you see that white,
+neat-looking house.  Well, that is my house, sir, and I have an
+apartment which I let to gentleman anglers.  It is generally occupied
+throughout the summer months.  I expect every day to have a letter to
+engage it, but it is vacant now.  A very nice apartment,
+sir,--sitting-room and bedroom."
+
+"/Descende ceolo, et dic age tibia/," said Kenelm.
+
+"Sir?" said the elderly man.
+
+"I beg you ten thousand pardons.  I have had the misfortune to have
+been at the university, and to have learned a little Latin, which
+sometimes comes back very inopportunely.  But, speaking in plain
+English, what I meant to say is this: I invoked the Muse to descend
+from heaven and bring with her--the original says a fife, but I
+meant--a fishing-rod.  I should think your apartment would suit me
+exactly; pray show it to me."
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," said the elderly man.  "The Muse need
+not bring a fishing-rod! we have all sorts of tackle at your service,
+and a boat too, if you care for that.  The stream hereabouts is so
+shallow and narrow that a boat is of little use till you get farther
+down."
+
+"I don't want to get farther down; but should I want to get to the
+opposite bank, without wading across, would the boat take me or is
+there a bridge?"
+
+"The boat can take you.  It is a flat-bottomed punt, and there is a
+bridge too for foot-passengers, just opposite my house; and between
+this and Moleswich, where the stream widens, there is a ferry.  The
+stone bridge for traffic is at the farther end of the town."
+
+"Good.  Let us go at once to your house."
+
+The two men walked on.
+
+"By the by," said Kenelm, as they walked, "do you know much of the
+family that inhabit the pretty cottage on the opposite side, which we
+have just left behind?"
+
+"Mrs. Cameron's.  Yes, of course, a very good lady; and Mr. Melville,
+the painter.  I am sure I ought to know, for he has often lodged with
+me when he came to visit Mrs. Cameron.  He recommends my apartment to
+his friends, and they are my best lodgers.  I like painters, sir,
+though I don't know much about paintings.  They are pleasant
+gentlemen, and easily contented with my humble roof and fare."
+
+"You are quite right.  I don't know much about paintings myself; but I
+am inclined to believe that painters, judging not from what I have
+seen of them, for I have not a single acquaintance among them
+personally, but from what I have read of their lives, are, as a
+general rule, not only pleasant but noble gentlemen.  They form within
+themselves desires to beautify or exalt commonplace things, and they
+can only accomplish their desires by a constant study of what is
+beautiful and what is exalted.  A man constantly so engaged ought to
+be a very noble gentleman, even though he may be the son of a
+shoeblack.  And living in a higher world than we do, I can conceive
+that he is, as you say, very well contented with humble roof and fare
+in the world we inhabit."
+
+"Exactly, sir; I see--I see now, though you put it in a way that never
+struck me before."
+
+"And yet," said Kenelm, looking benignly at the speaker, "you seem to
+me a well-educated and intelligent man; reflective on things in
+general, without being unmindful of your interests in particular,
+especially when you have lodgings to let.  Do not be offended.  That
+sort of man is not perhaps born to be a painter, but I respect him
+highly.  The world, sir, requires the vast majority of its inhabitants
+to live in it,--to live by it.  'Each for himself, and God for us
+all.'  The greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured
+by a prudent consideration for Number One."
+
+Somewhat to Kenelm's surprise (allowing that he had now learned enough
+of life to be occasionally surprised) the elderly man here made a dead
+halt, stretched out his hand cordially, and cried, "Hear, hear!  I see
+that, like me, you are a decided democrat."
+
+"Democrat!  Pray, may I ask, not why you are one,--that would be a
+liberty, and democrats resent any liberty taken with themselves; but
+why you suppose I am?"
+
+"You spoke of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.  That is
+a democratic sentiment surely!  Besides, did not you say, sir, that
+painters,--painters, sir, painters, even if they were the sons of
+shoeblacks, were the true gentlemen,--the true noblemen?"
+
+"I did not say that exactly, to the disparagement of other gentlemen
+and nobles.  But if I did, what then?"
+
+"Sir, I agree with you.  I despise rank; I despise dukes and earls and
+aristocrats.  'An honest man's the noblest work of God.'  Some poet
+says that.  I think Shakspeare. Wonderful man, Shakspeare.  A
+tradesman's son,--butcher, I believe.  Eh!  My uncle was a butcher,
+and might have been an alderman.  I go along with you heartily,
+heartily. I am a democrat, every inch of me.  Shake hands, sir, shake
+hands; we are all equals.  'Each man for himself, and God for us
+all.'"
+
+"I have no objection to shake hands," said Kenelm; "but don't let me
+owe your condescension to false pretences.  Though we are all equal
+before the law, except the rich man, who has little chance of justice
+as against a poor man when submitted to an English jury, yet I utterly
+deny that any two men you select can be equals.  One must beat the
+other in something; and, when one man beats another, democracy ceases
+and aristocracy begins."
+
+"Aristocracy!  I don't see that.  What do you mean by aristocracy?"
+
+"The ascendency of the better man.  In a rude State the better man is
+the stronger; in a corrupt State, perhaps the more roguish; in modern
+republics the jobbers get the money and the lawyers get the power.  In
+well-ordered States alone aristocracy appears at its genuine worth:
+the better man in birth, because respect for ancestry secures a higher
+standard of honour; the better man in wealth, because of the immense
+uses to enterprise, energy, and the fine arts, which rich men must be
+if they follow their natural inclinations; the better man in
+character, the better man in ability, for reasons too obvious to
+define; and these two last will beat the others in the government of
+the State, if the State be flourishing and free.  All these four
+classes of better men constitute true aristocracy; and when a better
+government than a true aristocracy shall be devised by the wit of man,
+we shall not be far off from the Millennium and the reign of saints.
+But here we are at the house,--yours, is it not?  I like the look of
+it extremely."
+
+The elderly man now entered the little porch, over which clambered
+honeysuckle and ivy intertwined, and ushered Kenelm into a pleasant
+parlour, with a bay window, and an equally pleasant bedroom behind it.
+
+"Will it do, sir?"
+
+"Perfectly.  I take it from this moment.  My knapsack contains all I
+shall need for the night.  There is a portmanteau of mine at Mr.
+Somers's shop, which can be sent here in the morning."
+
+"But we have not settled about the terms," said the elderly man,
+beginning to feel rather doubtful whether he ought thus to have
+installed in his home a stalwart pedestrian of whom he knew nothing,
+and who, though talking glibly enough on other things, had preserved
+an ominous silence on the subject of payment.
+
+"Terms? true, name them."
+
+"Including board?"
+
+"Certainly.  Chameleons live on air; democrats on wind bags.  I have a
+more vulgar appetite, and require mutton."
+
+"Meat is very dear now-a-days," said the elderly man, "and I am
+afraid, for board and lodging I cannot charge you less than L3
+3s.,--say L3 a week.  My lodgers usually pay a week in advance."
+
+"Agreed," said Kenelm, extracting three sovereigns from his purse.  "I
+have dined already: I want nothing more this evening; let me detain
+you no further.  Be kind enough to shut the door after you."
+
+When he was alone, Kenelm seated himself in the recess of the bay
+window, against the casement, and looked forth intently.  Yes; he was
+right: he could see from thence the home of Lily.  Not, indeed, more
+than a white gleam of the house through the interstices of trees and
+shrubs, but the gentle lawn sloping to the brook, with the great
+willow at the end dipping its boughs into the water, and shutting out
+all view beyond itself by its bower of tender leaves.  The young man
+bent his face on his hands and mused dreamily: the evening deepened;
+the stars came forth; the rays of the moon now peered aslant through
+the arching dips of the willow, silvering their way as they stole to
+the waves below.
+
+"Shall I bring lights, sir? or do you prefer a lamp or candles?" asked
+a voice behind,--the voice of the elderly man's wife.  "Do you like
+the shutters closed?"
+
+The question startled the dreamer.  They seemed mocking his own old
+mockings on the romance of love.  Lamp or candles, practical lights
+for prosaic eyes, and shutters closed against moon and stars!
+
+"Thank you, ma'am, not yet," he said; and rising quietly he placed his
+hand on the window-sill, swung himself through the open casement, and
+passed slowly along the margin of the rivulet, by a path checkered
+alternately with shade and starlight; the moon yet more slowly rising
+above the willows, and lengthening its track along the wavelets.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THOUGH Kenelm did not think it necessary at present to report to his
+parents or his London acquaintances his recent movements and his
+present resting-place, it never entered into his head to lurk /perdu/
+in the immediate vicinity of Lily's house, and seek opportunities of
+meeting her clandestinely.  He walked to Mrs. Braefield's the next
+morning, found her at home, and said in rather a more off-hand manner
+than was habitual to him, "I have hired a lodging in your
+neighbourhood, on the banks of the brook, for the sake of its
+trout-fishing.  So you will allow me to call on you sometimes, and one
+of these days I hope you will give me the dinner I so unceremoniously
+rejected some days ago.  I was then summoned away suddenly, much
+against my will."
+
+"Yes; my husband said that you shot off from him with a wild
+exclamation about duty."
+
+"Quite true; my reason, and I may say my conscience, were greatly
+perplexed upon a matter extremely important and altogether new to me.
+I went to Oxford,--the place above all others in which questions of
+reason and conscience are most deeply considered, and perhaps least
+satisfactorily solved.  Relieved in my mind by my visit to a
+distinguished ornament of that university, I felt I might indulge in a
+summer holiday, and here I am."
+
+"Ah!  I understand.  You had religious doubts,--thought perhaps of
+turning Roman Catholic.  I hope you are not going to do so?"
+
+"My doubts were not necessarily of a religious nature.  Pagans have
+entertained them."
+
+"Whatever they were I am pleased to see they did not prevent your
+return," said Mrs. Braefield, graciously.  "But where have you found a
+lodging; why not have come to us?  My husband would have been scarcely
+less glad than myself to receive you."
+
+"You say that so sincerely, and so cordially, that to answer by a
+brief 'I thank you' seems rigid and heartless.  But there are times in
+life when one yearns to be alone,--to commune with one's own heart,
+and, if possible, be still; I am in one of those moody times.  Bear
+with me."
+
+Mrs. Braefield looked at him with affectionate, kindly interest.  She
+had gone before him through the solitary road of young romance.  She
+remembered her dreamy, dangerous girlhood, when she, too, had yearned
+to be alone.
+
+"Bear with you; yes, indeed.  I wish, Mr. Chillingly, that I were your
+sister, and that you would confide in me.  Something troubles you."
+
+"Troubles me,--no.  My thoughts are happy ones, and they may sometimes
+perplex me, but they do not trouble."
+
+Kenelm said this very softly; and in the warmer light of his musing
+eyes, the sweeter play of his tranquil smile, there was an expression
+which did not belie his words.
+
+"You have not told me where you have found a lodging," said Mrs.
+Braefield, somewhat abruptly.
+
+"Did I not?"  replied Kenelm, with an unconscious start, as from an
+abstracted reverie.  "With no undistinguished host, I presume, for
+when I asked him this morning for the right address of this cottage,
+in order to direct such luggage as I have to be sent there, he gave me
+his card with a grand air, saying, 'I am pretty well known at
+Moleswich, by and beyond it.' I have not yet looked at his card.  Oh,
+here it is,--'Algernon Sidney Gale Jones, Cromwell Lodge;' you laugh.
+What do you know of him?"
+
+"I wish my husband were here; he would tell you more about him.  Mr.
+Jones is quite a character."
+
+"So I perceive."
+
+"A great radical,--very talkative and troublesome at the vestry; but
+our vicar, Mr. Emlyn, says there is no real harm in him, that his bark
+is worse than his bite, and that his republican or radical notions
+must be laid to the door of his godfathers!  In addition to his name
+of Jones, he was unhappily christened Gale; Gale Jones being a noted
+radical orator at the time of his birth.  And I suppose Algernon
+Sidney was prefixed to Gale in order to devote the new-born more
+emphatically to republican principles."
+
+"Naturally, therefore, Algernon Sidney Gale Jones baptizes his house
+Cromwell Lodge, seeing that Algernon Sidney held the Protectorate in
+especial abhorrence, and that the original Gale Jones, if an honest
+radical, must have done the same, considering what rough usage the
+advocates of Parliamentary Reform met with at the hands of his
+Highness.  But we must be indulgent to men who have been unfortunately
+christened before they had any choice of the names that were to rule
+their fate.  I myself should have been less whimsical had I not been
+named after a Kenelm who believed in sympathetic powders.  Apart from
+his political doctrines, I like my landlord: he keeps his wife in
+excellent order.  She seems frightened at the sound of her own
+footsteps, and glides to and fro, a pallid image of submissive
+womanhood in list slippers."
+
+"Great recommendations certainly, and Cromwell Lodge is very prettily
+situated.  By the by, it is very near Mrs. Cameron's."
+
+"Now I think of it, so it is," said Kenelm, innocently.  Ah! my friend
+Kenelm, enemy of shams, and truth-teller, /par excellence/, what hast
+thou come to?  How are the mighty fallen!  "Since you say you will
+dine with us, suppose we fix the day after to-morrow, and I will ask
+Mrs. Cameron and Lily."
+
+"The day after to-morrow: I shall be delighted."
+
+"An early hour?"
+
+"The earlier the better."
+
+"Is six o'clock too early?"
+
+"Too early! certainly not; on the contrary.  Good-day: I must now go
+to Mrs. Somers; she has charge of my portmanteau."
+
+Then Kenelm rose.
+
+"Poor dear Lily!" said Mrs. Braefield; "I wish she were less of a
+child."
+
+Kenelm reseated himself.
+
+"Is she a child?  I don't think she is actually a child."
+
+"Not in years; she is between seventeen and eighteen: but my husband
+says that she is too childish to talk to, and always tells me to take
+her off his hands; he would rather talk with Mrs. Cameron."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Still I find something in her."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Not exactly childish, nor quite womanish."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I can't exactly define.  But you know what Mr. Melville and Mrs.
+Cameron call her as a pet name?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Fairy!  Fairies have no age; fairy is neither child nor woman."
+
+"Fairy.  She is called fairy by those who know her best?  Fairy!"
+
+"And she believes in fairies."
+
+"Does she?--so do I.  Pardon me, I must be off.  The day after
+to-morrow,--six o'clock."
+
+"Wait one moment," said Elsie, going to her writing-table.  "Since you
+pass Grasmere on your way home, will you kindly leave this note?"
+
+"I thought Grasmere was a lake in the north?"
+
+"Yes; but Mr. Melville chose to call the cottage by the name of the
+lake.  I think the first picture he ever sold was a view of
+Wordsworth's house there.  Here is my note to ask Mrs. Cameron to meet
+you; but if you object to be my messenger--"
+
+"Object! my dear Mrs. Braefield.  As you say, I pass close by the
+cottage."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+KENELM went with somewhat rapid pace from Mrs. Braefield's to the shop
+in the High Street kept by Will Somers.  Jessie was behind the
+counter, which was thronged with customers.  Kenelm gave her a brief
+direction about his portmanteau, and then passed into the back
+parlour, where her husband was employed on his baskets,--with the
+baby's cradle in the corner, and its grandmother rocking it
+mechanically, as she read a wonderful missionary tract full of tales
+of miraculous conversions: into what sort of Christians we will not
+pause to inquire.
+
+"And so you are happy, Will?" said Kenelm, seating himself between the
+basket-maker and the infant; the dear old mother beside him, reading
+the tract which linked her dreams of life eternal with life just
+opening in the cradle that she rocked.  He not happy!  How he pitied
+the man who could ask such a question.
+
+"Happy, sir!  I should think so, indeed.  There is not a night on
+which Jessie and I, and mother too, do not pray that some day or other
+you may be as happy.  By and by the baby will learn to pray 'God bless
+papa, and mamma, grandmamma, and Mr. Chillingly.'"
+
+"There is some one else much more deserving of prayers than I, though
+needing them less.  You will know some day: pass it by now.  To return
+to the point: you are happy; if I asked why, would you not say,
+'Because I have married the girl I love, and have never repented'?"
+
+"Well, sir, that is about it; though, begging your pardon, I think it
+could be put more prettily somehow."
+
+"You are right there.  But perhaps love and happiness never yet found
+any words that could fitly express them.  Good-bye, for the present."
+
+Ah! if it were as mere materialists, or as many middle-aged or elderly
+folks, who, if materialists, are so without knowing it, unreflectingly
+say, "The main element of happiness is bodily or animal health and
+strength," that question which Chillingly put would appear a very
+unmeaning or a very insulting one addressed to a pale cripple, who
+however improved of late in health, would still be sickly and ailing
+all his life,--put, too, by a man of the rarest conformation of
+physical powers that nature can adapt to physical enjoyment,--a man
+who, since the age in which memory commences, had never known what it
+was to be unwell, who could scarcely understand you if you talked of a
+finger-ache, and whom those refinements of mental culture which
+multiply the delights of the senses had endowed with the most
+exquisite conceptions of such happiness as mere nature and its
+instincts can give!  But Will did not think the question unmeaning or
+insulting.  He, the poor cripple, felt a vast superiority on the scale
+of joyous being over the young Hercules, well born, cultured, and
+wealthy, who could know so little of happiness as to ask the crippled
+basket-maker if he were happy.--he, blessed husband and father!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+LILY was seated on the grass under a chestnut-tree on the lawn.  A
+white cat, not long emerged from kittenhood, curled itself by her
+side.  On her lap was an open volume, which she was reading with the
+greatest delight.
+
+Mrs. Cameron came from the house, looked round, perceived the girl,
+and approached; and either she moved so gently, or Lily was so
+absorbed in the book, that the latter was not aware of her presence
+till she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and, looking up,
+recognized her aunt's gentle face.
+
+"Ah!  Fairy, Fairy, that silly book, when you ought to be at your
+French verbs.  What will your guardian say when he comes and finds you
+have so wasted time?"
+
+"He will say that fairies never waste their time; and he will scold
+you for saying so."  Therewith Lily threw down the book, sprang to her
+feet, wound her arm round Mrs. Cameron's neck, and kissed her fondly.
+"There! is that wasting time?  I love you so, aunty.  In a day like
+this I think I love everybody and everything!"  As she said this, she
+drew up her lithe form, looked into the blue sky, and with parted lips
+seemed to drink in air and sunshine.  Then she woke up the dozing cat,
+and began chasing it round the lawn.
+
+Mrs. Cameron stood still, regarding her with moistened eyes.  Just at
+that moment Kenelm entered through the garden gate.  He, too, stood
+still, his eyes fixed on the undulating movements of Fairy's exquisite
+form.  She had arrested her favourite, and was now at play with it,
+shaking off her straw hat, and drawing the ribbon attached to it
+tantalizingly along the smooth grass.  Her rich hair, thus released
+and dishevelled by the exercise, fell partly over her face in wavy
+ringlets; and her musical laugh and words of sportive endearment
+sounded on Kenelm's ear more joyously than the thrill of the skylark,
+more sweetly than the coo of the ring-dove.
+
+He approached towards Mrs. Cameron.  Lily turned suddenly and saw him.
+Instinctively she smoothed back her loosened tresses, replaced the
+straw hat, and came up demurely to his side just as he had accosted
+her aunt.
+
+"Pardon my intrusion, Mrs. Cameron.  I am the bearer of this note from
+Mrs. Braefield."  While the aunt read the note, he turned to the
+niece.
+
+"You promised to show me the picture, Miss Mordaunt."
+
+"But that was a long time ago."
+
+"Too long to expect a lady's promise to be kept?"
+
+Lily seemed to ponder that question, and hesitated before she
+answered.
+
+"I will show you the picture.  I don't think I ever broke a promise
+yet, but I shall be more careful how I make one in future."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because you did not value mine when I made it, and that hurt me."
+Lily lifted up her head with a bewitching stateliness, and added
+gravely, "I was offended."
+
+"Mrs. Braefield is very kind," said Mrs. Cameron; "she asks us to dine
+the day after to-morrow.  You would like to go, Lily?"
+
+"All grown-up people, I suppose?  No, thank you, dear aunt.  You go
+alone, I would rather stay at home.  May I have little Clemmy to play
+with?  She will bring Juba, and Blanche is very partial to Juba,
+though she does scratch him."
+
+"Very well, my dear, you shall have your playmate, and I will go by
+myself."
+
+Kenelm stood aghast.  "You will not go, Miss Mordaunt; Mrs. Braefield
+will be so disappointed.  And if you don't go, whom shall I have to
+talk to?  I don't like grown-up people better than you do."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And if I go you will talk to me?  I am afraid of Mr. Braefield.  He
+is so wise."
+
+"I will save you from him, and will not utter a grain of wisdom."
+
+"Aunty, I will go."
+
+Here Lily made a bound and caught up Blanche, who, taking her kisses
+resignedly, stared with evident curiosity upon Kenelm.
+
+Here a bell within the house rang the announcement of luncheon.  Mrs.
+Cameron invited Kenelm to partake of that meal.  He felt as Romulus
+might have felt when first invited to taste the ambrosia of the gods.
+Yet certainly that luncheon was not such as might have pleased Kenelm
+Chillingly in the early days of the Temperance Hotel.  But somehow or
+other of late he had lost appetite; and on this occasion a very modest
+share of a very slender dish of chicken fricasseed, and a few cherries
+daintily arranged on vine leaves, which Lily selected for him,
+contented him,--as probably a very little ambrosia contented Romulus
+while feasting his eyes on Hebe.
+
+Luncheon over, while Mrs. Cameron wrote her reply to Elsie, Kenelm was
+conducted by Lily into her own /own/ room, in vulgar parlance her
+/boudoir/, though it did not look as if any one ever /bouder'd/ there.
+It was exquisitely pretty,--pretty not as a woman's, but as a child's
+dream of the own /own/ room she would like to have,--wondrously neat
+and cool, and pure-looking; a trellis paper, the trellis gay with
+roses and woodbine, and birds and butterflies; draperies of muslin,
+festooned with dainty tassels and ribbons; a dwarf bookcase, that
+seemed well stored, at least as to bindings; a dainty little
+writing-table in French /marqueterie/, looking too fresh and spotless
+to have known hard service.  The casement was open, and in keeping
+with the trellis paper; woodbine and roses from without encroached on
+the window-sides, gently stirred by the faint summer breeze, and
+wafted sweet odours into the little room.  Kenelm went to the window,
+and glanced on the view beyond.  "I was right," he said to himself; "I
+divined it."  But though he spoke in a low inward whisper, Lily, who
+had watched his movements in surprise, overheard.
+
+"You divined it.  Divined what?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing; I was but talking to myself."
+
+"Tell me what you divined: I insist upon it!" and Fairy petulantly
+stamped her tiny foot on the floor.
+
+"Do you?  Then I obey.  I have taken a lodging for a short time on the
+other side of the brook,--Cromwell Lodge,--and seeing your house as I
+passed, I divined that your room was in this part of it.  How soft
+here is the view of the water!  Ah! yonder is Izaak Walton's
+summer-house."
+
+"Don't talk about Izaak Walton, or I shall quarrel with you, as I did
+with Lion when he wanted me to like that cruel book."
+
+"Who is Lion?"
+
+"Lion,--of course, my guardian.  I called him Lion when I was a little
+child.  It was on seeing in one of his books a print of a lion playing
+with a little child."
+
+"Ah!  I know the design well," said Kenelm, with a slight sigh.  "It
+is from an antique Greek gem.  It is not the lion that plays with the
+child, it is the child that masters the lion, and the Greeks called
+the child 'Love.'"
+
+This idea seemed beyond Lily's perfect comprehension.  She paused
+before she answered, with the naivete of a child six years old,--
+
+"I see now why I mastered Blanche, who will not make friends with any
+one else: I love Blanche.  Ah, that reminds me,--come and look at the
+picture."
+
+She went to the wall over the writing-table, drew a silk curtain aside
+from a small painting in a dainty velvet framework, and pointing to
+it, cried with triumph, "Look there! is it not beautiful?"
+
+Kenelm had been prepared to see a landscape, or a group, or anything
+but what he did see: it was the portrait of Blanche when a kitten.
+
+Little elevated though the subject was, it was treated with graceful
+fancy.  The kitten had evidently ceased from playing with the cotton
+reel that lay between her paws, and was fixing her gaze intently on a
+bulfinch that had lighted on a spray within her reach.
+
+"You understand," said Lily, placing her hand on his arm, and drawing
+him towards what she thought the best light for the picture; "it is
+Blanche's first sight of a bird.  Look well at her face; don't you see
+a sudden surprise,--half joy, half fear?  She ceases to play with the
+reel.  Her intellect--or, as Mr. Braefield would say, 'her
+instinct'--is for the first time aroused.  From that moment Blanche
+was no longer a mere kitten.  And it required, oh, the most careful
+education, to teach her not to kill the poor little birds.  She never
+does now, but I had such trouble with her."
+
+"I cannot say honestly that I do see all that you do in the picture;
+but it seems to me very simply painted, and was, no doubt, a striking
+likeness of Blanche at that early age."
+
+"So it was.  Lion drew the first sketch from life with his pencil; and
+when he saw how pleased I was with it--he was so good--he put it on
+canvas, and let me sit by him while he painted it.  Then he took it
+away, and brought it back finished and framed as you see, last May, a
+present for my birthday."
+
+"You were born in May--with the flowers."
+
+"The best of all the flowers are born in May,--violets."
+
+"But they are born in the shade, and cling to it.  Surely, as a child
+of May, you love the sun!"
+
+"I love the sun; it is never too bright nor too warm for me.  But I
+don't think that, though born in May, I was born in sunlight.  I feel
+more like my own native self when I creep into the shade and sit down
+alone.  I can weep then."
+
+As she thus shyly ended, the character of her whole countenance was
+changed: its infantine mirthfulness was gone; a grave, thoughtful,
+even a sad expression settled on the tender eyes and the tremulous
+lips.
+
+Kenelm was so touched that words failed him, and there was silence for
+some moments between the two.  At length Kenelm said, slowly,--
+
+"You say your own native self.  Do you, then, feel, as I often do,
+that there is a second, possibly a /native/, self, deep hid beneath
+the self,--not merely what we show to the world in common (that may be
+merely a mask), but the self that we ordinarily accept even when in
+solitude as our own, an inner innermost self, oh so different and so
+rarely coming forth from its hiding-place, asserting its right of
+sovereignty, and putting out the other self as the sun puts out a
+star?"
+
+Had Kenelm thus spoken to a clever man of the world--to a Chillingly
+Mivers, to a Chillingly Gordon--they certainly would not have
+understood him.  But to such men he never would have thus spoken.  He
+had a vague hope that this childlike girl, despite so much of
+childlike talk, would understand him; and she did at once.
+
+Advancing close to him, again laying her hand on his arm, and looking
+up towards his bended face with startled wondering eyes, no longer
+sad, yet not mirthful,--
+
+"How true!  You have felt that too?  Where /is/ that innermost self,
+so deep down,--so deep; yet when it does come forth, so much
+higher,--higher,--immeasurably higher than one's everyday self?  It
+does not tame the butterflies; it longs to get to the stars.  And
+then,--and then,--ah, how soon it fades back again!  You have felt
+that.  Does it not puzzle you?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Are there no wise books about it that help to explain?"
+
+"No wise books in my very limited reading even hint at the puzzle.  I
+fancy that it is one of those insoluble questions that rest between
+the infant and his Maker.  Mind and soul are not the same things, and
+what you and I call 'wise men' are always confounding the two--"
+
+Fortunately for all parties--especially the reader; for Kenelm had
+here got on the back of one of his most cherished hobbies, the
+distinction between psychology and metaphysics, soul and mind
+scientifically or logically considered--Mrs. Cameron here entered the
+room, and asked him how he liked the picture.
+
+"Very much.  I am no great judge of the art.  But it pleased me at
+once, and now that Miss Mordaunt has interpreted the intention of the
+painter I admire it yet more."
+
+"Lily chooses to interpret his intention in her own way, and insists
+that Blanche's expression of countenance conveys an idea of her
+capacity to restrain her destructive instinct, and be taught to
+believe that it is wrong to kill birds for mere sport.  For food she
+need not kill them, seeing that Lily takes care that she has plenty to
+eat.  But I don't think that Mr. Melville had the slightest suspicion
+that he had indicated that capacity in his picture."
+
+"He must have done so, whether he suspected it or not," said Lily,
+positively; "otherwise he would not be truthful."
+
+"Why not truthful?" asked Kenelm.
+
+"Don't you see?  If you were called upon to describe truthfully the
+character of any little child, would you only speak of such naughty
+impulses as all children have in common, and not even hint at the
+capacity to be made better?"
+
+"Admirably put!" said Kenelm.  "There is no doubt that a much fiercer
+animal than a cat--a tiger, for instance, or a conquering hero--may be
+taught to live on the kindest possible terms with the creatures on
+which it was its natural instinct to prey."
+
+"Yes, yes; hear that, aunty!  You remember the Happy Family that we
+saw eight years ago, at Moleswich fair, with a cat not half so nice as
+Blanche allowing a mouse to bite her ear?  Well, then, would Lion not
+have been shamefully false to Blanche if he had not"--
+
+Lily paused and looked half shyly, half archly, at Kenelm, then added,
+in slow, deep-drawn tones--"given a glimpse of her innermost self?"
+
+"Innermost self!" repeated Mrs. Cameron, perplexed and laughing
+gently.
+
+Lily stole nearer to Kenelm and whispered,--
+
+"Is not one's innermost self one's best self?"
+
+Kenelm smiled approvingly.  The fairy was rapidly deepening her spell
+upon him.  If Lily had been his sister, his betrothed, his wife, how
+fondly he would have kissed her!  She had expressed a thought over
+which he had often inaudibly brooded, and she had clothed it with all
+the charm of her own infantine fancy and womanlike tenderness.  Goethe
+has said somewhere, or is reported to have said, "There is something
+in every man's heart, that, if you knew it, would make you hate him."
+What Goethe said, still more what Goethe is reported to have said, is
+never to be taken quite literally.  No comprehensive genius--genius at
+once poet and thinker--ever can be so taken.  The sun shines on a
+dunghill.  But the sun has no predilection for a dunghill.  It only
+comprehends a dunghill as it does a rose.  Still Kenelm had always
+regarded that loose ray from Goethe's prodigal orb with an abhorrence
+most unphilosophical for a philosopher so young as generally to take
+upon oath any words of so great a master.  Kenelm thought that the
+root of all private benevolence, of all enlightened advance in social
+reform, lay in the adverse theorem,--that in every man's nature there
+lies a something that, could we get at it, cleanse it, polish it,
+render it visibly clear to our eyes, would make us love him. And in
+this spontaneous, uncultured sympathy with the results of so many
+laborious struggles of his own scholastic intellect against the dogma
+of the German giant, he felt as if he had found a younger--true, but
+oh, how much more subduing, because so much younger--sister of his own
+man's soul.  Then came, so strongly, the sense of her sympathy with
+his own strange innermost self, which a man will never feel more than
+once in his life with a daughter of Eve, that he dared not trust
+himself to speak.  He somewhat hurried his leave-taking.
+
+Passing in the rear of the garden towards the bridge which led to his
+lodging, he found on the opposite bank, at the other end of the
+bridge, Mr. Algernon Sidney Gale Jones peacefully angling for trout.
+
+"Will you not try the stream to-day, sir?  Take my rod."  Kenelm
+remembered that Lily had called Izaak Walton's book "a cruel one," and
+shaking his head gently, went his way into the house.  There he seated
+himself silently by the window, and looked towards the grassy lawn and
+the dipping willows, and the gleam of the white walls through the
+girdling trees, as he had looked the eve before.
+
+"Ah!" he murmured at last, "if, as I hold, a man but tolerably good
+does good unconsciously merely by the act of living,--if he can no
+more traverse his way from the cradle to the grave, without letting
+fall, as he passes, the germs of strength, fertility, and beauty, than
+can a reckless wind or a vagrant bird, which, where it passes, leaves
+behind it the oak, the corn-sheaf, or the flower,--ah, if that be so,
+how tenfold the good must be, if the man find the gentler and purer
+duplicate of his own being in that mysterious, undefinable union which
+Shakspeares and day-labourers equally agree to call love; which Newton
+never recognizes, and which Descartes (his only rival in the realms of
+thought at once severe and imaginative) reduces into links of early
+association, explaining that he loved women who squinted, because,
+when he was a boy, a girl with that infirmity squinted at him from the
+other side of his father's garden-wall!  Ah! be this union between man
+and woman what it may; if it be really love, really the bond which
+embraces the innermost and bettermost self of both,--how daily,
+hourly, momently, should we bless God for having made it so easy to be
+happy and to be good!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE dinner-party at Mr. Braefield's was not quite so small as Kenelm
+had anticipated.  When the merchant heard from his wife that Kenelm
+was coming, he thought it would be but civil to the young gentleman to
+invite a few other persons to meet him.
+
+"You see, my dear," he said to Elsie, "Mrs. Cameron is a very good,
+simple sort of woman, but not particularly amusing; and Lily, though a
+pretty girl, is so exceedingly childish.  We owe much, my sweet Elsie,
+to this Mr. Chillingly,"--here there was a deep tone of feeling in his
+voice and look,--"and we must make it as pleasant for him as we can.
+I will bring down my friend Sir Thomas, and you ask Mr. Emlyn and his
+wife.  Sir Thomas is a very sensible man, and Emlyn a very learned
+one.  So Mr. Chillingly will find people worth talking to.  By the by,
+when I go to town I will send down a haunch of venison from Groves's."
+
+So when Kenelm arrived, a little before six o'clock, he found in the
+drawing-room the Rev. Charles Emlyn, vicar of Moleswich proper, with
+his spouse, and a portly middle-aged man, to whom, as Sir Thomas
+Pratt, Kenelm was introduced.  Sir Thomas was an eminent city banker.
+The ceremonies of introduction over, Kenelm stole to Elsie's side.
+
+"I thought I was to meet Mrs. Cameron.  I don't see her."
+
+"She will be here presently.  It looks as if it might rain, and I have
+sent the carriage for her and Lily.  Ah, here they are!"
+
+Mrs. Cameron entered, clothed in black silk.  She always wore black;
+and behind her came Lily, in the spotless colour that became her name;
+no ornament, save a slender gold chain to which was appended a single
+locket, and a single blush rose in her hair.  She looked wonderfully
+lovely; and with that loveliness there was a certain nameless air of
+distinction, possibly owing to delicacy of form and colouring;
+possibly to a certain grace of carriage, which was not without a
+something of pride.
+
+Mr. Braefield, who was a very punctual man, made a sign to his
+servant, and in another moment or so dinner was announced.  Sir
+Thomas, of course, took in the hostess; Mr. Braefield, the vicar's
+wife (she was a dean's daughter); Kenelm, Mrs. Cameron; and the vicar,
+Lily.
+
+On seating themselves at the table Kenelm was on the left hand, next
+to the hostess, and separated from Lily by Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Emlyn;
+and when the vicar had said grace, Lily glanced behind his back and
+her aunt's at Kenelm (who did the same thing), making at him what the
+French call a /moue/.  The pledge to her had been broken.  She was
+between two men very much grown up,--the vicar and the host.  Kenelm
+returned the /moue/ with a mournful smile and an involuntary shrug.
+
+All was silent till, after his soup and his first glass of sherry, Sir
+Thomas began,--
+
+"I think, Mr. Chillingly, we have met before, though I had not the
+honour then of making your acquaintance."  Sir Thomas paused before he
+added, "Not long ago; the last State ball at Buckingham Palace."
+
+Kenelm bent his head acquiescingly.  He had been at that ball.
+
+"You were talking with a very charming woman,--a friend of mine,--Lady
+Glenalvon."
+
+(Sir Thomas was Lady Glenalvon's banker.)
+
+"I remember perfectly," said Kenelm.  "We were seated in the picture
+gallery.  You came to speak to Lady Glenalvon, and I yielded to you my
+place on the settee."
+
+"Quite true; and I think you joined a young lady, very handsome,--the
+great heiress, Miss Travers."
+
+Kenelm again bowed, and, turning away as politely as he could,
+addressed himself to Mrs. Cameron.  Sir Thomas, satisfied that he had
+impressed on his audience the facts of his friendship with Lady
+Glenalvon and his attendance at the court ball, now directed his
+conversational powers towards the viear, who, utterly foiled in the
+attempt to draw out Lily, met the baronet's advances with the ardour
+of a talker too long suppressed.  Kenelm continued, unmolested, to
+ripen his acquaintance with Mrs. Cameron.  She did not, however, seem
+to lend a very attentive ear to his preliminary commonplace remarks
+about scenery or weather, but at his first pause, said,--
+
+"Sir Thomas spoke about a Miss Travers: is she related to a gentleman
+who was once in the Guards, Leopold Travers?"
+
+"She is his daughter.  Did you ever know Leopold Travers?"
+
+"I have heard him mentioned by friends of mine long ago,--long ago,"
+replied Mrs. Cameron with a sort of weary languor, not unwonted, in
+her voice and manner; and then, as if dismissing the bygone
+reminiscence from her thoughts, changed the subject.
+
+"Lily tells me, Mr. Chillingly, that you said you were staying at Mr.
+Jones's, Cromwell Lodge.  I hope you are made comfortable there."
+
+"Very.  The situation is singularly pleasant."
+
+"Yes, it is considered the prettiest spot on the brook-side, and used
+to be a favourite resort for anglers; but the trout, I believe, are
+growing scarce; at least, now that the fishing in the Thames is
+improved, poor Mr. Jones complains that his old lodgers desert him.
+Of course you took the rooms for the sake of the fishing.  I hope the
+sport may be better than it is said to be."
+
+"It is of little consequence to me: I do not care much about fishing;
+and since Miss Mordaunt calls the book which first enticed me to take
+to it 'a cruel one,' I feel as if the trout had become as sacred as
+crocodiles were to the ancient Egyptians."
+
+"Lily is a foolish child on such matters.  She cannot bear the thought
+of giving pain to any dumb creature; and just before our garden there
+are a few trout which she has tamed.  They feed out of her hand; she
+is always afraid they will wander away and get caught."
+
+"But Mr. Melville is an angler?"
+
+"Several years ago he would sometimes pretend to fish, but I believe
+it was rather an excuse for lying on the grass and reading 'the cruel
+book,' or perhaps, rather, for sketching.  But now he is seldom here
+till autumn, when it grows too cold for such amusement."
+
+Here Sir Thomas's voice was so loudly raised that it stopped the
+conversation between Kenelm and Mrs. Cameron.  He had got into some
+question of politics on which he and the vicar did not agree, and the
+discussion threatened to become warm, when Mrs. Braefield, with a
+woman's true tact, broached a new topic, in which Sir Thomas was
+immediately interested, relating to the construction of a conservatory
+for orchids that he meditated adding to his country-house, and in
+which frequent appeal was made to Mrs. Cameron, who was considered an
+accomplished florist, and who seemed at some time or other in her life
+to have acquired a very intimate acquaintance with the costly family
+of orchids.
+
+When the ladies retired Kenelm found himself seated next to Mr. Emlyn,
+who astounded him by a complimentary quotation from one of his own
+Latin prize poems at the university, hoped he would make some stay at
+Moleswich, told him of the principal places in the neighbourhood worth
+visiting, and offered him the run of his library, which he flattered
+himself was rather rich, both in the best editions of Greek and Latin
+classics and in early English literature.  Kenelm was much pleased
+with the scholarly vicar, especially when Mr. Emlyn began to speak
+about Mrs. Cameron and Lily.  Of the first he said, "She is one of
+those women in whom quiet is so predominant that it is long before one
+can know what undercurrents of good feeling flow beneath the unruffled
+surface.  I wish, however, she was a little more active in the
+management and education of her niece,--a girl in whom I feel a very
+anxious interest, and whom I doubt if Mrs. Cameron understands.
+Perhaps, however, only a poet, and a very peculiar sort of poet, can
+understand her: Lily Mordaunt is herself a poem."
+
+"I like your definition of her," said Kenelm.  "There is certainly
+something about her which differs much from the prose of common life."
+
+"You probably know Wordsworth's lines:
+
+
+   "'  .  .  .  and she shall lean her ear
+     In many a secret place
+     Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
+     And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
+     Shall pass into her face.'
+
+
+"They are lines that many critics have found unintelligible; but Lily
+seems like the living key to them."
+
+Kenelm's dark face lighted up, but he made no answer.
+
+"Only," continued Mr. Emlyn, "how a girl of that sort, left wholly to
+herself, untrained, undisciplined, is to grow up into the practical
+uses of womanhood, is a question that perplexes and saddens me."
+
+"Any more wine?" asked the host, closing a conversation on commercial
+matters with Sir Thomas.  "No?--shall we join the ladies?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE drawing-room was deserted; the ladies were in the garden.  As
+Kenelm and Mr. Emlyn walked side by side towards the group (Sir Thomas
+and Mr. Braefield following at a little distance), the former asked,
+somewhat abruptly, "What sort of man is Miss Cameron's guardian, Mr.
+Melville?"
+
+"I can scarcely answer that question.  I see little of him when he
+comes here.  Formerly, he used to run down pretty often with a
+harum-scarum set of young fellows, quartered at Cromwell
+Lodge,--Grasmere had no accommodation for them,--students in the
+Academy, I suppose.  For some years he has not brought those persons,
+and when he does come himself it is but for a few days.  He has the
+reputation of being very wild."
+
+Further conversation was here stopped.  The two men, while they thus
+talked, had been diverging from the straight way across the lawn
+towards the ladies, turning into sequestered paths through the
+shrubbery; now they emerged into the open sward, just before a table,
+on which coffee was served, and round which all the rest of the party
+were gathered.
+
+"I hope, Mr. Emlyn," said Elsie's cheery voice, "that you have
+dissuaded Mr. Chillingly from turning Papist.  I am sure you have
+taken time enough to do so."
+
+Mr. Emlyn, Protestant every inch of him, slightly recoiled from
+Kenelm's side.  "Do you meditate turning--" He could not conclude the
+sentence.
+
+"Be not alarmed, my dear sir.  I did but own to Mrs. Braefield that I
+had paid a visit to Oxford in order to confer with a learned man on a
+question that puzzled me, and as abstract as that feminine pastime,
+theology, is now-a-days.  I cannot convince Mrs. Braefield that Oxford
+admits other puzzles in life than those which amuse the ladies."  Here
+Kenelm dropped into a chair by the side of Lily.
+
+Lily half turned her back to him.
+
+"Have I offended again?"
+
+Lily shrugged her shoulders slightly and would not answer.
+
+"I suspect, Miss Mordaunt, that among your good qualities, nature has
+omitted one; the bettermost self within you should replace it."
+
+Lily here abruptly turned to him her front face: the light of the
+skies was becoming dim, but the evening star shone upon it.
+
+"How! what do you mean?"
+
+"Am I to answer politely or truthfully?"
+
+"Truthfully!  Oh, truthfully!  What is life without truth?"
+
+"Even though one believes in fairies?"
+
+"Fairies are truthful, in a certain way.  But you are not truthful.
+You were not thinking of fairies when you--"
+
+"When I what?"
+
+"Found fault with me."
+
+"I am not sure of that.  But I will translate to you my thoughts, so
+far as I can read them myself, and to do so I will resort to the
+fairies.  Let us suppose that a fairy has placed her changeling into
+the cradle of a mortal: that into the cradle she drops all manner of
+fairy gifts which are not bestowed on mere mortals; but that one
+mortal attribute she forgets.  The changeling grows up; she charms
+those around her: they humour, and pet, and spoil her.  But there
+arises a moment in which the omission of the one mortal gift is felt
+by her admirers and friends.  Guess what that is."
+
+Lily pondered.  "I see what you mean; the reverse of truthfulness,
+politeness."
+
+"No, not exactly that, though politeness slides into it unawares: it
+is a very humble quality, a very unpoetic quality; a quality that many
+dull people possess; and yet without it no fairy can fascinate
+mortals, when on the face of the fairy settles the first wrinkle.  Can
+you not guess it now?"
+
+"No: you vex me; you provoke me;" and Lily stamped her foot
+petulantly, as in Kenelm's presence she had stamped it once before.
+"Speak plainly, I insist."
+
+"Miss Mordaunt, excuse me: I dare not," said Kenelm, rising with a
+sort of bow one makes to the Queen; and he crossed over to Mrs.
+Braefield.
+
+Lily remained, still pouting fiercely.
+
+Sir Thomas took the chair Kenelm had vacated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE hour for parting came.  Of all the guests, Sir Thomas alone stayed
+at the house a guest for the night.  Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn had their own
+carriage.  Mrs. Braefield's carriage came to the door for Mrs. Cameron
+and Lily.
+
+Said Lily, impatiently and discourteously, "Who would not rather walk
+on such a night?" and she whispered to her aunt.
+
+Mrs. Cameron, listening to the whisper and obedient to every whim of
+Lily's, said, "You are too considerate, dear Mrs. Braefield; Lily
+prefers walking home; there is no chance of rain now."
+
+Kenelm followed the steps of the aunt and niece, and soon overtook
+them on the brook-side.
+
+"A charming night, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Cameron.
+
+"An English summer night; nothing like it in such parts of the world
+as I have visited.  But, alas! of English summer nights there are but
+few."
+
+"You have travelled much abroad?"
+
+"Much, no, a little; chiefly on foot."
+
+Lily hitherto had not said a word, and had been walking with downcast
+head.  Now she looked up and said, in the mildest and most
+conciliatory of human voices,--
+
+"You have been abroad;" then, with an acquiescence in the manners of
+the world which to him she had never yet manifested, she added his
+name, "Mr. Chillingly," and went on, more familiarly.  "What a breadth
+of meaning the word 'abroad' conveys!  Away, afar from one's self,
+from one's everyday life.  How I envy you! you have been abroad: so
+has Lion" (here drawing herself up), "I mean my guardian, Mr.
+Melville."
+
+"Certainly, I have been abroad, but afar from myself--never.  It is an
+old saying,--all old sayings are true; most new sayings are false,--a
+man carries his native soil at the sole of his foot."
+
+Here the path somewhat narrowed.  Mrs. Cameron went on first, Kenelm
+and Lily behind; she, of course, on the dry path, he on the dewy
+grass.
+
+She stopped him.  "You are walking in the wet, and with those thin
+shoes."  Lily moved instinctively away from the dry path.
+
+Homely though that speech of Lily's be, and absurd as said by a
+fragile girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a whole world of
+womanhood: it showed all that undiscoverable land which was hidden to
+the learned Mr. Emlyn, all that land which an uncomprehended girl
+seizes and reigns over when she becomes wife and mother.
+
+At that homely speech, and that impulsive movement, Kenelm halted, in
+a sort of dreaming maze.  He turned timidly, "Can you forgive me for
+my rude words?  I presumed to find fault with you."
+
+"And so justly.  I have been thinking over all you said, and I feel
+you were so right; only I still do not quite understand what you meant
+by the quality for mortals which the fairy did not give to her
+changeling."
+
+"If I did not dare say it before, I should still less dare to say it
+now."
+
+"Do."  There was no longer the stamp of the foot, no longer the flash
+from her eyes, no longer the wilfulness which said, "I insist;"--"
+Do;" soothingly, sweetly, imploringly.
+
+Thus pushed to it, Kenelm plucked up courage, and not trusting himself
+to look at Lily, answered brusquely,--
+
+"The quality desirable for men, but more essential to women in
+proportion as they are fairy-like, though the tritest thing possible,
+is good temper."
+
+Lily made a sudden bound from his side, and joined her aunt, walking
+through the wet grass.
+
+When they reached the garden-gate, Kenelm advanced and opened it.
+Lily passed him by haughtily; they gained the cottage-door.
+
+"I don't ask you in at this hour," said Mrs. Cameron.  "It would be
+but a false compliment."
+
+Kenelm bowed and retreated.  Lily left her aunt's side, and came
+towards him, extending her hand.
+
+"I shall consider your words, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with a
+strangely majestic air.  "At present I think you are not right.  I am
+not ill-tempered; but--" here she paused, and then added with a
+loftiness of mien which, had she not been so exquisitely pretty, would
+have been rudeness--"in any case I forgive you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THERE were a good many pretty villas in the outskirts of Moleswich,
+and the owners of them were generally well off, and yet there was
+little of what is called visiting society; owing perhaps to the fact
+that there not being among these proprietors any persons belonging to
+what is commonly called "the aristocratic class," there was a vast
+deal of aristocratic pretension.  The family of Mr. A-----, who had
+enriched himself as a stock-jobber, turned up its nose at the family
+of Mr. B-----, who had enriched himself still more as a linen-draper,
+while the family of Mr. B----- showed a very cold shoulder to the
+family of Mr. C-----, who had become richer than either of them as a
+pawnbroker, and whose wife wore diamonds, but dropped her h's.
+England would be a community so aristocratic that there would be no
+living in it, if one could exterminate what is now called
+"aristocracy."  The Braefields were the only persons who really drew
+together the antagonistic atoms of the Moleswich society, partly
+because they were acknowledged to be the first persons there, in right
+not only of old settlement (the Braefields had held Braefieldville for
+four generations), but of the wealth derived from those departments of
+commercial enterprise which are recognized as the highest, and of an
+establishment considered to be the most elegant in the neighbourhood;
+principally because Elsie, while exceedingly genial and cheerful in
+temper, had a certain power of will (as her runaway folly had
+manifested), and when she got people together compelled them to be
+civil to each other.  She had commenced this gracious career by
+inaugurating children's parties, and when the children became friends
+the parents necessarily grew closer together.  Still her task had only
+recently begun, and its effects were not in full operation.  Thus,
+though it became known at Moleswich that a young gentleman, the heir
+to a baronetcy and a high estate, was sojourning at Cromwell Lodge, no
+overtures were made to him on the part of the A's, B's, and C's.  The
+vicar, who called on Kenelm the day after the dinner at
+Braefieldville, explained to him the social conditions of the place.
+"You understand," said he, "that it will be from no want of courtesy
+on the part of my neighbours if they do not offer you any relief from
+the pleasures of solitude.  It will be simply because they are shy,
+not because they are uncivil.  And, it is this consideration that
+makes me, at the risk of seeming too forward, entreat you to look into
+the vicarage any morning or evening on which you feel tired of your
+own company; suppose you drink tea with us this evening,--you will
+find a young lady whose heart you have already won."
+
+"Whose heart I have won!" faltered Kenelm, and the warm blood rushed
+to his cheek.
+
+"But," continued the vicar, smiling, "she has no matrimonial designs
+on you at present.  She is only twelve years old,--my little girl
+Clemmy."
+
+"Clemmy!--she is your daughter?  I did not know that.  I very
+gratefully accept your invitation."
+
+"I must not keep you longer from your amusement.  The sky is just
+clouded enough for sport.  What fly do you use?"
+
+"To say truth, I doubt if the stream has much to tempt me in the way
+of trout, and I prefer rambling about the lanes and by-paths to
+
+
+  "'The noiseless angler's solitary stand.'
+
+"I am an indefatigable walker, and the home scenery round the place has
+many charms for me.  Besides," added Kenelm, feeling conscious that he
+ought to find some more plausible excuse than the charms of home
+scenery for locating himself long in Cromwell Lodge, "besides, I
+intend to devote myself a good deal to reading.  I have been very idle
+of late, and the solitude of this place must be favourable to study."
+
+"You are not intended, I presume, for any of the learned professions?"
+
+"The learned professions," replied Kenelm, "is an invidious form of
+speech that we are doing our best to eradicate from the language.  All
+professions now-a-days are to have much about the same amount of
+learning.  The learning of the military profession is to be levelled
+upwards, the learning of the scholastic to be levelled downwards.
+Cabinet ministers sneer at the uses of Greek and Latin.  And even such
+masculine studies as Law and Medicine are to be adapted to the
+measurements of taste and propriety in colleges for young ladies.  No,
+I am not intended for any profession; but still an ignorant man like
+myself may not be the worse for a little book-reading now and then."
+
+"You seem to be badly provided with books here," said the vicar,
+glancing round the room, in which, on a table in the corner, lay
+half-a-dozen old-looking volumes, evidently belonging not to the
+lodger but to the landlord.  "But, as I before said, my library is at
+your service.  What branch of reading do you prefer?"
+
+Kenelm was, and looked, puzzled.  But after a pause he answered:
+
+"The more remote it be from the present day, the better for me.  You
+said your collection was rich in mediaeval literature.  But the Middle
+Ages are so copied by the modern Goths, that I might as well read
+translations of Chaucer or take lodgings in Wardour Street.  If you
+have any books about the manners and habits of those who, according to
+the newest idea in science, were our semi-human progenitors in the
+transition state between a marine animal and a gorilla, I should be
+very much edified by the loan."
+
+"Alas," said Mr. Emlyn, laughing, "no such books have been left to
+us."
+
+"No such books?  You must be mistaken.  There must be plenty of them
+somewhere.  I grant all the wonderful powers of invention bestowed on
+the creators of poetic romance; still not the sovereign masters in
+that realm of literature--not Scott, not Cervantes, not Goethe, not
+even Shakspeare--could have presumed to rebuild the past without such
+materials as they found in the books that record it.  And though I, no
+less cheerfully, grant that we have now living among us a creator of
+poetic romance immeasurably more inventive than they,--appealing to
+our credulity in portents the most monstrous, with a charm of style
+the most conversationally familiar,--still I cannot conceive that even
+that unrivalled romance-writer can so bewitch our understandings as to
+make us believe that, if Miss Mordaunt's cat dislikes to wet her feet,
+it is probably because in the prehistoric age her ancestors lived in
+the dry country of Egypt; or that when some lofty orator, a Pitt or a
+Gladstone, rebuts with a polished smile which reveals his canine teeth
+the rude assault of an opponent, he betrays his descent from a
+'semi-human progenitor' who was accustomed to snap at his enemy.
+Surely, surely there must be some books still extant written by
+philosophers before the birth of Adam, in which there is authority,
+even though but in mythic fable, for such poetic inventions.  Surely,
+surely some early chroniclers must depose that they saw, saw with
+their own eyes, the great gorillas who scratched off their hairy
+coverings to please the eyes of the young ladies of their species, and
+that they noted the gradual metamorphosis of one animal into another.
+For, if you tell me that this illustrious romance-writer is but a
+cautious man of science, and that we must accept his inventions
+according to the sober laws of evidence and fact, there is not the
+most incredible ghost story which does not better satisfy the common
+sense of a sceptic.  However, if you have no such books, lend me the
+most unphilosophical you possess,--on magic, for instance,--the
+philosopher's stone"--
+
+"I have some of them," said the vicar, laughing; "you shall choose for
+yourself."
+
+"If you are going homeward, let me accompany you part of the way: I
+don't yet know where the church and the vicarage are, and I ought to
+know before I come in the evening."
+
+Kenelm and the vicar walked side by side, very sociably, across the
+bridge and on the side of the rivulet on which stood Mrs. Cameron's
+cottage.  As they skirted the garden pale at the rear of the cottage,
+Kenelm suddenly stopped in the middle of some sentence which had
+interested Mr. Emlyn, and as suddenly arrested his steps on the turf
+that bordered the lane.  A little before him stood an old peasant
+woman, with whom Lily, on the opposite side of the garden pale, was
+conversing.  Mr. Emlyn did not at first see what Kenelm saw; turning
+round rather to gaze on his companion, surprised by his abrupt halt
+and silence.  The girl put a small basket into the old woman's hand,
+who then dropped a low curtsy, and uttered low a "God bless you."  Low
+though it was, Kenelm overheard it, and said abstractedly to Mr.
+Emlyn, "Is there a greater link between this life and the next than
+God's blessing on the young, breathed from the lips of the old?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+"AND how is your good man, Mrs. Haley?" said the vicar, who had now
+reached the spot on which the old woman stood,--with Lily's fair face
+still bended down to her,--while Kenelm slowly followed him.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sir, he is better; out of his bed now.  The young
+lady has done him a power of good--"
+
+"Hush!" said Lily, colouring.  "Make haste home now; you must not keep
+him waiting for his dinner."
+
+The old woman again curtsied, and went off at a brisk pace.
+
+"Do you know, Mr. Chillingly," said Mr. Emlyn, "that Miss Mordaunt is
+the best doctor in the place?  Though if she goes on making so many
+cures she will find the number of her patients rather burdensome."
+
+"It was only the other day," said Lily, "that you scolded me for the
+best cure I have yet made."
+
+"I?--Oh!  I remember; you led that silly child Madge to believe that
+there was a fairy charm in the arrowroot you sent her.  Own you
+deserved a scolding there."
+
+"No, I did not.  I dressed the arrowroot, and am I not Fairy?  I have
+just got such a pretty note from Clemmy, Mr. Emlyn, asking me to come
+up this evening and see her new magic lantern.  Will you tell her to
+expect me?  And, mind, no scolding."
+
+"And all magic?" said Mr. Emlyn; "be it so."
+
+Lily and Kenelm had not hitherto exchanged a word.  She had replied
+with a grave inclination of her head to his silent bow.  But now she
+turned to him shyly and said, "I suppose you have been fishing all the
+morning?"
+
+"No; the fishes hereabout are under the protection of a Fairy,--whom I
+dare not displease."
+
+Lily's face brightened, and she extended her hand to him over the
+palings.  "Good-day; I hear aunty's voice: those dreadful French
+verbs!"
+
+She disappeared among the shrubs, amid which they heard the thrill of
+her fresh young voice singing to herself.
+
+"That child has a heart of gold," said Mr. Emlyn, as the two men
+walked on.  "I did not exaggerate when I said she was the best doctor
+in the place.  I believe the poor really do believe that she is a
+fairy.  Of course we send from the vicarage to our ailing parishioners
+who require it, food and wine; but it never seems to do them the good
+that her little dishes made by her own tiny hands do; and I don't know
+if you noticed the basket that old woman took away,--Miss Lily taught
+Will Somers to make the prettiest little baskets; and she puts her
+jellies or other savouries into dainty porcelain gallipots nicely
+fitted into the baskets, which she trims with ribbons.  It is the look
+of the thing that tempts the appetite of the invalids, and certainly
+the child may well be called Fairy at present; but I wish Mrs. Cameron
+would attend a little more strictly to her education.  She can't be a
+fairy forever."
+
+Kenelm sighed, but made no answer.
+
+Mr. Emlyn then turned the conversation to erudite subjects, and so
+they came in sight of the town, when the vicar stopped and pointed
+towards the church, of which the spire rose a little to the left, with
+two aged yew-trees half shadowing the burial-ground, and in the rear a
+glimpse of the vicarage seen amid the shrubs of its garden ground.
+
+"You will know your way now," said the vicar; "excuse me if I quit
+you: I have a few visits to make; among others, to poor Haley, husband
+to the old woman you saw.  I read to him a chapter in the Bible every
+day; yet still I fancy that he believes in fairy charms."
+
+"Better believe too much, than too little," said Kenelm; and he turned
+aside into the village and spent half-an-hour with Will, looking at
+the pretty baskets Lily had taught Will to make.  Then, as he went
+slowly homeward, he turned aside into the churchyard.
+
+The church, built in the thirteenth century, was not large, but it
+probably sufficed for its congregation, since it betrayed no signs of
+modern addition; restoration or repair it needed not.  The centuries
+had but mellowed the tints of its solid walls, as little injured by
+the huge ivy stems that shot forth their aspiring leaves to the very
+summit of the stately tower as by the slender roses which had been
+trained to climb up a foot or so of the massive buttresses.  The site
+of the burial-ground was unusually picturesque: sheltered towards the
+north by a rising ground clothed with woods, sloping down at the south
+towards the glebe pasture-grounds through which ran the brooklet,
+sufficiently near for its brawling gurgle to be heard on a still day.
+Kenelm sat himself on an antique tomb, which was evidently
+appropriated to some one of higher than common rank in bygone days,
+but on which the sculpture was wholly obliterated.
+
+The stillness and solitude of the place had their charms for his
+meditative temperament; and he remained there long, forgetful of time,
+and scarcely hearing the boom of the clock that warned him of its
+lapse.
+
+When suddenly, a shadow--the shadow of a human form--fell on the grass
+on which his eyes dreamily rested.  He looked up with a start, and
+beheld Lily standing before him mute and still.  Her image was so
+present in his thoughts at the moment that he felt a thrill of awe, as
+if the thoughts had conjured up her apparition.  She was the first to
+speak.
+
+"You here, too?" she said very softly, almost whisperingly.  "Too!"
+echoed Kenelm, rising; "too!  'Tis no wonder that I, a stranger to the
+place, should find my steps attracted towards its most venerable
+building.  Even the most careless traveller, halting at some remote
+abodes of the living, turns aside to gaze on the burial-ground of the
+dead.  But my surprise is that you, Miss Mordaunt, should be attracted
+towards the same spot."
+
+"It is my favourite spot," said Lily, "and always has been.  I have
+sat many an hour on that tombstone.  It is strange to think that no
+one knows who sleeps beneath it.  The 'Guide Book to Moleswich,'
+though it gives the history of the church from the reign in which it
+was first built, can only venture a guess that this tomb, the grandest
+and oldest in the burial-ground, is tenanted by some member of a
+family named Montfichet, that was once very powerful in the county,
+and has become extinct since the reign of Henry VI.  But," added Lily,
+"there is not a letter of the name Montfichet left.  I found out more
+than any one else has done; I learned black-letter on purpose; look
+here," and she pointed to a small spot in which the moss had been
+removed.  "Do you see those figures? are they not XVIII? and look
+again, in what was once the line above the figures, ELE.  It must have
+been an Eleanor, who died at the age of eighteen--"
+
+"I rather think it more probable that the figures refer to the date of
+the death, 1318 perhaps; and so far as I can decipher black-letter,
+which is more in my father's line than mine, I think it is AL, not EL,
+and that it seems as if there had been a letter between L and the
+second E, which is now effaced.  The tomb itself is not likely to
+belong to any powerful family then resident at the place.  Their
+monuments, according to usage, would have been within the
+church,--probably in their own mortuary chapel."
+
+"Don't try to destroy my fancy," said Lily, shaking her head; "you
+cannot succeed, I know her history too well.  She was young, and some
+one loved her, and built over her the finest tomb he could afford; and
+see how long the epitaph must have been! how much it must have spoken
+in her praise and of his grief.  And then he went his way, and the
+tomb was neglected, and her fate forgotten."
+
+"My dear Miss Mordaunt, this is indeed a wild romance to spin out of
+so slender a thread.  But even if true, there is no reason to think
+that a life is forgotten, though a tomb be neglected."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Lily, thoughtfully.  "But when I am dead, if I can
+look down, I think it would please me to see my grave not neglected by
+those who had loved me once."
+
+She moved from him as she said this, and went to a little mound that
+seemed not long since raised; there was a simple cross at the head and
+a narrow border of flowers round it.  Lily knelt beside the flowers
+and pulled out a stray weed.  Then she rose, and said to Kenelm, who
+had followed, and now stood beside her,--
+
+"She was the little grandchild of poor old Mrs. Hales.  I could not
+cure her, though I tried hard: she was so fond of me, and died in my
+arms.  No, let me not say 'died,'--surely there is no such thing as
+dying.  'Tis but a change of life,--
+
+
+      'Less than the void between two waves of air,
+       The space between existence and a soul.'"
+
+
+"Whose lines are those?" asked Kenelm.
+
+"I don't know; I learnt them from Lion.  Don't you believe them to be
+true?"
+
+"Yes.  But the truth does not render the thought of quitting this
+scene of life for another more pleasing to most of us.  See how soft
+and gentle and bright is all that living summer land beyond; let us
+find subject for talk from that, not from the graveyard on which we
+stand."
+
+"But is there not a summer land fairer than that we see now; and which
+we do see, as in a dream, best when we take subjects of talk from the
+graveyard?"  Without waiting for a reply, Lily went on.  "I planted
+these flowers: Mr. Emlyn was angry with me; he said it was 'Popish.'
+But he had not the heart to have them taken up; I come here very often
+to see to them.  Do you think it wrong?  Poor little Nell! she was so
+fond of flowers.  And the Eleanor in the great tomb, she too perhaps
+knew some one who called her Nell; but there are no flowers round her
+tomb.  Poor Eleanor!"
+
+She took the nosegay she wore on her bosom, and as she repassed the
+tomb laid it on the mouldering stone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THEY quitted the burial-ground, taking their way to Grasmere.  Kenelm
+walked by Lily's side; not a word passed between them till they came
+in sight of the cottage.
+
+Then Lily stopped abruptly, and lifting towards him her charming face,
+said,--
+
+"I told you I would think over what you said to me last night.  I have
+done so, and feel I can thank you honestly.  You were very kind: I
+never before thought that I had a bad temper; no one ever told me so.
+But I see now what you mean; sometimes I feel very quickly, and then I
+show it.  But how did I show it to you, Mr. Chillingly?"
+
+"Did you not turn your back to me when I seated myself next you in
+Mrs. Braefield's garden, vouchsafing me no reply when I asked if I had
+offended?"
+
+Lily's face became bathed in blushes, and her voice faltered, as she
+answered,--
+
+"I was not offended; I was not in a bad temper then: it was worse than
+that."
+
+"Worse? what could it possibly be?"
+
+"I am afraid it was envy."
+
+"Envy of what? of whom?"
+
+"I don't know how to explain; after all, I fear aunty is right, and
+the fairy tales put very silly, very naughty thoughts into one's head.
+When Cinderella's sisters went to the king's ball, and Cinderella was
+left alone, did not she long to go too?  Did not she envy her
+sisters?"
+
+"Ah! I understand now: Sir Charles spoke of the Court Ball."
+
+"And you were there talking with handsome ladies--and--oh!  I was so
+foolish and felt sore."
+
+"You, who when we first met wondered how people who could live in the
+country preferred to live in towns, do then sometimes contradict
+yourself, and sigh for the great world that lies beyond these quiet
+water banks.  You feel that you have youth and beauty, and wish to be
+admired!"
+
+"It is not that exactly," said Lily, with a perplexed look in her
+ingenuous countenance, "and in my better moments, when the 'bettermost
+self' comes forth, I know that I am not made for the great world you
+speak of.  But you see--"  Here she paused again, and as they had now
+entered the garden, dropped wearily on a bench beside the path.
+Kenelm seated himself there too, waiting for her to finish her broken
+sentence.
+
+"You see," she continued, looking down embarrassed, and describing
+vague circles on the gravel with her fairy-like foot, "that at home,
+ever since I can remember, they have treated me as if--well, as if I
+were--what shall I say? the child of one of your great ladies.  Even
+Lion, who is so noble, so grand, seemed to think when I was a mere
+infant that I was a little queen: once when I told a fib he did not
+scold me; but I never saw him look so sad and so angry as when he
+said, 'Never again forget that you are a lady.' And, but I tire you--"
+
+"Tire me, indeed! go on."
+
+"No, I have said enough to explain why I have at times proud thoughts,
+and vain thoughts; and why, for instance, I said to myself, 'Perhaps
+my place of right is among those fine ladies whom he--' but it is all
+over now."  She rose hastily with a pretty laugh, and bounded towards
+Mrs. Cameron, who was walking slowly along the lawn with a book in her
+hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IT was a very merry party at the vicarage that evening.  Lily had not
+been prepared to meet Kenelm there, and her face brightened
+wonderfully as at her entrance he turned from the book-shelves to
+which Mr. Emlyn was directing his attention.  But instead of meeting
+his advance, she darted off to the lawn, where Clemmy and several
+other children greeted her with a joyous shout.
+
+"Not acquainted with Macleane's Juvenal?" said the reverend scholar;
+"you will be greatly pleased with it; here it is,--a posthumous work,
+edited by George Long.  I can lend you Munro's Lucretius, '69.  Aha!
+we have some scholars yet to pit against the Germans."
+
+"I am heartily glad to hear it," said Kenelm.  "It will be a long time
+before they will ever wish to rival us in that game which Miss Clemmy
+is now forming on the lawn, and in which England has recently acquired
+a European reputation."
+
+"I don't take you.  What game?"
+
+"Puss in the Corner.  With your leave I will look out and see whether
+it be a winning game for puss--in the long-run."  Kenelm joined the
+children, amidst whom Lily seemed not the least childlike.  Resisting
+all overtures from Clemmy to join their play, he seated himself on a
+sloping bank at a little distance,--an idle looker-on.  His eye
+followed Lily's nimble movements, his ear drank in the music of her
+joyous laugh.  Could that be the same girl whom he had seen tending
+the flower-bed amid the gravestones?  Mrs. Emlyn came across the lawn
+and joined him, seating herself also on the bank.  Mrs. Emlyn was an
+exceedingly clever woman: nevertheless she was not formidable,--on the
+contrary, pleasing; and though the ladies in the neighbourhood said
+'she talked like a book,' the easy gentleness of her voice carried off
+that offence.
+
+"I suppose, Mr. Chillingly," said she, "I ought to apologize for my
+husband's invitation to what must seem to you so frivolous an
+entertainment as a child's party.  But when Mr. Emlyn asked you to
+come to us this evening, he was not aware that Clemmy had also invited
+her young friends.  He had looked forward to rational conversation
+with you on his own favourite studies."
+
+"It is not so long since I left school, but that I prefer a half
+holiday to lessons, even from a tutor so pleasant as Mr. Emlyn,--
+
+
+     "'Ah, happy years,--once more who would not be a boy!'"
+
+
+"Nay," said Mrs. Emlyn, with a grave smile.  "Who that had started so
+fairly as Mr. Chillingly in the career of man would wish to go back
+and resume a place among boys?"
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Emlyn, the line I quoted was wrung from the heart
+of a man who had already outstripped all rivals in the race-ground he
+had chosen, and who at that moment was in the very Maytime of youth
+and of fame.  And if such a man at such an epoch in his career could
+sigh to 'be once more a boy,' it must have been when he was thinking
+of the boy's half holiday, and recoiling from the task work he was
+condemned to learn as man."
+
+"The line you quote is, I think, from 'Childe Harold,' and surely you
+would not apply to mankind in general the sentiment of a poet so
+peculiarly self-reflecting (if I may use that expression), and in whom
+sentiment is often so morbid."
+
+"You are right, Mrs. Emlyn," said Kenelm, ingenuously.  "Still a boy's
+half holiday is a very happy thing; and among mankind in general there
+must be many who would be glad to have it back again,--Mr. Emlyn
+himself, I should think."
+
+"Mr. Emlyn has his half holiday now.  Do you not see him standing just
+outside the window?  Do you not hear him laughing?  He is a child
+again in the mirth of his children.  I hope you will stay some time in
+the neighbourhood; I am sure you and he will like each other.  And it
+is such a rare delight to him to get a scholar like yourself to talk
+to."
+
+"Pardon me, I am not a scholar; a very noble title that, and not to be
+given to a lazy trifler on the surface of book-lore like myself."
+
+"You are too modest.  My husband has a copy of your Cambridge prize
+verses, and says 'the Latinity of them is quite beautiful.' I quote
+his very words."
+
+"Latin verse-making is a mere knack, little more than a proof that one
+had an elegant scholar for one's tutor, as I certainly had.  But it is
+by special grace that a real scholar can send forth another real
+scholar, and a Kennedy produce a Munro.  But to return to the more
+interesting question of half holidays; I declare that Clemmy is
+leading off your husband in triumph.  He is actually going to be Puss
+in the Corner."
+
+"When you know more of Charles,--I mean my husband,--you will discover
+that his whole life is more or less of a holiday.  Perhaps because he
+is not what you accuse yourself of being: he is not lazy; he never
+wishes to be a boy once more; and taskwork itself is holiday to him.
+He enjoys shutting himself up in his study and reading; he enjoys a
+walk with the children; he enjoys visiting the poor; he enjoys his
+duties as a clergyman.  And though I am not always contented for him,
+though I think he should have had those honours in his profession
+which have been lavished on men with less ability and less learning,
+yet he is never discontented himself.  Shall I tell you his secret?"
+
+"Do."
+
+"He is a /Thanks-giving Man/.  You, too, must have much to thank God
+for, Mr. Chillingly; and in thanksgiving to God does there not blend
+usefulness to man, and such sense of pastime in the usefulness as
+makes each day a holiday?"
+
+Kenelm looked up into the quiet face of this obscure pastor's wife
+with a startled expression in his own.
+
+"I see, ma'am," said he, "that you have devoted much thought to the
+study of the aesthetical philosophy as expounded by German thinkers,
+whom it is rather difficult to understand."
+
+"I, Mr. Chillingly! good gracious!  No!  What do you mean by your
+aesthetical philosophy?"
+
+"According to aesthetics, I believe man arrives at his highest state
+of moral excellence when labour and duty lose all the harshness of
+effort,--when they become the impulse and habit of life; when as the
+essential attributes of the beautiful, they are, like beauty, enjoyed
+as pleasure; and thus, as you expressed, each day becomes a holiday: a
+lovely doctrine, not perhaps so lofty as that of the Stoics, but more
+bewitching.  Only, very few of us can practically merge our cares and
+our worries into so serene an atmosphere."
+
+"Some do so without knowing anything of aesthetics and with no
+pretence to be Stoics; but, then, they are Christians."
+
+"There are some such Christians, no doubt; but they are rarely to be
+met with.  Take Christendom altogether, and it appears to comprise the
+most agitated population in the world; the population in which there
+is the greatest grumbling as to the quantity of labour to be done, the
+loudest complaints that duty instead of a pleasure is a very hard and
+disagreeable struggle, and in which holidays are fewest and the moral
+atmosphere least serene.  Perhaps," added Kenelm, with a deeper shade
+of thought on his brow, "it is this perpetual consciousness of
+struggle; this difficulty in merging toil into ease, or stern duty
+into placid enjoyment; this refusal to ascend for one's self into the
+calm of an air aloof from the cloud which darkens, and the hail-storm
+which beats upon, the fellow-men we leave below,--that makes the
+troubled life of Christendom dearer to Heaven, and more conducive to
+Heaven's design in rendering earth the wrestling-ground and not the
+resting-place of man, than is that of the Brahmin, ever seeking to
+abstract himself from the Christian's conflicts of action and desire,
+and to carry into its extremest practice the aesthetic theory, of
+basking undisturbed in the contemplation of the most absolute beauty
+human thought can reflect from its idea of divine good!"
+
+Whatever Mrs. Emlyn might have said in reply was interrupted by the
+rush of the children towards her; they were tired of play, and eager
+for tea and the magic lantern.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE room is duly obscured and the white sheet attached to the wall;
+the children are seated, hushed, and awe-stricken.  And Kenelm is
+placed next to Lily.
+
+The tritest things in our mortal experience are among the most
+mysterious.  There is more mystery in the growth of a blade of grass
+than there is in the wizard's mirror or the feats of a spirit medium.
+Most of us have known the attraction that draws one human being to
+another, and makes it so exquisite a happiness to sit quiet and mute
+by another's side; which stills for the moment the busiest thoughts in
+our brain, the most turbulent desires in our heart, and renders us but
+conscious of a present ineffable bliss.  Most of us have known that.
+But who has ever been satisfied with any metaphysical account of its
+why or wherefore?  We can but say it is love, and love at that earlier
+section of its history which has not yet escaped from romance; but by
+what process that other person has become singled out of the whole
+universe to attain such special power over one is a problem that,
+though many have attempted to solve it, has never attained to
+solution.  In the dim light of the room Kenelm could only distinguish
+the outlines of Lily's delicate face, but at each new surprise in the
+show, the face intuitively turned to his, and once, when the terrible
+image of a sheeted ghost, pursuing a guilty man, passed along the
+wall, she drew closer to him in her childish fright, and by an
+involuntary innocent movement laid her hand on his.  He detained it
+tenderly, but, alas! it was withdrawn the next moment; the ghost was
+succeeded by a couple of dancing dogs.  And Lily's ready laugh--partly
+at the dogs, partly at her own previous alarm--vexed Kenelm's ear.  He
+wished there had been a succession of ghosts, each more appalling than
+the last.
+
+The entertainment was over, and after a slight refreshment of cakes
+and wine-and-water the party broke up; the children visitors went away
+attended by servant-maids who had come for them.  Mrs. Cameron and
+Lily were to walk home on foot.
+
+"It is a lovely night, Mrs. Cameron," said Mr. Emlyn, "and I will
+attend you to your gate."
+
+"Permit me also," said Kenelm.
+
+"Ay," said the vicar, "it is your own way to Cromwell Lodge."
+
+The path led them through the churchyard as the nearest approach to
+the brook-side.  The moonbeams shimmered through the yew-trees and
+rested on the old tomb; playing, as it were, round the flowers which
+Lily's hand had that day dropped upon its stone.  She was walking
+beside Kenelm, the elder two a few paces in front.
+
+"How silly I was," said she, "to be so frightened at the false ghost!
+I don't think a real one would frighten me, at least if seen here, in
+this loving moonlight, and on God's ground!"
+
+"Ghosts, were they permitted to appear except in a magic lantern,
+could not harm the innocent.  And I wonder why the idea of their
+apparition should always have been associated with such phantasies of
+horror, especially by sinless children, who have the least reason to
+dread them."
+
+"Oh, that is true," cried Lily; "but even when we are grown up there
+must be times in which we should so long to see a ghost, and feel what
+a comfort, what a joy it would be."
+
+"I understand you.  If some one very dear to us had vanished from our
+life; if we felt the anguish of the separation so intensely as to
+efface the thought that life, as you said so well, 'never dies;' well,
+yes, then I can conceive that the mourner would yearn to have a
+glimpse of the vanished one, were it but to ask the sole and only
+question he could desire to put, 'Art thou happy?  May I hope that we
+shall meet again, never to part,--never?'"
+
+Kenelm's voice trembled as he spoke, tears stood in his eyes.  A
+melancholy--vague, unaccountable, overpowering--passed across his
+heart, as the shadow of some dark-winged bird passes over a quiet
+stream.
+
+"You have never yet felt this?" asked Lily doubtingly, in a soft
+voice, full of tender pity, stopping short and looking into his face.
+
+"I?  No.  I have never yet lost one whom I so loved and so yearned to
+see again.  I was but thinking that such losses may befall us all ere
+we too vanish out of sight."
+
+"Lily!" called forth Mrs. Cameron, halting at the gate of the
+burial-ground.
+
+"Yes, auntie?"
+
+"Mr. Emlyn wants to know how far you have got in 'Numa Pompilius.'
+Come and answer for yourself."
+
+"Oh, those tiresome grown-up people!" whispered Lily, petulantly, to
+Kenelm.  "I do like Mr. Emlyn; he is one of the very best of men.  But
+still he is grown up, and his 'Numa Pompilius' is so stupid."
+
+"My first French lesson-book.  No, it is not stupid.  Read on.  It has
+hints of the prettiest fairy tale I know, and of the fairy in especial
+who bewitched my fancies as a boy."
+
+By this time they had gained the gate of the burial-ground.
+
+"What fairy tale? what fairy?" asked Lily, speaking quickly.
+
+"She was a fairy, though in heathen language she is called a
+nymph,--Egeria.  She was the link between men and gods to him she
+loved; she belongs to the race of gods.  True, she, too, may vanish,
+but she can never die."
+
+"Well, Miss Lily," said the vicar, "and how far in the book I lent
+you,--'Numa Pompilius.'"
+
+"Ask me this day next week."
+
+"I will; but mind you are to translate as you go on.  I must see the
+translation."
+
+"Very well.  I will do my best," answered Lily meekly.  Lily now
+walked by the vicar's side, and Kenelm by Mrs. Cameron's, till they
+reached Grasmere.
+
+"I will go on with you to the bridge, Mr. Chillingly," said the vicar,
+when the ladies had disappeared within their garden.  "We had little
+time to look over my books, and, by the by, I hope you at least took
+the Juvenal."
+
+"No, Mr. Emlyn; who can quit your house with an inclination for
+satire?  I must come some morning and select a volume from those works
+which give pleasant views of life and bequeath favourable impressions
+of mankind.  Your wife, with whom I have had an interesting
+conversation, upon the principles of aesthetical philosophy--"
+
+"My wife!  Charlotte!  She knows nothing about aesthetical
+philosophy."
+
+"She calls it by another name, but she understands it well enough to
+illustrate the principles by example.  She tells me that labour and
+duty are so taken up by you--
+
+
+     'In den heitern Regionen
+       Wo die reinen Formen wohnen,'
+
+
+that they become joy and beauty,--is it so?"
+
+"I am sure that Charlotte never said anything half so poetical.  But,
+in plain words, the days pass with me very happily.  I should be
+ungrateful if I were not happy.  Heaven has bestowed on me so many
+sources of love,--wife, children, books, and the calling which, when
+one quits one's own threshold, carries love along with it into the
+world beyond; a small world in itself,--only a parish,--but then my
+calling links it with infinity."
+
+"I see; it is from the sources of love that you draw the supplies for
+happiness."
+
+"Surely; without love one may be good, but one could scarcely be
+happy.  No one can dream of a heaven except as the abode of love.
+What writer is it who says, 'How well the human heart was understood
+by him who first called God by the name of Father'?"
+
+"I do not remember, but it is beautifully said.  You evidently do not
+subscribe to the arguments in Decimus Roach's 'Approach to the
+Angels.'"
+
+"Ah, Mr. Chillingly! your words teach me how lacerated a man's
+happiness may be if he does not keep the claws of vanity closely
+pared.  I actually feel a keen pang when you speak to me of that
+eloquent panegyric on celibacy, ignorant that the only thing I ever
+published which I fancied was not without esteem by intellectual
+readers is a Reply to 'The Approach to the Angels,'--a youthful book,
+written in the first year of my marriage.  But it obtained success: I
+have just revised the tenth edition of it."
+
+"That is the book I will select from your library.  You will be
+pleased to hear that Mr. Roach, whom I saw at Oxford a few days ago,
+recants his opinions, and, at the age of fifty, is about to be
+married; he begs me to add, 'not for his own personal satisfaction.'"
+
+"Going to be married!--Decimus Roach!  I thought my Reply would
+convince him at last."
+
+"I shall look to your Reply to remove some lingering doubts in my own
+mind."
+
+"Doubts in favour of celibacy?"
+
+"Well, if not for laymen, perhaps for a priesthood."
+
+"The most forcible part of my Reply is on that head: read it
+attentively.  I think that, of all sections of mankind, the clergy are
+those to whom, not only for their own sakes, but for the sake of the
+community, marriage should be most commended.  Why, sir," continued
+the vicar, warming up into oratorical enthusiasm, "are you not aware
+that there are no homes in England from which men who have served and
+adorned their country have issued forth in such prodigal numbers as
+those of the clergy of our Church?  What other class can produce a
+list so crowded with eminent names as we can boast in the sons we have
+reared and sent forth into the world?  How many statesmen, soldiers,
+sailors, lawyers, physicians, authors, men of science, have been the
+sons of us village pastors?  Naturally: for with us they receive
+careful education; they acquire of necessity the simple tastes and
+disciplined habits which lead to industry and perseverance; and, for
+the most part, they carry with them throughout life a purer moral
+code, a more systematic reverence for things and thoughts religious,
+associated with their earliest images of affection and respect, than
+can be expected from the sons of laymen whose parents are wholly
+temporal and worldly. Sir, I maintain that this is a cogent argument,
+to be considered well by the nation, not only in favour of a married
+clergy,--for, on that score, a million of Roaches could not convert
+public opinion in this country,--but in favour of the Church, the
+Established Church, which has been so fertile a nursery of illustrious
+laymen; and I have often thought that one main and undetected cause of
+the lower tone of morality, public and private, of the greater
+corruption of manners, of the more prevalent scorn of religion which
+we see, for instance, in a country so civilized as France, is, that
+its clergy can train no sons to carry into the contests of earth the
+steadfast belief in accountability to Heaven."
+
+"I thank you with a full heart," said Kenelm.  "I shall ponder well
+over all that you have so earnestly said.  I am already disposed to
+give up all lingering crotchets as to a bachelor clergy; but, as a
+layman, I fear that I shall never attain to the purified philanthropy
+of Mr. Decimus Roach, and, if ever I do marry, it will be very much
+for my personal satisfaction."
+
+Mr. Emlyn laughed good-humouredly, and, as they had now reached the
+bridge, shook hands with Kenelm, and walked homewards, along the
+brook-side and through the burial-ground, with the alert step and the
+uplifted head of a man who has joy in life and admits of no fear in
+death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FOR the next two weeks or so Kenelm and Lily met not indeed so often
+as the reader might suppose, but still frequently; five times at Mrs.
+Braefield's, once again at the vicarage, and twice when Kenelm had
+called at Grasmere; and, being invited to stay to tea at one of those
+visits, he stayed the whole evening.  Kenelm was more and more
+fascinated in proportion as he saw more and more of a creature so
+exquisitely strange to his experience.  She was to him not only a
+poem, but a poem in the Sibylline Books; enigmatical, perplexing
+conjecture, and somehow or other mysteriously blending its interest
+with visions of the future.
+
+Lily was indeed an enchanting combination of opposites rarely blended
+into harmony.  Her ignorance of much that girls know before they
+number half her years was so relieved by candid, innocent simplicity,
+so adorned by pretty fancies and sweet beliefs, and so contrasted and
+lit up by gleams of a knowledge that the young ladies we call well
+educated seldom exhibit,--knowledge derived from quick observation of
+external Nature, and impressionable susceptibility to its varying and
+subtle beauties.  This knowledge had been perhaps first instilled, and
+subsequently nourished, by such poetry as she had not only learned by
+heart, but taken up as inseparable from the healthful circulation of
+her thoughts; not the poetry of our own day,--most young ladies know
+enough of that,--but selected fragments from the verse of old, most of
+them from poets now little read by the young of either sex, poets dear
+to spirits like Coleridge or Charles Lamb,--none of them, however, so
+dear to her as the solemn melodies of Milton.  Much of such poetry she
+had never read in books: it had been taught her in childhood by her
+guardian the painter.  And with all this imperfect, desultory culture,
+there was such dainty refinement in her every look and gesture, and
+such deep woman-tenderness of heart.  Since Kenelm had commended "Numa
+Pompilius" to her study, she had taken very lovingly to that
+old-fashioned romance, and was fond of talking to him about Egeria as
+of a creature who had really existed.
+
+But what was the effect that he,--the first man of years correspondent
+to her own with whom she had ever familiarly conversed,--what was the
+effect that Kenelm Chillingly produced on the mind and the heart of
+Lily?
+
+This was, after all, the question that puzzled him the most,--not
+without reason: it might have puzzled the shrewdest bystander.  The
+artless candour with which she manifested her liking to him was at
+variance with the ordinary character of maiden love; it seemed more
+the fondness of a child for a favourite brother.  And it was this
+uncertainty that, in his own thoughts, justified Kenelm for lingering
+on, and believing that it was necessary to win, or at least to learn
+more of, her secret heart before he could venture to disclose his own.
+He did not flatter himself with the pleasing fear that he might be
+endangering her happiness; it was only his own that was risked.  Then,
+in all those meetings, all those conversations to themselves, there
+had passed none of the words which commit our destiny to the will of
+another.  If in the man's eyes love would force its way, Lily's frank,
+innocent gaze chilled it back again to its inward cell.  Joyously as
+she would spring forward to meet him, there was no tell-tale blush on
+her cheek, no self-betraying tremor in her clear, sweet-toned voice.
+No; there had not yet been a moment when he could say to himself, "She
+loves me."  Often he said to himself, "She knows not yet what love
+is."
+
+In the intervals of time not passed in Lily's society, Kenelm would
+take long rambles with Mr. Emlyn, or saunter into Mrs. Braefield's
+drawing-room.  For the former he conceived a more cordial sentiment of
+friendship than he entertained for any man of his own age,--a
+friendship that admitted the noble elements of admiration and respect.
+
+Charles Emlyn was one of those characters in which the colours appear
+pale unless the light be brought very close to them, and then each
+tint seems to change into a warmer and richer one.  The manner which,
+at first, you would call merely gentle, becomes unaffectedly genial;
+the mind you at first might term inert, though well-informed, you now
+acknowledge to be full of disciplined vigour.  Emlyn was not, however,
+without his little amiable foibles; and it was, perhaps, these that
+made him lovable.  He was a great believer in human goodness, and very
+easily imposed upon by cunning appeals to "his well-known
+benevolence."  He was disposed to overrate the excellence of all that
+he once took to his heart.  He thought he had the best wife in the
+world, the best children, the best servants, the best beehive, the
+best pony, and the best house-dog.  His parish was the most virtuous,
+his church the most picturesque, his vicarage the prettiest,
+certainly, in the whole shire,--perhaps, in the whole kingdom.
+Probably it was this philosophy of optimism which contributed to lift
+him into the serene realm of aesthetic joy.
+
+He was not without his dislikes as well as likings.  Though a liberal
+Churchman towards Protestant dissenters, he cherished the /odium
+theologicum/ for all that savoured of Popery.  Perhaps there was
+another cause for this besides the purely theological one.  Early in
+life a young sister of his had been, to use his phrase, "secretly
+entrapped" into conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, and had since
+entered a convent.  His affections had been deeply wounded by this
+loss to the range of them.  Mr. Emlyn had also his little infirmities
+of self-esteem rather than of vanity.  Though he had seen very little
+of any world beyond that of his parish, he piqued himself on his
+knowledge of human nature and of practical affairs in general.
+Certainly no man had read more about them, especially in the books of
+the ancient classics.  Perhaps it was owing to this that he so little
+understood Lily,--a character to which the ancient classics afforded
+no counterpart nor clue; and perhaps it was this also that made Lily
+think him "so terribly grown up."  Thus, despite his mild good-nature,
+she did not get on very well with him.
+
+The society of this amiable scholar pleased Kenelm the more, because
+the scholar evidently had not the remotest idea that Kenelm's sojourn
+at Cromwell Lodge was influenced by the vicinity to Grasmere.  Mr.
+Emlyn was sure that he knew human nature, and practical affairs in
+general, too well to suppose that the heir to a rich baronet could
+dream of taking for wife a girl without fortune or rank, the orphan
+ward of a low-born artist only just struggling into reputation; or,
+indeed, that a Cambridge prizeman, who had evidently read much on
+grave and dry subjects, and who had no less evidently seen a great
+deal of polished society, could find any other attraction in a very
+imperfectly-educated girl, who tamed butterflies and knew no more than
+they did of fashionable life, than Mr. Emlyn himself felt in the
+presence of a pretty wayward innocent child, the companion and friend
+of his Clemmy.
+
+Mrs. Braefield was more discerning; but she had a good deal of tact,
+and did not as yet scare Kenelm away from her house by letting him see
+how much she had discerned.  She would not even tell her husband, who,
+absent from the place on most mornings, was too absorbed in the cares
+of his own business to interest himself much in the affairs of others.
+
+Now Elsie, being still of a romantic turn of mind, had taken it into
+her head that Lily Mordaunt, if not actually the princess to be found
+in poetic dramas whose rank was for a while kept concealed, was yet
+one of the higher-born daughters of the ancient race whose name she
+bore, and in that respect no derogatory alliance for Kenelm
+Chillingly.  A conclusion she had arrived at from no better evidence
+than the well-bred appearance and manners of the aunt, and the
+exquisite delicacy of the niece's form and features, with the
+undefinable air of distinction which accompanied even her most
+careless and sportive moments.  But Mrs. Braefield also had the wit to
+discover that, under the infantine ways and phantasies of this almost
+self-taught girl, there lay, as yet undeveloped, the elements of a
+beautiful womanhood.  So that altogether, from the very day she first
+re-encountered Kenelm, Elsie's thought had been that Lily was the wife
+to suit him.  Once conceiving that idea, her natural strength of will
+made her resolve on giving all facilities to carry it out silently and
+unobtrusively, and therefore skilfully.
+
+"I am so glad to think," she said one day, when Kenelm had joined her
+walk through the pleasant shrubberies in her garden ground, "that you
+have made such friends with Mr. Emlyn.  Though all hereabouts like him
+so much for his goodness, there are few who can appreciate his
+learning.  To you it must be a surprise as well as pleasure to find,
+in this quiet humdrum place, a companion so clever and well-informed:
+it compensates for your disappointment in discovering that our brook
+yields such bad sport."
+
+"Don't disparage the brook; it yields the pleasantest banks on which
+to lie down under old pollard oaks at noon, or over which to saunter
+at morn and eve.  Where those charms are absent even a salmon could
+not please.  Yes; I rejoice to have made friends with Mr. Emlyn.  I
+have learned a great deal from him, and am often asking myself whether
+I shall ever make peace with my conscience by putting what I have
+learned into practice."
+
+"May I ask what special branch of learning is that?"
+
+"I scarcely know how to define it.  Suppose we call it
+'Worth-whileism.' Among the New Ideas which I was recommended to study
+as those that must govern my generation, the Not-worth-while Idea
+holds a very high rank; and being myself naturally of calm and equable
+constitution, that new idea made the basis of my philosophical system.
+But since I have become intimate with Charles Emlyn I think there is a
+great deal to be said in favour of Worth-whileism, old idea though it
+be.  I see a man who, with very commonplace materials for interest or
+amusement at his command, continues to be always interested or
+generally amused; I ask myself why and how?  And it seems to me as if
+the cause started from fixed beliefs which settle his relations with
+God and man, and that settlement he will not allow any speculations to
+disturb.  Be those beliefs questionable or not by others, at least
+they are such as cannot displease a Deity, and cannot fail to be
+kindly and useful to fellow-mortals.  Then he plants these beliefs on
+the soil of a happy and genial home, which tends to confirm and
+strengthen and call them into daily practice; and when he goes forth
+from home, even to the farthest verge of the circle that surrounds it,
+he carries with him the home influences of kindliness and use.
+Possibly my line of life may be drawn to the verge of a wider circle
+than his; but so much the better for interest and amusement, if it can
+be drawn from the same centre; namely, fixed beliefs daily warmed into
+vital action in the sunshine of a congenial home."
+
+Mrs. Braefield listened to this speech with pleased attention, and as
+it came to its close, the name of Lily trembled on her tongue, for she
+divined that when he spoke of home Lily was in his thoughts; but she
+checked the impulse, and replied by a generalized platitude.
+
+"Certainly the first thing in life is to secure a happy and congenial
+home.  It must be a terrible trial for the best of us if we marry
+without love."
+
+"Terrible, indeed, if the one loves and the other does not."
+
+"That can scarcely be your case, Mr. Chillingly, for I am sure you
+could not marry where you did not love; and do not think I flatter you
+when I say that a man far less gifted than you can scarcely fail to be
+loved by the woman he wooes and wins."
+
+Kenelm, in this respect one of the modestest of human beings, shook
+his head doubtingly, and was about to reply in self-disparagement,
+when, lifting his eyes and looking round, he halted mute and still as
+if rooted to the spot.  They had entered the trellised circle through
+the roses of which he had first caught sight of the young face that
+had haunted him ever since.
+
+"Ah!" he said abruptly; "I cannot stay longer here, dreaming away the
+work-day hours in a fairy ring.  I am going to town to-day by the next
+train."
+
+"Yoa are coming back?"
+
+"Of course,--this evening.  I left no address at my lodgings in
+London.  There must be a large accumulation of letters; some, no
+doubt, from my father and mother.  I am only going for them.  Good-by.
+How kindly you have listened to me!"
+
+"Shall we fix a day next week for seeing the remains of the old Roman
+villa?  I will ask Mrs. Cameron and her niece to be of the party."
+
+"Any day you please," said Kenelm joyfully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+KENELM did indeed find a huge pile of letters and notes on reaching
+his forsaken apartment in Mayfair; many of them merely invitations for
+days long past, none of them of interest except two from Sir Peter,
+three from his mother, and one from Tom Bowles.
+
+Sir Peter's were short.  In the first he gently scolded Kenelm for
+going away without communicating any address; and stated the
+acquaintance he had formed with Gordon, the favourable impression that
+young gentleman had made on him, the transfer of the L20,000 and the
+invitation given to Gordon, the Traverses, and Lady Glenalvon.  The
+second, dated much later, noted the arrival of his invited guests,
+dwelt with warmth unusual to Sir Peter on the attractions of Cecilia,
+and took occasion to refer, not the less emphatically because as it
+were incidentally, to the sacred promise which Kenelm had given him
+never to propose to a young lady until the case had been submitted to
+the examination and received the consent of Sir Peter.  "Come to
+Exmundham, and if I do not give my consent to propose to Cecilia
+Travers hold me a tyrant and rebel."
+
+Lady Chillingly's letters were much longer.  They dwelt more
+complainingly on his persistence in eccentric habits; so exceedingly
+unlike other people, quitting London at the very height of the season,
+going without even a servant nobody knew where: she did not wish to
+wound his feelings; but still those were not the ways natural to a
+young gentleman of station.  If he had no respect for himself, he
+ought to have some consideration for his parents, especially his poor
+mother.  She then proceeded to comment on the elegant manners of
+Leopold Travers, and the good sense and pleasant conversation of
+Chillingly Gordon, a young man of whom any mother might be proud.
+From that subject she diverged to mildly querulous references to
+family matters.  Parson John had expressed himself very rudely to Mr.
+Chillingly Gordon upon some book by a foreigner,--Comte or Count, or
+some such name,--on which, so far as she could pretend to judge, Mr.
+Gordon had uttered some very benevolent sentiments about humanity,
+which, in the most insolent manner, Parson John had denounced as an
+attack on religion.  But really Parson John was too High Church for
+her.  Having thus disposed of Parson John, she indulged some ladylike
+wailings on the singular costume of the three Miss Chillinglys.  They
+had been asked by Sir Peter, unknown to her--so like him--to meet
+their guests; to meet Lady Glenalvon and Miss Travers, whose dress was
+so perfect (here she described their dress); and they came in
+pea-green with pelerines of mock blonde, and Miss Sally with corkscrew
+ringlets and a wreath of jessamine, "which no girl after eighteen
+would venture to wear."
+
+"But, my dear," added her ladyship, "your poor father's family are
+certainly great oddities.  I have more to put up with than any one
+knows.  I do my best to carry it off.  I know my duties, and will do
+them."
+
+Family grievances thus duly recorded and lamented, Lady Chillingly
+returned to her guests.
+
+Evidently unconscious of her husband's designs on Cecilia, she
+dismissed her briefly: "A very handsome young lady, though rather too
+blonde for her taste, and certainly with an air /distingue/."  Lastly,
+she enlarged on the extreme pleasure she felt on meeting again the
+friend of her youth, Lady Glenalvon.
+
+"Not at all spoilt by the education of the great world, which, alas!
+obedient to the duties of wife and mother, however little my
+sacrifices are appreciated, I have long since relinquished.  Lady
+Glenalvon suggests turning that hideous old moat into a fernery,--a
+great improvement.  Of course your poor father makes objections."
+
+Tom's letter was written on black-edged paper, and ran thus:--
+
+
+DEAR SIR,--Since I had the honour to see you in London I have had a
+sad loss: my poor uncle is no more.  He died very suddenly after a
+hearty supper.  One doctor says it was apoplexy, another valvular
+disease of the heart.  He has left me his heir, after providing for
+his sister: no one had an idea that he had saved so much money.  I am
+quite a rich man now.  And I shall leave the veterinary business,
+which of late--since I took to reading, as you kindly advised--is not
+much to my liking  The principal corn-merchant here has offered to
+take me into partnership; and, from what I can see, it will be a very
+good thing and a great rise in life.  But, sir, I can't settle to it
+at present; I can't settle, as I would wish to anything.  I know you
+will not laugh at me when I say I have a strange longing to travel for
+a while.  I have been reading books of travels, and they get into my
+head more than any other books.  But I don't think I could leave the
+country with a contented heart till I have had just another look at
+you know whom,--just to see her, and know she is happy.  I am sure I
+could shake hands with Will and kiss her little one without a wrong
+thought.  What do you say to that, dear sir?  You promised to write to
+me about her.  But I have not heard from you.  Susey, the little girl
+with the flower-ball, has had a loss too: the poor old man she lived
+with died within a few days of my dear uncle's decease.  Mother moved
+here, as I think you know, when the forge at Graveleigh was sold; and
+she is going to take Susey to live with her.  She is quite fond of
+Susey.  Pray let me hear from you soon; and do, dear sir, give me your
+advice about travelling--and about Her.  You see I should like Her to
+think of me more kindly when I am in distant parts.
+
+     I remain, dear sir,
+
+          Your grateful servant,
+
+               T.  BOWLES.
+
+P.S.--Miss Travers has sent me Will's last remittance.  There is very
+little owed me now; so they must be thriving.  I hope she is not
+overworked.
+
+
+On returning by the train that evening, Kenelm went to the house of
+Will Somers.  The shop was already closed, but he was admitted by a
+trusty servant-maid to the parlour, where he found them all at supper,
+except indeed the baby, who had long since retired to the cradle, and
+the cradle had been removed upstairs.  Will and Jessie were very proud
+when Kenelm invited himself to share their repast, which, though
+simple, was by no means a bad one.  When the meal was over and the
+supper things removed, Kenelm drew his chair near to the glass door
+which led into a little garden very neatly kept--for it was Will's
+pride to attend to it before he sat down to his more professional
+work.  The door was open, and admitted the coolness of the starlit air
+and the fragrance of the sleeping flowers.
+
+"You have a pleasant home here, Mrs. Somers."
+
+"We have, indeed, and know how to bless him we owe it to."
+
+"I am rejoiced to think that.  How often when God designs a special
+kindness to us He puts the kindness into the heart of a
+fellow-man,--perhaps the last fellow-man we should have thought of;
+but in blessing him we thank God who inspired him.  Now, my dear
+friends, I know that you all three suspect me of being the agent whom
+God chose for His benefits.  You fancy that it was from me came the
+loan which enabled you to leave Graveleigh and settle here.  You are
+mistaken,--you look incredulous."
+
+"It could not be the Squire," exclaimed Jessie.  "Miss Travers assured
+me that it was neither he nor herself.  Oh, it must be you, sir.  I
+beg pardon, but who else could it be?"
+
+"Your husband shall guess.  Suppose, Will, that you had behaved ill to
+some one who was nevertheless dear to you, and on thinking over it
+afterwards felt very sorry and much ashamed of yourself, and suppose
+that later you had the opportunity and the power to render a service
+to that person, do you think you would do it?"
+
+"I should be a bad man if I did not."
+
+"Bravo!  And supposing that when the person you thus served came to
+know it was you who rendered the service, he did not feel thankful, he
+did not think it handsome of you, thus to repair any little harm he
+might have done you before, but became churlish and sore and
+cross-grained, and with a wretched false pride said that because he
+had offended you once he resented your taking the liberty of
+befriending him now, would you not think that person an ungrateful
+fellow; ungrateful not only to you his fellow-man,--that is of less
+moment,--but ungrateful to the God who put it into your heart to be
+His human agent in the benefit received?"
+
+"Well, sir, yes, certainly," said Will, with all the superior
+refinement of his intellect to that of Jessie, unaware of what Kenelm
+was driving at; while Jessie, pressing her hands tightly together,
+turned pale, and with a frightened hurried glance towards Will's face,
+answered, impulsively,--
+
+"Oh, Mr. Chillingly, I hope you are not thinking, not speaking, of Mr.
+Bowles?"
+
+"Whom else should I think or speak of?"
+
+Will rose nervously from his chair, all his features writhing.
+
+"Sir, sir, this is a bitter blow,--very bitter, very."
+
+Jessie rushed to Will, flung her arms round him and sobbed.  Kenelm
+turned quietly to old Mrs. Somers, who had suspended the work on which
+since supper she had been employed, knitting socks for the baby,--
+
+"My dear Mrs. Somers, what is the good of being a grandmother and
+knitting socks for baby grandchildren, if you cannot assure those
+silly children of yours that they are too happy in each other to
+harbour any resentment against a man who would have parted them, and
+now repents?"
+
+Somewhat to Kenelm's admiration, I dare not say surprise, old Mrs.
+Somers, thus appealed to, rose from her seat, and, with a dignity of
+thought or of feeling no one could have anticipated from the quiet
+peasant woman, approached the wedded pair, lifted Jessie's face with
+one hand, laid the other on Will's head, and said, "If you don't long
+to see Mr. Bowles again and say 'The Lord bless you, sir!' you don't
+deserve the Lord's blessing upon you."  Therewith she went back to her
+seat, and resumed her knitting.
+
+"Thank Heaven, we have paid back the best part of the loan," said
+Will, in very agitated tones, "and I think, with a little pinching,
+Jessie, and with selling off some of the stock, we might pay the rest;
+and then,"--and then he turned to Kenelm,--"and then, sir, we will"
+(here a gulp) "thank Mr. Bowles."
+
+"This don't satisfy me at all, Will," answered Kenelm; "and since I
+helped to bring you two together, I claim the right to say I would
+never have done so could I have guessed you could have trusted your
+wife so little as to allow a remembrance of Mr. Bowles to be a thought
+of pain.  You did not feel humiliated when you imagined that it was to
+me you owed some moneys which you have been honestly paying off.
+Well, then, I will lend you whatever trifle remains to discharge your
+whole debts to Mr. Bowles, so that you may sooner be able to say to
+him, 'Thank you.'  But between you and me, Will, I think you will be a
+finer fellow and a manlier fellow if you decline to borrow that trifle
+of me; if you feel you would rather say 'Thank you' to Mr. Bowles,
+without the silly notion that when you have paid him his money you owe
+him nothing for his kindness."
+
+Will looked away irresolutely.  Kenelm went on: "I have received a
+letter from Mr. Bowles to-day.  He has come into a fortune, and thinks
+of going abroad for a time; but before he goes, he says he should like
+to shake hands with Will, and be assured by Jessie that all his old
+rudeness is forgiven.  He had no notion that I should blab about the
+loan: he wished that to remain always a secret.  But between friends
+there need be no secrets.  What say you, Will?  As head of this
+household, shall Mr. Bowles be welcomed here as a friend or not?"
+
+"Kindly welcome," said old Mrs. Somers, looking up from the socks.
+
+"Sir," said Will, with sudden energy, "look here; you have never been
+in love, I dare say.  If you had, you would not be so hard on me.  Mr.
+Bowles was in love with my wife there.  Mr. Bowles is a very fine man,
+and I am a cripple."
+
+"Oh, Will!  Will!" cried Jessie.
+
+"But I trust my wife with my whole heart and soul; and, now that the
+first pang is over, Mr. Bowles shall be, as mother says, kindly
+welcome,--heartily welcome."
+
+"Shake hands.  Now you speak like a man, Will.  I hope to bring Bowles
+here to supper before many days are over."
+
+And that night Kenelm wrote to Mr. Bowles:
+
+
+MY DEAR TOM,--Come and spend a few days with me at Cromwell Lodge,
+Moleswich.  Mr. and Mrs. Somers wish much to see and to thank you.  I
+could not remain forever degraded in order to gratify your whim.  They
+would have it that I bought their shop, etc., and I was forced in
+self-defence to say who it was.  More on this and on travels when you
+come.
+
+     Your true friend,
+
+          K. C.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MRS. CAMERON was seated alone in her pretty drawing-room, with a book
+lying open, but unheeded, on her lap.  She was looking away from its
+pages, seemingly into the garden without, but rather into empty space.
+
+To a very acute and practised observer, there was in her countenance
+an expression which baffled the common eye.
+
+To the common eye it was simply vacant; the expression of a quiet,
+humdrum woman, who might have been thinking of some quiet humdrum
+household detail,--found that too much for her, and was now not
+thinking at all.
+
+But to the true observer, there were in that face indications of a
+troubled past, still haunted with ghosts never to be laid at
+rest,--indications, too, of a character in herself that had undergone
+some revolutionary change; it had not always been the character of a
+woman quiet and humdrum.  The delicate outlines of the lip and nostril
+evinced sensibility, and the deep and downward curve of it bespoke
+habitual sadness.  The softness of the look into space did not tell of
+a vacant mind, but rather of a mind subdued and over-burdened by the
+weight of a secret sorrow.  There was also about her whole presence,
+in the very quiet which made her prevalent external characteristic,
+the evidence of manners formed in a high-bred society,--the society in
+which quiet is connected with dignity and grace.  The poor understood
+this better than her rich acquaintances at Moleswich, when they said,
+"Mrs. Cameron was every inch a lady."  To judge by her features she
+must once have been pretty, not a showy prettiness, but decidedly
+pretty.  Now, as the features were small, all prettiness had faded
+away in cold gray colourings, and a sort of tamed and slumbering
+timidity of aspect.  She was not only not demonstrative, but must have
+imposed on herself as a duty the suppression of demonstration.  Who
+could look at the formation of those lips, and not see that they
+belonged to the nervous, quick, demonstrative temperament?  And yet,
+observing her again more closely, that suppression of the
+constitutional tendency to candid betrayal of emotion would the more
+enlist our curiosity or interest; because, if physiognomy and
+phrenology have any truth in them, there was little strength in her
+character.  In the womanly yieldingness of the short curved upper lip,
+the pleading timidity of the regard, the disproportionate but elegant
+slenderness of the head between the ear and the neck, there were the
+tokens of one who cannot resist the will, perhaps the whim, of another
+whom she either loves or trusts.
+
+The book open on her lap is a serious book on the doctrine of grace,
+written by a popular clergyman of what is termed "the Low Church."
+She seldom read any but serious books, except where such care as she
+gave to Lily's education compelled her to read "Outlines of History
+and Geography," or the elementary French books used in seminaries for
+young ladies.  Yet if any one had decoyed Mrs. Cameron into familiar
+conversation, he would have discovered that she must early have
+received the education given to young ladies of station.  She could
+speak and write French and Italian as a native.  She had read, and
+still remembered, such classic authors in either language as are
+conceded to the use of pupils by the well-regulated taste of orthodox
+governesses.  She had a knowledge of botany, such as botany was taught
+twenty years ago.  I am not sure that, if her memory had been fairly
+aroused, she might not have come out strong in divinity and political
+economy, as expounded by the popular manuals of Mrs. Marcet.  In
+short, you could see in her a thoroughbred English lady, who had been
+taught in a generation before Lily's, and immeasurably superior in
+culture to the ordinary run of English young ladies taught nowadays.
+So, in what after all are very minor accomplishments,--now made major
+accomplishments,--such as music, it was impossible that a connoisseur
+should hear her play on the piano without remarking, "That woman has
+had the best masters of her time."  She could only play pieces that
+belonged to her generation.  She had learned nothing since.  In short,
+the whole intellectual culture had come to a dead stop long years ago,
+perhaps before Lily was born.
+
+Now, while she is gazing into space Mrs. Braefield is announced.  Mrs.
+Cameron does not start from revery.  She never starts.  But she makes
+a weary movement of annoyance, resettles herself, and lays the serious
+book on the sofa table.  Elsie enters, young, radiant, dressed in all
+the perfection of the fashion, that is, as ungracefully as in the eyes
+of an artist any gentlewoman can be; but rich merchants who are proud
+of their wives so insist, and their wives, in that respect,
+submissively obey them.
+
+The ladies interchange customary salutations, enter into the customary
+preliminaries of talk, and after a pause Elsie begins in earnest.
+
+"But sha'n't I see Lily?  Where is she?"
+
+"I fear she has gone into the town.  A poor little boy, who did our
+errands, has met with an accident,--fallen from a cherry-tree."
+
+"Which he was robbing?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+"And Lily has gone to lecture him?"
+
+"I don't know as to that; but he is much hurt, and Lily has gone to
+see what is the matter with him."
+
+Mrs. Braefield, in her frank outspoken way,--"I don't take much to
+girls of Lily's age in general, though I am passionately fond of
+children.  You know how I do take to Lily; perhaps because she is so
+like a child.  But she must be an anxious charge to you."
+
+Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious "No; she is still a child, a very
+good one; why should I be anxious?"
+
+Mrs. Braefield, impulsively,--"Why, your child must now be eighteen."
+
+Mrs. Cameron,--"Eighteen--is it possible!  How time flies! though in a
+life so monotonous as mine, time does not seem to fly, it slips on
+like the lapse of water.  Let me think,--eighteen?  No, she is but
+seventeen,--seventeen last May."
+
+Mrs. Braefield,--"Seventeen!  A very anxious age for a girl; an age in
+which dolls cease and lovers begin."
+
+Mrs. Cameron, not so languidly, but still quietly,--"Lily never cared
+much for dolls,--never much for lifeless pets; and as to lovers, she
+does not dream of them."
+
+Mrs. Braefield, briskly,--"There is no age after six in which girls do
+not dream of lovers.  And here another question arises.  When a girl
+so lovely as Lily is eighteen next birthday, may not a lover dream of
+her?"
+
+Mrs. Cameron, with that wintry cold tranquillity of manner, which
+implies that in putting such questions an interrogator is taking a
+liberty,--"As no lover has appeared, I cannot trouble myself about his
+dreams."
+
+Said Elsie inly to herself, "This is the stupidest woman I ever met!"
+and aloud to Mrs. Cameron,--"Do you not think that your neighbour, Mr.
+Chillingly, is a very fine young man?"
+
+"I suppose he would be generally considered so.  He is very tall."
+
+"A handsome face?"
+
+"Handsome, is it?  I dare say."
+
+"What does Lily say?"
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About Mr. Chillingly.  Does she not think him handsome?"
+
+"I never asked her."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Cameron, would it not be a very pretty match for Lily?
+The Chillinglys are among the oldest families in Burke's 'Landed
+Gentry,' and I believe his father, Sir Peter, has a considerable
+property."
+
+For the first time in this conversation Mrs. Cameron betrayed emotion.
+A sudden flush overspread her countenance, and then left it paler than
+before.  After a pause she recovered her accustomed composure, and
+replied, rudely,--
+
+"It would be no friend to Lily who could put such notions into her
+head; and there is no reason to suppose that they have entered into
+Mr. Chillingly's."
+
+"Would you be sorry if they did?  Surely you would like your niece to
+marry well, and there are few chances of her doing so at Moleswich."
+
+"Pardon me, Mrs. Braefield, but the question of Lily's marriage I have
+never discussed, even with her guardian.  Nor, considering the
+childlike nature of her tastes and habits, rather than the years she
+has numbered, can I think the time has yet come for discussing it at
+all."
+
+Elsie, thus rebuked, changed the subject to some newspaper topic which
+interested the public mind at the moment and very soon rose to depart.
+Mrs. Cameron detained the hand that her visitor held out, and said in
+low tones, which, though embarrassed, were evidently earnest, "My dear
+Mrs. Braefield, let me trust to your good sense and the affection with
+which you have honoured my niece not to incur the risk of unsettling
+her mind by a hint of the ambitious projects for her future on which
+you have spoken to me.  It is extremely improbable that a young man of
+Mr. Chillingly's expectations would entertain any serious thoughts of
+marrying out of his own sphere of life, and--"
+
+"Stop, Mrs. Cameron, I must interrupt you.  Lily's personal
+attractions and grace of manner would adorn any station; and have I
+not rightly understood you to say that though her guardian, Mr.
+Melville, is, as we all know, a man who has risen above the rank of
+his parents, your niece, Miss Mordaunt, is like yourself, by birth a
+gentlewoman?"
+
+"Yes, by birth a gentlewoman," said Mrs. Cameron, raising her head
+with a sudden pride.  But she added, with as sudden a change to a sort
+of freezing humility, "What does that matter?  A girl without fortune,
+without connection, brought up in this little cottage, the ward of a
+professional artist, who was the son of a city clerk, to whom she owes
+even the home she has found, is not in the same sphere of life as Mr.
+Chillingly, and his parents could not approve of such an alliance for
+him.  It would be most cruel to her, if you were to change the
+innocent pleasure she may take in the conversation of a clever and
+well-informed stranger into the troubled interest which, since you
+remind me of her age, a girl even so childlike and beautiful as Lily
+might conceive in one represented to her as the possible partner of
+her life.  Don't commit that cruelty; don't--don't, I implore you!"
+
+"Trust me," cried the warm-hearted Elsie, with tears rushing to her
+eyes.  "What you say so sensibly, so nobly, never struck me before.  I
+do not know much of the world,--knew nothing of it till I
+married,--and being very fond of Lily, and having a strong regard for
+Mr. Chillingly, I fancied I could not serve both better
+than--than--but I see now; he is very young, very peculiar; his
+parents might object, not to Lily herself, but to the circumstances
+you name.  And you would not wish her to enter any family where she
+was not as cordially welcomed as she deserves to be.  I am glad to
+have had this talk with you.  Happily, I have done no mischief as yet.
+I will do none.  I had come to propose an excursion to the remains of
+the Roman Villa, some miles off, and to invite you and Mr. Chillingly.
+I will no longer try to bring him and Lily together."
+
+"Thank you.  But you still misconstrue me.  I do not think that Lily
+cares half so much for Mr. Chillingly as she does for a new butterfly.
+I do not fear their coming together, as you call it, in the light in
+which she now regards him, and in which, from all I observe, he
+regards her.  My only fear is that a hint might lead her to regard him
+in another way, and that way impossible."
+
+Elsie left the house extremely bewildered, and with a profound
+contempt for Mrs. Cameron's knowledge of what may happen to two young
+persons "brought together."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+NOW, on that very day, and about the same hour in which the
+conversation just recorded between Elsie and Mrs. Cameron took place,
+Kenelm, in his solitary noonday wanderings, entered the burial-ground
+in which Lily had some short time before surprised him.  And there he
+found her, standing beside the flower border which she had placed
+round the grave of the child whom she had tended and nursed in vain.
+
+The day was cloudless and sunless; one of those days that so often
+instil a sentiment of melancholy into the heart of an English summer.
+
+"You come here too often, Miss Mordaunt," said Kenelm, very softly, as
+he approached.
+
+Lily turned her face to him, without any start of surprise, with no
+brightening change in its pensive expression,--an expression rare to
+the mobile play of her features.
+
+"Not too often.  I promised to come as often as I could; and, as I
+told you before, I have never broken a promise yet."
+
+Kenelm made no answer.  Presently the girl turned from the spot, and
+Kenelm followed her silently till she halted before the old tombstone
+with its effaced inscription.
+
+"See," she said, with a faint smile, "I have put fresh flowers there.
+Since the day we met in this churchyard, I have thought so much of
+that tomb, so neglected, so forgotten, and--" she paused a moment, and
+went on abruptly, "do you not often find that you are much too--what
+is the word? ah! too egotistical, considering and pondering and
+dreaming greatly too much about yourself?"
+
+"Yes, you are right there; though, till you so accused me, my
+conscience did not detect it."
+
+"And don't you find that you escape from being so haunted by the
+thought of yourself, when you think of the dead? they can never have
+any share in your existence /here/.  When you say, 'I shall do this or
+that to-day;' when you dream, 'I may be this or that to-morrow,' you
+are thinking and dreaming, all by yourself, for yourself.  But you are
+out of yourself, beyond yourself, when you think and dream of the
+dead, who can have nothing to do with your to-day or your to-morrow."
+
+As we all know, Kenelm Chillingly made it one of the rules of his life
+never to be taken by surprise.  But when the speech I have written
+down came from the lips of that tamer of butterflies, he was so
+startled that all it occurred to him to say, after a long pause,
+was,--
+
+"The dead are the past; and with the past rests all in the present or
+the future that can take us out of our natural selves.  The past
+decides our present.  By the past we divine our future.  History,
+poetry, science, the welfare of states, the advancement of
+individuals, are all connected with tombstones of which inscriptions
+are effaced.  You are right to honour the mouldered tombstones with
+fresh flowers.  It is only in the companionship of the dead that one
+ceases to be an egotist."
+
+If the imperfectly educated Lily had been above the quick
+comprehension of the academical Kenelm in her speech, so Kenelm was
+now above the comprehension of Lily.  She, too, paused before she
+replied,--
+
+"If I knew you better, I think I could understand you better.  I wish
+you knew Lion.  I should like to hear you talk with him."
+
+While thus conversing, they had left the burial-ground, and were in
+the pathway trodden by the common wayfarer.
+
+Lily resumed,--"Yes, I should like to hear you talk with Lion."
+
+"You mean your guardian, Mr. Melville?"
+
+"Yes, you know that."
+
+"And why should you like to hear me talk to him?"
+
+"Because there are some things in which I doubt if he was altogether
+right, and I would ask you to express my doubts to him; you would,
+would you not?"
+
+"But why can you not express them yourself to your guardian; are you
+afraid of him?"
+
+"Afraid, no indeed!  But--ah, how many people there are coming this
+way!  There is some tiresome public meeting in the town to-day.  Let
+us take the ferry: the other side of the stream is much pleasanter; we
+shall have it more to ourselves."
+
+Turning aside to the right while she thus spoke, Lily descended a
+gradual slope to the margin of the stream, on which they found an old
+man dozily reclined in his ferry-boat.
+
+As, seated side by side, they were slowly borne over the still waters
+under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his
+companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance
+at the ferryman.  Evidently what she had to say was too confidential
+to admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to
+take the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to
+him.  Lily soon did address her talk to him, "So, Brown, the cow has
+quite recovered."
+
+"Yes, Miss, thanks to you, and God bless you.  To think of your
+beating the old witch like that!"
+
+"'Tis not I who beat the witch, Brown; 'tis the fairy.  Fairies, you
+know, are much more powerful than witches."
+
+"So I find, Miss."
+
+Lily here turned to Kenelm; "Mr. Brown has a very nice milch-cow that
+was suddenly taken very ill, and both he and his wife were convinced
+that the cow was bewitched."
+
+"Of course it were, that stands to reason.  Did not Mother Wright tell
+my old woman that she would repent of selling milk, and abuse her
+dreadful; and was not the cow taken with shivers that very night?"
+
+"Gently, Brown.  Mother Wright did not say that your wife would repent
+of selling milk, but of putting water into it."
+
+"And how did she know that, if she was not a witch?  We have the best
+of customers among the gentlefolks, and never any one that
+complained."
+
+"And," answered Lily to Kenelm, unheeding this last observation, which
+was made in a sullen manner, "Brown had a horrid notion of enticing
+Mother Wright into his ferry-boat and throwing her into the water, in
+order to break the spell upon the cow.  But I consulted the fairies,
+and gave him a fairy charm to tie round the cow's neck.  And the cow
+is quite well now, you see.  So, Brown, there was no necessity to
+throw Mother Wright into the water, because she said you put some of
+it into the milk.  But," she added, as the boat now touched the
+opposite bank, "shall I tell you, Brown, what the fairies said to me
+this morning?"
+
+"Do, Miss."
+
+"It was this: If Brown's cow yields milk without any water in it, and
+if water gets into it when the milk is sold, we, the fairies, will
+pinch Mr. Brown black and blue; and when Brown has his next fit of
+rheumatics he must not look to the fairies to charm it away."
+
+Herewith Lily dropped a silver groat into Brown's hand, and sprang
+lightly ashore, followed by Kenelm.
+
+"You have quite converted him, not only as to the existence, but as to
+the beneficial power of fairies," said Kenelm.
+
+"Ah," answered Lily very gravely, "ah, but would it not be nice if
+there were fairies still? good fairies, and one could get at them?
+tell them all that troubles and puzzles us, and win from them charms
+against the witchcraft we practise on ourselves?"
+
+"I doubt if it would be good for us to rely on such supernatural
+counsellors.  Our own souls are so boundless that the more we explore
+them the more we shall find worlds spreading upon worlds into
+infinities; and among the worlds is Fairyland."  He added, inly to
+himself, "Am I not in Fairyland now?"
+
+"Hush!" whispered Lily.  "Don't speak more yet awhile.  I am thinking
+over what you have just said, and trying to understand it."
+
+Thus walking silently they gained the little summer-house which
+tradition dedicated to the memory of Izaak Walton.  Lily entered it
+and seated herself; Kenelm took his place beside her.  It was a small
+octagon building which, judging by its architecture, might have been
+built in the troubled reign of Charles I.; the walls plastered within
+were thickly covered with names and dates, and inscriptions in praise
+of angling, in tribute to Izaak, or with quotations from his books.
+On the opposite side they could see the lawn of Grasmere, with its
+great willows dipping into the water.  The stillness of the place,
+with its associations of the angler's still life, were in harmony with
+the quiet day, its breezeless air, and cloud-vested sky.
+
+"You were to tell me your doubts in connection with your guardian,
+doubts if he were right in something which you left unexplained, which
+you could not yourself explain to him."
+
+Lily started as from thoughts alien to the subject thus reintroduced.
+"Yes, I cannot mention my doubts to him because they relate to me, and
+he is so good.  I owe him so much that I could not bear to vex him by
+a word that might seem like reproach or complaint.  You remember,"
+here she drew nearer to him; and with that ingenuous confiding look
+and movement which had, not unfrequently, enraptured him at the
+moment, and saddened him on reflection,--too ingenuous, too confiding,
+for the sentiment with which he yearned to inspire her,--she turned
+towards him her frank untimorous eyes, and laid her hand on his arm:
+"you remember that I said in the burial-ground how much I felt that
+one is constantly thinking too much of one's self.  That must be
+wrong.  In talking to you only about myself I know I am wrong, but I
+cannot help it: I must do so.  Do not think ill of me for it. You see
+I have not been brought up like other girls.  Was my guardian right in
+that?  Perhaps if he had insisted upon not letting me have my own
+wilful way, if he had made me read the books which Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn
+wanted to force on me, instead of the poems and fairy tales which he
+gave me, I should have had so much more to think of that I should have
+thought less of myself.  You said that the dead were the past; one
+forgets one's self when one thinks of the dead.  If I had read more of
+the past, had more subjects of interest in the dead whose history it
+tells, surely I should be less shut up, as it were, in my own small,
+selfish heart?  It is only very lately I have thought of this, only
+very lately that I have felt sorrow and shame in the thought that I am
+so ignorant of what other girls know, even little Clemmy.  And I dare
+not say this to Lion when I see him next, lest he should blame
+himself, when he only meant to be kind, and used to say, 'I don't want
+Fairy to be learned, it is enough for me to think she is happy.'  And
+oh, I was so happy, till--till of late!"
+
+"Because till of late you only knew yourself as a child.  But, now
+that you feel the desire of knowledge, childhood is vanishing.  Do not
+vex yourself.  With the mind which nature has bestowed on you, such
+learning as may fit you to converse with those dreaded 'grown-up
+folks' will come to you very easily and quickly.  You will acquire
+more in a month now than you would have acquired in a year when you
+were a child, and task-work was loathed, not courted.  Your aunt is
+evidently well instructed, and if I might venture to talk to her about
+the choice of books--"
+
+"No, don't do that.  Lion would not like it."
+
+"Your guardian would not like you to have the education common to
+other young ladies?"
+
+"Lion forbade my aunt to teach me much that I rather wished to learn.
+She wanted to do so, but she has given it up at his wish.  She only
+now teases me with those horrid French verbs, and that I know is a
+mere make-belief.  Of course on Sunday it is different; then I must
+not read anything but the Bible and sermons.  I don't care so much for
+the sermons as I ought, but I could read the Bible all day, every
+week-day as well as Sunday; and it is from the Bible that I learn that
+I ought to think less about myself."
+
+Kenelm involuntarily pressed the little hand that lay so innocently on
+his arm.
+
+"Do you know the difference between one kind of poetry and another?"
+asked Lily, abruptly.
+
+"I am not sure.  I ought to know when one kind is good and another
+kind is bad.  But in that respect I find many people, especially
+professed critics, who prefer the poetry which I call bad to the
+poetry I think good."
+
+"The difference between one kind of poetry and another, supposing them
+both to be good," said Lily, positively, and with an air of triumph,
+"is this,--I know, for Lion explained it to me,--in one kind of poetry
+the writer throws himself entirely out of his existence, he puts
+himself into other existences quite strange to his own.  He may be a
+very good man, and he writes his best poetry about very wicked men: he
+would not hurt a fly, but he delights in describing murderers.  But in
+the other kind of poetry the writer does not put himself into other
+existences, he expresses his own joys and sorrows, his own individual
+heart and mind.  If he could not hurt a fly, he certainly could not
+make himself at home in the cruel heart of a murderer.  There, Mr.
+Chillingly, that is the difference between one kind of poetry and
+another."
+
+"Very true," said Kenelm, amused by the girl's critical definitions.
+"The difference between dramatic poetry and lyrical.  But may I ask
+what that definition has to do with the subject into which you so
+suddenly introduced it?"
+
+"Much; for when Lion was explaining this to my aunt, he said, 'A
+perfect woman is a poem; but she can never be a poem of the one kind,
+never can make herself at home in the hearts with which she has no
+connection, never feel any sympathy with crime and evil; she must be a
+poem of the other kind, weaving out poetry from her own thoughts and
+fancies.' And, turning to me, he said, smiling, 'That is the poem I
+wish Lily to be.  Too many dry books would only spoil the poem.'  And
+you now see why I am so ignorant, and so unlike other girls, and why
+Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn look down upon me."
+
+"You wrong at least Mr. Emlyn, for it was he who first said to me,
+'Lily Mordaunt is a poem.'"
+
+"Did he?  I shall love him for that.  How pleased Lion will be!"
+
+"Mr. Melville seems to have an extraordinary influence over your
+mind," said Kenelm, with a jealous pang.
+
+"Of course.  I have neither father nor mother: Lion has been both to
+me.  Aunty has often said, 'You cannot be too grateful to your
+guardian; without him I should have no home to shelter you, no bread
+to give you.'  He never said that: he would be very angry with aunty
+if he knew she had said it.  When he does not call me Fairy he calls
+me Princess.  I would not displease him for the world."
+
+"He is very much older than you; old enough to be your father, I
+hear."
+
+"I dare say.  But if he were twice as old I could not love him
+better."
+
+Kenelm smiled: the jealousy was gone.  Certainly not thus could any
+girl, even Lily, speak of one with whom, however she might love him,
+she was likely to fall in love.
+
+Lily now rose up, rather slowly and wearily.  "It is time to go home:
+aunty will be wondering what keeps me away,--come."
+
+They took their way towards the bridge opposite to Cromwell Lodge.
+
+It was not for some minutes that either broke silence.  Lily was the
+first to do so, and with one of those abrupt changes of topic which
+were common to the restless play of her secret thoughts.
+
+"You have father and mother still living, Mr. Chillingly?"
+
+"Thank Heaven, yes."
+
+"Which do you love the best?"
+
+"That is scarcely a fair question.  I love my mother very much; but my
+father and I understand each other better than--"
+
+"I see: it is so difficult to be understood.  No one understands me."
+
+"I think I do."
+
+Lily shook her head with an energetic movement of dissent.
+
+"At least as well as a man can understand a young lady."
+
+"What sort of young lady is Miss Cecilia Travers?"
+
+"Cecilia Travers!  When and how did you ever hear that such a person
+existed?"
+
+"That big London man whom they call Sir Thomas mentioned her name the
+day we dined at Braefieldville."
+
+"I remember,--as having been at the Court ball."
+
+"He said she was very handsome."
+
+"So she is."
+
+"Is she a poem too?"
+
+"No; that never struck me."
+
+"Mr. Emlyn, I suppose, would call her perfectly brought up,--well
+educated.  He would not raise his eyebrows at her as he does at
+me,--poor me, Cinderella!"
+
+"Ah, Miss Mordaunt, you need not envy her.  Again let me say that you
+could very soon educate yourself to the level of any young ladies who
+adorn the Court balls."
+
+"Ay; but then I should not be a poem," said Lily, with a shy, arch
+side-glance at his face.
+
+They were now on the bridge, and before Kenelm could answer Lily
+resumed quickly, "You need not come any farther; it is out of your
+way."
+
+"I cannot be so disdainfully dismissed, Miss Mordaunt; I insist on
+seeing you to at least your garden gate."
+
+Lily made no objection and again spoke,--
+
+"What sort of country do you live in when at home; is it like this?"
+
+"Not so pretty; the features are larger, more hill and dale and
+woodland: yet there is one feature in our grounds which reminds me a
+little of this landscape,--a light stream, somewhat wider, indeed,
+than your brooklet; but here and there the banks are so like those by
+Cromwell Lodge that I sometimes start and fancy myself at home.  I
+have a strange love for rivulets and all running waters, and in my
+foot wanderings I find myself magnetically attracted towards them."
+
+Lily listened with interest, and after a short pause said, with a
+half-suppressed sigh, "Your home is much finer than any place here,
+even than Braefieldville, is it not?  Mrs. Braefield says your father
+is very rich."
+
+"I doubt if he is richer than Mr. Braefield; and, though his house may
+be larger than Braefieldville, it is not so smartly furnished, and has
+no such luxurious hothouses and conservatories.  My father's tastes
+are like mine, very simple.  Give him his library, and he would
+scarcely miss his fortune if he lost it.  He has in this one immense
+advantage over me."
+
+"You would miss fortune?" said Lily, quickly.
+
+"Not that; but my father is never tired of books.  And shall I own it?
+there are days when books tire me almost as much as they do you."
+
+They were now at the garden gate.  Lily, with one hand on the latch,
+held out the other to Kenelm, and her smile lit up the dull sky like a
+burst of sunshine, as she looked in his face and vanished.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+NEVER in his whole life had the mind of Sir Peter been so agitated as
+it was during and after the perusal of Kenelm's flighty composition.
+He had received it at the breakfast-table, and, opening it eagerly,
+ran his eye hastily over the contents, till he very soon arrived at
+sentences which appalled him.  Lady Chillingly, who was fortunately
+busied at the tea-urn, did not observe the dismay on his countenance.
+It was visible only to Cecilia and to Gordon.  Neither guessed who
+that letter was from.
+
+"No bad news, I hope," said Cecilia, softly.
+
+"Bad news," echoed Sir Peter.  "No, my dear, no; a letter on business.
+It seems terribly long," and he thrust the packet into his pocket,
+muttering, "see to it by and by."
+
+"That slovenly farmer of yours, Mr. Nostock, has failed, I suppose,"
+said Mr. Travers, looking up and observing a quiver on his host's lip.
+"I told you he would,--a fine farm too.  Let me choose you another
+tenant."
+
+Sir Peter shook his head with a wan smile.
+
+"Nostock will not fail.  There have been six generations of Nostocks
+on the farm."
+
+"So I should guess," said Travers, dryly.
+
+"And--and," faltered Sir Peter, "if the last of the race fails, he
+must lean upon me, and--if one of the two break down--it shall not
+be--"
+
+"Shall not be that cross-cropping blockhead, my dear Sir Peter.  This
+is carrying benevolence too far."
+
+Here the tact and /savoir vivre/ of Chillingly Gordon came to the
+rescue of the host.  Possessing himself of the "Times" newspaper, he
+uttered an exclamation of surprise, genuine or simulated, and read
+aloud an extract from the leading article, announcing an impending
+change in the Cabinet.
+
+As soon as he could quit the breakfast-table, Sir Peter hurried into
+his library and there gave himself up to the study of Kenelm's
+unwelcome communication.  The task took him long, for he stopped at
+intervals, overcome by the struggle of his heart, now melted into
+sympathy with the passionate eloquence of a son hitherto so free from
+amorous romance, and now sorrowing for the ruin of his own cherished
+hopes.  This uneducated country girl would never be such a helpmate to
+a man like Kenelm as would have been Cecilia Travers.  At length,
+having finished the letter, he buried his head between his clasped
+hands, and tried hard to realize the situation that placed the father
+and son into such direct antagonism.
+
+"But," he murmured, "after all it is the boy's happiness that must be
+consulted.  If he will not be happy in my way, what right have I to
+say that he shall not be happy in his?"
+
+Just then Cecilia came softly into the room.  She had acquired the
+privilege of entering his library at will; sometimes to choose a book
+of his recommendation, sometimes to direct and seal his letters,--Sir
+Peter was grateful to any one who saved him an extra trouble,--and
+sometimes, especially at this hour, to decoy him forth into his wonted
+constitutional walk.
+
+He lifted his face at the sound of her approaching tread and her
+winning voice, and the face was so sad that the tears rushed to her
+eyes on seeing it.  She laid her hand on his shoulder, and said
+pleadingly, "Dear Sir Peter, what is it,--what is it?"
+
+"Ah--ah, my dear," said Sir Peter, gathering up the scattered sheets
+of Kenelm's effusion with hurried, trembling hands.  "Don't
+ask,--don't talk of it; 'tis but one of the disappointments that all
+of us must undergo, when we invest our hopes in the uncertain will of
+others."
+
+Then, observing that the tears were trickling down the girl's fair,
+pale cheeks, he took her hand in both his, kissed her forehead, and
+said, whisperingly, "Pretty one, how good you have been to me!  Heaven
+bless you.  What a wife you will be to some man!"
+
+Thus saying, he shambled out of the room through the open casement.
+She followed him impulsively, wonderingly; but before she reached his
+side he turned round, waved his hand with a gently repelling gesture,
+and went his way alone through dense fir-groves which had been planted
+in honour of Kenelm's birth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+KENELM arrived at Exmundham just in time to dress for dinner.  His
+arrival was not unexpected, for the morning after his father had
+received his communication, Sir Peter had said to Lady
+Chillingly--"that he had heard from Kenelm to the effect that he might
+be down any day."
+
+"Quite time he should come," said Lady Chillingly.  "Have you his
+letter about you?"
+
+"No, my dear Caroline.  Of course he sends you his kindest love, poor
+fellow."
+
+"Why poor fellow?  Has he been ill?"
+
+"No; but there seems to be something on his mind.  If so we must do
+what we can to relieve it.  He is the best of sons, Caroline."
+
+"I am sure I have nothing to say against him, except," added her
+Ladyship, reflectively, "that I do wish he were a little more like
+other young men."
+
+"Hum--like Chillingly Gordon, for instance?"
+
+"Well, yes; Mr. Gordon is a remarkably well-bred, sensible young man.
+How different from that disagreeable, bearish father of his, who went
+to law with you!"
+
+"Very different indeed, but with just as much of the Chillingly blood
+in him.  How the Chillinglys ever gave birth to a Kenelm is a question
+much more puzzling."
+
+"Oh, my dear Sir Peter, don't be metaphysical.  You know how I hate
+puzzles."
+
+"And yet, Caroline, I have to thank you for a puzzle which I can never
+interpret by my brain.  There are a great many puzzles in human nature
+which can only be interpreted by the heart."
+
+"Very true," said Lady Chillingly.  "I suppose Kenelm is to have his
+old room, just opposite to Mr. Gordon's."
+
+"Ay--ay, just opposite.  Opposite they will be all their lives.  Only
+think, Caroline, I have made a discovery!"
+
+"Dear me!  I hope not.  Your discoveries are generally very expensive,
+and bring us in contact with such very odd people."
+
+"This discovery shall not cost us a penny, and I don't know any people
+so odd as not to comprehend it.  Briefly it is this: To genius the
+first requisite is heart; it is no requisite at all to talent.  My
+dear Caroline, Gordon has as much talent as any young man I know, but
+he wants the first requisite of genius.  I am not by any means sure
+that Kenelm has genius, but there is no doubt that he has the first
+requisite of genius,--heart.  Heart is a very perplexing, wayward,
+irrational thing; and that perhaps accounts for the general incapacity
+to comprehend genius, while any fool can comprehend talent.  My dear
+Caroline, you know that it is very seldom, not more than once in three
+years, that I presume to have a will of my own against a will of
+yours; but should there come a question in which our son's heart is
+concerned, then (speaking between ourselves) my will must govern
+yours."
+
+"Sir Peter is growing more odd every day," said Lady Chillingly to
+herself when left alone.  "But he does not mean ill, and there are
+worse husbands in the world."
+
+Therewith she rang for her maid, gave requisite orders for the
+preparing of Kenelm's room, which had not been slept in for many
+months, and then consulted that functionary as to the adaptation of
+some dress of hers, too costly to be laid aside, to the style of some
+dress less costly which Lady Glenalvon had imported from Paris as /la
+derniere mode/.
+
+On the very day on which Kenelm arrived at Exmundham, Chillingly
+Gordon had received this letter from Mr. Gerald Danvers.
+
+
+DEAR GORDON,--In the ministerial changes announced as rumour in the
+public papers, and which you may accept as certain, that sweet little
+cherub--is to be sent to sit up aloft and pray there for the life of
+poor Jack; namely, of the government he leaves below.  In accepting
+the peerage, which I persuaded him to do,--creates a vacancy for the
+borough of -----, just the place for you, far better in every way than
+Saxborough. ----- promises to recommend you to his committee.  Come to
+town at once.  Yours, etc.
+
+     G. DANVERS.
+
+
+Gordon showed this letter to Mr. Travers, and, on receiving the hearty
+good-wishes of that gentleman, said, with emotion partly genuine,
+partly assumed, "You cannot guess all that the realization of your
+good-wishes would be.  Once in the House of Commons, and my motives
+for action are so strong that--do not think me very conceited if I
+count upon Parliamentary success."
+
+"My clear Gordon, I am as certain of your success as I am of my own
+existence."
+
+"Should I succeed,--should the great prizes of public life be within
+my reach,--should I lift myself into a position that would warrant my
+presumption, do you think I could come to you and say, 'There is an
+object of ambition dearer to me than power and office,--the hope of
+attaining which was the strongest of all my motives of action?  And in
+that hope shall I also have the good-wishes of the father of Cecilia
+Travers?"
+
+"My dear fellow, give me your hand; you speak manfully and candidly as
+a gentleman should speak.  I answer in the same spirit.  I don't
+pretend to say that I have not entertained views for Cecilia which
+included hereditary rank and established fortune in a suitor to her
+hand, though I never should have made them imperative conditions.  I
+am neither potentate nor /parvenu/ enough for that; and I can never
+forget" (here every muscle in the man's face twitched) "that I myself
+married for love, and was so happy.  How happy Heaven only knows!
+Still, if you had thus spoken a few weeks ago, I should not have
+replied very favourably to your question.  But now that I have seen so
+much of you, my answer is this: If you lose your election,--if you
+don't come into Parliament at all, you have my good-wishes all the
+same.  If you win my daughter's heart, there is no man on whom I would
+more willingly bestow her hand.  There she is, by herself too, in the
+garden.  Go and talk to her."
+
+Gordon hesitated.  He knew too well that he had not won her heart,
+though he had no suspicion that it was given to another.  And he was
+much too clever not to know also how much he hazards who, in affairs
+of courtship, is premature.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I cannot express my gratitude for words so generous,
+encouragement so cheering.  But I have never yet dared to utter to
+Miss Travers a word that would prepare her even to harbour a thought
+of me as a suitor.  And I scarcely think I should have the courage to
+go through this election with the grief of her rejection on my heart."
+
+"Well, go in and win the election first; meanwhile, at all events,
+take leave of Cecilia."
+
+Gordon left his friend, and joined Miss Travers, resolved not indeed
+to risk a formal declaration, but to sound his way to his chances of
+acceptance.
+
+The interview was very brief.  He did sound his way skilfully, and
+felt it very unsafe for his footsteps.  The advantage of having gained
+the approval of the father was too great to be lost altogether, by one
+of those decided answers on the part of the daughter which allow of no
+appeal, especially to a poor gentleman who wooes an heiress.
+
+He returned to Travers, and said simply, "I bear with me her
+good-wishes as well as yours.  That is all.  I leave myself in your
+kind hands."
+
+Then he hurried away to take leave of his host and hostess, say a few
+significant words to the ally he had already gained in Mrs. Campion,
+and within an hour was on his road to London, passing on his way the
+train that bore Kenelm to Exmundham.  Gordon was in high spirits.  At
+least he felt as certain of winning Cecilia as he did of winning his
+election.
+
+"I have never yet failed in what I desired," said he to himself,
+"because I have ever taken pains not to fail."
+
+The cause of Gordon's sudden departure created a great excitement in
+that quiet circle, shared by all except Cecilia and Sir Peter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+KENELM did not see either father or mother till he appeared at dinner.
+Then he was seated next to Cecilia.  There was but little conversation
+between the two; in fact, the prevalent subject of talk was general
+and engrossing, the interest in Chillingly Gordon's election;
+predictions of his success, of what he would do in Parliament.
+"Where," said Lady Glenalvon, "there is such a dearth of rising young
+men, that if he were only half as clever as he is he would be a gain."
+
+"A gain to what?" asked Sir Peter, testily.  "To his country? about
+which I don't believe he cares a brass button."
+
+To this assertion Leopold Travers replied warmly, and was not less
+warmly backed by Mrs. Campion.
+
+"For my part," said Lady Glenalvon, in conciliatory accents, "I think
+every able man in Parliament is a gain to the country; and he may not
+serve his country less effectively because he does not boast of his
+love for it.  The politicians I dread most are those so rampant in
+France nowadays, the bawling patriots.  When Sir Robert Walpole said,
+'All those men have their price,' he pointed to the men who called
+themselves 'patriots.'"
+
+"Bravo!" cried Travers.
+
+"Sir Robert Walpole showed his love for his country by corrupting it.
+There are many ways besides bribing for corrupting a country," said
+Kenelm, mildly, and that was Kenelm's sole contribution to the general
+conversation.
+
+It was not till the rest of the party had retired to rest that the
+conference, longed for by Kenelm, dreaded by Sir Peter, took place in
+the library.  It lasted deep into the night; both parted with
+lightened hearts and a fonder affection for each other.  Kenelm had
+drawn so charming a picture of the Fairy, and so thoroughly convinced
+Sir Peter that his own feelings towards her were those of no passing
+youthful fancy, but of that love which has its roots in the innermost
+heart, that though it was still with a sigh, a deep sigh, that he
+dismissed the thought of Cecilia, Sir Peter did dismiss it; and,
+taking comfort at last from the positive assurance that Lily was of
+gentle birth, and the fact that her name of Mordaunt was that of
+ancient and illustrious houses, said, with half a smile, "It might
+have been worse, my dear boy.  I began to be afraid that, in spite of
+the teachings of Mivers and Welby, it was 'The Miller's Daughter,'
+after all.  But we still have a difficult task to persuade your poor
+mother.  In covering your first flight from our roof I unluckily put
+into her head the notion of Lady Jane, a duke's daughter, and the
+notion has never got out of it.  That comes of fibbing."
+
+"I count on Lady Glenalvon's influence on my mother in support of your
+own," said Kenelm.  "If so accepted an oracle in the great world
+pronounce in my favour, and promise to present my wife at Court and
+bring her into fashion, I think that my mother will consent to allow
+us to reset the old family diamonds for her next reappearance in
+London.  And then, too, you can tell her that I will stand for the
+county.  I will go into Parliament, and if I meet there our clever
+cousin, and find that he does not care a brass button for the country,
+take my word for it, I will lick him more easily than I licked Tom
+Bowles."
+
+"Tom Bowles! who is he?--ah!  I remember some letter of yours in which
+you spoke of a Bowles, whose favourite study was mankind, a moral
+philosopher."
+
+"Moral philosophers," answered Kenelm, "have so muddled their brains
+with the alcohol of new ideas that their moral legs have become shaky,
+and the humane would rather help them to bed than give them a licking.
+My Tom Bowles is a muscular Christian, who became no less muscular,
+but much more Christian, after he was licked."
+
+And in this pleasant manner these two oddities settled their
+conference, and went up to bed with arms wrapped round each other's
+shoulder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+KENELM found it a much harder matter to win Lady Glenalvon to his side
+than he had anticipated.  With the strong interest she had taken in
+Kenelm's future, she could not but revolt from the idea of his union
+with an obscure portionless girl whom he had only known a few weeks,
+and of whose very parentage he seemed to know nothing, save an
+assurance that she was his equal in birth.  And, with the desire,
+which she had cherished almost as fondly as Sir Peter, that Kenelm
+might win a bride in every way so worthy of his choice as Cecilia
+Travers, she felt not less indignant than regretful at the overthrow
+of her plans.
+
+At first, indeed, she was so provoked that she would not listen to his
+pleadings.  She broke away from him with a rudeness she had never
+exhibited to any one before, refused to grant him another interview in
+order to re-discuss the matter, and said that, so far from using her
+influence in favour of his romantic folly, she would remonstrate well
+with Lady Chillingly and Sir Peter against yielding their assent to
+his "thus throwing himself away."
+
+It was not till the third day after his arrival that, touched by the
+grave but haughty mournfulness of his countenance, she yielded to the
+arguments of Sir Peter in the course of a private conversation with
+that worthy baronet.  Still it was reluctantly (she did not fulfil her
+threat of remonstrance with Lady Chillingly) that she conceded the
+point, that a son who, succeeding to the absolute fee-simple of an
+estate, had volunteered the resettlement of it on terms singularly
+generous to both his parents, was entitled to some sacrifice of their
+inclinations on a question in which he deemed his happiness vitally
+concerned; and that he was of age to choose for himself independently
+of their consent, but for a previous promise extracted from him by his
+father, a promise which, rigidly construed, was not extended to Lady
+Chillingly, but confined to Sir Peter as the head of the family and
+master of the household.  The father's consent was already given, and,
+if in his reverence for both parents Kenelm could not dispense with
+his mother's approval, surely it was the part of a true friend to
+remove every scruple from his conscience, and smooth away every
+obstacle to a love not to be condemned because it was disinterested.
+
+After this conversation, Lady Glenalvon sought Kenelm, found him
+gloomily musing on the banks of the trout-stream, took his arm, led
+him into the sombre glades of the fir-grove, and listened patiently to
+all he had to say.  Even then her woman's heart was not won to his
+reasonings, until he said pathetically, "You thanked me once for
+saving your son's life: you said then that you could never repay me;
+you can repay me tenfold.  Could your son, who is now, we trust, in
+heaven, look down and judge between us, do you think he would approve
+you if you refuse?"
+
+Then Lady Glenalvon wept, and took his hand, kissed his forehead as a
+mother might kiss it, and said, "You triumph; I will go to Lady
+Chillingly at once.  Marry her whom you so love, on one condition:
+marry her from my house."
+
+Lady Glenalvon was not one of those women who serve a friend by
+halves.  She knew well how to propitiate and reason down the apathetic
+temperament of Lady Chillingly; she did not cease till that lady
+herself came into Kenelm's room, and said very quietly,--
+
+"So you are going to propose to Miss Mordaunt, the Warwickshire
+Mordaunts I suppose?  Lady Glenalvon says she is a very lovely girl,
+and will stay with her before the wedding.  And as the young lady is
+an orphan Lady Glenalvon's uncle the Duke, who is connected with the
+eldest branch of the Mordaunts, will give her away.  It will be a very
+brilliant affair.  I am sure I wish you happy; it is time you should
+have sown your wild oats."
+
+Two days after the consent thus formally given, Kenelm quitted
+Exmundham.  Sir Peter would have accompanied him to pay his respects
+to the intended, but the agitation he had gone through brought on a
+sharp twinge of the gout, which consigned his feet to flannels.
+
+After Kenelm had gone, Lady Glenalvon went into Cecilia's room.
+Cecilia was seated very desolately by the open window.  She had
+detected that something of an anxious and painful nature had been
+weighing upon the minds of father and son, and had connected it with
+the letter which had so disturbed the even mind of Sir Peter; but she
+did not divine what the something was, and if mortified by a certain
+reserve, more distant than heretofore, which had characterized
+Kenelm's manner towards herself, the mortification was less sensibly
+felt than a tender sympathy for the sadness she had observed on his
+face and yearned to soothe.  His reserve had, however, made her own
+manner more reserved than of old, for which she was now rather chiding
+herself than reproaching him.
+
+Lady Glenalvon put her arms round Cecilia's neck and kissed her,
+whispering, "That man has so disappointed me: he is so unworthy of the
+happiness I had once hoped for him!"
+
+"Whom do you speak of?" murmured Cecilia, turning very pale.
+
+"Kenelm Chillingly.  It seems that he has conceived a fancy for some
+penniless girl whom he has met in his wanderings, has come here to get
+the consent of his parents to propose to her, has obtained their
+consent, and is gone to propose."
+
+Cecilia remained silent for a moment with her eyes closed, then she
+said, "He is worthy of all happiness, and he would never make an
+unworthy choice.  Heaven bless him--and--and--" She would have added,
+"his bride," but her lips refused to utter the word bride.
+
+"Cousin Gordon is worth ten of him," cried Lady Glenalvon,
+indignantly.
+
+She had served Kenelm, but she had not forgiven him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KENELM slept in London that night, and, the next day, being singularly
+fine for an English summer, he resolved to go to Moleswich on foot.
+He had no need this time to encumber himself with a knapsack; he had
+left sufficient change of dress in his lodgings at Cromwell Lodge.
+
+It was towards the evening when he found himself in one of the
+prettiest rural villages by which
+
+
+     "Wanders the hoary Thames along
+      His silver-winding way."
+
+
+It was not in the direct road from London to Moleswich, but it was a
+pleasanter way for a pedestrian.  And when, quitting the long street
+of the sultry village, he came to the shelving margin of the river, he
+was glad to rest a while, enjoy the cool of the rippling waters, and
+listen to their placid murmurs amid the rushes in the bordering
+shallows.  He had ample time before him.  His rambles while at
+Cromwell Lodge had made him familiar with the district for miles round
+Moleswich, and he knew that a footpath through the fields at the right
+would lead him, in less than an hour, to the side of the tributary
+brook on which Cromwell Lodge was placed, opposite the wooden bridge
+which conducted to Grasmere and Moleswich.
+
+To one who loves the romance of history, English history, the whole
+course of the Thames is full of charm.  Ah! could I go back to the
+days in which younger generations than that of Kenelm Chillingly were
+unborn, when every wave of the Rhine spoke of history and romance to
+me, what fairies should meet on thy banks, O thou our own Father
+Thames!  Perhaps some day a German pilgrim may repay tenfold to thee
+the tribute rendered by the English kinsman to the Father Rhine.
+
+Listening to the whispers of the reeds, Kenelm Chillingly felt the
+haunting influence of the legendary stream.  Many a poetic incident or
+tradition in antique chronicle, many a votive rhyme in song, dear to
+forefathers whose very names have become a poetry to us, thronged
+dimly and confusedly back to his memory, which had little cared to
+retain such graceful trinkets in the treasure-house of love.  But
+everything that, from childhood upward, connects itself with romance,
+revives with yet fresher bloom in the memories of him who loves.
+
+And to this man, through the first perilous season of youth, so
+abnormally safe from youth's most wonted peril,--to this would-be
+pupil of realism, this learned adept in the schools of a Welby or a
+Mivers,--to this man, love came at last as with the fatal powers of
+the fabled Cytherea; and with that love all the realisms of life
+became ideals, all the stern lines of our commonplace destinies
+undulated into curves of beauty, all the trite sounds of our every-day
+life attuned into delicacies of song.  How full of sanguine yet dreamy
+bliss was his heart--and seemed his future--in the gentle breeze and
+the softened glow of that summer eve!  He should see Lily the next
+morn, and his lips were now free to say all that they had as yet
+suppressed.
+
+Suddenly he was roused from the half-awake, half-asleep happiness that
+belongs to the moments in which we transport ourselves into Elysium,
+by the carol of a voice more loudly joyous than that of his own
+heart--
+
+
+               "Singing, singing,
+      Lustily singing,
+      Down the road, with his dogs before,
+      Came the Ritter of Nierestein."
+
+
+Kenelm turned his head so quickly that he frightened Max, who had for
+the last minute been standing behind him inquisitively with one paw
+raised, and sniffing, in some doubt whether he recognized an old
+acquaintance; but at Kenelm's quick movement the animal broke into a
+nervous bark, and ran back to his master.
+
+The minstrel, little heeding the figure reclined on the bank, would
+have passed on with his light tread and his cheery carol, but Kenelm
+rose to his feet, and holding out his hand, said, "I hope you don't
+share Max's alarm at meeting me again?"
+
+"Ah, my young philosopher, is it indeed you?"
+
+"If I am to be designated a philosopher it is certainly not I.  And,
+honestly speaking, I am not the same.  I, who spent that pleasant day
+with you among the fields round Luscombe two years ago--"
+
+"Or who advised me at Tor Hadham to string my lyre to the praise of a
+beefsteak.  I, too, am not quite the same,--I, whose dog presented you
+with the begging-tray."
+
+"Yet you still go through the world singing."
+
+"Even that vagrant singing time is pretty well over.  But I disturbed
+you from your repose; I would rather share it.  You are probably not
+going my way, and as I am in no hurry, I should not like to lose the
+opportunity chance has so happily given me of renewing acquaintance
+with one who has often been present to my thoughts since we last met."
+Thus saying, the minstrel stretched himself at ease on the bank, and
+Kenelm followed his example.
+
+There certainly was a change in the owner of the dog with the
+begging-tray, a change in costume, in countenance, in that
+indescribable self-evidence which we call "manner."  The costume was
+not that Bohemian attire in which Kenelm had first encountered the
+wandering minstrel, nor the studied, more graceful garb, which so well
+became his shapely form during his visit to Luscombe.  It was now
+neatly simple, the cool and quiet summer dress any English gentleman
+might adopt in a long rural walk.  And as he uncovered his head to
+court the cooling breeze, there was a graver dignity in the man's
+handsome Rubens-like face, a line of more concentrated thought in the
+spacious forehead, a thread or two of gray shimmering here and there
+through the thick auburn curls of hair and beard.  And in his manner,
+though still very frank, there was just perceptible a sort of
+self-assertion, not offensive, but manly; such as does not misbecome
+one of maturer years, and of some established position, addressing
+another man much younger than himself, who in all probability has
+achieved no position at all beyond that which the accident of birth
+might assign to him.
+
+"Yes," said the minstrel, with a half-suppressed sigh, "the last year
+of my vagrant holidays has come to its close.  I recollect that the
+first day we met by the road-side fountain, I advised you to do like
+me, seek amusement and adventure as a foot-traveller.  Now, seeing
+you, evidently a gentleman by education and birth, still a
+foot-traveller, I feel as if I ought to say, 'You have had enough of
+such experience: vagabond life has its perils as well as charms; cease
+it, and settle down.'"
+
+"I think of doing so," replied Kenelm, laconically.
+
+"In a profession?--army, law, medicine?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, in marriage then.  Right; give me your hand on that.  So a
+petticoat indeed has at last found its charm for you in the actual
+world as well as on the canvas of a picture?"
+
+"I conclude," said Kenelm, evading any direct notice of that playful
+taunt, "I conclude from your remark that it is in marriage /you/ are
+about to settle down."
+
+"Ay, could I have done so before I should have been saved from many
+errors, and been many years nearer to the goal which dazzled my sight
+through the haze of my boyish dreams."
+
+"What is that goal,--the grave?"
+
+"The grave!  That which allows of no grave,--fame."
+
+"I see--despite of what you just now said--you still mean to go
+through the world seeking a poet's fame."
+
+"Alas!  I resign that fancy," said the minstrel, with another
+half-sigh.  "It was not indeed wholly, but in great part the hope
+of the poet's fame that made me a truant in the way to that which
+destiny, and such few gifts as Nature conceded to me, marked
+out for my proper and only goal.  But what a strange, delusive
+Will-o'-the-Wisp the love of verse-making is!  How rarely a man of
+good sense deceives himself as to other things for which he is fitted,
+in which he can succeed; but let him once drink into his being the
+charm of verse-making, how the glamour of the charm bewitches his
+understanding! how long it is before he can believe that the world
+will not take his word for it, when he cries out to sun, moon, and
+stars, 'I, too, am a poet.' And with what agonies, as if at the wrench
+of soul from life, he resigns himself at last to the conviction that
+whether he or the world be right, it comes to the same thing.  Who can
+plead his cause before a court that will not give him a hearing?"
+
+It was with an emotion so passionately strong, and so intensely
+painful, that the owner of the dog with the begging-tray thus spoke,
+that Kenelm felt, through sympathy, as if he himself were torn asunder
+by the wrench of life from soul.  But then Kenelm was a mortal so
+eccentric that, if a single acute suffering endured by a fellow mortal
+could be brought before the evidence of his senses, I doubt whether he
+would not have suffered as much as that fellow-mortal.  So that,
+though if there were a thing in the world which Kenelm Chillingly
+would care not to do, it was verse-making, his mind involuntarily
+hastened to the arguments by which he could best mitigate the pang of
+the verse-maker.
+
+Quoth he: "According to my very scanty reading, you share the love of
+verse-making with men the most illustrious in careers which have
+achieved the goal of fame.  It must, then, be a very noble love:
+Augustus, Pollio, Varius, Maecenas,--the greatest statesmen of their
+day,--they were verse-makers.  Cardinal Richelieu was a verse-maker;
+Walter Raleigh and Philip Sidney, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Warren
+Hastings, Canning, even the grave William Pitt,--all were
+verse-makers.  Verse-making did not retard--no doubt the qualities
+essential to verse-making accelerated--their race to the goal of fame.
+What great painters have been verse-makers!  Michael Angelo, Leonardo
+da Vinci, Salvator Rosa"--and Heaven knows how may other great names
+Kenelm Chillingly might have proceeded to add to his list, if the
+minstrel had not here interposed.
+
+"What!  all those mighty painters were verse-makers?"
+
+"Verse-makers so good, especially Michael Angelo,--the greatest
+painter of all,--that they would have had the fame of poets, if,
+unfortunately for that goal of fame, their glory in the sister art of
+painting did not outshine it.  But when you give to your gift of song
+the modest title of verse-making, permit me to observe that your gift
+is perfectly distinct from that of the verse-maker.  Your gift,
+whatever it may be, could not exist without some sympathy with the non
+verse-making human heart.  No doubt in your foot travels, you have
+acquired not only observant intimacy with external Nature in the
+shifting hues at each hour of a distant mountain, in the lengthening
+shadows which yon sunset casts on the waters at our feet, in the
+habits of the thrush dropped fearlessly close beside me, in that turf
+moistened by its neighbourhood to those dripping rushes, all of which
+I could describe no less accurately than you,--as a Peter Bell might
+describe them no less accurately than a William Wordsworth.  But in
+such songs of yours as you have permitted me to hear, you seem to have
+escaped out of that elementary accidence of the poet's art, and to
+touch, no matter how slightly, on the only lasting interest which the
+universal heart of man can have in the song of the poet; namely, in
+the sound which the poet's individual sympathy draws forth from the
+latent chords in that universal heart.  As for what you call 'the
+world,' what is it more than the fashion of the present day?  How far
+the judgment of that is worth a poet's pain I can't pretend to say.
+But of one thing I am sure, that while I could as easily square the
+circle as compose a simple couplet addressed to the heart of a simple
+audience with sufficient felicity to decoy their praises into Max's
+begging-tray, I could spin out by the yard the sort of verse-making
+which characterizes the fashion of the present day."
+
+Much flattered, and not a little amused, the wandering minstrel turned
+his bright countenance, no longer dimmed by a cloud, towards that of
+his lazily reclined consoler, and answered gayly,--
+
+"You say that you could spin out by the yard verses in the fashion of
+the present day.  I wish you would give me a specimen of your skill in
+that handiwork."
+
+"Very well; on one condition, that you will repay my trouble by a
+specimen of your own verses, not in the fashion of the present
+day,--something which I can construe.  I defy you to construe mine."
+
+"Agreed."
+
+"Well, then, let us take it for granted that this is the Augustan age
+of English poetry, and that the English language is dead, like the
+Latin.  Suppose I am writing for a prize-medal in English, as I wrote
+at college for a prize-medal in Latin: of course, I shall be
+successful in proportion as I introduce the verbal elegances peculiar
+to our Augustan age, and also catch the prevailing poetic
+characteristic of that classical epoch.
+
+"Now I think that every observant critic will admit that the striking
+distinctions of the poetry most in the fashion of the present day,
+namely, of the Augustan age, are,--first, a selection of such verbal
+elegances as would have been most repulsive to the barbaric taste of
+the preceding century; and, secondly, a very lofty disdain of all
+prosaic condescensions to common-sense, and an elaborate cultivation
+of that element of the sublime which Mr. Burke defines under the head
+of obscurity.
+
+"These premises conceded, I will only ask you to choose the metre.
+Blank verse is very much in fashion just now."
+
+"Pooh! blank verse indeed!  I am not going so to free your experiment
+from the difficulties of rhyme."
+
+"It is all one to me," said Kenelm, yawning; "rhyme be it: heroic or
+lyrical?"
+
+"Heroics are old-fashioned; but the Chaucer couplet, as brought to
+perfection by our modern poets, I think the best adapted to dainty
+leaves and uncrackable nuts.  I accept the modern Chaucerian.  The
+subject?"
+
+"Oh, never trouble yourself about that.  By whatever title your
+Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius, like Pindar's,
+disdains to be cramped by the subject.  Listen, and don't suffer Max
+to howl, if he can help it.  Here goes."
+
+And in an affected but emphatic sing-song Kenelm began:--
+
+
+     "In Attica the gentle Pythias dwelt.
+      Youthful he was, and passing rich: he felt
+      As if nor youth nor riches could suffice
+      For bliss.  Dark-eyed Sophronia was a nice
+      Girl: and one summer day, when Neptune drove
+      His sea-car slowly, and the olive grove
+      That skirts Ilissus, to thy shell, Harmonia,
+      Rippled, he said 'I love thee' to Sophronia.
+      Crocus and iris, when they heard him, wagged
+      Their pretty heads in glee: the honey-bagged
+      Bees became altars: and the forest dove
+      Her plumage smoothed.  Such is the charm of love.
+      Of this sweet story do ye long for more?
+      Wait till I publish it in volumes four;
+      Which certain critics, my good friends, will cry
+      Up beyond Chaucer.  Take their word for 't.  I
+      Say 'Trust them, but not read,--or you'll not buy.'"
+
+
+"You have certainly kept your word," said the minstrel, laughing; "and
+if this be the Augustan age, and the English were a dead language, you
+deserve to win the prize-medal."
+
+"You flatter me," said Kenelm, modestly.  "But if I, who never before
+strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of
+the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself
+dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising
+completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of
+the rhyme by the frequent introduction of a line that will not scan,
+and towering yet more into the sublime by becoming yet more
+unintelligible?  Do that, and I promise you the most glowing panegyric
+in 'The Londoner,' for I will write it myself."
+
+"'The Londoner'!" exclaimed the minstrel, with an angry flush on his
+cheek and brow, "my bitter, relentless enemy."
+
+"I fear, then, you have as little studied the critical press
+of the Augustan age as you have imbued your muse with the classical
+spirit of its verse.  For the art of writing a man must cultivate
+himself.  The art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the
+acquaintance of reviewers.  In the Augustan age criticism is cliquism.
+Belong to a clique and you are Horace or Tibullus.  Belong to no
+clique and, of course, you are Bavius or Maevius.  'The Londoner' is
+the enemy of no man: it holds all men in equal contempt.  But as, in
+order to amuse, it must abuse, it compensates the praise it is
+compelled to bestow upon the members of its clique by heaping
+additional scorn upon all who are cliqueless.  Hit him hard: he has no
+friends."
+
+"Ah," said the minstrel, "I believe that there is much truth in what
+you say.  I never had a friend among the cliques.  And Heaven knows
+with what pertinacity those from whom I, in utter ignorance of the
+rules which govern so-called organs of opinion, had hoped, in my time
+of struggle, for a little sympathy, a kindly encouragement, have
+combined to crush me down.  They succeeded long.  But at last I
+venture to hope that I am beating them.  Happily, Nature endowed me
+with a sanguine, joyous, elastic temperament.  He who never despairs
+seldom completely fails."
+
+This speech rather perplexed Kenelm, for had not the minstrel declared
+that his singing days were over, that he had decided on the
+renunciation of verse-making?  What other path to fame, from which the
+critics had not been able to exclude his steps, was he, then, now
+pursuing,--he whom Kenelm had assumed to belong to some commercial
+moneymaking firm?  No doubt some less difficult prose-track, probably
+a novel.  Everybody writes novels nowadays, and as the public will
+read novels without being told to do so, and will not read poetry
+unless they are told that they ought, possibly novels are not quite so
+much at the mercy of cliques as are the poems of our Augustan age.
+
+However, Kenelm did not think of seeking for further confidence on
+that score.  His mind at that moment, not unnaturally, wandered from
+books and critics to love and wedlock.
+
+"Our talk," said he, "has digressed into fretful courses; permit me to
+return to the starting-point.  You are going to settle down into the
+peace of home.  A peaceful home is like a good conscience.  The rains
+without do not pierce its roof, the winds without do not shake its
+walls.  If not an impertinent question, is it long since you have
+known your intended bride?"
+
+"Yes, very long."
+
+"And always loved her?"
+
+"Always, from her infancy.  Out of all womankind, she was designed to
+be my life's playmate and my soul's purifier.  I know not what might
+have become of me, if the thought of her had not walked beside me as
+my guardian angel.  For, like many vagrants from the beaten high roads
+of the world, there is in my nature something of that lawlessness
+which belongs to high animal spirits, to the zest of adventure, and
+the warm blood that runs into song, chiefly because song is the voice
+of a joy.  And no doubt, when I look back on the past years I must own
+that I have too often been led astray from the objects set before my
+reason, and cherished at my heart, by erring impulse or wanton fancy."
+
+"Petticoat interest, I presume," interposed Kenelm, dryly.
+
+"I wish I could honestly answer 'No,'" said the minstrel, colouring
+high.  "But from the worst, from all that would have permanently
+blasted the career to which I intrust my fortunes, all that would have
+rendered me unworthy of the pure love that now, I trust, awaits and
+crowns my dreams of happiness, I have been saved by the haunting smile
+in a sinless infantine face.  Only once was I in great peril,--that
+hour of peril I recall with a shudder.  It was at Luscombe."
+
+"At Luscombe!"
+
+"In the temptation of a terrible crime I thought I heard a voice say,
+'Mischief!  Remember the little child.' In that supervention which is
+so readily accepted as a divine warning, when the imagination is
+morbidly excited, and when the conscience, though lulled asleep for a
+moment, is still asleep so lightly that the sigh of a breeze, the fall
+of a leaf, can awake it with a start of terror, I took the voice for
+that of my guardian angel.  Thinking it over later, and coupling the
+voice with the moral of those weird lines you repeated to ine so
+appositely the next day, I conclude that I am not mistaken when I say
+it was from your lips that the voice which preserved me came."
+
+"I confess the impertinence: you pardon it?"
+
+The minstrel seized Kenelm's hand and pressed it earnestly.
+
+"Pardon it!  Oh, could you but guess what cause I have to be grateful,
+everlastingly grateful!  That sudden cry, the remorse and horror of my
+own self that it struck into me,--deepened by those rugged lines which
+the next day made me shrink in dismay from 'the face of my darling
+sin'!  Then came the turning-point of my life.  From that day, the
+lawless vagabond within me was killed.  I mean not, indeed, the love
+of Nature and of song which had first allured the vagabond, but the
+hatred of steadfast habits and of serious work,--/that/ was killed.  I
+no longer trifled with my calling: I took to it as a serious duty.
+And when I saw her, whom fate has reserved and reared for my bride,
+her face was no longer in my eyes that of the playful child; the soul
+of the woman was dawning into it.  It is but two years since that day,
+to me so eventful.  Yet my fortunes are now secured.  And if fame be
+not established, I am at last in a position which warrants my saying
+to her I love, 'The time has come when, without fear for thy future, I
+can ask thee to be mine.'"
+
+The man spoke with so fervent a passion that Kenelm silently left him
+to recover his wonted self-possession,--not unwilling to be
+silent,--not unwilling, in the softness of the hour, passing from
+roseate sunset into starry twilight, to murmur to himself, "And the
+time, too, has come for me!"
+
+After a few moments the minstrel resumed lightly and cheerily,--
+
+"Sir, your turn: pray have you long known--judging by our former
+conversation you cannot have long loved--the lady whom you have wooed
+and won?"
+
+As Kenelm had neither as yet wooed nor won the lady in question, and
+did not deem it necessary to enter into any details on the subject of
+love particular to himself, he replied by a general observation,--
+
+"It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring:
+the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar.  It may be slow and
+gradual; it may be quick and sudden.  But in the morning, when we wake
+and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees,
+blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, then
+we say Spring has come!"
+
+"I like your illustration.  And if it be an idle question to ask a
+lover how long he has known the beloved one, so it is almost as idle
+to ask if she be not beautiful.  He cannot but see in her face the
+beauty she has given to the world without."
+
+"True; and that thought is poetic enough to make me remind you that I
+favoured you with the maiden specimen of my verse-making on condition
+that you repaid me by a specimen of your own practical skill in the
+art.  And I claim the right to suggest the theme.  Let it be--"
+
+"Of a beefsteak?"
+
+"Tush, you have worn out that tasteless joke at my expense.  The theme
+must be of love, and if you could improvise a stanza or two expressive
+of the idea you just uttered I shall listen with yet more pleased
+attention."
+
+"Alas!  I am no /improvisatore/.  Yet I will avenge myself on your
+former neglect of my craft by chanting to you a trifle somewhat in
+unison with the thought you ask me to versify, but which you would not
+stay to hear at Tor Hadham (though you did drop a shilling into Max's
+tray); it was one of the songs I sang that evening, and it was not
+ill-received by my humble audience.
+
+
+     "THE BEAUTY OF THE MISTRESS IS IN THE LOVER'S EYE.
+
+     "Is she not pretty, my Mabel May?
+        Nobody ever yet called her so.
+      Are not her lineaments faultless, say?
+        If I must answer you plainly, No.
+
+     "Joy to believe that the maid I love
+        None but myself as she is can see;
+      Joy that she steals from her heaven above,
+        And is only revealed on this earth to me!"
+
+
+As soon as he had finished this very artless ditty, the minstrel rose
+and said,--
+
+"Now I must bid you good-by.  My way lies through those meadows, and
+yours no doubt along the high road."
+
+"Not so.  Permit me to accompany you.  I have a lodging not far from
+hence, to which the path through the fields is the shortest way."
+
+The minstrel turned a somewhat surprised and somewhat inquisitive look
+towards Kenelm.  But feeling, perhaps, that having withheld from his
+fellow-traveller all confidence as to his own name and attributes, he
+had no right to ask any confidence from that gentleman not voluntarily
+made to him, he courteously said "that he wished the way were longer,
+since it would be so pleasantly halved," and strode forth at a brisk
+pace.
+
+The twilight was now closing into the brightness of a starry summer
+night, and the solitude of the fields was unbroken.  Both these men,
+walking side by side, felt supremely happy.  But happiness is like
+wine; its effect differing with the differing temperaments on which it
+acts.  In this case garrulous and somewhat vaunting with the one man,
+warm-coloured, sensuous, impressionable to the influences of external
+Nature, as an Aeolian harp to the rise or fall of a passing wind; and,
+with the other man, taciturn and somewhat modestly expressed,
+saturnine, meditative, not indeed dull to the influences of external
+Nature, but deeming them of no value, save where they passed out of
+the domain of the sensuous into that of the intellectual, and the soul
+of man dictated to the soulless Nature its own questions and its own
+replies.
+
+The minstrel took the talk on himself, and the talk charmed his
+listener.  It became so really eloquent in the tones of its utterance,
+in the frank play of its delivery, that I could no more adequately
+describe it than a reporter, however faithful to every word a true
+orator may say, can describe that which, apart from all words, belongs
+to the presence of the orator himself.
+
+Not, then, venturing to report the language of this singular
+itinerant, I content myself with saying that the substance of it was
+of the nature on which it is said most men can be eloquent: it was
+personal to himself.  He spoke of aspirations towards the achievement
+of a name, dating back to the dawn of memory; of early obstacles in
+lowly birth, stinted fortunes; of a sudden opening to his ambition
+while yet in boyhood, through the generous favour of a rich man, who
+said, "The child has genius: I will give it the discipline of culture;
+one day it shall repay to the world what it owes to me;" of studies
+passionately begun, earnestly pursued, and mournfully suspended in
+early youth.  He did not say how or wherefore: he rushed on to dwell
+upon the struggles for a livelihood for himself and those dependent on
+him; how in such struggles he was compelled to divert toil and energy
+from the systematic pursuit of the object he had once set before him;
+the necessities for money were too urgent to be postponed to the
+visions of fame.  "But even," he exclaimed, passionately, "even in
+such hasty and crude manifestations of what is within me, as
+circumstances limited my powers, I know that I ought to have found
+from those who profess to be authoritative judges the encouragement of
+praise.  How much better, then, I should have done if I had found it!
+How a little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, and
+the sneer of a contempt which he feels to be unjust chills the ardour
+to excel!  However, I forced my way, so far as was then most essential
+to me, the sufficing breadmaker for those I loved; and in my holidays
+of song and ramble I found a delight that atoned for all the rest.
+But still the desire of fame, once conceived in childhood, once
+nourished through youth, never dies but in our grave.  Foot and hoof
+may tread it down, bud, leaf, stalk; its root is too deep below the
+surface for them to reach, and year after year stalk and leaf and bud
+re-emerge.  Love may depart from our mortal life: we console
+ourselves; the beloved will be reunited to us in the life to come.
+But if he who sets his heart on fame loses it in this life, what can
+console him?"
+
+"Did you not say a little while ago that fame allowed of no grave?"
+
+"True; but if we do not achieve it before we ourselves are in the
+grave, what comfort can it give to us?  Love ascends to heaven, to
+which we hope ourselves to ascend; but fame remains on the earth,
+which we shall never again revisit.  And it is because fame is
+earth-born that the desire for it is the most lasting, the regret for
+the want of it the most bitter, to the child of earth.  But I shall
+achieve it now; it is already in my grasp."
+
+By this time the travellers had arrived at the brook, facing the
+wooden bridge beside Cromwell Lodge.
+
+Here the minstrel halted; and Kenelm with a certain tremble in his
+voice, said, "Is it not time that we should make ourselves known to
+each other by name?  I have no longer any cause to conceal mine,
+indeed I never had any cause stronger than whim,--Kenelm Chillingly,
+the only son of Sir Peter, of Exmundham, -----shire."
+
+"I wish your father joy of so clever a son," said the minstrel with
+his wonted urbanity.  "You already know enough of me to be aware that
+I am of much humbler birth and station than you; but if you chance to
+have visited the exhibition of the Royal Academy this year--ah!  I
+understand that start--you might have recognized a picture of which
+you have seen the rudimentary sketch, 'The Girl with the Flower-ball,'
+one of three pictures very severely handled by 'The Londoner,' but, in
+spite of that potent enemy, insuring fortune and promising fame to the
+wandering minstrel, whose name, if the sight of the pictures had
+induced you to inquire into that, you would have found to be Walter
+Melville.  Next January I hope, thanks to that picture, to add,
+'Associate of the Royal Academy.'  The public will not let them keep
+me out of it, in spite of 'The Londoner.'  You are probably an
+expected guest at one of the more imposing villas from which we see
+the distant lights.  I am going to a very humble cottage, in which
+henceforth I hope to find my established home.  I am there now only
+for a few days, but pray let me welcome you there before I leave.  The
+cottage is called Grasmere."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE minstrel gave a cordial parting shake of the hand to the
+fellow-traveller whom he had advised to settle down, not noticing how
+very cold had become the hand in his own genial grasp.  Lightly he
+passed over the wooden bridge, preceded by Max, and merrily, when he
+had gained the other side of the bridge, came upon Kenelm's ear,
+through the hush of the luminous night, the verse of the uncompleted
+love-song,--
+
+
+               "Singing, singing,
+      Lustily singing,
+      Down the road, with his dogs before,
+      Came the Ritter of Nierestein."
+
+
+Love-song, uncompleted; why uncompleted?  It was not given to Kenelm
+to divine the why.  It was a love-song versifying one of the prettiest
+fairy tales in the world, which was a great favourite with Lily, and
+which Lion had promised Lily to versify, but only to complete it in
+her presence and to her perfect satisfaction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IF I could not venture to place upon paper the exact words of an
+eloquent coveter of fame, the earth-born, still less can I dare to
+place upon paper all that passed through the voiceless heart of a
+coveter of love, the heaven-born.
+
+From the hour in which Kenelm Chillingly had parted from Walter
+Melville until somewhere between sunrise and noon the next day, the
+summer joyousness of that external Nature which does now and then,
+though, for the most part, deceitfully, address to the soul of man
+questions and answers all her soulless own, laughed away the gloom of
+his misgivings.
+
+No doubt this Walter Melville was the beloved guardian of Lily; no
+doubt it was Lily whom he designated as reserved and reared to become
+his bride.  But on that question Lily herself had the sovereign voice.
+It remained yet to be seen whether Kenelm had deceived himself in the
+belief that had made the world so beautiful to him since the hour of
+their last parting.  At all events it was due to her, due even to his
+rival, to assert his own claim to her choice.  And the more he
+recalled all that Lily had ever said to him of her guardian, so
+openly, so frankly, proclaiming affection, admiration, gratitude, the
+more convincingly his reasonings allayed his fears, whispering, "So
+might a child speak of a parent: not so does the maiden speak of the
+man she loves; she can scarcely trust herself to praise."
+
+In fine, it was not in despondent mood, nor with dejected looks, that,
+a little before noon, Kenelm crossed the bridge and re-entered the
+enchanted land of Grasmere.  In answer to his inquiries, the servant
+who opened the door said that neither Mr. Melville nor Miss Mordaunt
+were at home; they had but just gone out together for a walk.  He was
+about to turn back, when Mrs. Cameron came into the hall, and, rather
+by gesture than words, invited him to enter.  Kenelm followed her into
+the drawing-room, taking his seat beside her.  He was about to speak,
+when she interrupted him in a tone of voice so unlike its usual
+languor, so keen, so sharp, that it sounded like a cry of distress.
+
+"I was just about to come to you.  Happily, however, you find me
+alone, and what may pass between us will be soon over.  But first tell
+me: you have seen your parents; you have asked their consent to wed a
+girl such as I described; tell me, oh tell me that that consent is
+refused!"
+
+"On the contrary, I am here with their full permission to ask the hand
+of your niece."
+
+Mrs. Cameron sank back in her chair, rocking herself to and fro in the
+posture of a person in great pain.
+
+"I feared that.  Walter said he had met you last evening; that you,
+like himself, entertained the thought of marriage.  You, of course
+when you learned his name, must have known with whom his thought was
+connected.  Happily, he could not divine what was the choice to which
+your youthful fancy had been so blindly led."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Cameron," said Kenelm, very mildly, but very firmly,
+"you were aware of the purpose for which I left Moleswich a few days
+ago, and it seems to me that you might have forestalled my intention,
+the intention which brings me; thus early to your house.  I come to
+say to Miss Mordaunt's guardian, 'I ask the hand of your ward.  If you
+also woo her, I have a very noble rival.  With both of us no
+consideration for our own happiness can be comparable to the duty of
+consulting hers.  Let her choose between the two.'"
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Mrs. Cameron; "impossible.  You know not what
+you say; know not, guess not, how sacred are the claims of Walter
+Melville to all that the orphan whom he has protected from her very
+birth can give him in return.  She has no right to a preference for
+another: her heart is too grateful to admit of one.  If the choice
+were given to her between him and you, it is he whom she would choose.
+Solemnly I assure you of this.  Do not, then, subject her to the pain
+of such a choice.  Suppose, if you will, that you had attracted her
+fancy, and that now you proclaimed your love and urged your suit, she
+would not, must not, the less reject your hand, but you might cloud
+her happiness in accepting Melville's.  Be generous.  Conquer your own
+fancy; it can be but a passing one.  Speak not to her, nor to Mr.
+Melville, of a wish which can never be realized.  Go hence, silently,
+and at once."
+
+The words and the manner of the pale imploring woman struck a vague
+awe into the heart of her listener.  But he did not the less
+resolutely answer, "I cannot obey you.  It seems to me that my honour
+commands me to prove to your niece that, if I mistook the nature of
+her feelings towards me, I did not, by word or look, lead her to
+believe mine towards herself were less in earnest than they are; and
+it seems scarcely less honourable towards my worthy rival to endanger
+his own future happiness, should he discover later that his bride
+would have been happier with another.  Why be so mysteriously
+apprehensive?  If, as you say, with such apparent conviction, there is
+no doubt of your niece's preference for another, at a word from her
+own lips I depart, and you will see me no more.  But that word must be
+said by her; and if you will not permit me to ask for it in your own
+house, I will take my chance of finding her now, on her walk with Mr.
+Melville; and, could he deny me the right to speak to her alone, that
+which I would say can be said in his presence.  Ah! madam, have you no
+mercy for the heart that you so needlessly torture?  If I must bear
+the worst, let me learn it, and at once."
+
+"Learn it, then, from my lips," said Mrs. Cameron, speaking with voice
+unnaturally calm, and features rigidly set into stern composure.  "And
+I place the secret you wring from me under the seal of that honour
+which you so vauntingly make your excuse for imperilling the peace of
+the home I ought never to have suffered you to enter.  An honest
+couple, of humble station and narrow means, had an only son, who
+evinced in early childhood talents so remarkable that they attracted
+the notice of the father's employer, a rich man of very benevolent
+heart and very cultivated taste.  He sent the child, at his expense,
+to a first-rate commercial school, meaning to provide for him later in
+his own firm.  The rich man was the head partner of an eminent bank;
+but very infirm health, and tastes much estranged from business, had
+induced him to retire from all active share in the firm, the
+management of which was confined to a son whom he idolized.  But the
+talents of the protege he had sent to school took there so passionate
+a direction towards art and estranged from trade, and his designs in
+drawing when shown to connoisseurs were deemed so promising of future
+excellence, that the patron changed his original intention, entered
+him as a pupil in the studio of a distinguished French painter, and
+afterwards bade him perfect his taste by the study of Italian and
+Flemish masterpieces.
+
+"He was still abroad, when--" here Mrs. Cameron stopped, with visible
+effort, suppressed a sob, and went on, whisperingly, through teeth
+clenched together--"when a thunderbolt fell on the house of the
+patron, shattering his fortunes, blasting his name.  The son, unknown
+to the father, had been decoyed into speculations which proved
+unfortunate: the loss might have been easily retrieved in the first
+instance; unhappily he took the wrong course to retrieve it, and
+launched into new hazards.  I must be brief.  One day the world was
+startled by the news that a firm, famed for its supposed wealth and
+solidity, was bankrupt.  Dishonesty was alleged, was proved, not
+against the father,--he went forth from the trial, censured indeed for
+neglect, not condemned for fraud, but a penniless pauper.  The--son,
+the son, the idolized son, was removed from the prisoner's dock, a
+convicted felon, sentenced to penal servitude; escaped that sentence
+by--by--you guess--you guess.  How could he escape except through
+death?--death by his own guilty deed?"
+
+Almost as much overpowered by emotion as Mrs. Cameron herself, Kenelm
+covered his bended face with one hand, stretching out the other
+blindly to clasp her own, but she would not take it.
+
+A dreary foreboding.  Again before his eyes rose the old gray
+tower,--again in his ears thrilled the tragic tale of the Fletwodes.
+What was yet left untold held the young man in spell-bound silence.
+Mrs. Cameron resumed,--
+
+"I said the father was a penniless pauper; he died lingeringly
+bedridden.  But one faithful friend did not desert that bed,--the
+youth to whose genius his wealth had ministered.  He had come from
+abroad with some modest savings from the sale of copies or sketches
+made in Florence.  These savings kept a roof over the heads of the old
+man and the two helpless, broken-hearted women,--paupers like
+himself,--his own daughter and his son's widow.  When the savings were
+gone, the young man stooped from his destined calling, found
+employment somehow, no matter how alien to his tastes, and these three
+whom his toil supported never wanted a home or food.  Well, a few
+weeks after her husband's terrible death, his young widow (they had
+not been a year married) gave birth to a child,--a girl.  She did not
+survive the exhaustion of her confinement many days.  The shock of her
+death snapped the feeble thread of the poor father's life.  Both were
+borne to the grave on the same day.  Before they died, both made the
+same prayer to their sole two mourners, the felon's sister, the old
+man's young benefactor.  The prayer was this, that the new-born infant
+should be reared, however humbly, in ignorance of her birth, of a
+father's guilt and shame.  She was not to pass a suppliant for charity
+to rich and high-born kinsfolk, who had vouchsafed no word even of
+pity to the felon's guiltless father and as guiltless wife.  That
+promise has been kept till now.  I am that daughter.  The name I bear,
+and the name which I gave to my niece, are not ours, save as we may
+indirectly claim them through alliances centuries ago.  I have never
+married.  I was to have been a bride, bringing to the representative
+of no ignoble house what was to have been a princely dower; the
+wedding day was fixed, when the bolt fell.  I have never again seen my
+betrothed.  He went abroad and died there.  I think he loved me; he
+knew I loved him.  Who can blame him for deserting me?  Who could
+marry the felon's sister?  Who would marry the felon's child?  Who but
+one?  The man who knows her secret, and will guard it; the man who,
+caring little for other education, has helped to instil into her
+spotless childhood so steadfast a love of truth, so exquisite a pride
+of honour, that did she know such ignominy rested on her birth she
+would pine herself away."
+
+"Is there only one man on earth," cried Kenelm, suddenly, rearing his
+face,--till then concealed and downcast,--and with a loftiness of
+pride on its aspect, new to its wonted mildness, "is there only one
+man who would deem the virgin at whose feet he desires to kneel and
+say, 'Deign to be the queen of my life,' not far too noble in herself
+to be debased by the sins of others before she was even born; is there
+only one man who does not think that the love of truth and the pride
+of honour are most royal attributes of woman or of man, no matter
+whether the fathers of the woman or the man were pirates as lawless as
+the fathers of Norman kings, or liars as unscrupulous, where their own
+interests were concerned, as have been the crowned representatives of
+lines as deservedly famous as Caesars and Bourbons, Tudors and
+Stuarts?  Nobility, like genius, is inborn.  One man alone guard /her/
+secret!--guard a secret that if made known could trouble a heart that
+recoils from shame!  Ah, madam, we Chillinglys are a very obscure,
+undistinguished race, but for more than a thousand years we have been
+English gentlemen.  Guard her secret rather than risk the chance of
+discovery that could give her a pang!  I would pass my whole life by
+her side in Kamtchatka, and even there I would not snatch a glimpse of
+the secret itself with mine own eyes: it should be so closely muffled
+and wrapped round by the folds of reverence and worship."
+
+This burst of passion seemed to Mrs. Cameron the senseless declamation
+of an inexperienced, hot-headed young man; and putting it aside, much
+as a great lawyer dismisses as balderdash the florid rhetoric of some
+junior counsel, rhetoric in which the great lawyer had once indulged,
+or as a woman for whom romance is over dismisses as idle verbiage some
+romantic sentiment that befools her young daughter, Mrs. Cameron
+simply replied, "All this is hollow talk, Mr. Chillingly; let us come
+to the point.  After all I have said, do you mean to persist in your
+suit to my niece?"
+
+"I persist."
+
+"What!" she cried, this time indignantly, and with generous
+indignation; "what, even were it possible that you could win your
+parents' consent to marry the child of a man condemned to penal
+servitude, or, consistently with the duties a son owes to parents,
+conceal that fact from them, could you, born to a station on which
+every gossip will ask, 'Who and what is the name of the future Lady
+Chillingly?' believe that the who and the what will never be
+discovered!  Have you, a mere stranger, unknown to us a few weeks ago,
+a right to say to Walter Melville, 'Resign to me that which is your
+sole reward for the sublime sacrifices, for the loyal devotion, for
+the watchful tenderness of patient years'?"
+
+"Surely, madam," cried Kenelm, more startled, more shaken in soul by
+this appeal, than by the previous revelations, "surely, when we last
+parted, when I confided to you my love for your niece, when you
+consented to my proposal to return home and obtain my father's
+approval of my suit,--surely then was the time to say, 'No; a suitor
+with claims paramount and irresistible has come before you.'"
+
+"I did not then know, Heaven is my witness, I did not then even
+suspect, that Walter Melville ever dreamed of seeking a wife in the
+child who had grown up under his eyes.  You must own, indeed, how much
+I discouraged your suit; I could not discourage it more without
+revealing the secret of her birth, only to be revealed as an extreme
+necessity.  But my persuasion was that your father would not consent
+to your alliance with one so far beneath the expectations he was
+entitled to form, and the refusal of that consent would terminate all
+further acquaintance between you and Lily, leaving her secret
+undisclosed.  It was not till you had left, only indeed two days ago,
+that I received a letter from Walter Melville,--a letter which told me
+what I had never before conjectured.  Here is the letter, read it, and
+then say if you have the heart to force yourself into rivalry,
+with--with--"  She broke off, choked by her exertion, thrust the
+letter into his hands, and with keen, eager, hungry stare watched his
+countenance while he read.
+
+
+
+               ----- STREET, BLOOMSBURY.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--Joy and triumph!  My picture is completed, the
+picture on which for so many months I have worked night and day in
+this den of a studio, without a glimpse of the green fields,
+concealing my address from every one, even from you, lest I might be
+tempted to suspend my labours.  The picture is completed: it is sold;
+guess the price!  Fifteen hundred guineas, and to a dealer,--a dealer!
+Think of that!  It is to be carried about the country exhibited by
+itself.  You remember those three little landscapes of mine which two
+years ago I would gladly have sold for ten pounds, only neither Lily
+nor you would let me.  My good friend and earliest patron, the German
+merchant at Luscombe, who called on me yesterday, offered to cover
+them with guineas thrice piled over the canvas.  Imagine how happy I
+felt when I forced him to accept them as a present.  What a leap in a
+man's life it is when he can afford to say, "I give!"  Now then, at
+last, at last I am in a position which justifies the utterance of the
+hope which has for eighteen years been my solace, my support; been the
+sunbeam that ever shone through the gloom when my fate was at the
+darkest; been the melody that buoyed me aloft as in the song of the
+skylark, when in the voices of men I heard but the laugh of scorn.  Do
+you remember the night on which Lily's mother besought us to bring up
+her child in ignorance of her parentage, not even to communicate to
+unkind and disdainful relatives that such a child was born?  Do you
+remember how plaintively, and yet how proudly, she, so nobly born, so
+luxuriously nurtured, clasping my hand when I ventured to remonstrate,
+and say that her own family could not condemn her child because of the
+father's guilt,--she, the proudest woman I ever knew, she whose smile
+I can at rare moments detect in Lily, raised her head from her pillow,
+and gasped forth,--
+
+"I am dying: the last words of the dying are commands.  I command you
+to see that my child's lot is not that of a felon's daughter
+transported to the hearth of nobles.  To be happy, her lot must be
+humble: no roof too humble to shelter, no husband too humble to wed,
+the felon's daughter."
+
+From that hour I formed a resolve that I would keep hand and heart
+free, that when the grandchild of my princely benefactor grew up into
+womanhood I might say to her, "I am humbly born, but thy mother would
+have given thee to me."  The newborn, consigned to our charge, has now
+ripened into woman, and I have now so assured my fortune that it is no
+longer poverty and struggle that I should ask her to share.  I am
+conscious that, were her fate not so exceptional, this hope of mine
+would be a vain presumption,--conscious that I am but the creature of
+her grandsire's bounty, and that from it springs all I ever can
+be,--conscious of the disparity in years,-conscious of many a past
+error and present fault.  But, as fate so ordains, such considerations
+are trivial; I am her rightful choice.  What other choice, compatible
+with these necessities which weigh, dear and honoured friend,
+immeasurably more on your sense of honour than they do upon mine?  and
+yet mine is not dull.  Granting, then, that you, her nearest and most
+responsible relative, do not contemn me for presumption, all else
+seems to me clear.  Lily's childlike affection for me is too deep and
+too fond not to warm into a wife's love.  Happily, too, she has not
+been reared in the stereotyped boarding-school shallowness of
+knowledge and vulgarities of gentility; but educated, like myself, by
+the free influences of Nature, longing for no halls and palaces save
+those that we build as we list, in fairyland; educated to comprehend
+and share the fancies which are more than booklore to the worshipper
+of art and song.  In a day or two, perhaps the day after you receive
+this, I shall be able to escape from London, and most likely shall
+come on foot as usual.  How I long to see once more the woodbine on
+the hedgerows, the green blades of the cornfields, the sunny lapse of
+the river, and dearer still the tiny falls of our own little noisy
+rill!  Meanwhile I entreat you, dearest, gentlest, most honored of
+such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to consider
+well the direct purport of this letter.  If you, born in a grade so
+much higher than mine, feel that it is unwarrantable insolence in me
+to aspire to the hand of my patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I
+remain not less grateful for your friendship than I was to your
+goodness when dining for the first time at your father's palace.  Shy
+and sensitive and young, I felt that his grand guests wondered why I
+was invited to the same board as themselves.  You, then courted,
+admired, you had sympathetic compassion on the raw, sullen boy; left
+those, who then seemed to me like the gods and goddesses of a heathen
+Pantheon, to come and sit beside your father's protege and cheeringly
+whisper to him such words as make a low-born ambitious lad go home
+light-hearted, saying to himself, "Some day or other."  And what it is
+to an ambitious lad, fancying himself lifted by the gods and goddesses
+of a Pantheon, to go home light-hearted muttering to himself, "Some
+day or other," I doubt if even you can divine.
+
+But should you be as kind to the presumptuous man as you were to the
+bashful boy, and say, "Realized be the dream, fulfilled be the object
+of your life! take from me as her next of kin, the last descendant of
+your benefactor," then I venture to address to you this request.  You
+are in the place of mother to your sister's child, act for her as a
+keeper now, to prepare her mind and heart for the coming change in the
+relations between her and me.  When I last saw her, six months ago,
+she was still so playfully infantine that it half seems to me I should
+be sinning against the reverence due to a child, if I said too
+abruptly, "You are woman, and I love you not as child but as woman."
+And yet, time is not allowed to me for long, cautious, and gradual
+slide from the relationship of friend into that of lover.  I now
+understand what the great master of my art once said to me, "A career
+is a destiny."  By one of those merchant princes who now at
+Manchester, as they did once at Genoa or Venice, reign alike over
+those two civilizers of the world which to dull eyes seem
+antagonistic, Art and Commerce, an offer is made to me for a picture
+on a subject which strikes his fancy: an offer so magnificently
+liberal that his commerce must command my art; and the nature of the
+subject compels me to seek the banks of the Rhine as soon as may be.
+I must have all the hues of the foliage in the meridian glories of
+summer.  I can but stay at Grasmere a very few days; but before I
+leave I must know this, am I going to work for Lily or am I not?  On
+the answer to that question depends all.  If not to work for her,
+there would be no glory in the summer, no triumph in art to me: I
+refuse the offer.  If she says, "Yes; it is for me you work," then she
+becomes my destiny.  She assures my career.  Here I speak as an
+artist: nobody who is not an artist can guess how sovereign over even
+his moral being, at a certain critical epoch in his career of artist
+or his life of man, is the success or the failure of a single work.
+But I go on to speak as man.  My love for Lily is such for the last
+six months that, though if she rejected me I should still serve art,
+still yearn for fame, it would be as an old man might do either.  The
+youth of my life would be gone.
+
+As man I say, all my thoughts, all my dreams of happiness, distinct
+from Art and fame, are summed up in the one question, "Is Lily to be
+my wife or not?"
+
+     Yours affectionately,
+
+          W. M.
+
+
+Kenelm returned the letter without a word.
+
+Enraged by his silence, Mrs. Cameron exclaimed, "Now, sir, what say
+you?  You have scarcely known Lily five weeks.  What is the feverish
+fancy of five weeks' growth to the lifelong devotion of a man like
+this?  Do you now dare to say, 'I persist'?"
+
+Kenelm waved his hand very quietly, as if to dismiss all conception of
+taunt and insult and said with his soft melancholy eyes fixed upon the
+working features of Lily's aunt, "This man is more worthy of her than
+I.  He prays you, in his letter, to prepare your niece for that change
+of relationship which he dreads too abruptly to break to her himself.
+Have you done so?"
+
+"I have; the night I got the letter."
+
+"And--you hesitate; speak truthfully, I implore.  And she--"
+
+"She," answered Mrs. Cameron, feeling herself involuntarily compelled
+to obey the voice of that prayer--"she seemed stunned at first,
+muttering, 'This is a dream: it cannot be true,--cannot!  I Lion's
+wife--I--I!  I, his destiny!  In me his happiness!' And then she
+laughed her pretty child's laugh, and put her arms round my neck, and
+said, 'You are jesting, aunty.  He could not write thus!' So I put
+that part of his letter under her eyes; and when she had convinced
+herself, her face became very grave, more like a woman's face than I
+ever saw it; and after a pause she cried out passionately, 'Can you
+think me--can I think myself--so bad, so ungrateful, as to doubt what
+I should answer, if Lion asked me whether I would willingly say or do
+anything that made him unhappy?  If there be such a doubt in my heart,
+I would tear it out by the roots, heart and all!'  Oh, Mr. Chillingly!
+There would be no happiness for her with another, knowing that she had
+blighted the life of him to whom she owes so much, though she never
+will learn how much more she owes."  Kenelm not replying to this
+remark, Mrs. Cameron resumed, "I will be perfectly frank with you, Mr.
+Chillingly.  I was not quite satisfied with Lily's manner and looks
+the next morning, that is, yesterday.  I did fear there might be some
+struggle in her mind in which there entered a thought of yourself.
+And when Walter, on his arrival here in the evening, spoke of you as
+one he had met before in his rural excursions, but whose name he only
+learned on parting at the bridge by Cromwell Lodge, I saw that Lily
+turned pale, and shortly afterwards went to her own room for the
+night.  Fearing that any interview with you, though it would not alter
+her resolve, might lessen her happiness on the only choice she can and
+ought to adopt, I resolved to visit you this morning, and make that
+appeal to your reason and your heart which I have done now,--not, I am
+sure, in vain.  Hush!  I hear his voice!"
+
+Melville entered the room, Lily leaning on his arm.  The artist's
+comely face was radiant with ineffable joyousness.  Leaving Lily, he
+reached Kenelm's side as with a single bound, shook him heartily by
+the hand, saying, "I find that you have already been a welcomed
+visitor in this house.  Long may you be so, so say I, so (I answer for
+her) says my fair betrothed, to whom I need not present you."
+
+Lily advanced, and held out her hand very timidly.  Kenelm touched
+rather than clasped it.  His own strong hand trembled like a leaf.  He
+ventured but one glance at her face.  All the bloom had died out of
+it, but the expression seemed to him wondrously, cruelly tranquil.
+
+"Your betrothed! your future bride!" he said to the artist, with a
+mastery over his emotion rendered less difficult by the single glance
+at that tranquil face.  "I wish you joy.  All happiness to you, Miss
+Mordaunt.  You have made a noble choice."
+
+He looked round for his hat; it lay at his feet, but he did not see
+it; his eyes wandering away with uncertain vision, like those of a
+sleep-walker.
+
+Mrs. Cameron picked up the hat and gave it to him.
+
+"Thank you," he said meekly; then with a smile half sweet, half
+bitter, "I have so much to thank you for, Mrs. Cameron."
+
+"But you are not going already,--just as I enter too.  Hold!  Mrs.
+Cameron tells me you are lodging with my old friend Jones.  Come and
+stop a couple of days with us: we can find you a room; the room over
+your butterfly cage, eh, Fairy?"
+
+"Thank you too.  Thank you all.  No; I must be in London by the first
+train."
+
+Speaking thus, he had found his way to the door, bowed with the quiet
+grace that characterized all his movements, and was gone.
+
+"Pardon his abruptness, Lily; he too loves; he too is impatient to
+find a betrothed," said the artist gayly: "but now he knows my dearest
+secret, I think I have a right to know his; and I will try."
+
+He had scarcely uttered the words before he too had quitted the room
+and overtaken Kenelm just at the threshold.
+
+"If you are going back to Cromwell Lodge,--to pack up, I suppose,--let
+me walk with you as far as the bridge."
+
+Kenelm inclined his head assentingly and tacitly as they passed
+through the garden-gate, winding backwards through the lane which
+skirted the garden pales; when, at the very spot in which the day
+after their first and only quarrel Lily's face had been seen
+brightening through the evergreen, that day on which the old woman,
+quitting her, said, "God bless you!" and on which the vicar, walking
+with Kenelm, spoke of her fairy charms; well, just in that spot Lily's
+face appeared again, not this time brightening through the evergreens,
+unless the palest gleam of the palest moon can be said to brighten.
+Kenelm saw, started, halted.  His companion, then in the rush of a
+gladsome talk, of which Kenelm had not heard a word, neither saw nor
+halted; he walked on mechanically, gladsome, and talking.
+
+Lily stretched forth her hand through the evergreens.  Kenelm took it
+reverentially.  This time it was not his hand that trembled.
+
+"Good-by," she said in a whisper, "good-by forever in this world.  You
+understand,--you do understand me.  Say that you do."
+
+"I understand.  Noble child! noble choice!  God bless you!  God
+comfort me!" murmured Kenelm.  Their eyes met.  Oh, the sadness; and,
+alas! oh the love in the eyes of both!
+
+Kenelm passed on.
+
+All said in an instant.  How many Alls are said in an instant!
+Melville was in the midst of some glowing sentence, begun when Kenelm
+dropped from his side, and the end of the sentence was this:
+
+"Words cannot say how fair seems life; how easy seems conquest of
+fame, dating from this day--this day"--and in his turn he halted,
+looked round on the sunlit landscape, and breathed deep, as if to
+drink into his soul all of the earth's joy and beauty which his gaze
+could compass and the arch of the horizon bound.
+
+"They who knew her even the best," resumed the artist, striding on,
+"even her aunt, never could guess how serious and earnest, under all
+her infantine prettiness of fancy, is that girl's real nature.  We
+were walking along the brook-side, when I began to tell how solitary
+the world would be to me if I could not win her to my side; while I
+spoke she had turned aside from the path we had taken, and it was not
+till we were under the shadow of the church in which we shall be
+married that she uttered the word that gives to every cloud in my fate
+the silver lining; implying thus how solemnly connected in her mind
+was the thought of love with the sanctity of religion."
+
+Kenelm shuddered,--the church, the burial-ground, the old Gothic tomb,
+the flowers round the infant's grave!
+
+"But I am talking a great deal too much about myself," resumed the
+artist.  "Lovers are the most consummate of all egotists, and the most
+garrulous of all gossips.  You have wished me joy on my destined
+nuptials, when shall I wish you joy on yours?  Since we have begun to
+confide in each other, you are in my debt as to a confidence."
+
+They had now gained the bridge.  Kenelm turned round abruptly,
+"Good-day; let us part here.  I have nothing to confide to you that
+might not seem to your ears a mockery when I wish you joy."  So
+saying, so obeying in spite of himself the anguish of his heart,
+Kenelm wrung his companion's hand with the force of an uncontrollable
+agony, and speeded over the bridge before Melville recovered his
+surprise.
+
+The artist would have small claim to the essential attribute of
+genius--namely, the intuitive sympathy of passion with passion--if
+that secret of Kenelm's which he had so lightly said "he had acquired
+the right to learn," was not revealed to him as by an electric flash.
+"Poor fellow!" he said to himself pityingly; "how natural that he
+should fall in love with Fairy! but happily he is so young, and such a
+philosopher, that it is but one of those trials through which, at
+least ten times a year, I have gone with wounds that leave not a
+scar."
+
+Thus soliloquizing, the warm-blooded worshipper of Nature returned
+homeward, too blest in the triumph of his own love to feel more than a
+kindly compassion for the wounded heart, consigned with no doubt of
+the healing result to the fickleness of youth and the consolations of
+philosophy.  Not for a moment did the happier rival suspect that
+Kenelm's love was returned; that an atom in the heart of the girl who
+had promised to be his bride could take its light or shadow from any
+love but his own.  Yet, more from delicacy of respect to the rival so
+suddenly self-betrayed than from any more prudential motive, he did
+not speak even to Mrs. Cameron of Kenelm's secret and sorrow; and
+certainly neither she nor Lily was disposed to ask any question that
+concerned the departed visitor.
+
+In fact the name of Kenelm Chillingly was scarcely, if at all,
+mentioned in that household during the few days which elapsed before
+Walter Melville quitted Grasmere for the banks of the Rhine, not to
+return till the autumn, when his marriage with Lily was to take place.
+During those days Lily was calm and seemingly cheerful; her manner
+towards her betrothed, if more subdued, not less affectionate than of
+old.  Mrs. Cameron congratulated herself on having so successfully got
+rid of Kenelm Chillingly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SO, then, but for that officious warning, uttered under the balcony at
+Luscombe, Kenelm Chillingly might never have had a rival in Walter
+Melville.  But ill would any reader construe the character of Kenelm,
+did he think that such a thought increased the bitterness of his
+sorrow.  No sorrow in the thought that a noble nature had been saved
+from the temptation to a great sin.
+
+The good man does good merely by living.  And the good he does may
+often mar the plans he formed for his own happiness.  But he cannot
+regret that Heaven has permitted him to do good.
+
+What Kenelm did feel is perhaps best explained in the letter to Sir
+Peter, which is here subjoined:--
+
+
+"MY DEAREST FATHER,--Never till my dying day shall I forget that
+tender desire for my happiness with which, overcoming all worldly
+considerations, no matter at what disappointment to your own cherished
+plans or ambition for the heir to your name and race, you sent me away
+from your roof, these words ringing in my ear like the sound of
+joy-bells, 'Choose as you will, with my blessing on your choice.  I
+open my heart to admit another child: your wife shall be my daughter.'
+It is such an unspeakable comfort to me to recall those words now.  Of
+all human affections gratitude is surely the holiest; and it blends
+itself with the sweetness of religion when it is gratitude to a
+father.  And, therefore, do not grieve too much for me, when I tell
+you that the hopes which enchanted me when we parted are not to be
+fulfilled.  Her hand is pledged to another,--another with claims upon
+her preference to which mine cannot be compared; and he is himself,
+putting aside the accidents of birth and fortune, immeasurably my
+superior.  In that thought--I mean the thought that the man she
+selects deserves her more than I do, and that in his happiness she
+will blend her own--I shall find comfort, so soon as I can fairly
+reason down the first all-engrossing selfishness that follows the
+sense of unexpected and irremediable loss.  Meanwhile you will think
+it not unnatural that I resort to such aids for change of heart as are
+afforded by change of scene.  I start for the Continent to-night, and
+shall not rest till I reach Venice, which I have not yet seen.  I feel
+irresistibly attracted towards still canals and gliding gondolas.  I
+will write to you and to my dear mother the day I arrive.  And I trust
+to write cheerfully, with full accounts of all I see and encounter.
+Do not, dearest father, in your letters to me, revert or allude to
+that grief which even the tenderest word from your own tender self
+might but chafe into pain more sensitive.  After all, a disappointed
+love is a very common lot.  And we meet every day, men--ay, and women
+too--who have known it, and are thoroughly cured.  The manliest of our
+modern lyrical poets has said very nobly, and, no doubt, very justly,
+
+
+          "To bear is to conquer our fate.
+
+
+     "Ever your loving son,
+
+          "K. C."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+NEARLY a year and a half has elapsed since the date of my last
+chapter.  Two Englishmen were--the one seated, the other reclined at
+length--on one of the mounds that furrow the ascent of Posilippo.
+Before them spread the noiseless sea, basking in the sunshine, without
+visible ripple; to the left there was a distant glimpse through gaps
+of brushwood of the public gardens and white water of the Chiaja.
+They were friends who had chanced to meet abroad unexpectedly, joined
+company, and travelled together for many months, chiefly in the East.
+They had been but a few days in Naples.  The elder of the two had
+important affairs in England which ought to have summoned him back
+long since.  But he did not let his friend know this; his affairs
+seemed to him less important than the duties he owed to one for whom
+he entertained that deep and noble love which is something stronger
+than brotherly, for with brotherly affection it combines gratitude and
+reverence.  He knew, too, that his friend was oppressed by a haunting
+sorrow, of which the cause was divined by one, not revealed by the
+other.
+
+To leave him, so beloved, alone with that sorrow in strange lands, was
+a thought not to be cherished by a friend so tender; for in the
+friendship of this man there was that sort of tenderness which
+completes a nature, thoroughly manlike, by giving it a touch of the
+woman's.
+
+It was a day which in our northern climates is that of winter: in the
+southern clime of Naples it was mild as an English summer day,
+lingering on the brink of autumn; the sun sloping towards the west,
+and already gathering around it roseate and purple fleeces; elsewhere
+the deep blue sky was without a cloudlet.
+
+Both had been for some minutes silent; at length the man reclining on
+the grass--it was the younger man--said suddenly, and with no previous
+hint of the subject introduced, "Lay your hand on your heart, Tom, and
+answer me truly.  Are your thoughts as clear from regrets as the
+heavens above us are from a cloud?  Man takes regret from tears that
+have ceased to flow, as the heavens take clouds from the rains that
+have ceased to fall."
+
+"Regrets?  Ah, I understand, for the loss of the girl I once loved to
+distraction!  No; surely I made that clear to you many, many, many
+months ago, when I was your guest at Moleswich."
+
+"Ay, but I have never, since then, spoken to you on that subject.  I
+did not dare.  It seems to me so natural that a man, in the earlier
+struggle between love and reason, should say, 'Reason shall conquer,
+and has conquered;' and yet--and yet--as time glides on, feel that the
+conquerors who cannot put down rebellion have a very uneasy reign.
+Answer me not as at Moleswich, during the first struggle, but now, in
+the after-day, when reaction from struggle comes."
+
+"Upon my honour," answered the friend, "I have had no reaction at all.
+I was cured entirely, when I had once seen Jessie again, another man's
+wife, mother to his child, happy in her marriage; and, whether she was
+changed or not,--very different from the sort of wife I should like to
+marry, now that I am no longer a village farrier."
+
+"And, I remember, you spoke of some other girl whom it would suit you
+to marry.  You have been long abroad from her.  Do you ever think of
+her,--think of her still as your future wife?  Can you love her?  Can
+you, who have once loved so faithfully, love again?"
+
+"I am sure of that.  I love Emily better than I did when I left
+England.  We correspond.  She writes such nice letters."  Tom
+hesitated, blushed, and continued timidly, "I should like to show you
+one of her letters."
+
+"Do."
+
+Tom drew forth the last of such letters from his breast-pocket.
+
+Kenelm raised himself from the grass, took the letter, and read
+slowly, carefully, while Tom watched in vain for some approving smile
+to brighten up the dark beauty of that melancholy face.
+
+Certainly it was the letter a man in love might show with pride to a
+friend: the letter of a lady, well educated, well brought up, evincing
+affection modestly, intelligence modestly too; the sort of letter in
+which a mother who loved her daughter, and approved the daughter's
+choice, could not have suggested a correction.
+
+As Kenelm gave back the letter, his eyes met his friend's.  Those were
+eager eyes,--eyes hungering for praise.  Kenelm's heart smote him for
+that worst of sins in friendship,--want of sympathy; and that uneasy
+heart forced to his lips congratulations, not perhaps quite sincere,
+but which amply satisfied the lover.  In uttering them, Kenelm rose to
+his feet, threw his arm round his friend's shoulder, and said, "Are
+you not tired of this place, Tom?  I am.  Let us go back to England
+to-morrow."  Tom's honest face brightened vividly.  "How selfish and
+egotistical I have been!" continued Kenelm; "I ought to have thought
+more of you, your career, your marriage,--pardon me--"
+
+"Pardon you,--pardon!  Don't I owe to you all,--owe to you Emily
+herself?  If you had never come to Graveleigh, never said, 'Be my
+friend,' what should I have been now? what--what?"
+
+The next day the two friends quitted Naples /en route/ for England,
+not exchanging many words by the way.  The old loquacious crotchety
+humour of Kenelm had deserted him.  A duller companion than he was you
+could not have conceived.  He might have been the hero of a young
+lady's novel.  It was only when they parted in London, that Kenelm
+evinced more secret purpose, more external emotion than one of his
+heraldic Daces shifting from the bed to the surface of a waveless
+pond.
+
+"If I have rightly understood you, Tom, all this change in you,
+all this cure of torturing regret, was wrought, wrought
+lastingly,--wrought so as to leave you heart-free for the world's
+actions and a home's peace, on that eve when you saw her whose face
+till then had haunted you, another man's happy wife, and in so seeing
+her, either her face was changed or your heart became so."
+
+"Quite true.  I might express it otherwise, but the fact remains the
+same."
+
+"God bless you, Tom; bless you in your career without, in your home
+within," said Kenelm, wringing his friend's hand at the door of the
+carriage that was to whirl to love and wealth and station the whilom
+bully of a village, along the iron groove of that contrivance which,
+though now the tritest of prosaic realities, seemed once too poetical
+for a poet's wildest visions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A WINTER'S evening at Moleswich.  Very different from a winter sunset
+at Naples.  It is intensely cold.  There has been a slight fall of
+snow, accompanied with severe, bright, clean frost, a thin sprinkling
+of white on the pavements.  Kenelm Chillingly entered the town on
+foot, no longer a knapsack on his back.  Passing through the main
+street, he paused a moment at the door of Will Somers.  The shop was
+closed.  No, he would not stay there to ask in a roundabout way for
+news.  He would go in straightforwardly and manfully to Grasmere.  He
+would take the inmates there by surprise.  The sooner he could bring
+Tom's experience home to himself, the better.  He had schooled his
+heart to rely on that experience, and it brought him back the old
+elasticity of his stride.  In his lofty carriage and buoyant face were
+again visible the old haughtiness of the indifferentism that keeps
+itself aloof from the turbulent emotions and conventional frivolities
+of those whom its philosophy pities and scorns.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed he who like Swift never laughed aloud, and often
+laughed inaudibly.  "Ha! ha!  I shall exorcise the ghost of my grief.
+I shall never be haunted again.  If that stormy creature whom love
+might have maddened into crime, if he were cured of love at once by a
+single visit to the home of her whose face was changed to him,--for
+the smiles and the tears of it had become the property of another
+man,--how much more should I be left without a scar!  I, the heir of
+the Chillinglys!  I, the kinsman of a Mivers!  I, the pupil of a
+Welby!  I--I, Kenelm Chillingly, to be thus--thus--"  Here, in the
+midst of his boastful soliloquy, the well-remembered brook rushed
+suddenly upon eye and ear, gleaming and moaning under the wintry moon.
+Kenelm Chillingly stopped, covered his face with his hands, and burst
+into a passion of tears.
+
+Recovering himself slowly, he went on along the path, every step of
+which was haunted by the form of Lily.  He reached the garden gate of
+Grasmere, lifted the latch, and entered.  As he did so, a man,
+touching his hat, rushed beside, and advanced before him,--the village
+postman.  Kenelm drew back, allowing the man to pass to the door, and
+as he thus drew back, he caught a side view of lighted windows looking
+on the lawn,--the windows of the pleasant drawing-room in which he had
+first heard Lily speak of her guardian.
+
+The postman left his letters, and regained the garden gate, while
+Kenelm still stood wistfully gazing on those lighted windows.  He had,
+meanwhile, advanced along the whitened sward to the light, saying to
+himself, "Let me just see her and her happiness, and then I will knock
+boldly at the door, and say, 'Good-evening, Mrs. Melville.'"
+
+So Kenelm stole across the lawn, and, stationing himself at the angle
+of the wall, looked into the window.
+
+Melville, in dressing-robe and slippers, was seated alone by the
+fireside.  His dog was lazily stretched on the hearth rug.  One by one
+the features of the room, as the scene of his vanished happiness, grew
+out from its stillness; the delicately tinted walls, the dwarf
+bookcase, with its feminine ornaments on the upper shelf; the piano
+standing in the same place.  Lily's own small low chair; that was not
+in its old place, but thrust into a remote angle, as if it had passed
+into disuse.  Melville was reading a letter, no doubt one of those
+which the postman had left.  Surely the contents were pleasant, for
+his fair face, always frankly expressive of emotion, brightened
+wonderfully as he read on.  Then he rose with a quick, brisk movement,
+and pulled the bell hastily.
+
+A neat maid-servant entered,--a strange face to Kenelm.  Melville gave
+her some brief message.  "He has had joyous news," thought Kenelm.
+"He has sent for his wife that she may share his joy."  Presently the
+door opened, and entered not Lily, but Mrs. Cameron.
+
+She looked changed.  Her natural quietude of mien and movement the
+same, indeed, but with more languor in it.  Her hair had become gray.
+Melville was standing by the table as she approached him.  He put the
+letter into her hands with a gay, proud smile, and looked over her
+shoulder while she read it, pointing with his finger as to some lines
+that should more emphatically claim her attention.
+
+When she had finished her face reflected his smile.  They exchanged a
+hearty shake of the hand, as if in congratulation.
+
+"Ah," thought Kenelm, "the letter is from Lily.  She is abroad.
+Perhaps the birth of a first-born."
+
+Just then Blanche, who had not been visible before, emerged from under
+the table, and as Melville reseated himself by the fireside, sprang
+into his lap, rubbing herself against his breast.  The expression of
+his face changed; he uttered some low exclamation.  Mrs. Cameron took
+the creature from his lap, stroking it quietly, carried it across the
+room, and put it outside the door.  Then she seated herself beside the
+artist, placing her hand in his, and they conversed in low tones, till
+Melville's face again grew bright, and again he took up the letter.
+
+A few minutes later the maid-servant entered with the tea-things, and
+after arranging them on the table approached the window.  Kenelm
+retreated into the shade, the servant closed the shutters and drew the
+curtains; that scene of quiet home comfort vanished from the eyes of
+the looker-on.
+
+Kenelm felt strangely perplexed.  What had become of Lily? was she
+indeed absent from her home?  Had he conjectured rightly that the
+letter which had evidently so gladdened Melville was from her, or was
+it possible--here a thought of joy seized his heart and held him
+breathless--was it possible that, after all, she had not married her
+guardian; had found a home elsewhere,--was free?  He moved on farther
+down the lawn, towards the water, that he might better bring before
+his sight that part of the irregular building in which Lily formerly
+had her sleeping-chamber, and her "own-own room."
+
+All was dark there; the shutters inexorably closed.  The place with
+which the childlike girl had associated her most childlike fancies,
+taming and tending the honey-drinkers destined to pass into fairies,
+that fragile tenement was not closed against the winds and snows; its
+doors were drearily open; gaps in the delicate wire-work; of its
+dainty draperies a few tattered shreds hanging here and there; and on
+the depopulated floor the moonbeams resting cold and ghostly.  No
+spray from the tiny fountain; its basin chipped and mouldering; the
+scanty waters therein frozen.  Of all the pretty wild ones that Lily
+fancied she could tame, not one.  Ah! yes, there was one, probably not
+of the old familiar number; a stranger that might have crept in for
+shelter from the first blasts of winter, and now clung to an angle in
+the farther wall, its wings folded,--asleep, not dead.  But Kenelm saw
+it not; he noticed only the general desolation of the spot.
+
+"Natural enough," thought he.  "She has outgrown all such pretty
+silliness.  A wife cannot remain a child.  Still, if she had belonged
+to me--"  The thought choked even his inward, unspoken utterance.  He
+turned away, paused a moment under the leafless boughs of the great
+willow still dipping into the brook, and then with impatient steps
+strode back towards the garden gate.
+
+"No,--no,--no.  I cannot now enter that house and ask for Mrs.
+Melville.  Trial enough for one night to stand on the old ground.  I
+will return to the town.  I will call at Jessie's, and there I can
+learn if she indeed be happy."
+
+So he went on by the path along the brook-side, the night momently
+colder and colder, and momently clearer and clearer, while the moon
+noiselessly glided into loftier heights.  Wrapped in his abstracted
+thoughts, when he came to the spot in which the path split in twain,
+he did not take that which led more directly to the town.  His steps,
+naturally enough following the train of his thoughts, led him along
+the path with which the object of his thoughts was associated.  He
+found himself on the burial-ground, and in front of the old ruined
+tomb with the effaced inscription.
+
+"Ah! child! child!" he murmured almost audibly, "what depths of woman
+tenderness lay concealed in thee!  In what loving sympathy with the
+past--sympathy only vouchsafed to the tenderest women and the highest
+poets--didst thou lay thy flowers on the tomb, to which thou didst
+give a poet's history interpreted by a woman's heart, little dreaming
+that beneath the stone slept a hero of thine own fallen race."
+
+He passed beneath the shadow of the yews, whose leaves no winter wind
+can strew, and paused at the ruined tomb,--no flower now on its stone,
+only a sprinkling of snow at the foot of it,--sprinklings of snow at
+the foot of each humbler grave-mound.  Motionless in the frosty air
+rested the pointed church-spire, and through the frosty air, higher
+and higher up the arch of heaven, soared the unpausing moon.  Around
+and below and above her, the stars which no science can number; yet
+not less difficult to number are the thoughts, desires, aspirations
+which, in a space of time briefer than a winter's night, can pass
+through the infinite deeps of a human soul.
+
+From his stand by the Gothic tomb, Kenelm looked along the churchyard
+for the infant's grave which Lily's pious care had bordered with
+votive flowers.  Yes, in that direction there was still a gleam of
+colour; could it be of flowers in that biting winter time?--the moon
+is so deceptive, it silvers into the hue of the jessamines the green
+of the everlastings.
+
+He passed towards the white grave-mound.  His sight had duped him; no
+pale flower, no green "everlasting" on its neglected border,--only
+brown mould, withered stalks, streaks of snow.
+
+"And yet," he said sadly, "she told me she had never broken a promise;
+and she had given a promise to the dying child.  Ah! she is too happy
+now to think of the dead."
+
+So murmuring, he was about to turn towards the town, when close by
+that child's grave he saw another.  Round that other there were pale
+"everlastings," dwarfed blossoms of the laurestinus; at the four
+angles the drooping bud of a Christmas rose; at the head of the grave
+was a white stone, its sharp edges cutting into the starlit air; and
+on the head, in fresh letters, were inscribed these words:--
+
+
+                    To the Memory of
+                          L. M.
+                         Aged 17,
+               Died October 29, A. D. 18--,
+     This stone, above the grave to which her mortal
+   remains are consigned, beside that of an infant not
+        more sinless, is consecrated by those who
+                 most mourn and miss her,
+                     ISABEL CAMERON,
+                     WALTER MELVILLE.
+       "Suffer the little children to come unto me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE next morning Mr. Emlyn, passing from his garden to the town of
+Moleswich, descried a human form stretched on the burial-ground,
+stirring restlessly but very slightly, as if with an involuntary
+shiver, and uttering broken sounds, very faintly heard, like the moans
+that a man in pain strives to suppress and cannot.
+
+The rector hastened to the spot.  The man was lying, his face
+downward, on a grave-mound, not dead, not asleep.
+
+"Poor fellow overtaken by drink, I fear," thought the gentle pastor;
+and as it was the habit of his mind to compassionate error even more
+than grief, he accosted the supposed sinner in very soothing
+tones--trying to raise him from the ground--and with very kindly
+words.
+
+Then the man lifted his face from its pillow on the grave-mound,
+looked round him dreamily into the gray, blank air of the cheerless
+morn, and rose to his feet quietly and slowly.  The vicar was
+startled; he recognized the face of him he had last seen in the
+magnificent affluence of health and strength.  But the character of
+the face was changed,--so changed! its old serenity of expression, at
+once grave and sweet, succeeded by a wild trouble in the heavy eyelids
+and trembling lips.
+
+"Mr. Chillingly,--you!  Is it possible?"
+
+"Varus, Varus," exclaimed Kenelm, passionately, "what hast thou done
+with my legions?"
+
+At that quotation of the well-known greeting of Augustus to his
+unfortunate general, the scholar recoiled.  Had his young friend's
+mind deserted him,--dazed, perhaps, by over-study?
+
+He was soon reassured; Kenelm's face settled back into calm, though a
+dreary calm, like that of the wintry day.
+
+"I beg pardon, Mr. Emlyn; I had not quite shaken off the hold of a
+strange dream.  I dreamed that I was worse off than Augustus: he did
+not lose the world when the legions he had trusted to another vanished
+into a grave."
+
+Here Kenelm linked his arm in that of the rector,--on which he leaned
+rather heavily,--and drew him on from the burial-ground into the open
+space where the two paths met.
+
+"But how long have you returned to Moleswich?" asked Emlyn; "and how
+came you to choose so damp a bed for your morning slumbers?"
+
+"The wintry cold crept into my veins when I stood in the
+burial-ground, and I was very weary; I had no sleep at night.  Do not
+let me take you out of your way; I am going on to Grasmere.  So I see,
+by the record on a gravestone, that it is more than a year ago since
+Mr. Melville lost his wife."
+
+"Wife?  He never married."
+
+"What!" cried Kenelm.  "Whose, then, is that gravestone,--'L. M.'?"
+
+"Alas! it is our poor Lily's."
+
+"And she died unmarried?"
+
+As Kenelm said this he looked up, and the sun broke out from the
+gloomy haze of the morning.  "I may claim thee, then," he thought
+within himself, "claim thee as mine when we meet again."
+
+"Unmarried,--yes," resumed the vicar.  "She was indeed betrothed to
+her guardian; they were to have been married in the autumn, on his
+return from the Rhine.  He went there to paint on the spot itself his
+great picture, which is now so famous,--'Roland, the Hermit Knight,
+looking towards the convent lattice for a sight of the Holy Nun.'
+Melville had scarcely gone before the symptoms of the disease which
+proved fatal to poor Lily betrayed themselves; they baffled all
+medical skill,--rapid decline.  She was always very delicate, but no
+one detected in her the seeds of consumption.  Melville only returned
+a day or two before her death.  Dear childlike Lily! how we all
+mourned for her!--not least the poor, who believed in her fairy
+charms."
+
+"And least of all, it appears, the man she was to have married."
+
+"He?--Melville?  How can you wrong him so?  His grief was
+intense--overpowering--for the time."
+
+"For the time! what time?" muttered Kenelm, in tones too low for the
+pastor's ear.
+
+They moved on silently.  Mr. Emlyn resumed,--
+
+"You noticed the text on Lily's gravestone--'Suffer the little
+children to come unto me'?  She dictated it herself the day before she
+died.  I was with her then, so I was at the last."
+
+"Were you--were you--at the last--the last?  Good-day, Mr. Emlyn; we
+are just in sight of the garden gate.  And--excuse me--I wish to see
+Mr. Melville alone."
+
+"Well, then, good-day; but if you are making any stay in the
+neighbourhood, will you not be our guest?  We have a room at your
+service."
+
+"I thank you gratefully; but I return to London in an hour or so.
+Hold, a moment.  You were with her at the last?  She was resigned to
+die?"
+
+"Resigned! that is scarcely the word.  The smile left upon her lips
+was not that of human resignation: it was the smile of a divine joy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+"YES, sir, Mr. Melville is at home in his studio."
+
+Kenelm followed the maid across the hall into a room not built at the
+date of Kenelm's former visits to the house: the artist, making
+Grasmere his chief residence after Lily's death, had added it at the
+back of the neglected place wherein Lily had encaged "the souls of
+infants unbaptized."
+
+A lofty room, with a casement partially darkened, to the bleak north;
+various sketches on the walls; gaunt specimens of antique furniture,
+and of gorgeous Italian silks, scattered about in confused disorder;
+one large picture on its easel curtained; another as large, and half
+finished, before which stood the painter.  He turned quickly, as
+Kenelm entered the room unannounced, let fall brush and palette, came
+up to him eagerly, grasped his hand, drooped his head on Kenelm's
+shoulder, and said, in a voice struggling with evident and strong
+emotion,--
+
+"Since we parted, such grief! such a loss!"
+
+"I know it; I have seen her grave.  Let us not speak of it.  Why so
+needlessly revive your sorrow?  So--so--your sanguine hopes are
+fulfilled: the world at last has done you justice?  Emlyn tells me
+that you have painted a very famous picture."
+
+Kenelm had seated himself as he thus spoke.  The painter still stood
+with dejected attitude on the middle of the floor, and brushed his
+hand over his moistened eyes once or twice before he answered, "Yes,
+wait a moment, don't talk of fame yet.  Bear with me.  The sudden
+sight of you unnerved me."
+
+The artist here seated himself also on an old worm-eaten Gothic chest,
+rumpling and chafing the golden or tinselled threads of the
+embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn, flung over the Gothic
+chest, so rare also, and so worm-eaten.
+
+Kenelm looked through half-closed lids at the artist, and his lips,
+before slightly curved with a secret scorn, became gravely compressed.
+In Melville's struggle to conceal emotion the strong man recognized a
+strong man,--recognized, and yet only wondered; wondered how such a
+man, to whom Lily had pledged her hand, could so soon after the loss
+of Lily go on painting pictures, and care for any praise bestowed on a
+yard of canvas.
+
+In a very few minutes Melville recommenced conversation,--no more
+reference to Lily than if she had never existed.  "Yes, my last
+picture has been indeed a success,--a reward complete, if tardy, for
+all the bitterness of former struggles made in vain, for the galling
+sense of injustice, the anguish of which only an artist knows, when
+unworthy rivals are ranked before him.
+
+
+          "'Foes quick to blame, and friends afraid to praise.'
+
+
+"True that I have still much to encounter; the cliques still seek to
+disparage me, but between me and the cliques there stands at last the
+giant form of the public, and at last critics of graver weight than
+the cliques have deigned to accord to me a higher rank than even the
+public yet acknowledge.  Ah, Mr. Chillingly, you do not profess to be
+a judge of paintings, but, excuse me, just look at this letter.  I
+received it only last night from the greatest connoisseur of my art,
+certainly in England, perhaps in Europe."  Here Melville drew, from
+the side-pocket of his picturesque /moyen age/ surtout, a letter
+signed by a name authoritative to all who, being painters themselves,
+acknowledge authority in one who could no more paint a picture himself
+than Addison, the ablest critic of the greatest poem modern Europe has
+produced, could have written ten lines of the "Paradise Lost," and
+thrust the letter into Kenelm's hand.  Kenelm read it listlessly, with
+an increased contempt for an artist who could so find in gratified
+vanity consolation for the life gone from earth.  But, listlessly as
+he read the letter, the sincere and fervent enthusiasm of the
+laudatory contents impressed him, and the preeminent authority of the
+signature could not be denied.
+
+The letter was written on the occasion of Melville's recent election
+to the dignity of R. A., successor to a very great artist whose death
+had created a vacancy in the Academy.  He returned the letter to
+Melville, saying, "This is the letter I saw you reading last night as
+I looked in at your window.  Indeed, for a man who cares for the
+opinion of other men, this letter is very flattering; and for the
+painter who cares for money, it must be very pleasant to know by how
+many guineas every inch of his canvas may be covered."  Unable longer
+to control his passions of rage, of scorn, of agonizing grief, Kenelm
+then burst forth: "Man, man, whom I once accepted as a teacher on
+human life,--a teacher to warm, to brighten, to exalt mine own
+indifferent, dreamy, slow-pulsed self! has not the one woman whom thou
+didst select out of this overcrowded world to be bone of thy bone,
+flesh of thy flesh, vanished evermore from the earth,--little more
+than a year since her voice was silenced, her heart ceased to beat?
+But how slight is such loss to thy life compared to the worth of a
+compliment that flatters thy vanity!"
+
+The artist rose to his feet with an indignant impulse.  But the angry
+flush faded from his cheek as he looked on the countenance of his
+rebuker.  He walked up to him, and attempted to take his hand, but
+Kenelm snatched it scornfully from his grasp.
+
+"Poor friend," said Melville, sadly and soothingly, "I did not think
+you loved her thus deeply.  Pardon me."  He drew a chair close to
+Kenelm's, and after a brief pause went on thus, in very earnest tones,
+"I am not so heartless, not so forgetful of my loss as you suppose.
+But reflect, you have but just learned of her death, you are under the
+first shock of grief.  More than a year has been given to me for
+gradual submission to the decree of Heaven.  Now listen to me, and try
+to listen calmly.  I am many years older than you: I ought to know
+better the conditions on which man holds the tenure of life.  Life is
+composite, many-sided: nature does not permit it to be lastingly
+monopolized by a single passion, or while yet in the prime of its
+strength to be lastingly blighted by a single sorrow.  Survey the
+great mass of our common race, engaged in the various callings, some
+the humblest, some the loftiest, by which the business of the world is
+carried on,--can you justly despise as heartless the poor trader, or
+the great statesman, when it may be but a few days after the loss of
+some one nearest and dearest to his heart, the trader reopens his
+shop, the statesman reappears in his office?  But in me, the votary of
+art, in me you behold but the weakness of gratified vanity; if I feel
+joy in the hope that my art may triumph, and my country may add my
+name to the list of those who contribute to her renown, where and when
+ever lived an artist not sustained by that hope, in privation, in
+sickness, in the sorrows he must share with his kind?  Nor is this
+hope that of a feminine vanity, a sicklier craving for applause; it
+identifies itself with glorious services to our land, to our race, to
+the children of all after time.  Our art cannot triumph, our name
+cannot live, unless we achieve a something that tends to beautify or
+ennoble the world in which we accept the common heritage of toil and
+of sorrow, in order therefrom to work out for successive multitudes a
+recreation and a joy."
+
+While the artist thus spoke Kenelm lifted towards his face eyes
+charged with suppressed tears.  And the face, kindling as the artist
+vindicated himself from the young man's bitter charge, became
+touchingly sweet in its grave expression at the close of the not
+ignoble defence.
+
+"Enough," said Kenelm, rising.  "There is a ring of truth in what you
+say.  I can conceive the artist's, the poet's escape from this world,
+when all therein is death and winter, into the world he creates and
+colours at his will with the hues of summer.  So, too, I can conceive
+how the man whose life is sternly fitted into the grooves of a
+trader's calling, or a statesman's duties, is borne on by the force of
+custom, afar from such brief halting-spot as a grave.  But I am no
+poet, no artist, no trader, no statesman; I have no calling, my life
+is fixed into no grooves.  Adieu."
+
+"Hold a moment.  Not now, but somewhat later, ask yourself whether any
+life can be permitted to wander in space, a monad detached from the
+lives of others.  Into some groove or other, sooner or later, it must
+settle, and be borne on obedient to the laws of Nature and the
+responsibility to God."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+KENELM went back alone, and with downcast looks, through the desolate,
+flowerless garden, when at the other side of the gate a light touch
+was laid on his arm.  He looked up, and recognized Mrs. Cameron.
+
+"I saw you," she said, "from my window coming to the house, and I have
+been waiting for you here.  I wished to speak to you alone.  Allow me
+to walk beside you."'
+
+Kenelm inclined his head assentingly, but made no answer.  They were
+nearly midway between the cottage and the burial-ground when Mrs.
+Cameron resumed, her tones quick and agitated, contrasting her
+habitual languid quietude,--
+
+"I have a great weight on my mind; it ought not to be remorse.  I
+acted as I thought in my conscience for the best.  But oh, Mr.
+Chillingly, if I erred,--if I judged wrongly, do say you at least
+forgive me."  She seized his hand, pressing it convulsively.  Kenelm
+muttered inaudibly: a sort of dreary stupor had succeeded to the
+intense excitement of grief.  Mrs. Cameron went on,--
+
+"You could not have married Lily; you know you could not.  The secret
+of her birth could not, in honour, have been concealed from your
+parents.  They could not have consented to your marriage; and even if
+you had persisted, without that consent and in spite of that secret,
+to press for it,--even had she been yours--"
+
+"Might she not be living now?" cried Kenelm, fiercely.
+
+"No,--no; the secret must have come out.  The cruel world would have
+discovered it; it would have reached her ears.  The shame of it would
+have killed her.  How bitter then would have been her short interval
+of life!  As it is, she passed away,--resigned and happy.  But I own
+that I did not, could not, understand her, could not believe her
+feeling for you to be so deep.  I did think that when she knew her own
+heart she would find that love for her guardian was its strongest
+affection.  She assented, apparently without a pang, to become his
+wife; and she seemed always so fond of him, and what girl would not
+be?  But I was mistaken, deceived.  From the day you saw her last, she
+began to fade away; but then Walter left a few days after, and I
+thought that it was his absence she mourned.  She never owned to me
+that it was yours,--never till too late,--too late,--just when my sad
+letter had summoned him back, only three days before she died.  Had I
+known earlier, while yet there was hope of recovery, I must have
+written to you, even though the obstacles to your union with her
+remained the same.  Oh, again I implore you, say that if I erred you
+forgive me.  She did, kissing me so tenderly.  She did forgive me.
+Will not you?  It would have been her wish."
+
+"Her wish?  Do you think I could disobey it?  I know not if I have
+anything to forgive.  If I have, now could I not forgive one who loved
+her?  God comfort us both."
+
+He bent down and kissed Mrs. Cameron's forehead.  The poor woman threw
+her arm gratefully, lovingly round him, and burst into tears.
+
+When she had recovered her emotion, she said,--
+
+"And now, it is with so much lighter a heart that I can fulfil her
+commission to you.  But, before I place this in your hands, can you
+make me one promise?  Never tell Melville how she loved you.  She was
+so careful he should never guess that.  And if he knew it was the
+thought of union with him which had killed her, he would never smile
+again."
+
+"You would not ask such a promise if you could guess how sacred from
+all the world I hold the secret that you confide to me.  By that
+secret the grave is changed into an altar.  Our bridals now are only a
+while deferred."
+
+Mrs. Cameron placed a letter in Kenelm's hand, and murmuring in
+accents broken by a sob, "She gave it to me the day before her last,"
+left him, and with quick vacillating steps hurried back towards the
+cottage.  She now understood him, at last, too well not to feel that
+on opening that letter he must be alone with the dead.
+
+It is strange that we need have so little practical household
+knowledge of each other to be in love.  Never till then had Kenelm's
+eyes rested upon Lily's handwriting.  And he now gazed at the formal
+address on the envelope with a sort of awe.  Unknown handwriting
+coming to him from an unknown world,--delicate, tremulous
+handwriting,--handwriting not of one grown up, yet not of a child who
+had long to live.
+
+He turned the envelope over and over,--not impatiently, as does the
+lover whose heart beats at the sound of the approaching footstep, but
+lingeringly, timidly.  He would not break the seal.
+
+He was now so near the burial-ground.  Where should the first letter
+ever received from her--the sole letter he ever could receive--be so
+reverentially, lovingly read, as at her grave?
+
+He walked on to the burial-ground, sat down by the grave, broke the
+envelope; a poor little ring, with a poor little single turquoise,
+rolled out and rested at his feet.  The letter contained only these
+words,--
+
+
+The ring comes back to you.  I could not live to marry another.  I
+never knew how I loved you--till, till I began to pray that you might
+not love me too much.  Darling! darling! good-by, darling!
+
+                    LILY.
+
+Don't let Lion ever see this, or ever know what it says to you.  He is
+so good, and deserves to be so happy.  Do you remember the day of the
+ring?  Darling! darling!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+SOMEWHAT more than another year has rolled away.  It is early spring
+in London.  The trees in the park and squares are budding into leaf
+and blossom.  Leopold Travers has had a brief but serious conversation
+with his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback.  Handsome and
+graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find
+himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when
+himself in youth.  He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine,
+no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with
+greater fluency on the topics which interest his companions.
+
+Cecilia is in the smaller drawing-room, which is exclusively
+appropriated to her use, alone with Lady Glenalvon.
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"I own, my dear, dear Cecilia, that I arrange myself
+at last on the side of your father.  How earnestly at one time I had
+hoped that Kenelm Chillingly might woo and win the bride that seemed
+to me most fitted to adorn and to cheer his life, I need not say.  But
+when at Exmundham he asked me to befriend his choice of another, to
+reconcile his mother to that choice,--evidently not a suitable one,--I
+gave him up.  And though that affair is at an end, he seems little
+likely ever to settle down to practical duties and domestic habits, an
+idle wanderer over the face of the earth, only heard of in remote
+places and with strange companions.  Perhaps he may never return to
+England."
+
+CECILIA.--"He is in England now, and in London."
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"You amaze me!  Who told you so?"
+
+CECILIA.--"His father, who is with him.  Sir Peter called yesterday,
+and spoke to me so kindly."  Cecilia here turned aside her face to
+conceal the tears that had started to her eyes.
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"Did Mr. Travers see Sir Peter?"
+
+CECILIA.--"Yes; and I think it was something that passed between them
+which made my father speak to me--for the first time--almost sternly."
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"In urging Chillingly Gordon's suit?"
+
+CECILIA.--"Commanding me to reconsider my rejection of it.  He has
+contrived to fascinate my father."
+
+LADY GLENALVON.--"So he has me.  Of course you might choose among
+other candidates for your hand one of much higher worldly rank, of
+much larger fortune; yet, as you have already rejected them, Gordon's
+merits become still more entitled to a fair hearing.  He has already
+leaped into a position that mere rank and mere wealth cannot attain.
+Men of all parties speak highly of his parliamentary abilities.  He is
+already marked in public opinion as a coming man,--a future minister
+of the highest grade.  He has youth and good looks; his moral
+character is without a blemish: yet his manners are so free from
+affected austerity, so frank, so genial.  Any woman might be pleased
+with his companionship; and you, with your intellect, your
+culture,--you, so born for high station,--you of all women might be
+proud to partake the anxieties of his career and the rewards of his
+ambition."
+
+CECILIA (clasping her hands tightly together).--"I cannot, I cannot.
+He may be all you say,--I know nothing against Mr. Chillingly
+Gordon,--but my whole nature is antagonistic to his, and even were it
+not so--"
+
+She stopped abruptly, a deep blush warming up her fair face, and
+retreating to leave it coldly pale.
+
+LADY GLENALVON (tenderly kissing her).--"You have not, then, even yet
+conquered the first maiden fancy; the ungrateful one is still
+remembered?"
+
+Cecilia bowed her head on her friend's breast, and murmured
+imploringly, "Don't speak against him; he has been so unhappy.  How
+much he must have loved!"
+
+"But it is not you whom he loved."
+
+"Something here, something at my heart, tells me that he will love me
+yet; and, if not, I am contented to be his friend."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+WHILE the conversation just related took place between Cecilia and
+Lady Glenalvon, Chillingly Gordon was seated alone with Mivers in the
+comfortable apartment of the cynical old bachelor.  Gordon had
+breakfasted with his kinsman, but that meal was long over; the two men
+having found much to talk about on matters very interesting to the
+younger, nor without interest to the elder one.
+
+It is true that Chillingly Gordon had, within the very short space of
+time that had elapsed since his entrance into the House of Commons,
+achieved one of those reputations which mark out a man for early
+admission into the progressive career of office,--not a very showy
+reputation, but a very solid one.  He had none of the gifts of the
+genuine orator, no enthusiasm, no imagination, no imprudent bursts of
+fiery words from a passionate heart.  But he had all the gifts of an
+exceedingly telling speaker,--a clear metallic voice; well-bred,
+appropriate action, not less dignified for being somewhat too quiet;
+readiness for extempore replies; industry and method for prepared
+expositions of principle or fact.  But his principal merit with the
+chiefs of the assembly was in the strong good sense and worldly tact
+which made him a safe speaker.  For this merit he was largely indebted
+to his frequent conferences with Chillingly Mivers.  That gentleman,
+whether owing to his social qualities or to the influence of "The
+Londoner" on public opinion, enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with the
+chiefs of all parties, and was up to his ears in the wisdom of the
+world.  "Nothing," he would say, "hurts a young Parliamentary speaker
+like violence in opinion, one way or the other.  Shun it.  Always
+allow that much may be said on both sides.  When the chiefs of your
+own side suddenly adopt a violence, you can go with them or against
+them, according as best suits your own book."
+
+"So," said Mivers, reclined on his sofa, and approaching the end of
+his second Trabuco (he never allowed himself more than two), "so I
+think we have pretty well settled the tone you must take in your
+speech to-night.  It is a great occasion."
+
+"True.  It is the first time in which the debate has been arranged so
+that I may speak at ten o'clock or later.  That in itself is a great
+leap; and it is a Cabinet minister whom I am to answer,--luckily, he
+is a very dull fellow.  Do you think I might hazard a joke,--at least
+a witticism?"
+
+"At his expense?  Decidedly not.  Though his office compels him to
+introduce this measure, he was by no means in its favour when it was
+discussed in the Cabinet; and though, as you say, he is dull, it is
+precisely that sort of dulness which is essential to the formation of
+every respectable Cabinet.  Joke at him, indeed!  Learn that gentle
+dulness never loves a joke--at its own expense.  Vain man! seize the
+occasion which your blame of his measure affords you to secure his
+praise of yourself; compliment him.  Enough of politics.  It never
+does to think too much over what one has already decided to say.
+Brooding over it, one may become too much in earnest, and commit an
+indiscretion.  So Kenelm has come back?"
+
+"Yes.  I heard that news last night, at White's, from Travers.  Sir
+Peter had called on Travers."
+
+"Travers still favours your suit to the heiress?"
+
+"More, I think, than ever.  Success in Parliament has great effect on
+a man who has success in fashion and respects the opinion of clubs.
+But last night he was unusually cordial.  Between you and me, I think
+he is a little afraid that Kenelm may yet be my rival.  I gathered
+that from a hint he let fall of the unwelcome nature of Sir Peter's
+talk to him."
+
+"Why has Travers conceived a dislike to poor Kenelm?  He seemed
+partial enough to him once."
+
+"Ay, but not as a son-in-law, even before I had a chance of becoming
+so.  And when, after Kenelm appeared at Exmundham, while Travers was
+staying there, Travers learned, I suppose from Lady Chillingly, that
+Kenelm had fallen in love with and wanted to marry some other girl,
+who it seems rejected him; and still more when he heard that Kenelm
+had been subsequently travelling on the Continent in company with a
+low-lived fellow, the drunken, riotous son of a farrier, you may well
+conceive how so polished and sensible a man as Leopold Travers would
+dislike the idea of giving his daughter to one so little likely to
+make an agreeable son-in-law.  Bah!  I have no fear of Kenelm.  By the
+way, did Sir Peter say if Kenelm had quite recovered his health?  He
+was at death's door some eighteen months ago, when Sir Peter and Lady
+Chillingly were summoned to town by the doctors."
+
+"My dear Gordon, I fear there is no chance of your succession to
+Exmundham.  Sir Peter says that his wandering Hercules is as stalwart
+as ever, and more equable in temperament, more taciturn and grave,--in
+short, less odd.  But when you say you have no fear of Kenelm's
+rivalry, do you mean only as to Cecilia Travers?"
+
+"Neither as to that nor as to anything in life; and as to the
+succession to Exmundham, it is his to leave as he pleases, and I have
+cause to think he would never leave it to me.  More likely to Parson
+John or the parson's son,--or why not to yourself?  I often think that
+for the prizes immediately set before my ambition I am better off
+without land: land is a great obfuscator."
+
+"Humph, there is some truth in that.  Yet the fear of land and
+obfuscation does not seem to operate against your suit to Cecilia
+Travers?"
+
+"Her father is likely enough to live till I maybe contented to 'rest
+and be thankful' in the Upper House; and I should not like to be a
+landless peer."
+
+"You are right there; but I should tell you that, now Kenelm has come
+back, Sir Peter has set his heart on his son's being your rival."
+
+"For Cecilia?"
+
+"Perhaps; but certainly for Parliamentary reputation.  The senior
+member for the county means to retire, and Sir Peter has been urged to
+allow his son to be brought forward,--from what I hear, with the
+certainty of success."
+
+"What! in spite of that wonderful speech of his on coming of age?"
+
+"Pooh! that is now understood to have been but a bad joke on the new
+ideas, and their organs, including 'The Londoner.' But if Kenelm does
+come into the House, it will not be on your side of the question; and
+unless I greatly overrate his abilities--which very likely I do--he
+will not be a rival to despise.  Except, indeed, that he may have one
+fault which in the present day would be enough to unfit him for public
+life."
+
+"And what is that fault?"
+
+"Treason to the blood of the Chillinglys.  This is the age, in
+England, when one cannot be too much of a Chillingly.  I fear that if
+Kenelm does become bewildered by a political abstraction,--call it, no
+matter what, say, 'love of his country,' or some such old-fashioned
+crotchet,--I fear, I greatly fear, that he may be--in earnest."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+IT was a field night in the House of Commons,--an adjourned debate,
+opened by George Belvoir, who had been, the last two years, very
+slowly creeping on in the favour, or rather the indulgence of the
+House, and more than justifying Kenelm's prediction of his career.
+Heir to a noble name and vast estates, extremely hard-working, very
+well informed, it was impossible that he should not creep on.  That
+night he spoke sensibly enough, assisting his memory by frequent
+references to his notes; listened to courteously, and greeted with a
+faint "Hear, hear!" of relief when he had done.
+
+Then the House gradually thinned till nine o'clock, at which hour it
+became very rapidly crowded.  A Cabinet minister had solemnly risen,
+deposited on the table before him a formidable array of printed
+papers, including a corpulent blue-book.  Leaning his arm on the red
+box, he commenced with this awe-compelling sentence,--
+
+"Sir, I join issue with the right honourable gentleman opposite.  He
+says this is not raised as a party question.  I deny it.  Her
+Majesty's Government are put upon their trial."
+
+Here there were cheers, so loudly, and so rarely greeting a speech
+from that Cabinet minister, that he was put out, and had much to "hum"
+and to "ha," before he could recover the thread of his speech.  Then
+he went on, with unbroken but lethargic fluency; read long extracts
+from the public papers, inflicted a whole page from the blue-book,
+wound up with a peroration of respectable platitudes, glanced at the
+clock, saw that he had completed the hour which a Cabinet minister who
+does not profess to be oratorical is expected to speak, but not to
+exceed; and sat down.
+
+Up rose a crowd of eager faces, from which the Speaker, as previously
+arranged with the party whips, selected one,--a young face, hardy,
+intelligent, emotionless.
+
+I need not say that it was the face of Chillingly Gordon.  His
+position that night was one that required dexterous management and
+delicate tact.  He habitually supported the Government; his speeches
+had been hitherto in their favour.  On this occasion he differed from
+the Government.  The difference was known to the chiefs of the
+Opposition, and hence the arrangement of the whips, that he should
+speak for the first time after ten o'clock, and for the first time in
+reply to a Cabinet minister.  It is a position in which a young party
+man makes or mars his future.  Chillingly Gordon spoke from the third
+row behind the Government; he had been duly cautioned by Mivers not to
+affect a conceited independence, or an adhesion to "violence" in
+ultra-liberal opinions, by seating himself below the gangway.
+Speaking thus, amid the rank and file of the Ministerial supporters,
+any opinion at variance with the mouthpieces of the Treasury Bench
+would be sure to produce a more effective sensation than if delivered
+from the ranks of the mutinous Bashi Bazouks divided by the gangway
+from better disciplined forces.  His first brief sentences enthralled
+the House, conciliated the Ministerial side, kept the Opposition side
+in suspense.  The whole speech was, indeed, felicitously adroit, and
+especially in this, that, while in opposition to the Government as a
+whole, it expressed the opinions of a powerful section of the Cabinet,
+which, though at present a minority, yet being the most enamoured of a
+New Idea, the progress of the age would probably render a safe
+investment for the confidence which honest Gordon reposed in its
+chance of beating its colleagues.
+
+It was not, however, till Gordon had concluded that the cheers of his
+audience--impulsive and hearty as are the cheers of that assembly when
+the evidence of intellect is unmistakable--made manifest to the
+gallery and the reporters the full effect of the speech he had
+delivered.  The chief of the Opposition whispered to his next
+neighbour, "I wish we could get that man."  The Cabinet minister whom
+Gordon had answered--more pleased with a personal compliment to
+himself than displeased with an attack on the measure his office
+compelled him to advocate--whispered to his chief, "That is a man we
+must not lose."
+
+Two gentlemen in the Speaker's gallery, who had sat there from the
+opening of the debate, now quitted their places.  Coming into the
+lobby, they found themselves commingled with a crowd of members who
+had also quitted their seats, after Gordon's speech, in order to
+discuss its merits, as they gathered round the refreshment table for
+oranges or soda-water.  Among them was George Belvoir, who, on sight
+of the younger of the two gentlemen issuing from the Speaker's
+gallery, accosted him with friendly greeting,--
+
+"Ha!  Chillingly, how are you?  Did not know you were in town.  Been
+here all the evening?  Yes; very good debate.  How did you like
+Gordon's speech?"
+
+"I liked yours much better."
+
+"Mine!" cried George, very much flattered and very much surprised.
+"Oh, mine was a mere humdrum affair, a plain statement of the reasons
+for the vote I should give.  And Gordon's was anything but that.  You
+did not like his opinions?"
+
+"I don't know what his opinions are.  But I did not like his ideas."
+
+"I don't quite understand you.  What ideas?"
+
+"The new ones; by which it is shown how rapidly a great state can be
+made small."
+
+Here Mr. Belvoir was taken aside by a brother member, on an important
+matter to be brought before the committee on salmon fisheries, on
+which they both served; and Kenelm, with his companion, Sir Peter,
+threaded his way through the crowded lobby and disappeared.  Emerging
+into the broad space, with its lofty clock-tower, Sir Peter halted,
+and pointing towards the old Abbey, half in shadow, half in light,
+under the tranquil moonbeams, said,--
+
+"It tells much for the duration of a people when it accords with the
+instinct of immortality in a man; when an honoured tomb is deemed
+recompense for the toils and dangers of a noble life.  How much of the
+history of England Nelson summed up in the simple words,--'Victory or
+Westminster Abbey.'"
+
+"Admirably expressed, my dear father," said Kenelm, briefly.
+
+"I agree with your remark, which I overheard, on Gordon's speech,"
+resumed Sir Peter.  "It was wonderfully clever; yet I should have been
+sorry to hear you speak it.  It is not by such sentiments that Nelsons
+become great.  If such sentiments should ever be national, the cry
+will not be 'Victory or Westminster Abbey!' but 'Defeat and the Three
+per Cents!'"
+
+Pleased with his own unwonted animation, and with the sympathizing
+half-smile on his son's taciturn lips, Sir Peter then proceeded more
+immediately to the subjects which pressed upon his heart.  Gordon's
+success in Parliament, Gordon's suit to Cecilia Travers, favoured, as
+Sir Peter had learned, by her father, rejected as yet by herself, were
+somehow inseparably mixed up in Sir Peter's mind and his words, as he
+sought to kindle his son's emulation.  He dwelt on the obligations
+which a country imposed on its citizens, especially on the young and
+vigorous generation to which the destinies of those to follow were
+intrusted; and with these stern obligations he combined all the
+cheering and tender associations which an English public man connects
+with an English home: the wife with a smile to soothe the cares, and a
+mind to share the aspirations, of a life that must go through labour
+to achieve renown; thus, in all he said, binding together, as if they
+could not be disparted, Ambition and Cecilia.
+
+His son did not interrupt him by a word, Sir Peter in his eagerness
+not noticing that Kenelm had drawn him aside from the direct
+thoroughfare, and had now made halt in the middle of Westminster
+bridge, bending over the massive parapet and gazing abstractedly upon
+the waves of the starlit river.  On the right the stately length of
+the people's legislative palace, so new in its date, so elaborately in
+each detail ancient in its form, stretching on towards the lowly and
+jagged roofs of penury and crime.  Well might these be so near to the
+halls of a people's legislative palace: near to the heart of every
+legislator for a people must be the mighty problem how to increase a
+people's splendour and its virtue, and how to diminish its penury and
+its crime.
+
+"How strange it is," said Kenelm, still bending over the parapet,
+"that throughout all my desultory wanderings I have ever been
+attracted towards the sight and the sound of running waters, even
+those of the humblest rill!  Of what thoughts, of what dreams, of what
+memories, colouring the history of my past, the waves of the humblest
+rill could speak, were the waves themselves not such supreme
+philosophers,--roused indeed on their surface, vexed by a check to
+their own course, but so indifferent to all that makes gloom or death
+to the mortals who think and dream and feel beside their banks."
+
+"Bless me," said Peter to himself, "the boy has got back to his old
+vein of humours and melancholies.  He has not heard a word I have been
+saying.  Travers is right.  He will never do anything in life.  Why
+did I christen him Kenelm? he might as well have been christened
+Peter."  Still, loth to own that his eloquence had been expended in
+vain and that the wish of his heart was doomed to expire disappointed,
+Sir Peter said aloud, "You have not listened to what I said; Kenelm,
+you grieve me."
+
+"Grieve you! you! do not say that, Father, dear Father.  Listen to
+you!  Every word you have said has sunk into the deepest deep of my
+heart.  Pardon my foolish, purposeless snatch of talk to myself: it is
+but my way, only my way, dear Father!"
+
+"Boy, boy," cried Sir Peter, with tears in his voice, "if you could
+get out of those odd ways of yours I should be so thankful.  But if
+you cannot, nothing you can do shall grieve me.  Only, let me say
+this; running waters have had a great charm for you.  With a humble
+rill you associate thoughts, dreams, memories in your past.  But now
+you halt by the stream of the mighty river: before you the senate of
+an empire wider than Alexander's; behind you the market of a commerce
+to which that of Tyre was a pitiful trade.  Look farther down, those
+squalid hovels, how much there to redeem or to remedy; and out of
+sight, but not very distant, the nation's Walhalla, 'Victory or
+Westminster Abbey!'  The humble rill has witnessed your past.  Has the
+mighty river no effect on your future?  The rill keeps no record of
+your past: shall the river keep no record of your future?  Ah, boy,
+boy, I see you are dreaming still,--no use talking.  Let us go home."
+
+"I was not dreaming, I was telling myself that the time had come to
+replace the old Kenelm with the new ideas, by a new Kenelm with the
+Ideas of Old.  Ah! perhaps we must,--at whatever cost to
+ourselves,--we must go through the romance of life before we clearly
+detect what is grand in its realities.  I can no longer lament that I
+stand estranged from the objects and pursuits of my race.  I have
+learned how much I have with them in common.  I have known love; I
+have known sorrow."
+
+Kenelm paused a moment, only a moment, then lifted the head which,
+during that pause, had drooped, and stood erect at the full height of
+his stature, startling his father by the change that had passed over
+his face; lip, eye, his whole aspect, eloquent with a resolute
+enthusiasm, too grave to be the flash of a passing moment.
+
+"Ay, ay," he said, "Victory or Westminster Abbey!  The world is a
+battle-field in which the worst wounded are the deserters, stricken as
+they seek to fly, and hushing the groans that would betray the secret
+of their inglorious hiding-place.  The pain of wounds received in the
+thick of the fight is scarcely felt in the joy of service to some
+honoured cause, and is amply atoned by the reverence for noble scars.
+My choice is made.  Not that of deserter, that of soldier in the
+ranks."
+
+"It will not be long before you rise from the ranks, my boy, if you
+hold fast to the Idea of Old, symbolized in the English battle-cry,
+'Victory or Westminster Abbey.'"
+
+So saying, Sir Peter took his son's arm, leaning on it proudly; and
+so, into the crowded thoroughfares, from the halting-place on the
+modern bridge that spans the legendary river, passes the Man of the
+Young Generation to fates beyond the verge of the horizon to which the
+eyes of my generation must limit their wistful gaze.
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, COMPLETE ***
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