Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

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—”