Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

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,—