Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

“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.