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Kenelm Chillingly, Book 2.

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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.

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