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Kenelm Chillingly, Book 3.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Kenelm Chillingly, Book 3.



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BOOK III.



CHAPTER I.

IF there were a woman in the world who might be formed and fitted to
reconcile Kenelm Chillingly to the sweet troubles of love and the
pleasant bickerings of wedded life, one might reasonably suppose that
that woman could be found in Cecilia Travers. An only daughter and
losing her mother in childhood, she had been raised to the
mistress-ship of a household at an age in which most girls are still
putting their dolls to bed; and thus had early acquired that sense of
responsibility, accompanied with the habits of self-reliance, which
seldom fails to give a certain nobility to character; though almost as
often, in the case of women, it steals away the tender gentleness
which constitutes the charm of their sex.

It had not done so in the instance of Cecilia Travers, because she was
so womanlike that even the exercise of power could not make her
manlike. There was in the depth of her nature such an instinct of
sweetness that wherever her mind toiled and wandered it gathered and
hoarded honey.

She had one advantage over most girls in the same rank of life,--she
had not been taught to fritter away such capacities for culture as
Providence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses which are called
feminine accomplishments. She did not paint figures out of drawing in
meagre water-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to the
inflicting on polite audiences the boredom of Italian bravuras, which
they could hear better sung by a third-rate professional singer in a
metropolitan music-hall. I am afraid she had no other female
accomplishments than those by which the sempstress or embroideress
earns her daily bread. That sort of work she loved, and she did it
deftly.

But if she had not been profitlessly plagued by masters, Cecilia
Travers had been singularly favoured by her father's choice of a
teacher: no great merit in him either. He had a prejudice against
professional governesses, and it chanced that among his own family
connections was a certain Mrs. Campion, a lady of some literary
distinction, whose husband had held a high situation in one of our
public offices, and living, much to his satisfaction, up to a very
handsome income, had died, much to the astonishment of others, without
leaving a farthing behind him.

Fortunately, there were no children to provide for. A small
government pension was allotted to the widow; and as her husband's
house had been made by her one of the pleasantest in London, she was
popular enough to be invited by numerous friends to their country
seats; among others, by Mr. Travers. She came intending to stay a
fortnight. At the end of that time she had grown so attached to
Cecilia, and Cecilia to her, and her presence had become so pleasant
and so useful to her host, that the Squire entreated her to stay and
undertake the education of his daughter. Mrs. Campion, after some
hesitation, gratefully consented; and thus Cecilia, from the age of
eight to her present age of nineteen, had the inestimable advantage of
living in constant companionship with a woman of richly cultivated
mind, accustomed to hear the best criticisms on the best books, and
adding to no small accomplishment in literature the refinement of
manners and that sort of prudent judgment which result from habitual
intercourse with an intellectual and gracefully world-wise circle of
society: so that Cecilia herself, without being at all blue or
pedantic, became one of those rare young women with whom a
well-educated man can converse on equal terms; from whom he gains as
much as he can impart to her; while a man who, not caring much about
books, is still gentleman enough to value good breeding, felt a relief
in exchanging the forms of his native language without the shock of
hearing that a bishop was "a swell" or a croquet-party "awfully
jolly."

In a word, Cecilia was one of those women whom Heaven forms for man's
helpmate; who, if he were born to rank and wealth, would, as his
partner, reflect on them a new dignity, and add to their enjoyment by
bringing forth their duties; who, not less if the husband she chose
were poor and struggling, would encourage, sustain, and soothe him,
take her own share of his burdens, and temper the bitterness of life
with the all-recompensing sweetness of her smile.

Little, indeed, as yet had she ever thought of love or of lovers. She
had not even formed to herself any of those ideals which float before
the eyes of most girls when they enter their teens. But of two things
she felt inly convinced: first, that she could never wed where she did
not love; and secondly, that where she did love it would be for life.

And now I close this sketch with a picture of the girl herself. She
has just come into her room from inspecting the preparations for the
evening entertainment which her father is to give to his tenants and
rural neighbours.

She has thrown aside her straw hat, and put down the large basket
which she has emptied of flowers. She pauses before the glass,
smoothing back the ruffled bands of her hair,--hair of a dark, soft
chestnut, silky and luxuriant,--never polluted, and never, so long as
she lives, to be polluted by auricomous cosmetics, far from that
delicate darkness, every tint of the colours traditionally dedicated
to the locks of Judas.

Her complexion, usually of that soft bloom which inclines to paleness,
is now heightened into glow by exercise and sunlight. The features
are small and feminine; the eyes dark with long lashes; the mouth
singularly beautiful, with a dimple on either side, and parted now in
a half-smile at some pleasant recollection, giving a glimpse of small
teeth glistening as pearls. But the peculiar charm of her face is in
an expression of serene happiness, that sort of happiness which seems
as if it had never been interrupted by a sorrow, had never been
troubled by a sin,--that holy kind of happiness which belongs to
innocence, the light reflected from a heart and conscience alike at
peace.



CHAPTER II.

IT was a lovely summer evening for the Squire's rural entertainment.
Mr. Travers had some guests staying with him: they had dined early for
the occasion, and were now grouped with their host a little before six
o'clock on the lawn. The house was of irregular architecture, altered
or added to at various periods from the reign of Elizabeth to that of
Victoria: at one end, the oldest part, a gable with mullion windows;
at the other, the newest part, a flat-roofed wing, with modern sashes
opening to the ground, the intermediate part much hidden by a veranda
covered with creepers in full bloom. The lawn was a spacious
table-land facing the west, and backed by a green and gentle hill,
crowned with the ruins of an ancient priory. On one side of the lawn
stretched a flower-garden and pleasure-ground, originally planned by
Repton; on the opposite angles of the sward were placed two large
marquees,--one for dancing, the other for supper. Towards the south
the view was left open, and commanded the prospect of an old English
park, not of the stateliest character; not intersected with ancient
avenues, nor clothed with profitless fern as lairs for deer: but the
park of a careful agriculturist, uniting profit with show, the sward
duly drained and nourished, fit to fatten bullocks in an incredibly
short time, and somewhat spoilt to the eye by subdivisions of wire
fence. Mr. Travers was renowned for skilful husbandry, and the
general management of land to the best advantage. He had come into
the estate while still in childhood, and thus enjoyed the
accumulations of a long minority. He had entered the Guards at the
age of eighteen, and having more command of money than most of his
contemporaries, though they might be of higher rank and the sons of
richer men, he had been much courted and much plundered. At the age
of twenty-five he found himself one of the leaders of fashion,
renowned chiefly for reckless daring where-ever honour could be
plucked out of the nettle danger: a steeple-chaser, whose exploits
made a quiet man's hair stand on end; a rider across country, taking
leaps which a more cautious huntsman carefully avoided. Known at
Paris as well as in London, he had been admired by ladies whose smiles
had cost him duels, the marks of which still remained in glorious
scars on his person. No man ever seemed more likely to come to direst
grief before attaining the age of thirty, for at twenty-seven all the
accumulations of his minority were gone; and his estate, which, when
he came of age, was scarcely three thousand a year, but entirely at
his own disposal, was mortgaged up to its eyes.

His friends began to shake their heads and call him "poor fellow;"
but, with all his wild faults, Leopold Travers had been wholly pure
from the two vices out of which a man does not often redeem himself.
He had never drunk and he had never gambled. His nerves were not
broken, his brain was not besotted. There was plenty of health in him
yet, mind and body. At the critical period of his life he married for
love, and his choice was a most felicitous one. The lady had no
fortune; but though handsome and high-born, she had no taste for
extravagance, and no desire for other society than that of the man she
loved. So when he said, "Let us settle in the country and try our
best to live on a few hundreds, lay by, and keep the old place out of
the market," she consented with a joyful heart: and marvel it was to
all how this wild Leopold Travers did settle down; did take to
cultivating his home farm with his men from sunrise to sunset like a
common tenant-farmer; did contrive to pay the interest on the
mortgages, and keep his head above water. After some years of
pupilage in this school of thrift, during which his habits became
formed and his whole character braced, Leopold Travers suddenly found
himself again rich, through the wife whom he had so prudently married
without other dower than her love and her virtues. Her only brother,
Lord Eagleton, a Scotch peer, had been engaged in marriage to a young
lady, considered to be a rare prize in the lottery of wedlock. The
marriage was broken off under very disastrous circumstances; but the
young lord, good-looking and agreeable, was naturally expected to seek
speedy consolation in some other alliance. Nevertheless he did not do
so: he became a confirmed invalid, and died single, leaving to his
sister all in his power to save from the distant kinsman who succeeded
to his lands and title,--a goodly sum, which not only sufficed to pay
off the mortgages on Neesdale Park but bestowed on its owner a surplus
which the practical knowledge of country life that he had acquired
enabled him to devote with extraordinary profit to the general
improvement of his estate. He replaced tumble-down old farm buildings
with new constructions on the most approved principles; bought or
pensioned off certain slovenly incompetent tenants; threw sundry petty
holdings into large farms suited to the buildings he constructed;
purchased here and there small bits of land, commodious to the farms
they adjoined, and completing the integrity of his ring-fence; stubbed
up profitless woods which diminished the value of neighbouring arables
by obstructing sun and air and harbouring legions of rabbits; and
then, seeking tenants of enterprise and capital, more than doubled his
original yearly rental, and perhaps more than tripled the market value
of his property. Simultaneously with this acquisition of fortune, he
emerged from the inhospitable and unsocial obscurity which his
previous poverty had compelled, took an active part in county
business, proved himself an excellent speaker at public meetings,
subscribed liberally to the hunt, and occasionally joined in it,--a
less bold but a wiser rider than of yore. In short, as Themistocles
boasted that he could make a small state great, so Leopold Travers
might boast with equal truth, that, by his energies, his judgment, and
the weight of his personal character, he had made the owner of a
property which had been at his accession to it of third-rate rank in
the county a personage so considerable that no knight of the shire
against whom he declared could have been elected, and if he had
determined to stand himself he would have been chosen free of expense.

But he said, on being solicited to become a candidate, "When a man
once gives himself up to the care and improvement of a landed estate,
he has no time and no heart for anything else. An estate is an income
or a kingdom, according as the owner chooses to take it. I take it as
a kingdom, and I cannot be /roi faineant/, with a steward for /maire
du palais/. A king does not go into the House of Commons."

Three years after this rise in the social ladder, Mrs. Travers was
seized with congestion of the lungs followed by pleurisy, and died
after less than a week's illness. Leopold never wholly recovered her
loss. Though still young and always handsome, the idea of another
wife, the love of another woman, were notions which he dismissed from
his, mind with a quiet scorn. He was too masculine a creature to
parade grief. For some weeks, indeed, he shut himself up in his own
room, so rigidly secluded that he would not see even his daughter.
But one morning he appeared in his fields as usual, and from that day
resumed his old habits, and gradually renewed that cordial interchange
of hospitalities which had popularly distinguished him since his
accession to wealth. Still people felt that the man was changed; he
was more taciturn, more grave: if always just in his dealings, he took
the harder side of justice, where in his wife's time he had taken the
gentler. Perhaps, to a man of strong will, the habitual intercourse
with an amiable woman is essential for those occasions in which Will
best proves the fineness of its temper by the facility with which it
can be bent.

It may be said that Leopold Travers might have found such intercourse
in the intimate companionship of his own daughter. But she was a mere
child when his wife died, and she grew up to womanhood too insensibly
for him to note the change. Besides, where a man has found a wife his
all-in-all, a daughter can never supply her place. The very reverence
due to children precludes unrestrained confidence; and there is not
that sense of permanent fellowship in a daughter which a man has in a
wife,--any day a stranger may appear and carry her off from him. At
all events Leopold did not own in Cecilia the softening influence to
which he had yielded in her mother. He was fond of her, proud of her,
indulgent to her; but the indulgence had its set limits. Whatever she
asked solely for herself he granted; whatever she wished for matters
under feminine control--the domestic household, the parish school, the
alms-receiving poor--obtained his gentlest consideration. But when
she had been solicited by some offending out-of-door dependant or some
petty defaulting tenant to use her good offices in favour of the
culprit, Mr. Travers checked her interference by a firm "No," though
uttered in a mild accent, and accompanied with a masculine aphorism to
the effect that "there would be no such things as strict justice and
disciplined order in the world if a man yielded to a woman's pleadings
in any matter of business between man and man." From this it will be
seen that Mr. Lethbridge had overrated the value of Cecilia's alliance
in the negotiation respecting Mrs. Bawtrey's premium and shop.



CHAPTER III.

IF, having just perused what has thus been written on the biographical
antecedents and mental characteristics of Leopold Travers, you, my
dear reader, were to be personally presented to that gentleman as he
now stands, the central figure of the group gathered round him, on his
terrace, you would probably be surprised,--nay, I have no doubt you
would say to yourself, "Not at all the sort of man I expected." In
that slender form, somewhat below the middle height; in that fair
countenance which still, at the age of forty-eight, retains a delicacy
of feature and of colouring which is of almost womanlike beauty, and,
from the quiet placidity of its expression, conveys at first glance
the notion of almost womanlike mildness,--it would be difficult to
recognize a man who in youth had been renowned for reckless daring, in
maturer years more honourably distinguished for steadfast prudence and
determined purpose, and who, alike in faults or in merits, was as
emphatically masculine as a biped in trousers can possibly be.

Mr. Travers is listening to a young man of about two and twenty, the
eldest son of the richest nobleman of the county, and who intends to
start for the representation of the shire at the next general
election, which is close at hand. The Hon. George Belvoir is tall,
inclined to be stout, and will look well on the hustings. He has had
those pains taken with his education which an English peer generally
does take with the son intended to succeed to the representation of an
honourable name and the responsibilities of high station. If eldest
sons do not often make as great a figure in the world as their younger
brothers, it is not because their minds are less cultivated, but
because they have less motive power for action. George Belvoir was
well read, especially in that sort of reading which befits a future
senator,--history, statistics, political economy, so far as that
dismal science is compatible with the agricultural interest. He was
also well-principled, had a strong sense of discipline and duty, was
prepared in politics firmly to uphold as right whatever was proposed
by his own party, and to reject as wrong whatever was proposed by the
other. At present he was rather loud and noisy in the assertion of
his opinions,--young men fresh from the University generally are. It
was the secret wish of Mr. Travers that George Belvoir should become
his son-in-law; less because of his rank and wealth (though such
advantages were not of a nature to be despised by a practical man like
Leopold Travers) than on account of those qualities in his personal
character which were likely to render him an excellent husband.

Seated on wire benches, just without the veranda, but shaded by its
fragrant festoons, were Mrs. Campion and three ladies, the wives of
neighbouring squires. Cecilia stood a little apart from them, bending
over a long-backed Skye terrier, whom she was teaching to stand on his
hind legs.

But see, the company are arriving! How suddenly that green space, ten
minutes ago so solitary, has become animated and populous!

Indeed the park now presented a very lively appearance: vans, carts,
and farmers' chaises were seen in crowded procession along the winding
road; foot-passengers were swarming towards the house in all
directions. The herds and flocks in the various enclosures stopped
grazing to stare at the unwonted invaders of their pasture: yet the
orderly nature of their host imparted a respect for order to his ruder
visitors; not even a turbulent boy attempted to scale the fences, or
creep through their wires; all threaded the narrow turnstiles which
gave egress from one subdivision of the sward to another.

Mr. Travers turned to George Belvoir: "I see old farmer Steen's yellow
gig. Mind how you talk to him, George. He is full of whims and
crotchets, and if you once brush his feathers the wrong way he will be
as vindictive as a parrot. But he is the man who must second you at
the nomination. No other tenant-farmer carries the same weight with
his class."

"I suppose," said George, "that if Mr. Steen is the best man to second
me at the hustings, he is a good speaker?"

"A good speaker? in one sense he is. He never says a word too much.
The last time he seconded the nomination of the man you are to
succeed, this was his speech: 'Brother Electors, for twenty years I
have been one of the judges at our county cattle-show. I know one
animal from another. Looking at the specimens before us to-day none
of them are as good of their kind as I've seen elsewhere. But if you
choose Sir John Hogg you'll not get the wrong sow by the ear!'"

"At least," said George, after a laugh at this sample of eloquence
unadorned, "Mr. Steen does not err on the side of flattery in his
commendations of a candidate. But what makes him such an authority
with the farmers? Is he a first-rate agriculturist?"

"In thrift, yes!--in spirit, no! He says that all expensive
experiments should be left to gentlemen farmers. He is an authority
with other tenants: firstly, because he is a very keen censor of their
landlords; secondly, because he holds himself thoroughly independent
of his own; thirdly, because he is supposed to have studied the
political bearings of questions that affect the landed interest, and
has more than once been summoned to give his opinion on such subjects
to Committees of both Houses of Parliament. Here he comes. Observe,
when I leave you to talk to him: firstly, that you confess utter
ignorance of practical farming; nothing enrages him like the
presumption of a gentleman farmer like myself: secondly, that you ask
his opinion on the publication of Agricultural Statistics, just
modestly intimating that you, as at present advised, think that
inquisitorial researches into a man's business involve principles
opposed to the British Constitution. And on all that he may say as to
the shortcomings of landlords in general, and of your father in
particular, make no reply, but listen with an air of melancholy
conviction. How do you do, Mr. Steen, and how's the mistress? Why
have you not brought her with you?"

"My good woman is in the straw again, Squire. Who is that youngster?"

"Hist! let me introduce Mr. Belvoir."

Mr. Belvoir offers his hand.

"No, sir!" vociferates Steen, putting both his own hands behind him.
"No offence, young gentleman. But I don't give my hand at first sight
to a man who wants to shake a vote out of it. Not that I know
anything against you. But, if you be a farmer's friend rabbits are
not, and my lord your father is a great one for rabbits."

"Indeed you are mistaken there!" cries George, with vehement
earnestness. Mr. Travers gave him a nudge, as much as to say, "Hold
your tongue." George understood the hint, and is carried off meekly
by Mr. Steen down the solitude of the plantations.

The guests now arrived fast and thick. They consisted chiefly not
only of Mr. Travers's tenants, but of farmers and their families
within the range of eight or ten miles from the Park, with a few of
the neighbouring gentry and clergy.

It was not a supper intended to include the labouring class; for Mr.
Travers had an especial dislike to the custom of exhibiting peasants
at feeding-time, as if they were so many tamed animals of an inferior
species. When he entertained work-people, he made them comfortable in
their own way; and peasants feel more comfortable when not invited to
be stared out of countenance.

"Well, Lethbridge," said Mr. Travers, "where is the young gladiator
you promised to bring?"

"I did bring him, and he was by my side not a minute ago. He has
suddenly given me the slip: 'abiit, evasit, erupit.' I was looking
round for him in vain when you accosted me."

"I hope he has not seen some guest of mine whom he wants to fight."

"I hope not," answered the Parson, doubtfully. "He's a strange
fellow. But I think you will be pleased with him; that is, if he can
be found. Oh, Mr. Saunderson, how do you do? Have you seen your
visitor?"

"No, sir, I have just come. My mistress, Squire, and my three girls;
and this is my son."

"A hearty welcome to all," said the graceful Squire; (turning to
Saunderson junior), "I suppose you are fond of dancing. Get yourself
a partner. We may as well open the ball."

"Thank you, sir, but I never dance," said Saunderson junior, with an
air of austere superiority to an amusement which the March of
Intellect had left behind.

"Then you'll have less to regret when you are grown old. But the band
is striking up; we must adjourn to the marquee. George" (Mr. Belvoir,
escaped from Mr. Steen, had just made his appearance), "will you give
your arm to Cecilia, to whom I think you are engaged for the first
quadrille?"

"I hope," said George to Cecilia, as they walked towards the marquee,
"that Mr. Steen is not an average specimen of the electors I shall
have to canvass. Whether he has been brought up to honour his own
father and mother I can't pretend to say, but he seems bent upon
teaching me not to honour mine. Having taken away my father's moral
character upon the unfounded allegation that he loved rabbits better
than mankind, he then assailed my innocent mother on the score of
religion, and inquired when she was going over to the Church of Rome,
basing that inquiry on the assertion that she had taken away her
custom from a Protestant grocer and conferred it on a Papist."

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