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Kenelm Chillingly, Book 6.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Kenelm Chillingly, Book 6.




"She is his daughter. Did you ever know Leopold Travers?"

"I have heard him mentioned by friends of mine long ago,--long ago,"
replied Mrs. Cameron with a sort of weary languor, not unwonted, in
her voice and manner; and then, as if dismissing the bygone
reminiscence from her thoughts, changed the subject.

"Lily tells me, Mr. Chillingly, that you said you were staying at Mr.
Jones's, Cromwell Lodge. I hope you are made comfortable there."

"Very. The situation is singularly pleasant."

"Yes, it is considered the prettiest spot on the brook-side, and used
to be a favourite resort for anglers; but the trout, I believe, are
growing scarce; at least, now that the fishing in the Thames is
improved, poor Mr. Jones complains that his old lodgers desert him.
Of course you took the rooms for the sake of the fishing. I hope the
sport may be better than it is said to be."

"It is of little consequence to me: I do not care much about fishing;
and since Miss Mordaunt calls the book which first enticed me to take
to it 'a cruel one,' I feel as if the trout had become as sacred as
crocodiles were to the ancient Egyptians."

"Lily is a foolish child on such matters. She cannot bear the thought
of giving pain to any dumb creature; and just before our garden there
are a few trout which she has tamed. They feed out of her hand; she
is always afraid they will wander away and get caught."

"But Mr. Melville is an angler?"

"Several years ago he would sometimes pretend to fish, but I believe
it was rather an excuse for lying on the grass and reading 'the cruel
book,' or perhaps, rather, for sketching. But now he is seldom here
till autumn, when it grows too cold for such amusement."

Here Sir Thomas's voice was so loudly raised that it stopped the
conversation between Kenelm and Mrs. Cameron. He had got into some
question of politics on which he and the vicar did not agree, and the
discussion threatened to become warm, when Mrs. Braefield, with a
woman's true tact, broached a new topic, in which Sir Thomas was
immediately interested, relating to the construction of a conservatory
for orchids that he meditated adding to his country-house, and in
which frequent appeal was made to Mrs. Cameron, who was considered an
accomplished florist, and who seemed at some time or other in her life
to have acquired a very intimate acquaintance with the costly family
of orchids.

When the ladies retired Kenelm found himself seated next to Mr. Emlyn,
who astounded him by a complimentary quotation from one of his own
Latin prize poems at the university, hoped he would make some stay at
Moleswich, told him of the principal places in the neighbourhood worth
visiting, and offered him the run of his library, which he flattered
himself was rather rich, both in the best editions of Greek and Latin
classics and in early English literature. Kenelm was much pleased
with the scholarly vicar, especially when Mr. Emlyn began to speak
about Mrs. Cameron and Lily. Of the first he said, "She is one of
those women in whom quiet is so predominant that it is long before one
can know what undercurrents of good feeling flow beneath the unruffled
surface. I wish, however, she was a little more active in the
management and education of her niece,--a girl in whom I feel a very
anxious interest, and whom I doubt if Mrs. Cameron understands.
Perhaps, however, only a poet, and a very peculiar sort of poet, can
understand her: Lily Mordaunt is herself a poem."

"I like your definition of her," said Kenelm. "There is certainly
something about her which differs much from the prose of common life."

"You probably know Wordsworth's lines:


"' . . . and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.'


"They are lines that many critics have found unintelligible; but Lily
seems like the living key to them."

Kenelm's dark face lighted up, but he made no answer.

"Only," continued Mr. Emlyn, "how a girl of that sort, left wholly to
herself, untrained, undisciplined, is to grow up into the practical
uses of womanhood, is a question that perplexes and saddens me."

"Any more wine?" asked the host, closing a conversation on commercial
matters with Sir Thomas. "No?--shall we join the ladies?"



CHAPTER VII.

THE drawing-room was deserted; the ladies were in the garden. As
Kenelm and Mr. Emlyn walked side by side towards the group (Sir Thomas
and Mr. Braefield following at a little distance), the former asked,
somewhat abruptly, "What sort of man is Miss Cameron's guardian, Mr.
Melville?"

"I can scarcely answer that question. I see little of him when he
comes here. Formerly, he used to run down pretty often with a
harum-scarum set of young fellows, quartered at Cromwell
Lodge,--Grasmere had no accommodation for them,--students in the
Academy, I suppose. For some years he has not brought those persons,
and when he does come himself it is but for a few days. He has the
reputation of being very wild."

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.

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