Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

CHAPTER V.

FROM this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek,—again a little less softly; he opened his eyes, they fell first upon two tiny rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised circle, a female child’s laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted charged with another rosebud, but behind the child’s figure, looking over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as innocent but lovelier far,—the face of a girl in her first youth, framed round with the blossoms that festooned the trellise. How the face became the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.

Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so ungallantly escaped from ran towards him through a wicket in the circle. Her companion disappeared.

“Is it you?” said Kenelm to the child, “you who pelted me so cruelly? Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the dish and all my own cream?”

“But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing with me?” replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex, all answer to the reproach she had deserved.

“I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself, since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I suspect she pelted me too, for she seems to have run away to hide herself.”

“No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had another rosebud—oh, so much bigger!—if she had not held back my arm. Don’t you know her,—don’t you know Lily?”

“No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her.”

By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped, some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance.

In the space between the group and the trellise Lily was walking alone and quickly. The child left Kenelm’s side and ran after her friend, soon overtook, but did not succeed in arresting her steps. Lily did not pause till she had reached the grassy ball-room, and here all the children came round her and shut out her delicate form from Kenelm’s sight.

Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.

“Lily is come!”

“I know it: I have seen her.”

“Is not she beautiful?”

“I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?”

Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer was brief enough not to need much consideration. “She is a Miss Mordaunt, an orphan; and, as I before told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs. Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place. Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere child,—her mind quite unformed.”

“Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?” muttered Kenelm. “I am sure mine is not, and never will be on this earth.”

Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm’s arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.

Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer and the laugh of children. In such scene and such circumstance formality does not last long. I know not how it was, but in a very few minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other. They found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl with mobile shifting glances now on earth, now on heaven, and talking freely; gayly,—like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.

No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life, and conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was right: her mind was still so unformed.

What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not, at least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical, as the talk of children generally is,—about herself and her aunt, and her home and her friends; all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger,—Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all this ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy,—nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child. But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round Lily. Evidently she was the prime favourite of them all; and as her companion had now become tired of dancing, new sports were proposed, and Lily was carried off to “Prisoner’s Base.”

“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly,” said a frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out his hand to Kenelm.

“My husband,” said Mrs. Braefield, with a certain pride in her look.

Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the house, who had just returned from his city office, and left all its cares behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous, and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong sense, of good-humour,—above all, of an active energetic temperament. A man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.

“You will stay and dine with us, of course,” said Mr. Braefield; “and, unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take a bed here.”

Kenelm hesitated.

“Do stay at least till to-morrow,” said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm hesitated still; and while hesitating his eye rested on Lily, leaning on the arm of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess,—evidently to take leave.

“I cannot resist so tempting an invitation,” said Kenelm, and he fell back a little behind Lily and her companion.

“Thank you much for so pleasant a day,” said Mrs. Cameron to the hostess. “Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we could not come earlier.”

“If you are walking home,” said Mr. Braefield, “let me accompany you. I want to speak to your gardener about his heart’s-ease: it is much finer than mine.”

“If so,” said Kenelm to Lily, “may I come too? Of all flowers that grow, heart’s-ease is the one I most prize.”

A few minutes afterwards Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along the banks of a little stream, tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.

Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly—I think it is called the Emperor of Morocco—that was sunning its yellow wings upon a group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing this wanderer in her straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture she returned demurely to Kenelm’s side.

“Do you collect insects?” said that philosopher, as much surprised as it was his nature to be at anything.

“Only butterflies,” answered Lily; “they are not insects, you know; they are souls.”

“Emblems of souls you mean,—at least, so the Greeks prettily represented them to be.”

“No, real souls,—the souls of infants that die in their cradles unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and live a year then they pass into fairies.”

“It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers cannot,—tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable fact?”

“I don’t know,” replied Lily, looking very much puzzled; “perhaps I learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it.”

“You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher. But you talk of taking care of butterflies; how do you do that? Do you impale them on pins stuck into a glass case?”

“Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be pinched by the fairies.”

“I am afraid,” thought Kenelm, compassionately, “that my companion has no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called ‘an innocent.’”

He shook his head and remained silent. Lily resumed,—

“I will show you my collection when we get home; they seem so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know me: they will feed from my hand. I have only had one die since I began to collect them last summer.”

“Then you have kept them a year: they ought to have turned into fairies.”

“I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that had been with me twelve months: they don’t turn to fairies in the cage, you know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn; the prettiest don’t appear till the autumn.”

The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner. Then again she looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped, and exclaimed,—

“How can people live in towns? How can people say they are ever dull in the country? Look,” she continued, gravely and earnestly, “look at that tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see how, as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:—

 “‘Wave your tops, ye pines;
  With every plant, in sign of worship wave.’ 

“What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!”

Kenelm was startled. This “an innocent”!—this a girl who had no mind to be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet. He replied gravely,—

“The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother. To them the butterfly’s wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy’s soul!”

When he had thus said Lily turned, and for the first time attentively looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, “Talk on; talk thus: I like to hear you.”

But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the garden-gate of Mrs. Cameron’s cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at the gate and walked with them to the house.

It was a long, low, irregular cottage, without pretension to architectural beauty, yet exceedingly picturesque,—a flower-garden, large, but in proportion to the house, with parterres in which the colours were exquisitely assorted, sloping to the grassy margin of the rivulet, where the stream expanded into a lake-like basin, narrowed at either end by locks, from which with gentle sound flowed shallow waterfalls. By the banks was a rustic seat, half overshadowed by the drooping boughs of a vast willow.

The inside of the house was in harmony with the exterior,—cottage-like, but with an unmistakable air of refinement about the rooms, even in the little entrance-hall, which was painted in Pompeian frescos.

“Come and see my butterfly-cage,” said Lily, whisperingly.

Kenelm followed her through the window that opened on the garden; and at one end of a small conservatory, or rather greenhouse, was the habitation of these singular favourites. It was as large as a small room; three sides of it formed by minute wirework, with occasional draperies of muslin or other slight material, and covered at intervals, sometimes within, sometimes without, by dainty creepers; a tiny cistern in the centre, from which upsprang a sparkling jet. Lily cautiously lifted a sash-door and glided in, closing it behind her. Her entrance set in movement a multitude of gossamer wings, some fluttering round her, some more boldly settling on her hair or dress. Kenelm thought she had not vainly boasted when she said that some of the creatures had learned to know her. She released the Emperor of Morocco from her hat; it circled round her fearlessly, and then vanished amidst the leaves of the creepers. Lily opened the door and came out.

“I have heard of a philosopher who tamed a wasp,” said Kenelm, “but never before of a young lady who tamed butterflies.”

“No,” said Lily, proudly; “I believe I am the first who attempted it. I don’t think I should have attempted it if I had been told that others had succeeded before me. Not that I have succeeded quite. No matter; if they don’t love me, I love them.”

They re-entered the drawing-room, and Mrs. Cameron addressed Kenelm.

“Do you know much of this part of the country, Mr. Chillingly?”

“It is quite new to me, and more rural than many districts farther from London.”

“That is the good fortune of most of our home counties,” said Mr. Braefield; “they escape the smoke and din of manufacturing towns, and agricultural science has not demolished their leafy hedgerows. The walks through our green lanes are as much bordered with convolvulus and honeysuckle as they were when Izaak Walton sauntered through them to angle in that stream!”

“Does tradition say that he angled in that stream? I thought his haunts were rather on the other side of London.”

“Possibly; I am not learned in Walton or in his art, but there is an old summer-house, on the other side of the lock yonder, on which is carved the name of Izaak Walton, but whether by his own hand or another’s who shall say? Has Mr. Melville been here lately, Mrs. Cameron?”

“No, not for several months.”

“He has had a glorious success this year. We may hope that at last his genius is acknowledged by the world. I meant to buy his picture, but I was not in time: a Manchester man was before me.”

“Who is Mr. Melville? any relation to you?” whispered Kenelm to Lily.

“Relation,—I scarcely know. Yes, I suppose so, because he is my guardian. But if he were the nearest relation on earth, I could not love him more,” said Lily, with impulsive eagerness, her cheeks flushing, her eyes filling with tears.

“And he is an artist,—a painter?” asked Kenelm.

“Oh, yes; no one paints such beautiful pictures,—no one so clever, no one so kind.”

Kenelm strove to recollect if he had ever heard the name of Melville as a painter, but in vain. Kenelm, however, knew but little of painters: they were not in his way; and he owned to himself, very humbly, that there might be many a living painter of eminent renown whose name and works would be strange to him.

He glanced round the wall; Lily interpreted his look. “There are no pictures of his here,” said she; “there is one in my own room. I will show it you when you come again.”

“And now,” said Mr. Braefield, rising, “I must just have a word with your gardener, and then go home. We dine earlier here than in London, Mr. Chillingly.”

As the two gentlemen, after taking leave, re-entered the hall, Lily followed them and said to Kenelm, “What time will you come to-morrow to see the picture?”

Kenelm averted his head, and then replied, not with his wonted courtesy, but briefly and brusquely,—

“I fear I cannot call to-morrow. I shall be far away by sunrise.”

Lily made no answer, but turned back into the room.

Mr. Braefield found the gardener watering a flower-border, conferred with him about the heart’s-ease, and then joined Kenelm, who had halted a few yards beyond the garden-gate.

“A pretty little place that,” said Mr. Braefield, with a sort of lordly compassion, as became the owner of Braefieldville. “What I call quaint.”

“Yes, quaint,” echoed Kenelm, abstractedly.

“It is always the case with houses enlarged by degrees. I have heard my poor mother say that when Melville or Mrs. Cameron first bought it, it was little better than a mere labourer’s cottage, with a field attached to it. And two or three years afterwards a room or so more was built, and a bit of the field taken in for a garden; and then by degrees the whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving only the old cottage as a scullery and washhouse; and the whole field was turned into the garden, as you see. But whether it was Melville’s money or the aunt’s that did it, I don’t know. More likely the aunt’s. I don’t see what interest Melville has in the place: he does not go there often, I fancy; it is not his home.”

“Mr. Melville, it seems, is a painter, and, from what I heard you say, a successful one.”

“I fancy he had little success before this year. But surely you saw his pictures at the Exhibition?”

“I am ashamed to say I have not been to the Exhibition.”

“You surprise me. However, Melville had three pictures there,—all very good; but the one I wished to buy made much more sensation than the others, and has suddenly lifted him from obscurity into fame.”

“He appears to be a relation of Miss Mordaunt’s, but so distant a one that she could not even tell me what grade of cousinship he could claim.”

“Nor can I. He is her guardian, I know. The relationship, if any, must, as you say, be very distant; for Melville is of humble extraction, while any one can see that Mrs. Cameron is a thorough gentlewoman, and Lily Mordaunt is her sister’s child. I have heard my mother say that it was Melville, then a very young man, who bought the cottage, perhaps with Mrs. Cameron’s money; saying it was for a widowed lady, whose husband had left her with very small means. And when Mrs. Cameron arrived with Lily, then a mere infant, she was in deep mourning, and a very young woman herself,—pretty too. If Melville had been a frequent visitor then, of course there would have been scandal; but he very seldom came, and when he did, he lodged in a cottage, Cromwell Lodge, on the other side of the brook; now and then bringing with him a fellow-lodger,—some other young artist, I suppose, for the sake of angling. So there could be no cause for scandal, and nothing can be more blameless than poor Mrs. Cameron’s life. My mother, who then resided at Braefieldville, took a great fancy to both Lily and her aunt, and when by degrees the cottage grew into a genteel sort of place, the few gentry in the neighbourhood followed my mother’s example and were very kind to Mrs. Cameron, so that she has now her place in the society about here, and is much liked.”

“And Mr. Melville?—does he still very seldom come here?”

“To say truth, he has not been at all since I settled at Braefieldville. The place was left to my mother for her life, and I was not much there during her occupation. In fact, I was then a junior partner in our firm, and conducted the branch business in New York, coming over to England for my holiday once a year or so. When my mother died, there was much to arrange before I could settle personally in England, and I did not come to settle at Braefieldville till I married. I did see Melville on one of my visits to the place some years ago; but, between ourselves, he is not the sort of person whose intimate acquaintance one would wish to court. My mother told me he was an idle, dissipated man, and I have heard from others that he was very unsteady. Mr. ——-, the great painter, told me that he was a loose fish; and I suppose his habits were against his getting on, till this year, when, perhaps, by a lucky accident, he has painted a picture that raises him to the top of the tree. But is not Miss Lily wondrously nice to look at? What a pity her education has been so much neglected!”

“Has it?”

“Have not you discovered that already? She has not had even a music-master, though my wife says she has a good ear, and can sing prettily enough. As for reading I don’t think she has read anything but fairy tales and poetry, and such silly stuff. However, she is very young yet; and now that her guardian can sell his pictures, it is to be hoped that he will do more justice to his ward. Painters and actors are not so regular in their private lives as we plain men are, and great allowance is to be made for them; still, every one is bound to do his duty. I am sure you agree with me?”

“Certainly,” said Kenelm, with an emphasis which startled the merchant. “That is an admirable maxim of yours: it seems a commonplace, yet how often, when it is put into our heads, it strikes as a novelty! A duty may be a very difficult thing, a very disagreeable thing, and, what is strange, it is often a very invisible thing. It is present,—close before us, and yet we don’t see it; somebody shouts its name in our ears, ‘Duty,’ and straight it towers before us a grim giant. Pardon me if I leave you: I can’t stay to dine. Duty summons me elsewhere. Make my excuses to Mrs. Braefield.”

Before Mr. Braefield could recover his self-possession, Kenelm had vaulted over a stile and was gone.