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?”
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