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.
