"Humph! my dear Gordon, _vous irez loin_."
"I hope to do so. Measuring myself against the men of my own day, I do not see many who should outstrip me."
"What sort of a fellow is your cousin Kenelm? I met him once or twice when he was very young, and reading with Welby in London. People then said that he was very clever; he struck me as very odd."
"I never saw him, but from all I hear, whether he be clever or whether he be odd, he is not likely to do anything in life,--a dreamer."
"Writes poetry perhaps?"
"Capable of it, I dare say."
Just then some other guests came into the room, amongst them a lady of an appearance at once singularly distinguished and singularly prepossessing, rather above the common height, and with a certain indescribable n.o.bility of air and presence. Lady Glenalvon was one of the queens of the London world, and no queen of that world was ever less worldly or more queen-like. Side by side with the lady was Mr.
Chillingly Mivers. Gordon and Mivers interchanged friendly nods, and the former sauntered away and was soon lost amid a crowd of other young men, with whom, as he could converse well and lightly on things which interested them, he was rather a favourite, though he was not an intimate a.s.sociate. Mr. Danvers retired into a corner of the adjoining lobby, where he favoured the French amba.s.sador with his views on the state of Europe and the reconstruction of Cabinets in general.
"But," said Lady Glenalvon to Chillingly Mivers, "are you quite sure that my old young friend Kenelm is here? Since you told me so, I have looked everywhere for him in vain. I should so much like to see him again."
"I certainly caught a glimpse of him half an hour ago; but before I could escape from a geologist who was boring me about the Silurian system, Kenelm had vanished."
"Perhaps it was his ghost!"
"Well, we certainly live in the most credulous and superst.i.tious age upon record; and so many people tell me that they converse with the dead under the table that it seems impertinent in me to say that I don"t believe in ghosts."
"Tell me some of those incomprehensible stories about table-rapping,"
said Lady Glenalvon. "There is a charming, snug recess here behind the screen."
Scarcely had she entered the recess when she drew back with a start and an exclamation of amaze. Seated at the table within the recess, his chin resting on his hand, and his face cast down in abstracted revery, was a young man. So still was his att.i.tude, so calmly mournful the expression of his face, so estranged did he seem from all the motley but brilliant a.s.semblage which circled around the solitude he had made for himself, that he might well have been deemed one of those visitants from another world whose secrets the intruder had wished to learn. Of that intruder"s presence he was evidently unconscious. Recovering her surprise, she stole up to him, placed her hand on his shoulder, and uttered his name in a low gentle voice. At that sound Kenelm Chillingly looked up.
"Do you not remember me?" asked Lady Glenalvon. Before he could answer, Mivers, who had followed the marchioness into the recess, interposed.
"My dear Kenelm, how are you? When did you come to London? Why have you not called on me; and what on earth are you hiding yourself for?"
Kenelm had now recovered the self-possession which he rarely lost long in the presence of others. He returned cordially his kinsman"s greeting, and kissed with his wonted chivalrous grace the fair hand which the lady withdrew from his shoulder and extended to his pressure. "Remember you!"
he said to Lady Glenalvon with the kindliest expression of his soft dark eyes; "I am not so far advanced towards the noon of life as to forget the sunshine that brightened its morning. My dear Mivers, your questions are easily answered. I arrived in England two weeks ago, stayed at Exmundham till this morning, to-day dined with Lord Thetford, whose acquaintance I made abroad, and was persuaded by him to come here and be introduced to his father and mother, the Beaumanoirs. After I had undergone that ceremony, the sight of so many strange faces frightened me into shyness. Entering this room at a moment when it was quite deserted, I resolved to turn hermit behind the screen."
"Why, you must have seen your cousin Gordon as you came into the room."
"But you forget I don"t know him by sight. However, there was no one in the room when I entered; a little later some others came in, for I heard a faint buzz, like that of persons talking in a whisper. However, I was no eavesdropper, as a person behind a screen is on the dramatic stage."
This was true. Even had Gordon and Danvers talked in a louder tone, Kenelm had been too absorbed in his own thoughts to have heard a word of their conversation.
"You ought to know young Gordon; he is a very clever fellow, and has an ambition to enter Parliament. I hope no old family quarrel between his bear of a father and dear Sir Peter will make you object to meet him."
"Sir Peter is the most forgiving of men, but he would scarcely forgive me if I declined to meet a cousin who had never offended him."
"Well said. Come and meet Gordon at breakfast to-morrow,--ten o"clock. I am still in the old rooms."
While the kinsmen thus conversed, Lady Glenalvon had seated herself on the couch beside Kenelm, and was quietly observing his countenance.
Now she spoke. "My dear Mr. Mivers, you will have many opportunities of talking with Kenelm; do not grudge me five minutes" talk with him now."
"I leave your ladyship alone in your hermitage. How all the men in this a.s.sembly will envy the hermit!"
CHAPTER II.
"I AM glad to see you once more in the world," said Lady Glenalvon; "and I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which ought to be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your nature."
KENELM.--"When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,--an actor or a looker-on?"
LADY GLENALVON.--"My dear young friend, your question saddens me."
(After a pause.)--"But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is not really a theatre. Life admits of no lookers-on. Speak to me frankly, as you used to do. Your face retains its old melancholy expression. Are you not happy?"
KENELM.--"Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be. I do not think I am unhappy. If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of its own. Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be found on the _Penseroso_ side of it as there are on the _Allegro_."
LADY GLENALVON.--"Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when, later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my care. When at the age of sixteen, with a boy"s years and a man"s heart, you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a mother? and did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the secrets of your heart more readily than to any other?"
"You were to me," said Kenelm, with emotion, "that most precious and sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of life,--a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of soul which is only found in the n.o.blest order of womanhood. Come, I will open my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever. It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural to my age and station. However, I have been seeking to brace and harden my nature, for the practical ends of life, by travel and adventure, chiefly among rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in drawing-rooms. Now, in compliance with the duty I owe to my dear father"s wishes, I come back to these circles, which under your auspices I entered in boyhood, and which even then seemed to me so inane and artificial. Take a part in the world of these circles; such is your wish. My answer is brief. I have been doing my best to acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded. I see nothing that I care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain. The very times in which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and I am not born like Hamlet to set them right. Ah! if I could look on society through the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in "Gil Blas"
looked on his meagre board,--spectacles by which cherries appear the size of peaches, and tomt.i.ts as large as turkeys! The imagination which is necessary to ambition is a great magnifier."
"I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who at your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of others."
"And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?"
"That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious fusion of one"s own being into other existences, which belong to home and marriage."
"I don"t object to home, but I do to marriage."
"Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman."
"Prettily said. In that case I resign the home."
"Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you could love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that you do not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married life?"
"Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a home."
"Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand. Listen to me. It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable longing to see you again,--to know your address that I might write to you; for yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a week"s visit, I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above all, the exact wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly."
"Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left your house."
"But she has not left London: she is here to-night. She only stayed with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for the season was vacant; those events happened yesterday."
"Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without danger."
"Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young lady who appears to me so well suited to you?"
"No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm."
"Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage. Come, there are many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old acquaintance, and to some of whom I should like to make you known."