A SMART pony-phaeton, with a box for a driver in livery equally smart, stood at the shop-door.
"Now, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Braefield, "it is my turn to run away with you; get in!"
"Eh!" murmured Kenelm, gazing at her with large dreamy eyes. "Is it possible?"
"Quite possible; get in. Coachman, home! Yes, Mr. Chillingly, you meet again that giddy creature whom you threatened to thrash; it would have served her right. I ought to feel so ashamed to recall myself to your recollection, and yet I am not a bit ashamed. I am proud to show you that I have turned out a steady, respectable woman, and, my husband tells me, a good wife."
"You have only been six months married, I hear," said Kenelm, dryly. "I hope your husband will say the same six years hence."
"He will say the same sixty years hence, if we live as long."
"How old is he now?"
"Thirty-eight."
"When a man wants only two years of his hundredth, he probably has learned to know his own mind; but then, in most cases, very little mind is left to him to know."
"Don"t be satirical, sir; and don"t talk as if you were railing at marriage, when you have just left as happy a young couple as the sun ever shone upon; and owing,--for Mrs. Somers has told me all about her marriage,--owing their happiness to you."
"Their happiness to me! not in the least. I helped them to marry, and in spite of marriage they helped each other to be happy."
"You are still unmarried yourself?"
"Yes, thank Heaven!"
"And are you happy?"
"No; I can"t make myself happy: myself is a discontented brute."
"Then why do you say "thank Heaven"?"
"Because it is a comfort to think I am not making somebody else unhappy."
"Do you believe that if you loved a wife who loved you, you should make her unhappy?"
"I am sure I don"t know; but I have not seen a woman whom I could love as a wife. And we need not push our inquiries further. What has become of that ill-treated gray cob?"
"He was quite well, thank you, when I last heard of him."
"And the uncle who would have inflicted me upon you, if you had not so gallantly defended yourself?"
"He is living where he did live, and has married his housekeeper. He felt a delicate scruple against taking that step till I was married myself and out of the way."
Here Mrs. Braefield, beginning to speak very hurriedly, as women who seek to disguise emotion often do, informed Kenelm how unhappy she had felt for weeks after having found an asylum with her aunt,--how she had been stung by remorse and oppressed by a sense of humiliation at the thought of her folly and the odious recollection of Mr. Compton,--how she had declared to herself that she would never marry any one now--never! How Mr. Braefield happened to be on a visit in the neighbourhood, and saw her at church,--how he had sought an introduction to her,--and how at first she rather disliked him than not; but he was so good and so kind, and when at last he proposed--and she had frankly told him all about her girlish flight and infatuation--how generously he had thanked her for a candour which had placed her as high in his esteem as she had been before in his love. "And from that moment," said Mrs.
Braefield, pa.s.sionately, "my whole heart leaped to him. And now you know all; and here we are at the Lodge."
The pony-phaeton went with great speed up a broad gravel-drive, bordered with rare evergreens, and stopped at a handsome house with a portico in front, and a long conservatory at the garden side,--one of those houses which belong to "city gentlemen," and often contain more comfort and exhibit more luxury than many a stately manorial mansion.
Mrs. Braefield evidently felt some pride as she led Kenelm through the handsome hall, paved with Malvern tiles and adorned with Scagliola columns, and into a drawing-room furnished with much taste and opening on a s.p.a.cious flower-garden.
"But where is Mr. Braefield?" asked Kenelm.
"Oh, he has taken the rail to his office; but he will be back long before dinner, and of course you dine with us."
"You"re very hospitable, but--"
"No buts: I will take no excuse. Don"t fear that you shall have only mutton-chops and a rice-pudding; and, besides, I have a children"s party coming at two o"clock, and there will be all sorts of fun. You are fond of children, I am sure?"
"I rather think I am not. But I have never clearly ascertained my own inclinations upon that subject."
"Well, you shall have ample opportunity to do so to-day. And oh! I promise you the sight of the loveliest face that you can picture to yourself when you think of your future wife."
"My future wife, I hope, is not yet born," said Kenelm, wearily, and with much effort suppressing a yawn. "But at all events, I will stay till after two o"clock; for two o"clock, I presume, means luncheon."
Mrs. Braefield laughed. "You retain your appet.i.te?"
"Most single men do, provided they don"t fall in love and become doubled up."
At this abominable attempt at a pun, Mrs. Braefield disdained to laugh; but turning away from its perpetrator she took off her hat and gloves and pa.s.sed her hands lightly over her forehead, as if to smooth back some vagrant tress in locks already sufficiently sheen and trim. She was not quite so pretty in female attire as she had appeared in boy"s dress, nor did she look quite as young. In all other respects she was wonderfully improved. There was a serener, a more settled intelligence in her frank bright eyes, a milder expression in the play of her parted lips. Kenelm gazed at her with pleased admiration. And as now, turning from the gla.s.s, she encountered his look, a deeper colour came into the clear delicacy of her cheeks, and the frank eyes moistened. She came up to him as he sat, and took his hand in both hers, pressing it warmly.
"Ah, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with impulsive tremulous tones, "look round, look round this happy, peaceful home!--the life so free from a care, the husband whom I so love and honour; all the blessings that I might have so recklessly lost forever had I not met with you, had I been punished as I deserved. How often I thought of your words, that "you would be proud of my friendship when we met again"! What strength they gave me in my hours of humbled self-reproach!" Her voice here died away as if in the effort to suppress a sob.
She released his hand, and, before he could answer, pa.s.sed quickly through the open sash into the garden.
CHAPTER IV.
THE children have come,--some thirty of them, pretty as English children generally are, happy in the joy of the summer sunshine, and the flower lawns, and the feast under cover of an awning suspended between chestnut-trees, and carpeted with sward.
No doubt Kenelm held his own at the banquet, and did his best to increase the general gayety, for whenever he spoke the children listened eagerly, and when he had done they laughed mirthfully.
"The fair face I promised you," whispered Mrs. Braefield, "is not here yet. I have a little note from the young lady to say that Mrs. Cameron does not feel very well this morning, but hopes to recover sufficiently to come later in the afternoon."
"And pray who is Mrs. Cameron?"
"Ah! I forgot that you are a stranger to the place. Mrs. Cameron is the aunt with whom Lily resides. Is it not a pretty name, Lily?"
"Very! emblematic of a spinster that does not spin, with a white head and a thin stalk."
"Then the name belies my Lily, as you will see."
The children now finished their feast, and betook themselves to dancing in an alley smoothed for a croquet-ground, and to the sound of a violin played by the old grandfather of one of the party. While Mrs. Braefield was busying herself with forming the dance, Kenelm seized the occasion to escape from a young nymph of the age of twelve who had sat next him at the banquet, and taken so great a fancy to him that he began to fear she would vow never to forsake his side, and stole away undetected.
There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood.
Gliding through a dense shrubbery, in which, though the lilacs were faded, the laburnum still retained here and there the waning gold of its cl.u.s.ters, Kenelm came into a recess which bounded his steps and invited him to repose. It was a circle, so formed artificially by slight trellises, to which clung parasite roses heavy with leaves and flowers.
In the midst played a tiny fountain with a silvery murmuring sound; at the background, dominating the place, rose the crests of stately trees, on which the sunlight shimmered, but which rampired out all horizon beyond. Even as in life do the great dominant pa.s.sions--love, ambition, desire of power or gold or fame or knowledge--form the proud background to the brief-lived flowerets of our youth, lift our eyes beyond the smile of their bloom, catch the glint of a loftier sunbeam, and yet, and yet, exclude our sight from the lengths and the widths of the s.p.a.ce which extends behind and beyond them.
Kenelm threw himself on the turf beside the fountain. From afar came the whoop and the laugh of the children in their sports or their dance. At the distance their joy did not sadden him,--he marvelled why; and thus, in musing revery, thought to explain the why to himself.