"Happy, sir! I should think so, indeed. There is not a night on which Jessie and I, and mother too, do not pray that some day or other you may be as happy. By and by the baby will learn to pray "G.o.d bless papa, and mamma, grandmamma, and Mr. Chillingly.""
"There is some one else much more deserving of prayers than I, though needing them less. You will know some day: pa.s.s it by now. To return to the point: you are happy; if I asked why, would you not say, "Because I have married the girl I love, and have never repented"?"
"Well, sir, that is about it; though, begging your pardon, I think it could be put more prettily somehow."
"You are right there. But perhaps love and happiness never yet found any words that could fitly express them. Good-bye, for the present."
Ah! if it were as mere materialists, or as many middle-aged or elderly folks, who, if materialists, are so without knowing it, unreflectingly say, "The main element of happiness is bodily or animal health and strength," that question which Chillingly put would appear a very unmeaning or a very insulting one addressed to a pale cripple, who however improved of late in health, would still be sickly and ailing all his life,--put, too, by a man of the rarest conformation of physical powers that nature can adapt to physical enjoyment,--a man who, since the age in which memory commences, had never known what it was to be unwell, who could scarcely understand you if you talked of a finger-ache, and whom those refinements of mental culture which multiply the delights of the senses had endowed with the most exquisite conceptions of such happiness as mere nature and its instincts can give!
But Will did not think the question unmeaning or insulting. He, the poor cripple, felt a vast superiority on the scale of joyous being over the young Hercules, well born, cultured, and wealthy, who could know so little of happiness as to ask the crippled basket-maker if he were happy.--he, blessed husband and father!
CHAPTER V.
LILY was seated on the gra.s.s under a chestnut-tree on the lawn. A white cat, not long emerged from kittenhood, curled itself by her side. On her lap was an open volume, which she was reading with the greatest delight.
Mrs. Cameron came from the house, looked round, perceived the girl, and approached; and either she moved so gently, or Lily was so absorbed in the book, that the latter was not aware of her presence till she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and, looking up, recognized her aunt"s gentle face.
"Ah! Fairy, Fairy, that silly book, when you ought to be at your French verbs. What will your guardian say when he comes and finds you have so wasted time?"
"He will say that fairies never waste their time; and he will scold you for saying so." Therewith Lily threw down the book, sprang to her feet, wound her arm round Mrs. Cameron"s neck, and kissed her fondly. "There!
is that wasting time? I love you so, aunty. In a day like this I think I love everybody and everything!" As she said this, she drew up her lithe form, looked into the blue sky, and with parted lips seemed to drink in air and sunshine. Then she woke up the dozing cat, and began chasing it round the lawn.
Mrs. Cameron stood still, regarding her with moistened eyes. Just at that moment Kenelm entered through the garden gate. He, too, stood still, his eyes fixed on the undulating movements of Fairy"s exquisite form. She had arrested her favourite, and was now at play with it, shaking off her straw hat, and drawing the ribbon attached to it tantalizingly along the smooth gra.s.s. Her rich hair, thus released and dishevelled by the exercise, fell partly over her face in wavy ringlets; and her musical laugh and words of sportive endearment sounded on Kenelm"s ear more joyously than the thrill of the skylark, more sweetly than the coo of the ring-dove.
He approached towards Mrs. Cameron. Lily turned suddenly and saw him.
Instinctively she smoothed back her loosened tresses, replaced the straw hat, and came up demurely to his side just as he had accosted her aunt.
"Pardon my intrusion, Mrs. Cameron. I am the bearer of this note from Mrs. Braefield." While the aunt read the note, he turned to the niece.
"You promised to show me the picture, Miss Mordaunt."
"But that was a long time ago."
"Too long to expect a lady"s promise to be kept?"
Lily seemed to ponder that question, and hesitated before she answered.
"I will show you the picture. I don"t think I ever broke a promise yet, but I shall be more careful how I make one in future."
"Why so?"
"Because you did not value mine when I made it, and that hurt me." Lily lifted up her head with a bewitching stateliness, and added gravely, "I was offended."
"Mrs. Braefield is very kind," said Mrs. Cameron; "she asks us to dine the day after to-morrow. You would like to go, Lily?"
"All grown-up people, I suppose? No, thank you, dear aunt. You go alone, I would rather stay at home. May I have little Clemmy to play with? She will bring Juba, and Blanche is very partial to Juba, though she does scratch him."
"Very well, my dear, you shall have your playmate, and I will go by myself."
Kenelm stood aghast. "You will not go, Miss Mordaunt; Mrs. Braefield will be so disappointed. And if you don"t go, whom shall I have to talk to? I don"t like grown-up people better than you do."
"You are going?"
"Certainly."
"And if I go you will talk to me? I am afraid of Mr. Braefield. He is so wise."
"I will save you from him, and will not utter a grain of wisdom."
"Aunty, I will go."
Here Lily made a bound and caught up Blanche, who, taking her kisses resignedly, stared with evident curiosity upon Kenelm.
Here a bell within the house rang the announcement of luncheon. Mrs.
Cameron invited Kenelm to partake of that meal. He felt as Romulus might have felt when first invited to taste the ambrosia of the G.o.ds. Yet certainly that luncheon was not such as might have pleased Kenelm Chillingly in the early days of the Temperance Hotel. But somehow or other of late he had lost appet.i.te; and on this occasion a very modest share of a very slender dish of chicken frica.s.seed, and a few cherries daintily arranged on vine leaves, which Lily selected for him, contented him,--as probably a very little ambrosia contented Romulus while feasting his eyes on Hebe.
Luncheon over, while Mrs. Cameron wrote her reply to Elsie, Kenelm was conducted by Lily into her own _own_ room, in vulgar parlance her _boudoir_, though it did not look as if any one ever _bouder"d_ there.
It was exquisitely pretty,--pretty not as a woman"s, but as a child"s dream of the own _own_ room she would like to have,--wondrously neat and cool, and pure-looking; a trellis paper, the trellis gay with roses and woodbine, and birds and b.u.t.terflies; draperies of muslin, festooned with dainty ta.s.sels and ribbons; a dwarf bookcase, that seemed well stored, at least as to bindings; a dainty little writing-table in French _marqueterie_, looking too fresh and spotless to have known hard service. The cas.e.m.e.nt was open, and in keeping with the trellis paper; woodbine and roses from without encroached on the window-sides, gently stirred by the faint summer breeze, and wafted sweet odours into the little room. Kenelm went to the window, and glanced on the view beyond.
"I was right," he said to himself; "I divined it." But though he spoke in a low inward whisper, Lily, who had watched his movements in surprise, overheard.
"You divined it. Divined what?"
"Nothing, nothing; I was but talking to myself."
"Tell me what you divined: I insist upon it!" and Fairy petulantly stamped her tiny foot on the floor.
"Do you? Then I obey. I have taken a lodging for a short time on the other side of the brook,--Cromwell Lodge,--and seeing your house as I pa.s.sed, I divined that your room was in this part of it. How soft here is the view of the water! Ah! yonder is Izaak Walton"s summer-house."
"Don"t talk about Izaak Walton, or I shall quarrel with you, as I did with Lion when he wanted me to like that cruel book."
"Who is Lion?"
"Lion,--of course, my guardian. I called him Lion when I was a little child. It was on seeing in one of his books a print of a lion playing with a little child."
"Ah! I know the design well," said Kenelm, with a slight sigh. "It is from an antique Greek gem. It is not the lion that plays with the child, it is the child that masters the lion, and the Greeks called the child "Love.""
This idea seemed beyond Lily"s perfect comprehension. She paused before she answered, with the naivete of a child six years old,--
"I see now why I mastered Blanche, who will not make friends with any one else: I love Blanche. Ah, that reminds me,--come and look at the picture."
She went to the wall over the writing-table, drew a silk curtain aside from a small painting in a dainty velvet framework, and pointing to it, cried with triumph, "Look there! is it not beautiful?"
Kenelm had been prepared to see a landscape, or a group, or anything but what he did see: it was the portrait of Blanche when a kitten.
Little elevated though the subject was, it was treated with graceful fancy. The kitten had evidently ceased from playing with the cotton reel that lay between her paws, and was fixing her gaze intently on a bulfinch that had lighted on a spray within her reach.
"You understand," said Lily, placing her hand on his arm, and drawing him towards what she thought the best light for the picture; "it is Blanche"s first sight of a bird. Look well at her face; don"t you see a sudden surprise,--half joy, half fear? She ceases to play with the reel.
Her intellect--or, as Mr. Braefield would say, "her instinct"--is for the first time aroused. From that moment Blanche was no longer a mere kitten. And it required, oh, the most careful education, to teach her not to kill the poor little birds. She never does now, but I had such trouble with her."