When they left Cromwell Lodge at nightfall, to repair to the supper at Will"s; Kenelm noticed that Bowles had availed himself of the contents of his carpet-bag to make some refined alterations in his dress. The alterations became him.
When they entered the parlour, Will rose from his chair with the evidence of deep emotion on his face, advanced to Tom, took his hand and grasped and dropped it without a word. Jessie saluted both guests alike, with drooping eyelids and an elaborate curtsy. The old mother alone was perfectly self-possessed and up to the occasion.
"I am heartily glad to see you, Mr. Bowles," said she, "and so all three of us are, and ought to be; and if baby was older, there would be four."
"And where on earth have you hidden baby?" cried Kenelm. "Surely he might have been kept up for me to-night, when I was expected; the last time I supped here I took you by surprise, and therefore had no right to complain of baby"s want of respect to her parents" friends."
Jessie raised the window-curtain, and pointed to the cradle behind it.
Kenelm linked his arm in Tom"s, led him to the cradle, and, leaving him alone to gaze on the sleeping inmate, seated himself at the table, between old Mrs. Somers and Will. Will"s eyes were turned away towards the curtain, Jessie holding its folds aside, and the formidable Tom, who had been the terror of his neighbourhood, bending smiling over the cradle: till at last he laid his large hand on the pillow, gently, timidly, careful not to awake the helpless sleeper, and his lips moved, doubtless with a blessing; then he, too, came to the table, seating himself, and Jessie carried the cradle upstairs.
Will fixed his keen, intelligent eyes on his bygone rival; and noticing the changed expression of the once aggressive countenance, the changed costume in which, without tinge of rustic foppery, there was the token of a certain gravity of station scarcely compatible with a return to old loves and old habits in the village world, the last shadow of jealousy vanished from the clear surface of Will"s affectionate nature.
"Mr. Bowles," he exclaimed, impulsively, "you have a kind heart, and a good heart, and a generous heart. And your corning here to-night on this friendly visit is an honour which--which"--"Which," interrupted Kenelm, compa.s.sionating Will"s embarra.s.sment, "is on the side of us single men.
In this free country a married man who has a male baby may be father to the Lord Chancellor or the Archbishop of Canterbury. But--well, my friends, such a meeting as we have to-night does not come often; and after supper let us celebrate it with a bowl of punch. If we have headaches the next morning none of us will grumble."
Old Mrs. Somers laughed out jovially. "Bless you, sir, I did not think of the punch; I will go and see about it," and, baby"s socks still in her hands, she hastened from the room.
What with the supper, what with the punch, and what with Kenelm"s art of cheery talk on general subjects, all reserve, all awkwardness, all shyness between the convivialists, rapidly disappeared. Jessie mingled in the talk; perhaps (excepting only Kenelm) she talked more than the others, artlessly, gayly, no vestige of the old coquetry; but, now and then, with a touch of genteel finery, indicative of her rise in life, and of the contact of the fancy shopkeeper with n.o.ble customers. It was a pleasant evening; Kenelm had resolved that it should be so. Not a hint of the obligations to Mr. Bowles escaped until Will, following his visitor to the door, whispered to Tom, "You don"t want thanks, and I can"t express them. But when we say our prayers at night, we have always asked G.o.d to bless him who brought us together, and has since made us so prosperous,--I mean Mr. Chillingly. To-night there will be another besides him, for whom we shall pray, and for whom baby, when he is older, will pray too."
Therewith Will"s voice thickened; and he prudently receded, with no unreasonable fear lest the punch might make him too demonstrative of emotion if he said more.
Tom was very silent on the return to Cromwell Lodge; it did not seem the silence of depressed spirits, but rather of quiet meditation, from which Kenelm did not attempt to rouse him.
It was not till they reached the garden pales of Grasmere that Tom, stopping short, and turning his face to Kenelm, said, "I am very grateful to you for this evening,--very."
"It has revived no painful thoughts then?"
"No; I feel so much calmer in mind than I ever believed I could have been, after seeing her again."
"Is it possible!" said Kenelm, to himself. "How should I feel if I ever saw in Lily the wife of another man, the mother of his child?" At that question he shuddered, and an involuntary groan escaped from his lips.
Just then having, willingly in those precincts, arrested his steps when Tom paused to address him, something softly touched the arm which he had rested on the garden pale. He looked, and saw that it was Blanche.
The creature, impelled by its instincts towards night-wanderings, had, somehow or other, escaped from its own bed within the house, and hearing a voice that had grown somewhat familiar to its ear, crept from among the shrubs behind upon the edge of the pale. There it stood, with arched back, purring low as in pleased salutation.
Kenelm bent down and covered with kisses the blue ribbon which Lily"s hand had bound round the favourite"s neck. Blanche submitted to the caress for a moment, and then catching a slight rustle among the shrubs made by some awaking bird, sprang into the thick of the quivering leaves and vanished.
Kenelm moved on with a quick impatient stride, and no further words were exchanged between him and his companion till they reached their lodging and parted for the night.
CHAPTER III.
THE next day, towards noon, Kenelm and his visitor, walking together along the brook-side, stopped before Izaak Walton"s summer-house, and, at Kenelm"s suggestion, entered therein to rest, and more at their ease to continue the conversation they had begun.
"You have just told me," said Kenelm, "that you feel as if a load were taken off your heart, now that you have again met Jessie Somers, and that you find her so changed that she is no longer the woman you loved.
As to the change, whatever it be, I own, it seems to me for the better, in person, in manners, in character; of course I should not say this, if I were not convinced of your perfect sincerity when you a.s.sured me that you are cured of the old wound. But I feel so deeply interested in the question how a fervent love, once entertained and enthroned in the heart of a man so earnestly affectionate and so warm-blooded as yourself, can be, all of a sudden, at a single interview, expelled or transferred into the calm sentiment of friendship, that I pray you to explain."
"That is what puzzles me, sir," answered Tom, pa.s.sing his hand over his forehead. "And I don"t know if I can explain it.
"Think over it, and try."
Tom mused for some moments and then began. "You see, sir, that I was a very different man myself when I fell in love with Jessie Wiles, and said, "Come what may, that girl shall be my wife. n.o.body else shall have her.""
"Agreed; go on."
"But while I was becoming a different man, when I thought of her--and I was always thinking of her--I still pictured her to myself as the same Jessie Wiles; and though, when I did see her again at Graveleigh, after she had married--the day--"
"You saved her from the insolence of the Squire."
"She was but very recently married. I did not realize her as married. I did not see her husband, and the difference within myself was only then beginning. Well, so all the time I was reading and thinking, and striving to improve my old self at Lus...o...b.., still Jessie Wiles haunted me as the only girl I had ever loved, ever could love; I could not believe it possible that I could ever marry any one else. And lately I have been much pressed to marry some one else; all my family wish it: but the face of Jessie rose up before me, and I said to myself, "I should be a base man if I married one woman, while I could not get another woman out of my head." I must see Jessie once more, must learn whether her face is now really the face that haunts me when I sit alone; and I have seen her, and it is not that face: it may be handsomer, but it is not a girl"s face, it is the face of a wife and a mother. And, last evening, while she was talking with an open-heartedness which I had never found in her before, I became strangely conscious of the difference in myself that had been silently at work within the last two years or so. Then, sir, when I was but an ill-conditioned, uneducated, petty village farrier, there was no inequality between me and a peasant girl; or, rather, in all things except fortune, the peasant girl was much above me. But last evening I asked myself, watching her and listening to her talk, "If Jessie were now free, should I press her to be my wife?" and I answered myself, "No.""
Kenelm listened with rapt attention, and exclaimed briefly, but pa.s.sionately, "Why?"
"It seems as if I were giving myself airs to say why. But, sir, lately I have been thrown among persons, women as well as men, of a higher cla.s.s than I was born in; and in a wife I should want a companion up to their mark, and who would keep me up to mine; and ah, sir, I don"t feel as if I could find that companion in Mrs. Somers."
"I understand you now, Tom. But you are spoiling a silly romance of mine. I had fancied the little girl with the flower face would grow up to supply the loss of Jessie; and, I am so ignorant of the human heart, I did think it would take all the years required for the little girl to open into a woman, before the loss of the old love could be supplied. I see now that the poor little child with the flower face has no chance."
"Chance? Why, Mr. Chillingly," cried Tom, evidently much nettled, "Susey is a dear little thing, but she is scarcely more than a mere charity girl. Sir, when I last saw you in London you touched on that matter as if I were still the village farrier"s son, who might marry a village labourer"s daughter. But," added Tom, softening down his irritated tone of voice, "even if Susey were a lady born I think a man would make a very great mistake, if he thought he could bring up a little girl to regard him as a father; and then, when she grew up, expect her to accept him as a lover."
"Ah, you think that!" exclaimed Kenelm, eagerly, and turning eyes that sparkled with joy towards the lawn of Grasmere. "You think that; it is very sensibly said,--well, and you have been pressed to marry, and have hung back till you had seen again Mrs. Somers. Now you will be better disposed to such a step; tell me about it?"
"I said, last evening, that one of the princ.i.p.al capitalists at Lus...o...b.., the leading corn-merchant, had offered to take me into partnership. And, sir, he has an only daughter, she is a very amiable girl, has had a first-rate education, and has such pleasant manners and way of talk, quite a lady. If I married her I should soon be the first man in Lus...o...b.., and Lus...o...b.., as you are no doubt aware, returns two members to Parliament; who knows, but that some day the farrier"s son might be--" Tom stopped abruptly, abashed at the aspiring thought which, while speaking, had deepened his hardy colour and flashed from his honest eyes.
"Ah!" said Kenelm, almost mournfully, "is it so? must each man in his life play many parts? Ambition succeeds to love, the reasoning brain to the pa.s.sionate heart. True, you are changed; my Tom Bowles is gone."
"Not gone in his undying grat.i.tude to you, sir," said Tom, with great emotion. "Your Tom Bowles would give up all his dreams of wealth or of rising in life, and go through fire and water to serve the friend who first bid him be a new Tom Bowles! Don"t despise me as your own work: you said to me that terrible day, when madness was on my brow and crime within my heart, "I will be to you the truest friend man ever found in man." So you have been. You commanded me to read; you commanded me to think; you taught me that body should be the servant of mind."
"Hush, hush, times are altered; it is you who can teach me now. Teach me, teach me; how does ambition replace love? How does the desire to rise in life become the all-mastering pa.s.sion, and, should it prosper, the all-atoning consolation of our life? We can never be as happy, though we rose to the throne of the Caesars, as we dream that we could have been, had Heaven but permitted us to dwell in the obscurest village, side by side with the woman we love."
Tom was exceedingly startled by such a burst of irrepressible pa.s.sion from the man who had told him that, though friends were found only once in a life, sweethearts were as plentiful as blackberries.
Again he swept his hand over his forehead, and replied hesitatingly: "I can"t pretend to say what maybe the case with others. But to judge by my own case, it seems to me this: a young man who, out of his own business, has nothing to interest or excite him, finds content, interest, and excitement when he falls in love; and then, whether for good or ill, he thinks there is nothing like love in the world, he don"t care a fig for ambition then. Over and over again did my poor uncle ask me to come to him at Lus...o...b.., and represent all the worldly advantage it would be to me; but I could not leave the village in which Jessie lived, and, besides, I felt myself unfit to be anything higher than I was. But when I had been some time at Lus...o...b.., and gradually got accustomed to another sort of people, and another sort of talk, then I began to feel interest in the same objects that interested those about me; and when, partly by mixing with better educated men, and partly by the pains I took to educate myself, I felt that I might now more easily rise above my uncle"s rank of life than two years ago I could have risen above a farrier"s forge, then the ambition to rise did stir in me, and grew stronger every day. Sir, I don"t think you can wake up a man"s intellect but what you wake with it emulation. And, after all, emulation is ambition."
"Then, I suppose, I have no emulation in me, for certainly I have no ambition."
"That I can"t believe, sir; other thoughts may cover it over and keep it down for a time. But sooner or later, it will force its way to the top, as it has done with me. To get on in life, to be respected by those who know you, more and more as you grow older, I call that a manly desire. I am sure it comes as naturally to an Englishman as--as--"
"As the wish to knock down some other Englishman who stands in his way does. I perceive now that you were always a very ambitious man, Tom; the ambition has only taken another direction. Caesar might have been
""But the first wrestler on the green."
"And now, I suppose, you abandon the idea of travel: you will return to Lus...o...b.., cured of all regret for the loss of Jessie; you will marry the young lady you mention, and rise, through progressive steps of alderman and mayor, into the rank of member for Lus...o...b..."
"All that may come in good time," answered Tom, not resenting the tone of irony in which he was addressed, "but I still intend to travel: a year so spent must render me all the more fit for any station I aim at.
I shall go back to Lus...o...b.. to arrange my affairs, come to terms with Mr. Leland the corn-merchant, against my return, and--"
"The young lady is to wait till then."