The artist rose to his feet with an indignant impulse. But the angry flush faded from his cheek as he looked on the countenance of his rebuker. He walked up to him, and attempted to take his hand, but Kenelm s.n.a.t.c.hed it scornfully from his grasp.
"Poor friend," said Melville, sadly and soothingly, "I did not think you loved her thus deeply. Pardon me." He drew a chair close to Kenelm"s, and after a brief pause went on thus, in very earnest tones, "I am not so heartless, not so forgetful of my loss as you suppose. But reflect, you have but just learned of her death, you are under the first shock of grief. More than a year has been given to me for gradual submission to the decree of Heaven. Now listen to me, and try to listen calmly. I am many years older than you: I ought to know better the conditions on which man holds the tenure of life. Life is composite, many-sided: nature does not permit it to be lastingly monopolized by a single pa.s.sion, or while yet in the prime of its strength to be lastingly blighted by a single sorrow. Survey the great ma.s.s of our common race, engaged in the various callings, some the humblest, some the loftiest, by which the business of the world is carried on,--can you justly despise as heartless the poor trader, or the great statesman, when it may be but a few days after the loss of some one nearest and dearest to his heart, the trader reopens his shop, the statesman reappears in his office? But in me, the votary of art, in me you behold but the weakness of gratified vanity; if I feel joy in the hope that my art may triumph, and my country may add my name to the list of those who contribute to her renown, where and when ever lived an artist not sustained by that hope, in privation, in sickness, in the sorrows he must share with his kind? Nor is this hope that of a feminine vanity, a sicklier craving for applause; it identifies itself with glorious services to our land, to our race, to the children of all after time. Our art cannot triumph, our name cannot live, unless we achieve a something that tends to beautify or enn.o.ble the world in which we accept the common heritage of toil and of sorrow, in order therefrom to work out for successive mult.i.tudes a recreation and a joy."
While the artist thus spoke Kenelm lifted towards his face eyes charged with suppressed tears. And the face, kindling as the artist vindicated himself from the young man"s bitter charge, became touchingly sweet in its grave expression at the close of the not ign.o.ble defence.
"Enough," said Kenelm, rising. "There is a ring of truth in what you say. I can conceive the artist"s, the poet"s escape from this world, when all therein is death and winter, into the world he creates and colours at his will with the hues of summer. So, too, I can conceive how the man whose life is sternly fitted into the grooves of a trader"s calling, or a statesman"s duties, is borne on by the force of custom, afar from such brief halting-spot as a grave. But I am no poet, no artist, no trader, no statesman; I have no calling, my life is fixed into no grooves. Adieu."
"Hold a moment. Not now, but somewhat later, ask yourself whether any life can be permitted to wander in s.p.a.ce, a monad detached from the lives of others. Into some groove or other, sooner or later, it must settle, and be borne on obedient to the laws of Nature and the responsibility to G.o.d."
CHAPTER XIII
KENELM went back alone, and with downcast looks, through the desolate, flowerless garden, when at the other side of the gate a light touch was laid on his arm. He looked up, and recognized Mrs. Cameron.
"I saw you," she said, "from my window coming to the house, and I have been waiting for you here. I wished to speak to you alone. Allow me to walk beside you.""
Kenelm inclined his head a.s.sentingly, but made no answer. They were nearly midway between the cottage and the burial-ground when Mrs.
Cameron resumed, her tones quick and agitated, contrasting her habitual languid quietude,--
"I have a great weight on my mind; it ought not to be remorse. I acted as I thought in my conscience for the best. But oh, Mr. Chillingly, if I erred,--if I judged wrongly, do say you at least forgive me." She seized his hand, pressing it convulsively. Kenelm muttered inaudibly: a sort of dreary stupor had succeeded to the intense excitement of grief. Mrs.
Cameron went on,--
"You could not have married Lily; you know you could not. The secret of her birth could not, in honour, have been concealed from your parents.
They could not have consented to your marriage; and even if you had persisted, without that consent and in spite of that secret, to press for it,--even had she been yours--"
"Might she not be living now?" cried Kenelm, fiercely.
"No,--no; the secret must have come out. The cruel world would have discovered it; it would have reached her ears. The shame of it would have killed her. How bitter then would have been her short interval of life! As it is, she pa.s.sed away,--resigned and happy. But I own that I did not, could not, understand her, could not believe her feeling for you to be so deep. I did think that when she knew her own heart she would find that love for her guardian was its strongest affection. She a.s.sented, apparently without a pang, to become his wife; and she seemed always so fond of him, and what girl would not be? But I was mistaken, deceived. From the day you saw her last, she began to fade away; but then Walter left a few days after, and I thought that it was his absence she mourned. She never owned to me that it was yours,--never till too late,--too late,--just when my sad letter had summoned him back, only three days before she died. Had I known earlier, while yet there was hope of recovery, I must have written to you, even though the obstacles to your union with her remained the same. Oh, again I implore you, say that if I erred you forgive me. She did, kissing me so tenderly. She did forgive me. Will not you? It would have been her wish."
"Her wish? Do you think I could disobey it? I know not if I have anything to forgive. If I have, now could I not forgive one who loved her? G.o.d comfort us both."
He bent down and kissed Mrs. Cameron"s forehead. The poor woman threw her arm gratefully, lovingly round him, and burst into tears.
When she had recovered her emotion, she said,--
"And now, it is with so much lighter a heart that I can fulfil her commission to you. But, before I place this in your hands, can you make me one promise? Never tell Melville how she loved you. She was so careful he should never guess that. And if he knew it was the thought of union with him which had killed her, he would never smile again."
"You would not ask such a promise if you could guess how sacred from all the world I hold the secret that you confide to me. By that secret the grave is changed into an altar. Our bridals now are only a while deferred."
Mrs. Cameron placed a letter in Kenelm"s hand, and murmuring in accents broken by a sob, "She gave it to me the day before her last," left him, and with quick vacillating steps hurried back towards the cottage. She now understood him, at last, too well not to feel that on opening that letter he must be alone with the dead.
It is strange that we need have so little practical household knowledge of each other to be in love. Never till then had Kenelm"s eyes rested upon Lily"s handwriting. And he now gazed at the formal address on the envelope with a sort of awe. Unknown handwriting coming to him from an unknown world,--delicate, tremulous handwriting,--handwriting not of one grown up, yet not of a child who had long to live.
He turned the envelope over and over,--not impatiently, as does the lover whose heart beats at the sound of the approaching footstep, but lingeringly, timidly. He would not break the seal.
He was now so near the burial-ground. Where should the first letter ever received from her--the sole letter he ever could receive--be so reverentially, lovingly read, as at her grave?
He walked on to the burial-ground, sat down by the grave, broke the envelope; a poor little ring, with a poor little single turquoise, rolled out and rested at his feet. The letter contained only these words,--
The ring comes back to you. I could not live to marry another. I never knew how I loved you--till, till I began to pray that you might not love me too much. Darling! darling! good-by, darling!
LILY.
Don"t let Lion ever see this, or ever know what it says to you. He is so good, and deserves to be so happy. Do you remember the day of the ring?
Darling! darling!
CHAPTER XIV.
SOMEWHAT more than another year has rolled away. It is early spring in London. The trees in the park and squares are budding into leaf and blossom. Leopold Travers has had a brief but serious conversation with his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the topics which interest his companions.
Cecilia is in the smaller drawing-room, which is exclusively appropriated to her use, alone with Lady Glenalvon.
LADY GLENALVON.--"I own, my dear, dear Cecilia, that I arrange myself at last on the side of your father. How earnestly at one time I had hoped that Kenelm Chillingly might woo and win the bride that seemed to me most fitted to adorn and to cheer his life, I need not say. But when at Exmundham he asked me to befriend his choice of another, to reconcile his mother to that choice,--evidently not a suitable one,--I gave him up. And though that affair is at an end, he seems little likely ever to settle down to practical duties and domestic habits, an idle wanderer over the face of the earth, only heard of in remote places and with strange companions. Perhaps he may never return to England."
CECILIA.--"He is in England now, and in London."
LADY GLENALVON.--"You amaze me! Who told you so?"
CECILIA.--"His father, who is with him. Sir Peter called yesterday, and spoke to me so kindly." Cecilia here turned aside her face to conceal the tears that had started to her eyes.
LADY GLENALVON.--"Did Mr. Travers see Sir Peter?"
CECILIA.--"Yes; and I think it was something that pa.s.sed between them which made my father speak to me--for the first time--almost sternly."
LADY GLENALVON.--"In urging Chillingly Gordon"s suit?"
CECILIA.--"Commanding me to reconsider my rejection of it. He has contrived to fascinate my father."
LADY GLENALVON.--"So he has me. Of course you might choose among other candidates for your hand one of much higher worldly rank, of much larger fortune; yet, as you have already rejected them, Gordon"s merits become still more ent.i.tled to a fair hearing. He has already leaped into a position that mere rank and mere wealth cannot attain. Men of all parties speak highly of his parliamentary abilities. He is already marked in public opinion as a coming man,--a future minister of the highest grade. He has youth and good looks; his moral character is without a blemish: yet his manners are so free from affected austerity, so frank, so genial. Any woman might be pleased with his companionship; and you, with your intellect, your culture,--you, so born for high station,--you of all women might be proud to partake the anxieties of his career and the rewards of his ambition."
CECILIA (clasping her hands tightly together).--"I cannot, I cannot. He may be all you say,--I know nothing against Mr. Chillingly Gordon,--but my whole nature is antagonistic to his, and even were it not so--"
She stopped abruptly, a deep blush warming up her fair face, and retreating to leave it coldly pale.
LADY GLENALVON (tenderly kissing her).--"You have not, then, even yet conquered the first maiden fancy; the ungrateful one is still remembered?"
Cecilia bowed her head on her friend"s breast, and murmured imploringly, "Don"t speak against him; he has been so unhappy. How much he must have loved!"
"But it is not you whom he loved."
"Something here, something at my heart, tells me that he will love me yet; and, if not, I am contented to be his friend."
CHAPTER XV.