For the first time in his life Kenelm Chillingly was seized with terror,terror and consternation. His jaw dropped; his tongue was palsied. If hair ever stands on end, his hair did. At last, with superhuman effort, he gasped out the word, Marry!
Yes; marry. If you are a gentleman you are bound to it. You have compromised my niece,a respectable, virtuous girl, sir; an orphan, but not unprotected. I repeat, it is you who have plucked her from my very arms, and with violence and assault eloped with her; and what would the world say if it knew? Would it believe in your prudent conduct?conduct only to be explained by the respect you felt due to your future wife. And where will you find a better? Where will you find an uncle who will part with his ward and L20,000 without asking if you have a sixpence? and the girl has taken a fancy to you; I see it: would she have given up that player so easily if you had not stolen her heart? Would you break that heart? No, young man: you are not a villain. Shake hands on it!
Mr. Bovill, said Kenelm, recovering his wonted equanimity, I am inexpressibly flattered by the honour you propose to me, and I do not deny that Miss Elsie is worthy of a much better man than myself. But I have inconceivable prejudices against the connubial state. If it be permitted to a member of the Established Church to cavil at any sentence written by Saint Paul,and I think that liberty may be permitted to a simple layman, since eminent members of the clergy criticise the whole Bible as freely as if it were the history of Queen Elizabeth by Mr. Froude,I should demur at the doctrine that it is better to marry than to burn: I myself should prefer burning. With these sentiments it would ill become any one entitled to that distinction of gentleman which you confer on me to lead a fellow-victim to the sacrificial altar. As for any reproach attached to Miss Elsie, since in my telegram I directed you to ask for a young gentleman at this hotel, her very sex is not known in this place unless you divulge it. And
Here Kenelm was interrupted by a violent explosion of rage from the uncle. He stamped his feet; he almost foamed at the mouth; he doubled his fist, and shook it in Kenelms face.
Sir, you are mocking me: John Bovill is not a man to be jeered in this way. You shall marry the girl. Ill not have her thrust back upon me to be the plague of my life with her whims and tantrums. You have taken her, and you shall keep her, or Ill break every bone in your skin.
Break them, said Kenelm, resignedly, but at the same time falling back into a formidable attitude of defence, which cooled the pugnacity of his accuser. Mr. Bovill sank into his chair, and wiped his forehead. Kenelm craftily pursued the advantage he had gained, and in mild accents proceeded to reason,
When you recover your habitual serenity of humour, Mr. Bovill, you will see how much your very excusable desire to secure your nieces happiness, and, I may add, to reward what you allow to have been forbearing and well-bred conduct on my part, has hurried you into an error of judgment. You know nothing of me. I may be, for what you know, an impostor or swindler; I may have every bad quality, and yet you are to be contented with my assurance, or rather your own assumption, that I am born a gentleman, in order to give me your niece and her L20,000. This is temporary insanity on your part. Allow me to leave you to recover from your excitement.
Stop, sir, said Mr. Bovill, in a changed and sullen tone; I am not quite the madman you think me. But I dare say I have been too hasty and too rough. Nevertheless the facts are as I have stated them, and I do not see how, as a man of honour, you can get off marrying my niece. The mistake you made in running away with her was, no doubt, innocent on your part: but still there it is; and supposing the case came before a jury, it would be an ugly one for you and your family. Marriage alone could mend it. Come, come, I own I was too business-like in rushing to the point at once, and I no longer say, Marry my niece off-hand. You have only seen her disguised and in a false position. Pay me a visit at Oakdale; stay with me a month; and if at the end of that time you do not like her well enough to propose, Ill let you off and say no more about it.
While Mr. Bovill thus spoke, and Kenelm listened, neither saw that the door had been noiselessly opened and that Elsie stood at the threshold. Now, before Kenelm could reply, she advanced into the middle of the room, and, her small figure drawn up to its fullest height, her cheeks glowing, her lips quivering, exclaimed,
Uncle, for shame! Then addressing Kenelm in a sharp tone of anguish, Oh, do not believe I knew anything of this! she covered her face with both hands and stood mute.
All of chivalry that Kenelm had received with his baptismal appellation was aroused. He sprang up, and, bending his knee as he drew one of her hands into his own, he said,
I am as convinced that your uncles words are abhorrent to you as I am that you are a pure-hearted and high-spirited woman, of whose friendship I shall be proud. We meet again. Then releasing her hand, he addressed Mr. Bovill: Sir, you are unworthy the charge of your niece. Had you not been so, she would have committed no imprudence. If she have any female relation, to that relation transfer your charge.
I have! I have! cried Elsie; my lost mothers sister: let me go to her.
The woman who keeps a school! said Mr. Bovill sneeringly.
Why not? asked Kenelm.
She never would go there. I proposed it to her a year ago. The minx would not go into a school.
I will now, Uncle.
Well, then, you shall at once; and I hope youll be put on bread and water. Fool! fool! you have spoilt your own game. Mr. Chillingly, now that Miss Elsie has turned her back on herself, I can convince you that I am not the mad man you thought me. I was at the festive meeting held when you came of age: my brother is one of your fathers tenants. I did not recognize your face immediately in the excitement of our encounter and in your change of dress; but in walking home it struck me that I had seen it before, and I knew it at once when you entered the room to-day. It has been a tussle between us which should beat the other. You have beat me; and thanks to that idiot! If she had not put her spoke into my wheel, she would have lived to be my lady. Now good-day, sir.
Mr. Bovill, you offered to shake hands: shake hands now, and promise me, with the good grace of one honourable combatant to another, that Miss Elsie shall go to her aunt the schoolmistress at once if she wishes it. Hark ye, my friend (this in Mr. Bovills ear): a man can never manage a woman. Till a woman marries, a prudent man leaves her to women; when she does marry, she manages her husband, and theres an end of it.
Kenelm was gone.
Oh, wise young man! murmured the uncle. Elsie, dear, how can you go to your aunts while you are in that dress?
Elsie started as from a trance, her eyes directed towards the doorway through which Kenelm had vanished. This dress, she said contemptuously, this dress; is not that easily altered with shops in the town?
Gad! muttered Mr. Bovill, that youngster is a second Solomon; and if I cant manage Elsie, shell manage a husbandwhenever she gets one.
CHAPTER VIII
BY the powers that guard innocence and celibacy, soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, but I have had a narrow escape! and had that amphibious creature been in girls clothes instead of boys, when she intervened like the deity of the ancient drama, I might have plunged my armorial Fishes into hot water. Though, indeed, it is hard to suppose that a young lady head-over-ears in love with Mr. Compton yesterday could have consigned her affections to me to-day. Still she looked as if she could, which proves either that one is never to trust a womans heart or never to trust a womans looks. Decimus Roach is right. Man must never relax his flight from the women, if he strives to achieve an Approach to the Angels.
These reflections were made by Kenelm Chillingly as, having turned his back upon the town in which such temptations and trials had befallen him, he took his solitary way along a footpath that wound through meads and cornfields, and shortened by three miles the distance to a cathedral town at which he proposed to rest for the night.
He had travelled for some hours, and the sun was beginning to slope towards a range of blue hills in the west, when he came to the margin of a fresh rivulet, overshadowed by feathery willows and the quivering leaves of silvery Italian poplars. Tempted by the quiet and cool of this pleasant spot, he flung himself down on the banks, drew from his knapsack some crusts of bread with which he had wisely provided himself, and, dipping them into the pure lymph as it rippled over its pebbly bed, enjoyed one of those luxurious repasts for which epicures would exchange their banquet in return for the appetite of youth. Then, reclining along the bank, and crushing the wild thyme that grows best and sweetest in wooded coverts, provided they be neighboured by water, no matter whether in pool or rill, he resigned himself to that intermediate state between thought and dream-land which we call revery. At a little distance he heard the low still sound of the mowers scythe, and the air came to his brow sweet with the fragrance of new-mown hay.
He was roused by a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turning lazily round, saw a good-humoured jovial face upon a pair of massive shoulders, and heard a hearty and winning voice say,
Young man, if you are not too tired, will you lend a hand to get in my hay? We are very short of hands, and I am afraid we shall have rain pretty soon.
Kenelm rose and shook himself, gravely contemplated the stranger, and replied in his customary sententious fashion, Man is born to help his fellow-man,especially to get in hay while the sun shines. I am at your service.
Thats a good fellow, and Im greatly obliged to you. You see I had counted on a gang of roving haymakers, but they were bought up by another farmer. This way; and leading on through a gap in the brushwood, he emerged, followed by Kenelm, into a large meadow, one-third of which was still under the scythe, the rest being occupied with persons of both sexes, tossing and spreading the cut grass. Among the latter, Kenelm, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, soon found himself tossing and spreading like the rest, with his usual melancholy resignation of mien and aspect. Though a little awkward at first in the use of his unfamiliar implements, his practice in all athletic accomplishments bestowed on him that invaluable quality which is termed handiness, and he soon distinguished himself by the superior activity and neatness with which he performed his work. Somethingit might be in his countenance or in the charm of his being a strangerattracted the attention of the feminine section of haymakers, and one very pretty girl who was nearer to him than the rest attempted to commence conversation.