Herewith the soliloquist's musings glided vaguely into mere revery. He closed his eyes drowsily, not asleep, nor yet quite awake; as sometimes in bright summer days when we recline on the grass we do close our eyes, and yet dimly recognize a golden light bathing the drowsy lids; and athwart that light images come and go like dreams, though we know that we are not dreaming.
CHAPTER V
FROM this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek,—again a little less softly; he opened his eyes, they fell first upon two tiny rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised circle, a female child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted charged with another rosebud, but behind the child's figure, looking over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as innocent but lovelier far,—the face of a girl in her first youth, framed round with the blossoms that festooned the trellise. How the face became the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.
Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so ungallantly escaped from ran towards him through a wicket in the circle. Her companion disappeared.
"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child, "you who pelted me so cruelly? Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the dish and all my own cream?"
"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex, all answer to the reproach she had deserved.
"I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself, since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I suspect she pelted me too, for she seems to have run away to hide herself."
"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had another rosebud—oh, so much bigger!—if she had not held back my arm. Don't you know her,—don't you know Lily?"
"No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her."
By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped, some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance.
In the space between the group and the trellise Lily was walking alone and quickly. The child left Kenelm's side and ran after her friend, soon overtook, but did not succeed in arresting her steps. Lily did not pause till she had reached the grassy ball-room, and here all the children came round her and shut out her delicate form from Kenelm's sight.
Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.
"Lily is come!"
"I know it: I have seen her."
"Is not she beautiful?"
"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"
Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer was brief enough not to need much consideration. "She is a Miss Mordaunt, an orphan; and, as I before told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs. Cameron, a widow. They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place. Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman. As to Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere child,—her mind quite unformed."
"Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?" muttered Kenelm. "I am sure mine is not, and never will be on this earth."
Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation. She was looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm's arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.
Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer and the laugh of children. In such scene and such circumstance formality does not last long. I know not how it was, but in a very few minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other. They found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl with mobile shifting glances now on earth, now on heaven, and talking freely; gayly,—like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.
No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life, and conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was right: her mind was still so unformed.
What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not, at least I could not jot it down on paper. I fear it was very egotistical, as the talk of children generally is,—about herself and her aunt, and her home and her friends; all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger,—Clemmy the chief of them. Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm. And amidst all this ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy,—nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child. But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round Lily. Evidently she was the prime favourite of them all; and as her companion had now become tired of dancing, new sports were proposed, and Lily was carried off to "Prisoner's Base."
"I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Chillingly," said a frank, pleasant voice; and a well-dressed, good-looking man held out his hand to Kenelm.
"My husband," said Mrs. Braefield, with a certain pride in her look.
Kenelm responded cordially to the civilities of the master of the house, who had just returned from his city office, and left all its cares behind him. You had only to look at him to see that he was prosperous, and deserved to be so. There were in his countenance the signs of strong sense, of good-humour,—above all, of an active energetic temperament. A man of broad smooth forehead, keen hazel eyes, firm lips and jaw; with a happy contentment in himself, his house, the world in general, mantling over his genial smile, and outspoken in the metallic ring of his voice.
"You will stay and dine with us, of course," said Mr. Braefield; "and, unless you want very much to be in town to-night, I hope you will take a bed here."
Kenelm hesitated.
"Do stay at least till to-morrow," said Mrs. Braefield. Kenelm hesitated still; and while hesitating his eye rested on Lily, leaning on the arm of a middle-aged lady, and approaching the hostess,— evidently to take leave.
"I cannot resist so tempting an invitation," said Kenelm, and he fell back a little behind Lily and her companion.
"Thank you much for so pleasant a day," said Mrs. Cameron to the hostess. "Lily has enjoyed herself extremely. I only regret we could not come earlier."
"If you are walking home," said Mr. Braefield, "let me accompany you. I want to speak to your gardener about his heart's-ease: it is much finer than mine."
"If so," said Kenelm to Lily, "may I come too? Of all flowers that grow, heart's-ease is the one I most prize."
A few minutes afterwards Kenelm was walking by the side of Lily along the banks of a little stream, tributary to the Thames; Mrs. Cameron and Mr. Braefield in advance, for the path only held two abreast.
Suddenly Lily left his side, allured by a rare butterfly—I think it is called the Emperor of Morocco—that was sunning its yellow wings upon a group of wild reeds. She succeeded in capturing this wanderer in her straw hat, over which she drew her sun-veil. After this notable capture she returned demurely to Kenelm's side.
"Do you collect insects?" said that philosopher, as much surprised as it was his nature to be at anything.
"Only butterflies," answered Lily; "they are not insects, you know; they are souls."
"Emblems of souls you mean,—at least, so the Greeks prettily represented them to be."
"No, real souls,—the souls of infants that die in their cradles unbaptized; and if they are taken care of, and not eaten by birds, and live a year then they pass into fairies."
"It is a very poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers cannot,—tell me how you learned a new idea to be an incontestable fact?"
"I don't know," replied Lily, looking very much puzzled; "perhaps I learned it in a book, or perhaps I dreamed it."
"You could not make a wiser answer if you were a philosopher. But you talk of taking care of butterflies; how do you do that? Do you impale them on pins stuck into a glass case?"
"Impale them! How can you talk so cruelly? You deserve to be pinched by the fairies."
"I am afraid," thought Kenelm, compassionately, "that my companion has no mind to be formed; what is euphoniously called 'an innocent.'"
He shook his head and remained silent. Lily resumed,—
"I will show you my collection when we get home; they seem so happy. I am sure there are some of them who know me: they will feed from my hand. I have only had one die since I began to collect them last summer."
"Then you have kept them a year: they ought to have turned into fairies."
"I suppose many of them have. Of course I let out all those that had been with me twelve months: they don't turn to fairies in the cage, you know. Now I have only those I caught this year, or last autumn; the prettiest don't appear till the autumn."
The girl here bent her uncovered head over the straw hat, her tresses shadowing it, and uttered loving words to the prisoner. Then again she looked up and around her, and abruptly stopped, and exclaimed,—
"How can people live in towns? How can people say they are ever dull in the country? Look," she continued, gravely and earnestly, "look at that tall pine-tree, with its long branch sweeping over the water; see how, as the breeze catches it, it changes its shadow, and how the shadow changes the play of the sunlight on the brook:—
"'Wave your tops, ye pines;
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.'
"What an interchange of music there must be between Nature and a poet!"
Kenelm was startled. This "an innocent"!—this a girl who had no mind to be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet. He replied gravely,—