Kenelm Chillingly Part 74

"These premises conceded, I will only ask you to choose the metre. Blank verse is very much in fas.h.i.+on just now."

"Pooh! blank verse indeed! I am not going so to free your experiment from the difficulties of rhyme."

"It is all one to me," said Kenelm, yawning; "rhyme be it: heroic or lyrical?"

"Heroics are old-fas.h.i.+oned; but the Chaucer couplet, as brought to perfection by our modern poets, I think the best adapted to dainty leaves and uncrackable nuts. I accept the modern Chaucerian. The subject?"

"Oh, never trouble yourself about that. By whatever t.i.tle your Augustan verse-maker labels his poem, his genius, like Pindar's, disdains to be cramped by the subject. Listen, and don't suffer Max to howl, if he can help it. Here goes."

And in an affected but emphatic sing-song Kenelm began:--

"In Attica the gentle Pythias dwelt.

Youthful he was, and pa.s.sing rich: he felt As if nor youth nor riches could suffice For bliss. Dark-eyed Sophronia was a nice Girl: and one summer day, when Neptune drove His sea-car slowly, and the olive grove That skirts Ilissus, to thy sh.e.l.l, Harmonia, Rippled, he said 'I love thee' to Sophronia.

Crocus and iris, when they heard him, wagged Their pretty heads in glee: the honey-bagged Bees became altars: and the forest dove Her plumage smoothed. Such is the charm of love.

Of this sweet story do ye long for more?

Wait till I publish it in volumes four; Which certain critics, my good friends, will cry Up beyond Chaucer. Take their word for 't. I Say 'Trust them, but not read,--or you'll not buy.'"

"You have certainly kept your word," said the minstrel, laughing; "and if this be the Augustan age, and the English were a dead language, you deserve to win the prize-medal."

"You flatter me," said Kenelm, modestly. "But if I, who never before strung two rhymes together, can improvise so readily in the style of the present day, why should not a practical rhymester like yourself dash off at a sitting a volume or so in the same style; disguising completely the verbal elegances borrowed, adding to the delicacies of the rhyme by the frequent introduction of a line that will not scan, and towering yet more into the sublime by becoming yet more unintelligible? Do that, and I promise you the most glowing panegyric in 'The Londoner,' for I will write it myself."

"'The Londoner'!" exclaimed the minstrel, with an angry flush on his cheek and brow, "my bitter, relentless enemy."

"I fear, then, you have as little studied the critical press of the Augustan age as you have imbued your muse with the cla.s.sical spirit of its verse. For the art of writing a man must cultivate himself. The art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the acquaintance of reviewers.

In the Augustan age criticism is cliquism. Belong to a clique and you are Horace or Tibullus. Belong to no clique and, of course, you are Bavius or Maevius. 'The Londoner' is the enemy of no man: it holds all men in equal contempt. But as, in order to amuse, it must abuse, it compensates the praise it is compelled to bestow upon the members of its clique by heaping additional scorn upon all who are cliqueless. Hit him hard: he has no friends."

"Ah," said the minstrel, "I believe that there is much truth in what you say. I never had a friend among the cliques. And Heaven knows with what pertinacity those from whom I, in utter ignorance of the rules which govern so-called organs of opinion, had hoped, in my time of struggle, for a little sympathy, a kindly encouragement, have combined to crush me down. They succeeded long. But at last I venture to hope that I am beating them. Happily, Nature endowed me with a sanguine, joyous, elastic temperament. He who never despairs seldom completely fails."

This speech rather perplexed Kenelm, for had not the minstrel declared that his singing days were over, that he had decided on the renunciation of verse-making? What other path to fame, from which the critics had not been able to exclude his steps, was he, then, now pursuing,--he whom Kenelm had a.s.sumed to belong to some commercial moneymaking firm? No doubt some less difficult prose-track, probably a novel. Everybody writes novels nowadays, and as the public will read novels without being told to do so, and will not read poetry unless they are told that they ought, possibly novels are not quite so much at the mercy of cliques as are the poems of our Augustan age.

However, Kenelm did not think of seeking for further confidence on that score. His mind at that moment, not unnaturally, wandered from books and critics to love and wedlock.

"Our talk," said he, "has digressed into fretful courses; permit me to return to the starting-point. You are going to settle down into the peace of home. A peaceful home is like a good conscience. The rains without do not pierce its roof, the winds without do not shake its walls. If not an impertinent question, is it long since you have known your intended bride?"

"Yes, very long."

"And always loved her?"

"Always, from her infancy. Out of all womankind, she was designed to be my life's playmate and my soul's purifier. I know not what might have become of me, if the thought of her had not walked beside me as my guardian angel. For, like many vagrants from the beaten high roads of the world, there is in my nature something of that lawlessness which belongs to high animal spirits, to the zest of adventure, and the warm blood that runs into song, chiefly because song is the voice of a joy.

And no doubt, when I look back on the past years I must own that I have too often been led astray from the objects set before my reason, and cherished at my heart, by erring impulse or wanton fancy."

"Petticoat interest, I presume," interposed Kenelm, dryly.

"I wish I could honestly answer 'No,'" said the minstrel, colouring high. "But from the worst, from all that would have permanently blasted the career to which I intrust my fortunes, all that would have rendered me unworthy of the pure love that now, I trust, awaits and crowns my dreams of happiness, I have been saved by the haunting smile in a sinless infantine face. Only once was I in great peril,--that hour of peril I recall with a shudder. It was at Lus...o...b..."

"At Lus...o...b..!"

"In the temptation of a terrible crime I thought I heard a voice say, 'Mischief! Remember the little child.' In that supervention which is so readily accepted as a divine warning, when the imagination is morbidly excited, and when the conscience, though lulled asleep for a moment, is still asleep so lightly that the sigh of a breeze, the fall of a leaf, can awake it with a start of terror, I took the voice for that of my guardian angel. Thinking it over later, and coupling the voice with the moral of those weird lines you repeated to me so appositely the next day, I conclude that I am not mistaken when I say it was from your lips that the voice which preserved me came."

"I confess the impertinence: you pardon it?"

The minstrel seized Kenelm's hand and pressed it earnestly.

"Pardon it! Oh, could you but guess what cause I have to be grateful, everlastingly grateful! That sudden cry, the remorse and horror of my own self that it struck into me,--deepened by those rugged lines which the next day made me shrink in dismay from 'the face of my darling sin'! Then came the turning-point of my life. From that day, the lawless vagabond within me was killed. I mean not, indeed, the love of Nature and of song which had first allured the vagabond, but the hatred of steadfast habits and of serious work,--_that_ was killed. I no longer trifled with my calling: I took to it as a serious duty. And when I saw her, whom fate has reserved and reared for my bride, her face was no longer in my eyes that of the playful child; the soul of the woman was dawning into it. It is but two years since that day, to me so eventful.

Yet my fortunes are now secured. And if fame be not established, I am at last in a position which warrants my saying to her I love, 'The time has come when, without fear for thy future, I can ask thee to be mine.'"

The man spoke with so fervent a pa.s.sion that Kenelm silently left him to recover his wonted self-possession,--not unwilling to be silent,--not unwilling, in the softness of the hour, pa.s.sing from roseate sunset into starry twilight, to murmur to himself, "And the time, too, has come for me!"

After a few moments the minstrel resumed lightly and cheerily,--

"Sir, your turn: pray have you long known--judging by our former conversation you cannot have long loved--the lady whom you have wooed and won?"

As Kenelm had neither as yet wooed nor won the lady in question, and did not deem it necessary to enter into any details on the subject of love particular to himself, he replied by a general observation,--

"It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring: the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the suns.h.i.+ne, music in the air, then we say Spring has come!"

"I like your ill.u.s.tration. And if it be an idle question to ask a lover how long he has known the beloved one, so it is almost as idle to ask if she be not beautiful. He cannot but see in her face the beauty she has given to the world without."

"True; and that thought is poetic enough to make me remind you that I favoured you with the maiden specimen of my verse-making on condition that you repaid me by a specimen of your own practical skill in the art.

And I claim the right to suggest the theme. Let it be--"

"Of a beefsteak?"

"Tush, you have worn out that tasteless joke at my expense. The theme must be of love, and if you could improvise a stanza or two expressive of the idea you just uttered I shall listen with yet more pleased attention."

"Alas! I am no _improvisatore_. Yet I will avenge myself on your former neglect of my craft by chanting to you a trifle somewhat in unison with the thought you ask me to versify, but which you would not stay to hear at Tor Hadham (though you did drop a s.h.i.+lling into Max's tray); it was one of the songs I sang that evening, and it was not ill-received by my humble audience.

"THE BEAUTY OF THE MISTRESS IS IN THE LOVER'S EYE.

"Is she not pretty, my Mabel May?

n.o.body ever yet called her so.

Are not her lineaments faultless, say?

If I must answer you plainly, No.

"Joy to believe that the maid I love None but myself as she is can see; Joy that she steals from her heaven above, And is only revealed on this earth to me!"

As soon as he had finished this very artless ditty, the minstrel rose and said,--

"Now I must bid you good-by. My way lies through those meadows, and yours no doubt along the high road."

"Not so. Permit me to accompany you. I have a lodging not far from hence, to which the path through the fields is the shortest way."

The minstrel turned a somewhat surprised and somewhat inquisitive look towards Kenelm. But feeling, perhaps, that having withheld from his fellow-traveller all confidence as to his own name and attributes, he had no right to ask any confidence from that gentleman not voluntarily made to him, he courteously said "that he wished the way were longer, since it would be so pleasantly halved," and strode forth at a brisk pace.

The twilight was now closing into the brightness of a starry summer night, and the solitude of the fields was unbroken. Both these men, walking side by side, felt supremely happy. But happiness is like wine; its effect differing with the differing temperaments on which it acts. In this case garrulous and somewhat vaunting with the one man, warm-coloured, sensuous, impressionable to the influences of external Nature, as an Aeolian harp to the rise or fall of a pa.s.sing wind; and, with the other man, taciturn and somewhat modestly expressed, saturnine, meditative, not indeed dull to the influences of external Nature, but deeming them of no value, save where they pa.s.sed out of the domain of the sensuous into that of the intellectual, and the soul of man dictated to the soulless Nature its own questions and its own replies.