Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

Kenelm, who was now hard at work at the pump-handle, only replied by a gracious nod. But as he seldom lost an opportunity for reflection, he said to himself, while he laved his face in the stream from the spout, “One can’t wonder why every small man thinks it so pleasant to let down a big one, when a father asks a stranger to let down his own son for even fancying that he is not small beer. It is upon that principle in human nature that criticism wisely relinquishes its pretensions as an analytical science, and becomes a lucrative profession. It relies on the pleasure its readers find in letting a man down.”

CHAPTER IX

IT was a pretty, quaint farmhouse, such as might well go with two or three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments, still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in a good-sized though low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide open, as were all the latticed windows, looking into a small garden, rich in those straggling old English flowers which are nowadays banished from gardens more pretentious and; infinitely less fragrant. At one corner was an arbour covered with honeysuckle, and opposite to it a row of beehives. The room itself had an air of comfort, and that sort of elegance which indicates the presiding genius of feminine taste. There were shelves suspended to the wall by blue ribbons, and filled with small books neatly bound; there were flower-pots in all the window-sills; there was a small cottage piano; the walls were graced partly with engraved portraits of county magnates and prize oxen; partly with samplers in worsted-work, comprising verses of moral character and the names and birthdays of the farmer’s grandmother, mother, wife, and daughters. Over the chimney-piece was a small mirror, and above that the trophy of a fox’s brush; while niched into an angle in the room was a glazed cupboard, rich with specimens of old china, Indian and English.

The party consisted of the farmer, his wife, three buxom daughters, and a pale-faced slender lad of about twenty, the only son, who did not take willingly to farming: he had been educated at a superior grammar school, and had high notions about the March of Intellect and the Progress of the Age.

Kenelm, though among the gravest of mortals, was one of the least shy. In fact shyness is the usual symptom of a keen amour propre; and of that quality the youthful Chillingly scarcely possessed more than did the three Fishes of his hereditary scutcheon. He felt himself perfectly at home with his entertainers; taking care, however, that his attentions were so equally divided between the three daughters as to prevent all suspicion of a particular preference. “There is safety in numbers,” thought he, “especially in odd numbers. The three Graces never married, neither did the nine Muses.”

“I presume, young ladies, that you are fond of music,” said Kenelm, glancing at the piano.

“Yes, I love it dearly,” said the eldest girl, speaking for the others.

Quoth the farmer, as he heaped the stranger’s plate with boiled beef and carrots, “Things are not what they were when I was a boy; then it was only great tenant-farmers who had their girls taught the piano, and sent their boys to a good school. Now we small folks are for helping our children a step or two higher than our own place on the ladder.”

“The schoolmaster is abroad,” said the son, with the emphasis of a sage adding an original aphorism to the stores of philosophy.

“There is, no doubt, a greater equality of culture than there was in the last generation,” said Kenelm. “People of all ranks utter the same commonplace ideas in very much the same arrangements of syntax. And in proportion as the democracy of intelligence extends—a friend of mine, who is a doctor, tells me that complaints formerly reserved to what is called aristocracy (though what that word means in plain English I don’t know) are equally shared by the commonalty—tic-douloureux and other neuralgic maladies abound. And the human race, in England at least, is becoming more slight and delicate. There is a fable of a man who, when he became exceedingly old, was turned into a grasshopper. England is very old, and is evidently approaching the grasshopper state of development. Perhaps we don’t eat as much beef as our forefathers did. May I ask you for another slice?”

Kenelm’s remarks were somewhat over the heads of his audience. But the son, taking them as a slur upon the enlightened spirit of the age, coloured up and said, with a knitted brow, “I hope, sir, that you are not an enemy to progress.”

“That depends: for instance, I prefer staying here, where I am well off, to going farther and faring worse.”

“Well said!” cried the farmer.

Not deigning to notice that interruption, the son took up Kenelm’s reply with a sneer, “I suppose you mean that it is to fare worse, if you march with the time.”

“I am afraid we have no option but to march with the time; but when we reach that stage when to march any farther is to march into old age, we should not be sorry if time would be kind enough to stand still; and all good doctors concur in advising us to do nothing to hurry him.”

“There is no sign of old age in this country, sir; and thank Heaven we are not standing still!”

“Grasshoppers never do; they are always hopping and jumping, and making what they think ‘progress,’ till (unless they hop into the water and are swallowed up prematurely by a carp or a frog) they die of the exhaustion which hops and jumps unremitting naturally produce. May I ask you, Mrs. Saunderson, for some of that rice-pudding?”

The farmer, who, though he did not quite comprehend Kenelm’s metaphorical mode of arguing, saw delightedly that his wise son looked more posed than himself, cried with great glee, “Bob, my boy,—Bob, our visitor is a little too much for you!”

“Oh, no,” said Kenelm, modestly. “But I honestly think Mr. Bob would be a wiser man, and a weightier man, and more removed from the grasshopper state, if he would think less and eat more pudding.”

When the supper was over the farmer offered Kenelm a clay pipe filled with shag, which that adventurer accepted with his habitual resignation to the ills of life; and the whole party, excepting Mrs. Saunderson, strolled into the garden. Kenelm and Mr. Saunderson seated themselves in the honeysuckle arbour: the girls and the advocate of progress stood without among the garden flowers. It was a still and lovely night, the moon at her full. The farmer, seated facing his hayfields, smoked on placidly. Kenelm, at the third whiff, laid aside his pipe, and glanced furtively at the three Graces. They formed a pretty group, all clustered together near the silenced beehives, the two younger seated on the grass strip that bordered the flower-beds, their arms over each other’s shoulders, the elder one standing behind them, with the moonlight shining soft on her auburn hair.

Young Saunderson walked restlessly by himself to and fro the path of gravel.

“It is a strange thing,” ruminated Kenelm, “that girls are not unpleasant to look at if you take them collectively,—two or three bound up together; but if you detach any one of them from the bunch, the odds are that she is as plain as a pikestaff. I wonder whether that bucolical grasshopper, who is so enamoured of the hop and jump that he calls ‘progress,’ classes the society of the Mormons among the evidences of civilized advancement? There is a good deal to be said in favour of taking a whole lot of wives as one may buy a whole lot of cheap razors. For it is not impossible that out of a dozen a good one may be found. And then, too, a whole nosegay of variegated blooms, with a faded leaf here and there, must be more agreeable to the eye than the same monotonous solitary lady’s smock. But I fear these reflections are naughty; let us change them. Farmer,” he said aloud, “I suppose your handsome daughters are too fine to assist you much. I did not see them among the haymakers.”

“Oh, they were there, but by themselves, in the back part of the field. I did not want them to mix with all the girls, many of whom are strangers from other places. I don’t know anything against them; but as I don’t know anything for them, I thought it as well to keep my lasses apart.”

“But I should have supposed it wiser to keep your son apart from them. I saw him in the thick of those nymphs.”

“Well,” said the farmer, musingly, and withdrawing his pipe from his lips, “I don’t think lasses not quite well brought up, poor things! do as much harm to the lads as they can do to proper-behaved lasses; leastways my wife does not think so. ‘Keep good girls from bad girls,’ says she, ‘and good girls will never go wrong.’ And you will find there is something in that when you have girls of your own to take care of.”

“Without waiting for that time, which I trust may never occur, I can recognize the wisdom of your excellent wife’s observation. My own opinion is, that a woman can more easily do mischief to her own sex than to ours; since, of course, she cannot exist without doing mischief to somebody or other.”

“And good, too,” said the jovial farmer, thumping his fist on the table. “What should we be without women?”

“Very much better, I take it, sir. Adam was as good as gold, and never had a qualm of conscience or stomach till Eve seduced him into eating raw apples.”

“Young man, thou’st been crossed in love. I see it now. That’s why thou look’st so sorrowful.”

“Sorrowful! Did you ever know a man crossed in love who looked less sorrowful when he came across a pudding?”

“Hey! but thou canst ply a good knife and fork, that I will say for thee.” Here the farmer turned round, and gazed on Kenelm with deliberate scrutiny. That scrutiny accomplished, his voice took a somewhat more respectful tone, as he resumed, “Do you know that you puzzle me somewhat?”

“Very likely. I am sure that I puzzle myself. Say on.”

“Looking at your dress and—and—”

“The two shillings you gave me? Yes—”

“I took you for the son of some small farmer like myself. But now I judge from your talk that you are a college chap,—anyhow, a gentleman. Be n’t it so?”

“My dear Mr. Saunderson, I set out on my travels, which is not long ago, with a strong dislike to telling lies. But I doubt if a man can get along through this world without finding that the faculty of lying was bestowed on him by Nature as a necessary means of self-preservation. If you are going to ask me any questions about myself, I am sure that I shall tell you lies. Perhaps, therefore, it may be best for both if I decline the bed you proffered me, and take my night’s rest under a hedge.”

“Pooh! I don’t want to know more of a man’s affairs than he thinks fit to tell me. Stay and finish the haymaking. And I say, lad, I’m glad you don’t seem to care for the girls; for I saw a very pretty one trying to flirt with you, and if you don’t mind she’ll bring you into trouble.”

“How? Does she want to run away from her uncle?”

“Uncle! Bless you, she don’t live with him! She lives with her father; and I never knew that she wants to run away. In fact, Jessie Wiles—that’s her name—is, I believe, a very good girl, and everybody likes her,—perhaps a little too much; but then she knows she’s a beauty, and does not object to admiration.”

“No woman ever does, whether she’s a beauty or not. But I don’t yet understand why Jessie Wiles should bring me into trouble.”

“Because there is a big hulking fellow who has gone half out of his wits for her; and when he fancies he sees any other chap too sweet on her he thrashes him into a jelly. So, youngster, you just keep your skin out of that trap.”

“Hem! And what does the girl say to those proofs of affection? Does she like the man the better for thrashing other admirers into jelly?”

“Poor child! No; she hates the very sight of him. But he swears she shall marry nobody else if he hangs for it. And, to tell you the truth, I suspect that if Jessie does seem to trifle with others a little too lightly, it is to draw away this bully’s suspicion from the only man I think she does care for,—a poor sickly young fellow who was crippled by an accident, and whom Tom Bowles could brain with his little finger.”

“This is really interesting,” cried Kenelm, showing something like excitement. “I should like to know this terrible suitor.”

“That’s easy eno’,” said the farmer, dryly. “You have only to take a stroll with Jessie Wiles after sunset, and you’ll know more of Tom Bowles than you are likely to forget in a month.”

“Thank you very much for your information,” said Kenelm, in a soft tone, grateful but pensive. “I hope to profit by it.”

“Do. I should be sorry if any harm came to thee; and Tom Bowles in one of his furies is as bad to cross as a mad bull. So now, as we must be up early, I’ll just take a look round the stables, and then off to bed; and I advise you to do the same.”

“Thank you for the hint. I see the young ladies have already gone in. Good-night.”

Passing through the garden, Kenelm encountered the junior Saunderson.

“I fear,” said the Votary of Progress, “that you have found the governor awful slow. What have you been talking about?”