Kenelm Chillingly Part 30

The girl released his arm, and he walked on. She stood some moments gazing after him till out of sight, then she drew her hand suddenly across her eyes, and retracing her steps, was, in her turn, caught hold of by a rougher hand than hers, as she pa.s.sed the gin-palace. She shook off the grasp with a pa.s.sionate scorn, and went straight home. Home! is that the right word? Poor sister mortal!

CHAPTER XI.

AND now Kenelm found himself at the extremity of the town, and on the banks of the river. Small squalid houses still lined the bank for some way, till, nearing the bridge, they abruptly ceased, and he pa.s.sed through a broad square again into the main street. On the other side of the street there was a row of villa-like mansions, with gardens stretching towards the river.

All around in the thoroughfare was silent and deserted. By this time the pa.s.sengers had gone home. The scent of night-flowers from the villa-gardens came sweet on the starlit air. Kenelm paused to inhale it, and then lifting his eyes, hitherto downcast, as are the eyes of men in meditative moods, he beheld, on the balcony of the nearest villa, a group of well-dressed persons. The balcony was unusually wide and s.p.a.cious. On it was a small round table, on which were placed wine and fruits. Three ladies were seated round the table on wire-work chairs, and on the side nearest to Kenelm, one man. In that man, now slightly turning his profile, as if to look towards the river, Kenelm recognized the minstrel. He was still in his picturesque knickerbocker dress, and his clear-cut features, with the cl.u.s.tering curls of hair, and Rubens-like hue and shape of beard, had more than their usual beauty, softened in the light of skies, to which the moon, just risen, added deeper and fuller radiance. The ladies were in evening dress, but Kenelm could not distinguish their faces hidden behind the minstrel. He moved softly across the street, and took his stand behind a b.u.t.tress in the low wall of the garden, from which he could have full view of the balcony, unseen himself. In this watch he had no other object than that of a vague pleasure. The whole grouping had in it a kind of scenic romance, and he stopped as one stops before a picture.

He then saw that of the three ladies one was old; another was a slight girl of the age of twelve or thirteen; the third appeared to be somewhere about seven or eight and twenty. She was dressed with more elegance than the others. On her neck, only partially veiled by a thin scarf, there was the glitter of jewels; and, as she now turned her full face towards the moon, Kenelm saw that she was very handsome,--a striking kind of beauty, calculated to fascinate a poet or an artist,--not unlike Raphael's Fornarina, dark, with warm tints.

Now there appeared at the open window a stout, burly, middle-aged gentleman, looking every inch of him a family man, a moneyed man, sleek and prosperous. He was bald, fresh-coloured, and with light whiskers.

"Holloa," he said, in an accent very slightly foreign, and with a loud clear voice, which Kenelm heard distinctly, "is it not time for you to come in?"

"Don't be so tiresome, Fritz," said the handsome lady, half petulantly, half playfully, in the way ladies address the tiresome spouses they lord it over. "Your friend has been sulking the whole evening, and is only just beginning to be pleasant as the moon rises."

"The moon has a good effect on poets and other mad folks, I dare say,"

said the bald man, with a good-humoured laugh. "But I can't have my little niece laid up again just as she is on the mend: Annie, come in."

The girl obeyed reluctantly. The old lady rose too.

"Ah, Mother, you are wise," said the bald man; "and a game at euchre is safer than poetizing in night air." He wound his arm round the old lady with a careful fondness, for she moved with some difficulty as if rather lame. "As for you two sentimentalists and moon-gazers, I give you ten minutes' time,--not more, mind."

"Tyrant!" said the minstrel.

The balcony now held only two forms,--the minstrel and the handsome lady. The window was closed, and partially veiled by muslin draperies, but Kenelm caught glimpses of the room within. He could see that the room, lit by a lamp on the centre table and candles elsewhere, was decorated and fitted up with cost and in a taste not English. He could see, for instance, that the ceiling was painted, and the walls were not papered, but painted in panels between arabesque pilasters.

"They are foreigners," thought Kenelm, "though the man does speak English so well. That accounts for playing euchre of a Sunday evening, as if there were no harm in it. Euchre is an American game. The man is called Fritz. Ah! I guess--Germans who have lived a good deal in America; and the verse-maker said he was at Lus...o...b.. on pecuniary business. Doubtless his host is a merchant, and the verse-maker in some commercial firm. That accounts for his concealment of name, and fear of its being known that he was addicted in his holiday to tastes and habits so opposed to his calling."

While he was thus thinking, the lady had drawn her chair close to the minstrel, and was speaking to him with evident earnestness, but in tones too low for Kenelm to hear. Still it seemed to him, by her manner and by the man's look, as if she were speaking in some sort of reproach, which he sought to deprecate. Then he spoke, also in a whisper, and she averted her face for a moment; then she held out her hand, and the minstrel kissed it. Certainly, thus seen, the two might well be taken for lovers; and the soft night, the fragrance of the flowers, silence and solitude, stars and moon light, all girt them as with an atmosphere of love. Presently the man rose and leaned over the balcony, propping his cheek on his hand, and gazing on the river. The lady rose too, and also leaned over the bal.u.s.trade, her dark hair almost touching the auburn locks of her companion.

Kenelm sighed. Was it from envy, from pity, from fear? I know not; but he sighed.

After a brief pause, the lady said, still in low tones, but not too low this time to escape Kenelm's fine sense of hearing,--

"Tell me those verses again. I must remember every word of them when you are gone."

The man shook his head gently, and answered, but inaudibly.

"Do," said the lady; "set them to music later; and the next time you come I will sing them. I have thought of a t.i.tle for them."

"What?" asked the minstrel.

"Love's quarrel."

The minstrel turned his head, and their eyes met, and, in meeting, lingered long. Then he moved away, and with face turned from her and towards the river, gave the melody of his wondrous voice to the following lines:--

LOVE'S QUARREL.

"Standing by the river, gazing on the river, See it paved with starbeams,--heaven is at our feet; Now the wave is troubled, now the rushes quiver; Vanished is the starlight: it was a deceit.

"Comes a little cloudlet 'twixt ourselves and heaven, And from all the river fades the silver track; Put thine arms around me, whisper low, 'Forgiven!'

See how on the river starlight settles back."

When he had finished, still with face turned aside, the lady did not, indeed, whisper "Forgiven," nor put her arms around him; but, as if by irresistible impulse, she laid her hand lightly on his shoulder.

The minstrel started.

There came to his ear,--he knew not from whence, from whom,--

"Mischief! mischief! Remember the little child!"

"Hush!" he said, staring round. "Did you not hear a voice?"

"Only yours," said the lady.

"It was our guardian angel's, Amalie. It came in time. We will go within."

CHAPTER XII.

THE next morning betimes Kenelm visited Tom at his uncle's home. A comfortable and respectable home it was, like that of an owner in easy circ.u.mstances. The veterinary surgeon himself was intelligent, and apparently educated beyond the range of his calling; a childless widower, between sixty and seventy, living with a sister, an old maid.

They were evidently much attached to Tom, and delighted by the hope of keeping him with them. Tom himself looked rather sad, but not sullen, and his face brightened wonderfully at first sight of Kenelm. That oddity made himself as pleasant and as much like other people as he could in conversing with the old widower and the old maid, and took leave, engaging Tom to be at his inn at half past twelve, and spend the day with him and the minstrel. He then returned to the Golden Lamb, and waited there for his first visitant; the minstrel. That votary of the muse arrived punctually at twelve o'clock. His countenance was less cheerful and sunny than usual. Kenelm made no allusion to the scene he had witnessed, nor did his visitor seem to suspect that Kenelm had witnessed it or been the utterer of that warning voice.

KENELM.--"I have asked my friend Tom Bowles to come a little later, because I wished you to be of use to him, and, in order to be so, I should suggest how."

THE MINSTREL.--"Pray do."

KENELM.--"You know that I am not a poet, and I do not have much reverence for verse-making merely as a craft."

THE MINSTREL.--"Neither have I."

KENELM.--"But I have a great reverence for poetry as a priesthood. I felt that reverence for you when you sketched and talked priesthood last evening, and placed in my heart--I hope forever while it beats--the image of the child on the sunlit hill, high above the abodes of men, tossing her flower-ball heavenward and with heavenward eyes."

The singer's cheek coloured high, and his lip quivered: he was very sensitive to praise; most singers are.

Kenelm resumed, "I have been educated in the Realistic school, and with realism I am discontented, because in realism as a school there is no truth. It contains but a bit of truth, and that the coldest and hardest bit of it, and he who utters a bit of truth and suppresses the rest of it tells a lie."

THE MINSTREL (slyly).--"Does the critic who says to me, 'Sing of beefsteak, because the appet.i.te for food is a real want of daily life, and don't sing of art and glory and love, because in daily life a man may do without such ideas,'--tell a lie?"

KENELM.--"Thank you for that rebuke. I submit to it. No doubt I did tell a lie,--that is, if I were quite in earnest in my recommendation, and if not in earnest, why--"

THE MINSTREL.--"You belied yourself."

KENELM.--"Very likely. I set out on my travels to escape from shams, and begin to discover that I am a sham _par excellence_. But I suddenly come across you, as a boy dulled by his syntax and his vulgar fractions suddenly comes across a pleasant poem or a picture-book, and feels his wits brighten up. I owe you much: you have done me a world of good."