Kenelm Chillingly Part 39

"I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead me,--except to the altar with another."

CHAPTER III.

THE rooms were now full,--not overcrowded, but full,--and it was rarely even in that house that so many distinguished persons were collected together. A young man thus honoured by so _grande_ a dame as Lady Glenalvon could not but be cordially welcomed by all to whom she presented him, Ministers and Parliamentary leaders, ball-givers, and beauties in vogue,--even authors and artists; and there was something in Kenelm Chillingly, in his striking countenance and figure, in that calm ease of manner natural to his indifference to effect, which seemed to justify the favour shown to him by the brilliant princess of fashion and mark him out for general observation.

That first evening of his reintroduction to the polite world was a success which few young men of his years achieve. He produced a sensation. Just as the rooms were thinning, Lady Glenalvon whispered to Kenelm,--

"Come this way: there is one person I must reintroduce you to; thank me for it hereafter."

Kenelm followed the marchioness, and found himself face to face with Cecilia Travers. She was leaning on her father's arm, looking very handsome, and her beauty was heightened by the blush which overspread her cheeks as Kenelm Chillingly approached.

Travers greeted him with great cordiality; and Lady Glenalvon asking him to escort her to the refreshment-room, Kenelm had no option but to offer his arm to Cecilia.

Kenelm felt somewhat embarra.s.sed. "Have you been long in town, Miss Travers?"

"A little more than a week, but we only settled into our house yesterday."

"Ah, indeed! were you then the young lady who--" He stopped short, and his face grew gentler and graver in its expression.

"The young lady who--what?" asked Cecilia with a smile.

"Who has been staying with Lady Glenalvon?"

"Yes; did she tell you?"

"She did not mention your name, but praised that young lady so justly that I ought to have guessed it."

Cecilia made some not very audible answer, and on entering the refreshment-room other young men gathered round her, and Lady Glenalvon and Kenelm remained silent in the midst of a general small-talk. When Travers, after giving his address to Kenelm, and, of course, pressing him to call, left the house with Cecilia, Kenelm said to Lady Glenalvon, musingly, "So that is the young lady in whom I was to see my fate: you knew that we had met before?"

"Yes, she told me when and where. Besides, it is not two years since you wrote to me from her father's house. Do you forget?"

"Ah," said Kenelm, so abstractedly that he seemed to be dreaming, "no man with his eyes open rushes on his fate: when he does so his sight is gone. Love is blind. They say the blind are very happy, yet I never met a blind man who would not recover his sight if he could."

CHAPTER IV.

Mr. CHILLINGLY MIVERS never gave a dinner at his own rooms. When he did give a dinner it was at Greenwich or Richmond. But he gave breakfast-parties pretty often, and they were considered pleasant.

He had handsome bachelor apartments in Grosvenor Street, daintily furnished, with a prevalent air of exquisite neatness, a good library stored with books of reference, and adorned with presentation copies from authors of the day, very beautifully bound. Though the room served for the study of the professed man of letters, it had none of the untidy litter which generally characterizes the study of one whose vocation it is to deal with books and papers. Even the implements for writing were not apparent, except when required. They lay concealed in a vast cylinder bureau, French made, and French polished. Within that bureau were numerous pigeon-holes and secret drawers, and a profound well with a separate patent lock. In the well were deposited the articles intended for publication in "The Londoner," proof-sheets, etc.; pigeon-holes were devoted to ordinary correspondence; secret drawers to confidential notes, and outlines of biographies of eminent men now living, but intended to be completed for publication the day after their death.

No man wrote such funeral compositions with a livelier pen than that of Chillingly Mivers; and the large and miscellaneous circle of his visiting acquaintances allowed him to ascertain, whether by authoritative report or by personal observation, the signs of mortal disease in the ill.u.s.trious friends whose dinners he accepted, and whose failing pulses he instinctively felt in returning the pressure of their hands; so that he was often able to put the finishing-stroke to their obituary memorials days, weeks, even months, before their fate took the public by surprise. That cylinder bureau was in harmony with the secrecy in which this remarkable man shrouded the productions of his brain. In his literary life Mivers had no "I," there he was ever the inscrutable, mysterious "We." He was only "I" when you met him in the world, and called him Mivers.

Adjoining the library on one side was a small dining or rather breakfast room, hung with valuable pictures,--presents from living painters.

Many of these painters had been severely handled by Mr. Mivers in his existence as "We,"--not always in "The Londoner." His most pungent criticisms were often contributed to other intellectual journals conducted by members of the same intellectual clique. Painters knew not how contemptuously "We" had treated them when they met Mr. Mivers.

His "I" was so complimentary that they sent him a tribute of their grat.i.tude.

On the other side was his drawing-room, also enriched by many gifts, chiefly from fair hands,--embroidered cushions and table-covers, bits of Sevres or old Chelsea, elegant knick-knacks of all kinds. Fashionable auth.o.r.esses paid great court to Mr. Mivers; and in the course of his life as a single man, he had other female adorers besides fashionable auth.o.r.esses.

Mr. Mivers had already returned from his early const.i.tutional walk in the Park, and was now seated by the cylinder _secretaire_ with a mild-looking man, who was one of the most merciless contributors to "The Londoner" and no unimportant councillor in the oligarchy of the clique that went by the name of the "Intellectuals."

"Well," said Mivers, languidly, "I can't even get through the book; it is as dull as the country in November. But, as you justly say, the writer is an 'Intellectual,' and a clique would be anything but intellectual if it did not support its members. Review the book yourself; mind and make the dulness of it the signal proof of its merit.

Say: 'To the ordinary cla.s.s of readers this exquisite work may appear less brilliant than the flippant smartness of'--any other author you like to name; 'but to the well educated and intelligent every line is pregnant with,' etc. By the way, when we come by and by to review the exhibition at Burlington House, there is one painter whom we must try our best to crush. I have not seen his pictures myself, but he is a new man; and our friend, who has seen him, is terribly jealous of him, and says that if the good judges do not put him down at once, the villanous taste of the public will set him up as a prodigy. A low-lived fellow too, I hear. There is the name of the man and the subject of the pictures. See to it when the time comes. Meanwhile, prepare the way for onslaught on the pictures by occasional sneers at the painter." Here Mr. Mivers took out of his cylinder a confidential note from the jealous rival and handed it to his mild-looking _confrere_; then rising, he said, "I fear we must suspend our business till to-morrow; I expect two young cousins to breakfast."

As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivers sauntered to his drawing-room window, amiably offering a lump of sugar to a canary-bird sent to him as a present the day before, and who, in the gilded cage which made part of the present, scanned him suspiciously and refused the sugar.

Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chillingly Mivers.

He scarcely looked a day older than when he was first presented to the reader on the birth of his kinsman Kenelm. He was reaping the fruit of his own sage maxims. Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was no sign of gray, no suspicion of dye. Superiority to pa.s.sion, abnegation of sorrow, indulgence of amus.e.m.e.nt, avoidance of excess, had kept away the crow's-feet, preserved the elasticity of his frame and the unflushed clearness of his gentlemanlike complexion. The door opened, and a well-dressed valet, who had lived long enough with Mivers to grow very much like him, announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon.

"Good morning," said Mivers; "I was much pleased to see you talking so long and so familiarly with Danvers: others, of course, observed it, and it added a step to your career. It does you great good to be seen in a drawing-room talking apart with a Somebody. But may I ask if the talk itself was satisfactory?"

"Not at all: Danvers throws cold water on the notion of Saxboro', and does not even hint that his party will help me to any other opening.

Party has few openings at its disposal nowadays for any young man. The schoolmaster being abroad has swept away the school for statesmen as he has swept away the school for actors,--an evil, and an evil of a far greater consequence to the destinies of the nation than any good likely to be got from the system that succeeded it."

"But it is of no use railing against things that can't be helped. If I were you, I would postpone all ambition of Parliament and read for the bar."

"The advice is sound, but too unpalatable to be taken. I am resolved to find a seat in the House, and where there is a will there is a way."

"I am not so sure of that."

"But I am."

"Judging by what your contemporaries at the University tell me of your speeches at the Debating Society, you were not then an ultra-Radical.

But it is only an ultra-Radical who has a chance of success at Saxboro'."

"I am no fanatic in politics. There is much to be said on all sides: _coeteris paribus_, I prefer the winning side to the losing; nothing succeeds like success."

"Ay, but in politics there is always reaction. The winning side one day may be the losing side another. The losing side represents a minority, and a minority is sure to comprise more intellect than a majority: in the long run intellect will force its way, get a majority and then lose it, because with a majority it will become stupid."

"Cousin Mivers, does not the history of the world show you that a single individual can upset all theories as to the comparative wisdom of the few or the many? Take the wisest few you can find, and one man of genius not a t.i.the so wise crushes them into powder. But then that man of genius, though he despises the many, must make use of them. That done, he rules them. Don't you see how in free countries political destinations resolve themselves into individual impersonations? At a general election it is one name around which electors rally. The candidate may enlarge as much as he pleases on political principles, but all his talk will not win him votes enough for success, unless he says, 'I go with Mr. A.,' the minister, or with Mr. Z., the chief of the opposition. It was not the Tories who beat the Whigs when Mr. Pitt dissolved Parliament. It was Mr. Pitt who beat Mr. Fox, with whom in general political principle--slave-trade, Roman Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, Parliamentary reform--he certainly agreed much more than he did with any man in his own cabinet."

"Take care, my young cousin," cried Mivers, in accents of alarm; "don't set up for a man of genius. Genius is the worst quality a public man can have nowadays: n.o.body heeds it, and everybody is jealous of it."

"Pardon me, you mistake; my remark was purely objective, and intended as a reply to your argument. I prefer at present to go with the many because it is the winning side. If we then want a man of genius to keep it the winning side, by subjugating its partisans to his will, he will be sure to come. The few will drive him to us, for the few are always the enemies of the one man of genius. It is they who distrust,--it is they who are jealous,--not the many. You have allowed your judgment, usually so clear, to be somewhat dimmed by your experience as a critic.

The critics are the few. They have infinitely more culture than the many. But when a man of real genius appears and a.s.serts himself, the critics are seldom such fair judges of him as the many are. If he be not one of their oligarchical clique, they either abuse, or disparage, or affect to ignore him; though a time at last comes when, having gained the many, the critics acknowledge him. But the difference between the man of action and the author is this, that the author rarely finds this acknowledgment till he is dead, and it is necessary to the man of action to enforce it while he is alive. But enough of this speculation: you ask me to meet Kenelm; is he not coming?"

"Yes, but I did not ask him till ten o'clock. I asked you at half-past nine, because I wished to hear about Danvers and Saxboro', and also to prepare you somewhat for your introduction to your cousin. I must be brief as to the last, for it is only five minutes to the hour, and he is a man likely to be punctual. Kenelm is in all ways your opposite. I don't know whether he is cleverer or less clever; there is no scale of measurement between you: but he is wholly void of ambition, and might possibly a.s.sist yours. He can do what he likes with Sir Peter; and considering how your poor father--a worthy man, but cantankerous--hara.s.sed and persecuted Sir Peter, because Kenelm came between the estate and you, it is probable that Sir Peter bears you a grudge, though Kenelm declares him incapable of it; and it would be well if you could annul that grudge in the father by conciliating the goodwill of the son."

"I should be glad so to annul it; but what is Kenelm's weak side?--the turf? the hunting-field? women? poetry? One can only conciliate a man by getting on his weak side."

"Hist! I see him from the windows. Kenelm's weak side was, when I knew him some years ago, and I rather fancy it still is--"

"Well, make haste! I hear his ring at your door-bell."

"A pa.s.sionate longing to find ideal truth in real life."

"Ah!" said Gordon, "as I thought,--a mere dreamer"