Kenelm Chillingly Part 50

"I go further," continued Kenelm, "and supposing with you that the Confessional has all the importance, whether in its monitory or its cheering effects upon repentant sinners, which is attached to it by the Roman Catholics, and that it ought to be no less cultivated by the Reformed Church, it seems to me essential that the Confessor should have no better half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an unguarded moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female acquaintances."

"I pushed that argument too far," murmured Roach.

"Not a bit of it. Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls with the Confessional. Your argument there is as sound as a bell. But when it comes to the layman, I think I detect a difference."

Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied stoutly, "No; if celibacy be inc.u.mbent on the one, it is equally inc.u.mbent on the other. I say 'if.'"

"Permit me to deny that a.s.sertion. Do not fear that I shall insult your understanding by the popular plat.i.tude; namely, that if celibacy were universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct. As you have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, 'It is the duty of each human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of the Creator.' If celibacy be necessary to spiritual perfection, how do we know but that it may be the purpose and decree of the All Wise that the human race, having attained to that perfection, should disappear from earth? Universal celibacy would thus be the euthanasia of mankind.

On the other hand, if the Creator decided that the human race, having culminated to this crowning but barren flower of perfection, should nevertheless continue to increase and multiply upon earth, have you not victoriously exclaimed, 'Presumptuous mortal! how canst thou presume to limit the resources of the Almighty? Would it not be easy for Him to continue some other mode, unexposed to trouble and sin and pa.s.sion, as in the nuptials of the vegetable world, by which the generations will be renewed? Can we suppose that the angels--the immortal companies of heaven--are not hourly increasing in number, and extending their population throughout infinity? and yet in heaven there is no marrying nor giving in marriage.' All this, clothed by you in words which my memory only serves me to quote imperfectly,--all this I unhesitatingly concede."

Mr. Roach rose and brought another bottle of the Chateau Margeaux from his cellaret, filled Kenelm's gla.s.s, reseated himself, and took the other knee into his lap to caress.

"But," resumed Kenelm, "my doubt is this."

"Ah!" cried Mr. Roach, "let us hear the doubt."

"In the first place, is celibacy essential to the highest state of spiritual perfection; and, in the second place, if it were, are mortals, as at present const.i.tuted, capable of that culmination?"

"Very well put," said Mr. Roach, and he tossed off his gla.s.s with more cheerful aspect than he had hitherto exhibited.

"You see," said Kenelm, "we are compelled in this, as in other questions of philosophy, to resort to the inductive process, and draw our theories from the facts within our cognizance. Now looking round the world, is it the fact that old maids and old bachelors are so much more spiritually advanced than married folks? Do they pa.s.s their time, like an Indian dervish, in serene contemplation of divine excellence and beat.i.tude?

Are they not quite as worldly in their own way as persons who have been married as often as the Wife of Bath, and, generally speaking, more selfish, more frivolous, and more spiteful? I am sure I don't wish to speak uncharitably against old maids and old bachelors. I have three aunts who are old maids, and fine specimens of the genus; but I am sure they would all three have been more agreeable companions, and quite as spiritually gifted, if they had been happily married, and were caressing their children, instead of lapdogs. So, too, I have an old bachelor cousin, Chillingly Mivers, whom you know. As clever as a man can be.

But, Lord bless you! as to being wrapped in spiritual meditation, he could not be more devoted to the things of earth if he had married as many wives as Solomon, and had as many children as Priam. Finally, have not half the mistakes in the world arisen from a separation between the spiritual and the moral nature of man? Is it not, after all, through his dealings with his fellow-men that man makes his safest 'approach to the angels'? And is not the moral system a very muscular system? Does it not require for healthful vigour plenty of continued exercise, and does it not get that exercise naturally by the relations.h.i.+ps of family, with all the wider collateral struggles with life which the care of family necessitates?

"I put these questions to you with the humblest diffidence. I expect to hear such answers as will thoroughly convince my reason, and I shall be delighted if so. For at the root of the controversy lies the pa.s.sion of love. And love must be a very disquieting, troublesome emotion, and has led many heroes and sages into wonderful weaknesses and follies."

"Gently, gently, Mr. Chillingly; don't exaggerate. Love, no doubt, is--ahem--a disquieting pa.s.sion. Still, every emotion that changes life from a stagnant pool into the freshness and play of a running stream is disquieting to the pool. Not only love and its fellow-pa.s.sions, such as ambition, but the exercise of the reasoning faculty, which is always at work in changing our ideas, is very disquieting. Love, Mr. Chillingly, has its good side as well as its bad. Pa.s.s the bottle."

KENELM (pa.s.sing the bottle).--"Yes, yes; you are quite right in putting the adversary's case strongly, before you demolish it: all good rhetoricians do that. Pardon me if I am up to that trick in argument.

a.s.sume that I know all that can be said in favour of the abnegation of common-sense, euphoniously called 'love,' and proceed to the demolition of the case."

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH (hesitatingly).--"The demolition of the case?

humph! The pa.s.sions are ingrafted in the human system as part and parcel of it, and are not to be demolished so easily as you seem to think.

Love, taken rationally and morally by a man of good education and sound principles, is--is--"

KENELM.--"Well, is what?"

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH.--"A--a--a--thing not to be despised. Like the sun, it is the great colourist of life, Mr. Chillingly. And you are so right: the moral system does require daily exercise. What can give that exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age in which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female companion by one's side; innocent little children climbing one's knee,--lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it out, who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon sitting alone on a pillar? Take another gla.s.s. You don't drink enough, Mr.

Chillingly."

"I have drunk enough," replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, "to think I see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of the insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I listen to a puling sentimentalist uttering the plat.i.tudes which the other Decimus Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom."

"Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided.

Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young friend. At that period of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companions.h.i.+p of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and prevent that morose h.o.a.r-frost into which solitude is chilled and made rigid by increasing years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world. And I am about next month to enter into the matrimonial state with a young lady who--"

"Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must be a painful subject to you. Let us drop it."

"It is not a painful subject at all!" exclaimed Mr. Roach, with warmth.

"I look forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the pleasure which a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting a fallacious doctrine. But you do me the justice to understand that of course I do not take this step I propose--for my personal satisfaction. No, sir, it is the value of my example to others which purifies my motives and animates my soul."

After this concluding and n.o.ble sentence, the conversation drooped. Host and guest both felt they had had enough of each other. Kenelm soon rose to depart.

Mr. Roach, on taking leave of, him at the door, said, with marked emphasis,--

"Not for my personal satisfaction,--remember that. Whenever you hear my conversion discussed in the world, say that from my own lips you heard these words,--NOT FOR MY PERSONAL SATISFACTION. No! my kind regards to Welby,--a married man himself, and a father: he will understand me."

CHAPTER IX.

ON quitting Oxford, Kenelm wandered for several days about the country, advancing to no definite goal, meeting with no noticeable adventure.

At last he found himself mechanically retracing his steps. A magnetic influence he could not resist drew him back towards the gra.s.sy meads and the sparkling rill of Moleswich.

"There must be," said he to himself, "a mental, like an optical, illusion. In the last, we fancy we have seen a spectre. If we dare not face the apparition,--dare not attempt to touch it,--run superst.i.tiously away from it,--what happens? We shall believe to our dying day that it was not an illusion, that it was a spectre; and so we may be crazed for life. But if we manfully walk up to the phantom, stretch our hands to seize it, oh! it fades into thin air, the cheat of our eyesight is dispelled, and we shall never be ghost-ridden again. So it must be with this mental illusion of mine. I see an image strange to my experience: it seems to me, at first sight, clothed with a supernatural charm; like an unreasoning coward, I run away from it. It continues to haunt me; I cannot shut out its apparition. It pursues me by day alike in the haunts of men,--alike in the solitudes of nature; it visits me by night in my dreams. I begin to say this must be a real visitant from another world: it must be love; the love of which I read in the Poets, as in the Poets I read of witchcraft and ghosts. Surely I must approach that apparition as a philosopher like Sir David Brewster would approach the black cat seated on a hearth-rug, which he tells us that some lady of his acquaintance constantly saw till she went into a world into which black cats are not held to be admitted. The more I think of it the less it appears to me possible that I can be really in love with a wild, half-educated, anomalous creature, merely because the apparition of her face haunts me. With perfect safety, therefore, I can approach the creature; in proportion as I see more of her the illusion will vanish. I will go back to Moleswich manfully."

Thus said Kenelm to himself, and himself answered,--"Go; for thou canst not help it. Thinkest thou that Daces can escape the net that has meshed a Roach? No,--

'Come it will, the day decreed by fate,'

when thou must succ.u.mb to the 'Nature which will be heard.' Better succ.u.mb now, and with a good grace, than resist till thou hast reached thy fiftieth year, and then make a rational choice not for thy personal satisfaction."

Whereupon Kenelm answered to himself, indignantly, "Pooh! thou flippant.

My _alter ego_, thou knowest not what thou art talking about! It is not a question of Nature; it is a question of the supernatural,--an illusion,--a phantom!" Thus Kenelm and himself continued to quarrel with each other; and the more they quarrelled, the nearer they approached to the haunted spot in which had been seen, and fled from, the fatal apparition of first love.

BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

SIR PETER had not heard from Kenelm since a letter informing him that his son had left town on an excursion, which would probably be short, though it might last a few weeks; and the good Baronet now resolved to go to London himself, take his chance of Kenelm's return, and if still absent, at least learn from Mivers and others how far that very eccentric planet had contrived to steer a regular course amidst the fixed stars of the metropolitan system. He had other reasons for his journey. He wished to make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon before handing him over the L20,000 which Kenelm had released in that resettlement of estates, the necessary deeds of which the young heir had signed before quitting London for Moleswich. Sir Peter wished still more to see Cecilia Travers, in whom Kenelm's accounts of her had inspired a very strong interest.

The day after his arrival in town Sir Peter breakfasted with Mivers.

"Upon my word you are very comfortable here," said Sir Peter, glancing at the well-appointed table, and round the well-furnished rooms.

"Naturally so: there is no one to prevent my being comfortable. I am not married; taste that omelette."

"Some men declare they never knew comfort till they were married, Cousin Miners."

"Some men are reflecting bodies, and catch a pallid gleam from the comfort which a wife concentres on herself. With a fortune so modest and secure, what comforts, possessed by me now, would not a Mrs. Chillingly Mivers ravish from my hold and appropriate to herself! Instead of these pleasant rooms, where should I be lodged? In a dingy den looking on a backyard excluded from the sun by day and vocal with cats by night; while Mrs. Mivers luxuriated in two drawing-rooms with southern aspect and perhaps a boudoir. My brougham would be torn from my uses and monopolized by 'the angel of my hearth,' clouded in her crinoline and halved by her chignon. No! if ever I marry--and I never deprive myself of the civilities and needlework which single ladies waste upon me by saying I shall not marry--it will be when women have fully established their rights; for then men may have a chance of vindicating their own.

Then if there are two drawing-rooms in the house I shall take one; if not, we will toss up who shall have the back parlour; if we keep a brougham, it will be exclusively mine three days in the week; if Mrs. M.

wants L200 a year for her wardrobe she must be contented with one, the other half will belong to my personal decoration; if I am oppressed by proof-sheets and printers' devils, half of the oppression falls to her lot, while I take my holiday on the croquet ground at Wimbledon. Yes, when the present wrongs of women are exchanged for equality with men, I will cheerfully marry; and to do the thing generous, I will not oppose Mrs. M.'s voting in the vestry or for Parliament. I will give her my own votes with pleasure."