“But I am talking a great deal too much about myself,” resumed the artist. “Lovers are the most consummate of all egotists, and the most garrulous of all gossips. You have wished me joy on my destined nuptials, when shall I wish you joy on yours? Since we have begun to confide in each other, you are in my debt as to a confidence.”
They had now gained the bridge. Kenelm turned round abruptly, “Good-day; let us part here. I have nothing to confide to you that might not seem to your ears a mockery when I wish you joy.” So saying, so obeying in spite of himself the anguish of his heart, Kenelm wrung his companion’s hand with the force of an uncontrollable agony, and speeded over the bridge before Melville recovered his surprise.
The artist would have small claim to the essential attribute of genius—namely, the intuitive sympathy of passion with passion—if that secret of Kenelm’s which he had so lightly said “he had acquired the right to learn,” was not revealed to him as by an electric flash. “Poor fellow!” he said to himself pityingly; “how natural that he should fall in love with Fairy! but happily he is so young, and such a philosopher, that it is but one of those trials through which, at least ten times a year, I have gone with wounds that leave not a scar.”
Thus soliloquizing, the warm-blooded worshipper of Nature returned homeward, too blest in the triumph of his own love to feel more than a kindly compassion for the wounded heart, consigned with no doubt of the healing result to the fickleness of youth and the consolations of philosophy. Not for a moment did the happier rival suspect that Kenelm’s love was returned; that an atom in the heart of the girl who had promised to be his bride could take its light or shadow from any love but his own. Yet, more from delicacy of respect to the rival so suddenly self-betrayed than from any more prudential motive, he did not speak even to Mrs. Cameron of Kenelm’s secret and sorrow; and certainly neither she nor Lily was disposed to ask any question that concerned the departed visitor.
In fact the name of Kenelm Chillingly was scarcely, if at all, mentioned in that household during the few days which elapsed before Walter Melville quitted Grasmere for the banks of the Rhine, not to return till the autumn, when his marriage with Lily was to take place. During those days Lily was calm and seemingly cheerful; her manner towards her betrothed, if more subdued, not less affectionate than of old. Mrs. Cameron congratulated herself on having so successfully got rid of Kenelm Chillingly.
CHAPTER VIII.
SO, then, but for that officious warning, uttered under the balcony at Luscombe, Kenelm Chillingly might never have had a rival in Walter Melville. But ill would any reader construe the character of Kenelm, did he think that such a thought increased the bitterness of his sorrow. No sorrow in the thought that a noble nature had been saved from the temptation to a great sin.
The good man does good merely by living. And the good he does may often mar the plans he formed for his own happiness. But he cannot regret that Heaven has permitted him to do good.
What Kenelm did feel is perhaps best explained in the letter to Sir Peter, which is here subjoined:—