“Shall I bring lights, sir? or do you prefer
a lamp or candles?” asked a voice behind,—the
voice of the elderly man’s wife. “Do
you like the shutters closed?”
The question startled the dreamer. They seemed
mocking his own old mockings on the romance of love.
Lamp or candles, practical lights for prosaic eyes,
and shutters closed against moon and stars!
“Thank you, ma’am, not yet,” he
said; and rising quietly he placed his hand on the
window-sill, swung himself through the open casement,
and passed slowly along the margin of the rivulet,
by a path checkered alternately with shade and starlight;
the moon yet more slowly rising above the willows,
and lengthening its track along the wavelets.
Though Kenelm did not think it necessary at present
to report to his parents or his London acquaintances
his recent movements and his present resting-place,
it never entered into his head to lurk perdu
in the immediate vicinity of Lily’s house, and
seek opportunities of meeting her clandestinely.
He walked to Mrs. Braefield’s the next morning,
found her at home, and said in rather a more off-hand
manner than was habitual to him, “I have hired
a lodging in your neighbourhood, on the banks of the
brook, for the sake of its trout-fishing. So
you will allow me to call on you sometimes, and one
of these days I hope you will give me the dinner I
so unceremoniously rejected some days ago. I
was then summoned away suddenly, much against my will.”
“Yes; my husband said that you shot off from
him with a wild exclamation about duty.”
“Quite true; my reason, and I may say my conscience,
were greatly perplexed upon a matter extremely important
and altogether new to me. I went to Oxford,—the
place above all others in which questions of reason
and conscience are most deeply considered, and perhaps
least satisfactorily solved. Relieved in my
mind by my visit to a distinguished ornament of that
university, I felt I might indulge in a summer holiday,
and here I am.”
“Ah! I understand. You had religious
doubts,—thought perhaps of turning Roman
Catholic. I hope you are not going to do so?”
“My doubts were not necessarily of a religious
nature. Pagans have entertained them.”
“Whatever they were I am pleased to see they
did not prevent your return,” said Mrs. Braefield,
graciously. “But where have you found a
lodging; why not have come to us? My husband
would have been scarcely less glad than myself to
receive you.”
“You say that so sincerely, and so cordially,
that to answer by a brief ‘I thank you’
seems rigid and heartless. But there are times
in life when one yearns to be alone,—to
commune with one’s own heart, and, if possible,
be still; I am in one of those moody times. Bear
with me.”
Mrs. Braefield looked at him with affectionate, kindly
interest. She had gone before him through the
solitary road of young romance. She remembered
her dreamy, dangerous girlhood, when she, too, had
yearned to be alone.
