A .Midsummer. Day's Dream

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue VIII, 23 August 1902, Page 454

A .Midsummer. Day's Dream

'1 he Rev. Robert Kenyon was reading- his morning letters with something very like a frown between his straight, black brows. His motherless uaughters, sitting round the breakfast table, watched him curiously. but, with a caution born of long knowledge, possessed their souls in patience.

He looked up presently, his forehead relaxing a little. The girls waited expectantly. “Give me some more tea, please, Elizabeth,” he said absently, and the three young faces fell again. There was a long silence in the dull Vicarage dining-room, with its sad-coloured walls and shabby leather chairs—chairs that had belonged to a ‘ presentation” some ten years ago, when Mr Kenyon had retired from an active town parish to the comparatively easy life of Daysleigh Vicarage. The ponderous clock on the mantelpiece was also a gift from a grateful parish, but it had belonged to Mr Kenyon's father. Cecelia Kenyon, the second daughter, was sometimes given to wondering why parochial gratitude invariably took such a peculiarly stolid form, but she wisely made such thoughts strictly mental. Elizabeth would have reproved her, in something- of her reverend father’s own manner, for having such wrong and ungrateful thoughts, whilst Margaret's material little mind would have argued that, so long as things were useful, what did appearances matter? And there was no denying the solid usefulness of both chairs and clock. So only to herself did Ceeelia sigh for the beautiful and unattainable. She was watching her father now in some anxiety lest this frown and the long-perused letter should betoken some bad news from Bob—Bob who was at Oxford, ostensibly studying for the Church, but apparently not quite so diligently as could be desired. Had Bob got into some scrape? She almost held her breath as Mr Kenyon at last laid down his letter. “I have heard from your brother,” he announced, in his habitually ponderous tones. It was impossible for Mr Kenyon—or his hearers—to forget he was not always occupying the pulpit. His mildest utterances suggested merely a Christmas-like spirit of general amnesty, while his severer tones recalled the denunciatory Lent sermons that invariably recurred once “Robert,” he continued, “has written to say that he wishes to bring home a friend to spend a. week during the summer vacation; his name is Mr Mark Seton, the son of Professor Seton, the great botanist.” The girls made no answer. The ■advent of a stranger, and particularly

a strange young man, was not a thing to be lightly commented on. It marked an epoch in their dull young lives. “I am not entirely certain that I approve of Robert’s friendship with this young man,” pursued Robert’s father. “Although I have a great admiration for Professor Seton’s work, his religious views are extremely to be regretted. He may almost be termed an atheist.”

The girls looked startled; this was a word seldom heard in the Vicarage. Cecelia spoke up timidly. “But, father,” she said, gently, “perhaps Mr Mark Seton doesn’t hold his father’s views.” ,

Mr Kenyon’s austere, good face relaxed a little. He was far too conscientious a man to allow himself a favourite child, but Cecqlia alone, of his four children, had her dead mother’s soft, brown eyes. Sometimes, too, he feared, the girl had inherited the same delicacy of constitution. He smiled gravely at her now.

“We will hope so, my child,” he answered. “At any rate, we are enjoined to show hospitality to strangers. Elizabeth, you will give the necessary directions for our guest?” “Yes, father.” replied Elizabeth, and as soon as Mr Kenyon left the room the sisters discu-sed their expected guest with girlish curiosity.

It was a dull life these young things led—in a country vicarage, in one of the dullest, and yet the/most beautiful, parts of the Midlands; Of youthful society they had next to none. The Squire and his wife werelderly and childless, and the few young married people in the neighbourhood w r* sole y given to hunting in the winter and were usually absent all the summer months. An occasional garden party in August, a few intermittent tea parties in the winter, were their only dissipations. Elizabeth, indeed, had once been to the county ball with the Hall party, but she had not enjoyed it. The consciousness of inferiority in social requirements, even more than that of inferiority in dress, had weighed heavily upon her. and after that her younger sisters had no wish to attend such a function. Since leaving school their lives had been largely occupied with duties in their father’s parish, duties somewhat rigidly enforced and conscientiously carried out. An occasional Advent or Lent preacher, a temperance lecturer, perhaps a lady to address the mothers’ meetings, were their only visitors. Elizabeth and Margaret were hardly conscious of any wish for a different life. Since Mrs Kenyon’s death, soon after they came to Daysleigh, now ten years ago, Elizabeth had found her time fully occupied. She left school at seventeen to come home to be her father’s right hand. Her useful.

practical soul aspired to nothing higher than the proper management of the Vicarage and parish. She was very useful in the village, and she was not unaware of the fact. “Miss Elizabeth,” despite her youthfulness —she was only twenty-three—was an acknowledged authority on coughs and colds and childish ailments, not to mention theological difficulties. She had a recipe for one, a text for the other. If either was a failure, she had at least done her best. And Elizabeth’s hearty, breezy manner was popular in the village. But if the eldest Miss Kenyon was

liked, it is no exaggeration to say that her younger sister was worshipped in Daysleigh. She could solve no theological difficulties, and was no authority on that mysterious ailment, the “brown kitus,” which attacked the infantile population, but she had a ready sympathy with all and every trouble, and no one could hold a tiny sufferer more tenderly, or sing soothing little -songs more effectually, than “Miss Ceeelia.” An enthusiastic old woman had once called her “a little angel,” which, on coming to the ears of Mr Kenyon, had caused him to frown severely, and remark on the

sin of exaggeration. But he had glanced at his daughter’s frail beauty vyith something akin to a sigh, for Cecelia's mother had died of consumption. Cecelia was often conscious of a want in her life to which she could hardly give expression. With so much of the beautiful all around her in nature, there seemed so little of it in her own. Oh, for daintily-fur-nished rooms like those seen on rare visits to the Hall—rooms free from solid parochial clocks and heavily useful chairs; for new books, new music, new ideas! Things would have been different had their mother lived, Cecelia felt certain. The crudelyexecuted portrait of a beautiful woman, with pathetic brown eyes, which hung in the drawing-room, not only represented to the girl the cherished memory of a dead mother, but the ideal of all true womanhood. Had her mother lived, mused Cecelia, her father would not have grown so grave, so joyless; and Bob—her idolised, darling Bob—would not have been so difficult of management. Thoughtless, and impatient of any rebuke, he was not the boy to sit quietly under his father’s somewhat harsh resentment of some piece of boyish folly. There had been once or twice in the last year scenes that Cecelia trembled even to remember, in which cold severity had triumphed over youthful hot temper, and an angry humiliated Bob had come to Cecelia to complain that “no fellow’s life was worth living in such a place.”

“I wonder what Mr Seton will be like?” Cecelia said, as the three girls left the dining-room on this particular morning. Elizabeth’s busy mind had already flown to certain difficulties to be grappled with at an impending mothers’ meeting, and she did not answer for a few moments. The girls were now in their own particular “den” at the back of the house, from the windows of which they enjoyed an uninterrupted view over the Home Farm belonging to Davsleiah Hall.

Elizabeth took down a pile of account books, and then seemed to remember her sister’s remark.

“I do hope,” she said, knitting her brows in something of her father’s fashion, “that he won’t teach Bob any of his religious views.”

“Oh. Elizabeth!” Cecelia's tone was hurt and shocked. “How can you suggest such a thing?” Mr Kenyon’s dislike of anything approaching a nicknrme was so great that, even among themselves, the sisters in no way shortened their lengthy, old-fashioned names. Only in their brother’s case had they rebelled, and Robert had been allowed to pass into Bob. But Mr Kenyon invariably called his son Robert, and it in no way lessened the constraint between father and son.

“Which room is Mr Seton going to have?” asked Margaret, giving a practical turn to the conversation, and bringing it into Elizabeth’s own particular province. Margaret was intensely practical and particularly cheerful. Neither the people nor the parish possessed any especial attraction for her, and the Daysleigh people smiled indulgently on “Miss Margaret,” and considered her at eighteen a perfect child still. And indeed she was. A very small interest in life could be of all-importance to Margaret. Just now it was the collection of pictorial postcards, a hobby which was concealed rather than exhibited in Mr Kenyon's presence. He had a particularly discouraging way of referring to such trifles as “singularly useless.”

A beautiful June evening brought Bob Kenyon and his friend to Daysleigh Vicarage, where there was a little group on the front door steps to meet them. Mr Kenyon's severe straight features relaxed into something like a smile, with Elizabeth, a milder, more human edition of himself, at his right hand; at the back Cecelia’s beautiful face slightly flushed with loving eyes fixed on Bob; and Margaret’s childish inquisitive glance —Mark Seton’s keen grey eyes noted them all.

Bob descended quickly from the somewhat shabby waggonette, which, like most things in use at the Vicar-

age, had some just claims to consideration on the score of old age.

“How are you all?” he said, cheerily, kissing the girls and shaking hands with his father. He was a nice-look-ing boy, two years senior to Margaret, and very like her in looks, with the same placid expression. He introduced his friend. The girls were too shy to offer more than a conventional greeting, and bore oft Bob to the drawing-room, leaving Mr Kenyon to follow' with their guest.

Bob’s tongue moved rapidly, and there were many enquiries after

things and people. The dull old Vicarage seemed stimulated into somesort of life by this cheery presence. Tea came in, and Elizabeth regained her confidence with this advent, and talked to Mr Seton in a pleasant, if somewhat stilted manner. He could not help thinking to himself that there was a marked resemblance between Mr Kenyon and his eldest daughter.

He himself was making a favourable impression with his pleasant, easy manners. Mark Seton possessed the gift of adaptability in no small degree. When, after dinner that evening. it w as discovered that he possessed also a fine tenor voice, even Cecelia, who had so far only considered him an obstacle in the way of undivided attention from Bob, expressed her pleasure.

“Don’t you sing yourself?” he asked. looking down at her with frank grey eyes. He seemed to tower ove* little Cecelia, who was. as her tall sisters often assured her. so absurdly small. Her delicate colour rose a little. “Yes. T do.” she answered simply, and Mark, with his knowledge of a fashionable world that revels in excuses, marvelled at her atsence of affectation. She sat down to the piano, while the young man watched her. wondering at the delicate beauty of the girl as he did so.

“What a sensation she would make in London,” he mused, while Cecelia sang her old-fashioned songs in her pure sweet voice. “And how she will waste her life down here. She is probably' destined to be the wife of some bucolic squire, or her father’s curate.” But quite unconscious of his thoughts the girl sang on, and only grew shy' when his thanks were very profusely' uttered. Then she returned to her seat on the sofa by Bob. The days wore on and Mark Seton retained the “golden opinions” he had won the first evening at Daysleigh.

Elizabeth pronounced him extremely useful, when, one w’et afternoon, when Bob was on carpentering intent, their guest volunteered to reenamel the old dining-room bookcase, and made such an excellent job of it that even Mr Kenyon was called out of his study to smile and admire. He had not altogether satisfied himsel f that young Seton was entirely exempt from his father’s dangerous views, but the young man was so pleasant, so sensible, that presently even Bob rose in the parental estimation from the choice of such a friend. Margaret bad discovered that Mr Seton's sister was, like herself, a collector of postcards. It seemed to be a link with the outside world, and when Mark good-naturedly suggested the possibility of a system of exchange between herself and Rose Seton the girl’s delight rose to such a climax that, his kind heart was touched. He

had come to Duysleigh Vicarae-e iu response to an invitation very diffidently proffered by Bob, and really accepted with a view to trying a novel situation. He was six years senior to Bob. and had left Oxford before the boy’s entrance there, but chance meetings at a friend's house when Seton was in the neighbourhood had led to a mutual liking, with a great deal of hero-worship on the one side, and a suspicion of patronage on the other. A casual remark from Seton that he might be in the neighbourhood of Daysleigh in June, had presently caused his appearance there as the Kenyons’ guest.

Mark Seton was the only son of a clever man. He (had inherited the parental brain-power, but, so far. had put it to no practical use. There were great possibilities lying dormant within him, and there was. withal, a strong element of laziness also. He had spent the greater part of his life in London and on the Continent, had seen many things, read most things, and formed his opinion on everything. But at six and twenty Mark Seton was still a dreamer, a dilettante.

It was a strangfe life with which he was thus confronted in the quiet little village, where people seemed to vegetate, rather than live, where the old ideas gave place to no new ones, and a sleepy stagnation seemed allpervading. He felt vaguely sorry for young Kenyon’s sisters, and wondered how* his sister would have endured this life—Rose, whose one object was to “get in” as many social duties and obligations as could possibly be compressed into the twenty-four hours. He smiled as he thought of Rose. And they were such nice girls, these sim-ple-minded Miss Kenyons: and how delicately beautiful Cecelia was! So mused Mark one glorious June morning. several days after his arrival at the Vicarage. I was sitting under the big cedar tree in front of the drawing-room windows, enjoying a glorious view over distant forest and hills. Mark was ostensibly reading, somewhat distracted—though not unpleasantly so—by the shouts of Bob and Margaret from the tennis court, where they were engaged in energetic singles, necessitating a vast expenditure of energy and talk. Out of the long drawing-room window stepped Cecelia, in a white frock and big shady hat. Mark rose, quickly throwing down his book on to the rustic seat. “Where are you off to, Miss Cecelia?” he asked, lightly. “Ah. I see that has to be tilled,” pointing to the flat basket in her hand. “May I come and help?" She gazed at him a moment, half doubtfully. All three g'rls were a trifle afraid of Bob’s grave friend. But Mark’s frank grey eyes smiled down at her, and she smiled too. “If you will,” she said. They turned into the red-walled kitchen garden. Here, in lavish and somewhat untidy profusion were “roses—roses everywhere,” pink, red, yellow, white. Mark filled her basket rapfdly. while Cecelia ’watched him with a growing admiration for his tall, lithe young figure, with its suggestion of latent strength. “What a heavenly day it is!” he exclaimed, involuntarily as he placed a last red rose on the over-full basket. “Daysleigh is an ideal spot on such a day.” and he began to sing in his eleai - voice: “ I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows. “How pretty that is,” exclaimed Cecelia. “You know it, don’t you?” he asked. as they turned away from therose beds.

She shook her head and wondered if Mr Seton thought her appall ngiy ignorant, lint he was smiling still as he told her where the words occurred.

•‘Oh, Shakspere," her face fell a little. “1 never read Shakspere,”

she confessed; "it looks so dull, and those great books in the study are so heavy to lift down.”

Mark drew a small volume from his pocket. "That's a more portable form, isn't it?” he smiled. “I was reading ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream' only this morning. You must let me read you the play, Miss Cecelia.”

“Oh. will you?” Her pleasure showed itself on her expressive face. They went back to the rustic seat on the lawn and Mark began to read. And that was the beginning ej many morning readings under the cedar tree, while Bob and Margaret argued in friendly fashion over their games, and Elizabeth was busy in the parish. Cecelia grew to know and appreciate Shakespere and to place him only second to her living hero. It was small wonder that Cecelia magnified Mark Seton into

such a position. She asked for nothing but to worship at a distance this being who had brought a fresh element into her life. She did not analyse her feelings; she was only conscious of them, and in such a < aisciousness was happy. She knew that both mentally and socially Mark was her superior; but he was s i kind, so considerate, that he never made her feel her ignorance. Had she known that many a girl as beautiful as herself had competed for the favour of one of Mark Seton’s carelessly accorded smiles Cecelia would have acknowledged the fact as no more than his due. So a golden week, and another equally happy rolled on, then something happened. The Squire and his wife found themselves called unon —somewhat unwillingly—to entertain some orphan nephews and nieces, and finding it incumbent upon them to do something to amuse the boys and girls, decided on a picnic as being an easy form of amusement. To this picnic, to be held in the woods around Daysleigh Hall, the Vicarage party, together with some half-dozen neighbours, were bidden.

It was a glorious day in early July. Cecelia, in a white frock, and her face radiant with happiness, was startlingly beautiful. Even the old Squire, who was not prone to enthusiasm, was heard to mutter that “that little girl of the parson’s was deuced pretty.” The girl was conscious for the first time of a new sensation. She spoke very little to Mark and hardly glanced in his direction, but she realised that day that his one object was to be by her side. And presently, after the early tea when the party broke up into twosandthreesto wander idly through the woods, Mark and Cecelia found themselves alone. They were silent for a while. The very happiness of living seemed almost enough that evening. The sun was sending golden touches of light down the green aisles of the woods and touching Cecelia’s soft hair. And then Mark, watching her, spoke. “Cecelia,” .he said, tenderly, “you know. I think, that I love you. Will you be my wife, dear?” There was a little silence in which only the birds answered him. Cecelia had taken off her shady hat, and her fair, wavy hair was a little ruffled. Mark always afterwards remembered her as she stood before him that summer evening, in her delicate, pure beauty, like some little saint of old. Suddenly she raised her brown eyes to his beseeching grey ones, but there was not a suspicion of coquetry in the girl’s manner.

“Yes, Mark,” she whispered. And he kissed her with a tenderness that was almost reverence. There came no

shadow to cloud Cecelia’s happiness till a chance remark of her lover’s brought to her mind a recollection and a fear. “Dearest,” he asked, “what will your father say? Will he be willing to give you to me?”

She shivered a little, involuntarily. The remembrance of her father’s bitter criticism on Professor Seton’s religious views flashed across her

mind. What did that matter, though? Mark had joined in the daily family prapers, had been to church with them on Sunday, nay, had even shared her hymn book. But, oh! what would her father say? Mark noted the shiver and laid a tender hand on hers. “You are repenting already,” he said, half reproachfully. But she shook her head and tried tc explain to him her fears. Her father’s views so strict, so particular, and he had heard that Professor Seton’s views were so, so . She faltered pitifully and stopped abruptly. But Mark’s face had grown very grave. He pulled a leaf cruelly to pieces. “My father is the best and kindest of men,” he said, slowly. “And he is what the world, perhaps, calls an atheist, and I, I ” “Yes?” she whispered, eagerly, pitifully. He turned to her with one of his bright smiles. “I will be whatever you will make me, Cecelia.” But she shook her head sadly. It was not with such loosely held opinions or hopes that Mr Kenyon’s rigorous questions could be met. The evening passed vaguely away. Something of the glory of it seemed to have vanished for at least two people. Cecelia was conscious of a slight look of reproachful questioning on Elizabeth’s face as they walked homewards, and clung to Bob’s side with a tenacity that astonished even that favourite brother. It was growing late when they reached the vicarage. Elizabeth remarked on Cecelia’s pallor, and sent her early to

bed. Mark lit her candle for her in the dusky hall where they were for one moment alone.

"To-morrow, after church,” he said, gent.y, "1 shall speak to your father.” But her hands trembled in his own as she took her candle, and went tiredly upstairs. She spent the night in alternate hopes and fears, and appeared at breakast with such heavy eyes, anu obvious want of appetite, as to draw upon herse’f even Mr Kenyon’s observation. “You look tired, Cecelia,” he observed, in a kindly tone somewhat tinged with severity. Mr Kenyon did not altogether approve of picnics. “Perhaps you had better rest instead of attending morning service.” This concession from her father, who regarded absence from morning service as one of the seven deadly sins, touched Cecelia, but she refused to stay at home. She was quite well, she declared. But to herself she whispered mournfully, was it not Mark’s last Sunday at Daysleigh? He walked to church with Elizabeth, but contrived to sit next to Cecelia in the vicarage pew, and again shared her hymn-book. His pure tenor voice rang out almost triumphantly in

“Onward Christian Soldiers”; even Mr Kenyon, lifted far above earthly things, heard it, and glanced kindly into the pew in front of him. In after days Cecelia’s hymn-book bore a mark and a date against that hymn.

To Cecelia the sermon seemed endless, but at last Mr Kenyon released a congregation who accepted his platitudes with the toleration that comes of long use, and the vicarage party were walking homewards again. Mark gave her one look of encouragement, and then disappeared into the study. She heard her