Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘I suppose you will be going back to London, Wilfrid?’ said my aunt, who had already been persuaded to pay her sister a visit.

‘I think I had better,’ I answered. ‘When I have a chance of publishing a book, I should like to come and write it, or at least finish it, here, if you will let me.’

‘The place is your own, Wilfrid. Of course I shall be very glad to have you here.’

‘The place is yours as much as mine, aunt,’ I replied. ‘I can’t bear to think that my uncle has no right over it still. I believe he has, and therefore it is yours just the same—not to mention my own wishes in the matter.’

She made no reply, and I saw that both she and her sister were shocked either at my mentioning the dead man, or at my supposing he had any earthly rights left. The next day they set out together, leaving in the house the wife of the head man at the farm, to attend to me until I should return to town. I had purposed to set out the following morning, but I found myself enjoying so much the undisturbed possession of the place, that I remained there for ten days; and when I went, it was with the intention of making it my home as soon as I might: I had grown enamoured of the solitude so congenial to labour. Before I left I arranged my uncle’s papers, and in doing so found several early sketches which satisfied me that he might have distinguished himself in literature if his fate had led him thitherward.

Having given the house in charge to my aunt’s deputy, Mrs Herbert, I at length returned to my lodging in Camden Town. There I found two letters waiting me, the one announcing the serious illness of my aunt, and the other her death. The latter was two days old. I wrote to express my sorrow, and excuse my apparent neglect, and having made a long journey to see her also laid in the earth, I returned to my old home, in order to make fresh arrangements.

CHAPTER XXX. PROPOSALS

Mrs Herbert attended me during the forenoon, but left me after my early dinner. I made my tea for myself, and a tankard filled from a barrel of ale of my uncle’s brewing, with a piece of bread and cheese, was my unvarying supper. The first night I felt very lonely, almost indeed what the Scotch call eerie. The place, although inseparably interwoven with my earliest recollections, drew back and stood apart from me—a thing to be thought about; and, in the ancient house, amidst the lonely field, I felt like a ghost condemned to return and live the vanished time over again. I had had a fire lighted in my own room; for, although the air was warm outside, the thick stone walls seemed to retain the chilly breath of the last Winter. The silent rooms that filled the house forced the sense of their presence upon me. I seemed to see the forsaken things in them staring at each other, hopeless and useless, across the dividing space, as if saying to themselves, ‘We belong to the dead, are mouldering to the dust after them, and in the dust alone we meet.’ From the vacant rooms my soul seemed to float out beyond, searching still—to find nothing but loneliness and emptiness betwixt me and the stars; and beyond the stars more loneliness and more emptiness still—no rest for the sole of the foot of the wandering Psyche—save—one mighty saving—an exception which, if true, must be the one all-absorbing rule. ‘But,’ I was saying to myself, ‘love unknown is not even equal to love lost,’ when my reverie was broken by the dull noise of a horse’s hoofs upon the sward. I rose and went to the window. As I crossed the room, my brain rather than myself suddenly recalled the night when my pendulum drew from the churning trees the unwelcome genius of the storm. The moment I reached the window—there through the dim Summer twilight, once more from the trees, now as still as sleep, came the same figure.

Mr Coningham saw me at the fire-lighted window, and halted.

‘May I be admitted?’ he asked ceremoniously.

I made a sign to him to ride round to the door, for I could not speak aloud: it would have been rude to the memories that haunted the silent house.

‘May I come in for a few minutes, Mr Cumbermede?’ he asked again, already at the door by the time I had opened it.

‘By all means, Mr Coningham,’ I replied. ‘Only you must tie your horse to this ring, for we—I—have no stable here.’

‘I’ve done this before,’ he answered, as he made the animal fast. ‘I know the ways of the place well enough. But surely you’re not here in absolute solitude?’

‘Yes, I am. I prefer being alone at present.’

‘Very unhealthy, I must say! You will grow hypochondriacal if you mope in this fashion,’ he returned, following me up-stairs to my room.

‘A day or two of solitude now and then would, I suspect, do most people more good than harm,’ I answered. ‘But you must not think I intend leading a hermit’s life. Have you heard that my aunt—?’

‘Yes, yes.—You are left alone in the world. But relations are not a man’s only friends—and certainly not always his best friends.’

I made no reply, thinking of my uncle.

‘I did not know you were down,’ he resumed. ‘I was calling at my father’s, and seeing your light across the park, thought it possible you might be here, and rode over to see. May I take the liberty of asking what your plans are?’ he added, seating himself by the fire.

‘I have hardly had time to form new ones; but I mean to stick to my work, anyhow.’

‘You mean your profession?’

‘Yes, if you will allow me to call it such. I have had success enough already to justify me in going on.’

‘I am more pleased than surprised to hear it,’ he answered.

‘But what will you do with the old nest?’

‘Let the old nest wait for the old bird, Mr Coningham—keep it to die in.’

‘I don’t like to hear a young fellow talking that way,’ he remonstrated. ‘You’ve got a long life to live yet—at least I hope so. But if you leave the house untenanted till the period to which you allude, it will be quite unfit by that time even for the small service you propose to require of it. Why not let it—for a term of years? I could find you a tenant, I make no doubt.’

‘I won’t let it. I shall meet the world all the better if I have a place of my own to take refuge in.’

‘Well, I can’t say but there’s good in that fancy. To have any spot of your own, however small—freehold, I mean—must be a comfort. At the same time, what’s the world for, if you’re to meet it in that half-hearted way? I don’t mean that every young man—there are exceptions—must sow just so many bushels of avena fatua. There are plenty of enjoyments to be got without leading a wild life—which I should be the last to recommend to any young man of principle. Take my advice, and let the place. But pray don’t do me the injustice to fancy I came to look after a job. I shall be most happy to serve you.’

‘I am exceedingly obliged to you,’ I answered. ‘If you could let the farm for me for the rest of the lease, of which there are but a few years to run, that would be of great consequence to me. Herbert, my uncle’s foreman, who has the management now, is a very good fellow, but I doubt if he will do more than make both ends meet without my aunt, and the accounts would bother me endlessly.’

‘I shall find out whether Lord Inglewold would be inclined to resume the fag-end. In such case, as the lease has been a long one, and land has risen much, he would doubtless pay a part of the difference. Then there’s the stock, worth a good deal, I should think. I’ll see what can be done. And then there’s the stray bit of park?’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked. ‘We have been in the way of calling it the park, though why I never could tell. I confess it does look like a bit of Sir Giles’s that had wandered beyond the gates.’

‘There is some old story or other about it, I believe. The possessors of the Moldwarp estate have, from time immemorial, regarded it as properly theirs. I know that.’

‘I am much obliged to them, certainly. I have been in the habit of thinking differently.’

‘Of course, of course,’ he rejoined, laughing. ‘But there may have been some—mistake somewhere. I know Sir Giles would give five times its value for it.’

‘He should not have it if he offered the Moldwarp estate in exchange,’ I cried indignantly; and the thought flashed across me that this temptation was what my uncle had feared from the acquaintance of Mr Coningham.

‘Your sincerity will not be put to so great a test as that,’ he returned, laughing quite merrily. ‘But I am glad you have such a respect for real property. At the same time—how many acres are there of it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, curtly and truly.

‘It is of no consequence. Only if you don’t want to be tempted, don’t let Sir Giles or my father broach the subject. You needn’t look at me. I am not Sir Giles’s agent. Neither do my father and I run in double harness. He hinted, however, this very day, that he believed the old fool wouldn’t stick at £500 an acre for this bit of grass—if he couldn’t get it for less.’

‘If that is what you have come about, Mr Coningham,’ I rejoined, haughtily I dare say, for something I could not well define made me feel as if the dignity of a thousand ancestors were perilled in my own,’ I beg you will not say another word on the subject, for sell this land I will not.’

He was looking at me strangely. His eye glittered with what, under other circumstances, I might have taken for satisfaction; but he turned his face away and rose, saying with a curiously altered tone, as he took up his hat,

‘I’m very sorry to have offended you, Mr Cumbermede. I sincerely beg your pardon. I thought our old—friendship may I not call it?—would have justified me in merely reporting what I had heard. I see now that I was wrong. I ought to have shown more regard for your feelings at this trying time. But again I assure you I was only reporting, and had not the slightest intention of making myself a go-between in the matter. One word more: I have no doubt I could let the field for you—at good grazing rental. That I think you can hardly object to.’

‘I should be much obliged to you,’ I replied—‘for a term of not more than seven years—but without the house, and with the stipulation expressly made that I have right of way in every direction through it.’

‘Reasonable enough,’ he answered.

‘One thing more,’ I said: ‘all these affairs must be pure matters of business between us.’

‘As you please,’ he returned, with, I fancied, a shadow of disappointment, if not of displeasure, on his countenance. ‘I should have been more gratified if you had accepted a friendly office; but I will do my best for you, notwithstanding.’

‘I had no intention of being unfriendly, Mr Coningham,’ I said. ‘But when I think of it, I fear I may have been rude, for the bare proposal of selling this Naboth’s vineyard of mine would go far to make me rude to any man alive. It sounds like an invitation to dishonour myself in the eyes of my ancestors.’

‘Ah! you do care about your ancestors?’ he said, half musingly, and looking into his hat.

‘Of course I do. Who is there does not?’

‘Only some ninety-nine hundredths of the English nation.’

‘I cannot well forget,’ I returned, ‘what my ancestors have done for me.’

‘Whereas most people only remember that their ancestors can do no more for them. I declare I am almost glad I offended you. It does one good to hear a young man speak like that in these degenerate days, when a buck would rather be the son of a rich brewer than a decayed gentleman. I will call again about the end of the week—that is if you will be here—and report progress.’

His manner, as he took his leave, was at once more friendly and more respectful than it had yet been—a change which I attributed to his having discovered in me more firmness than he had expected, in regard, if not of my rights, at least of my social position.

CHAPTER XXXI. ARRANGEMENTS

My custom at this time, and for long after I had finally settled down in the country, was to rise early in the morning—often, as I used when a child, before sunrise, in order to see the first burst of the sun upon the new-born world. I believed then, as I believe still, that, lovely as the sunset is, the sunrise is more full of mystery, poetry, and even, I had almost said, pathos. But often ere he was well up I had begun to imagine what the evening would be like, and with what softly mingled, all but imperceptible, gradations it would steal into night. Then, when the night came, I would wander about my little field, vainly endeavouring to picture the glory with which the next day’s sun would rise upon me. Hence the morning and evening became well known to me; and yet I shrink from saying it, for each is endless in the variety of its change. And the longer I was alone, I became the more enamoured of solitude, with the labour to which, in my case, it was so helpful; and began, indeed, to be in some danger of losing sight of my relation to ‘a world of men,’ for with that world my imagination and my love for Charley were now my sole recognizable links.

In the fore-part of the day I read and wrote; and in the after-part found both employment and pleasure in arranging my uncle’s books, amongst which I came upon a good many treasures, whereof I was now able in some measure to appreciate the value—thinking often, amidst their ancient dust and odours, with something like indignant pity, of the splendid collection, as I was sure it must be, mouldering away in utter neglect at the neighbouring Hall.

I was on my knees in the midst of a pile which I had drawn from a cupboard under the shelves, when Mrs Herbert showed Mr Coningham in. I was annoyed, for my uncle’s room was sacred; but as I was about to take him to my own, I saw such a look of interest upon his face that it turned me aside, and I asked him to take a seat.

‘If you do not mind the dust,’ I said.

‘Mind the dust!’ he exclaimed, ‘—of old books! I count it almost sacred. I am glad you know how to value them.’

What right had he to be glad? How did he know I valued them? How could I but value them? I rebuked my offence, however, and after a little talk about them, in which he revealed much more knowledge than I should have expected, it vanished. He then informed me of an arrangement he and Lord Inglewold’s factor had been talking over in respect of the farm; also of an offer he had had for my field. I considered both sufficiently advantageous in my circumstances, and the result was that I closed with both.

A few days after this arrangement I returned to London, intending to remain for some time. I had a warm welcome from Charley, but could not help fancying an unacknowledged something dividing us. He appeared, notwithstanding, less oppressed, and, in a word, more like other people. I proceeded at once to finish two or three papers and stories, which late events had interrupted. But within a week London had grown to me stifling and unendurable, and I longed unspeakably for the free air of my field and the loneliness of my small castle. If my reader regard me as already a hypochondriac, the sole disproof I have to offer is, that I was then diligently writing what some years afterwards obtained a hearty reception from the better class of the reading public. Whether my habits were healthy or not, whether my love of solitude was natural or not, I cannot but hope from this that my modes of thinking were. The end was that, after finishing the work I had on hand, I collected my few belongings, gave up my lodging, bade Charley good-bye, receiving from him a promise to visit me at my own house if possible, and took my farewell of London for a season, determined not to return until I had produced a work which my now more enlarged judgment might consider fit to see the light. I had laid out all my spare money upon books, with which, in a few heavy trunks, I now went back to my solitary dwelling. I had no care upon my mind, for my small fortune, along with the rent of my field, was more than sufficient for my maintenance in the almost anchoretic seclusion in which I intended to live, and hence I had every advantage for the more definite projection and prosecution of a work which had been gradually shaping itself in my mind for months past.

Before leaving for London, I had already spoken to a handy lad employed upon the farm, and he had kept himself free to enter my service when I should require him. He was the more necessary to me that I still had my mare Lilith, from which nothing but fate should ever part me. I had no difficulty in arranging with the new tenant for her continued accommodation at the farm; while, as Herbert still managed its affairs, the services of his wife were available as often as I required them. But my man soon made himself capable of doing everything for me, and proved himself perfectly trustworthy.

I must find a name for my place—for its own I will not write: let me call it The Moat: there were signs, plain enough to me after my return from Oxford, that there had once been a moat about it, of which the hollow I have mentioned as the spot where I used to lie and watch for the sun’s first rays, had evidently been a part. But the remains of the moat lay at a considerable distance from the house, suggesting a large area of building at some former period, proof of which, however, had entirely vanished, the house bearing every sign of a narrow completeness.

The work I had undertaken required a constantly recurring reference to books of the sixteenth century; and although I had provided as many as I thought I should need, I soon found them insufficient. My uncle’s library was very large for a man in his position, but it was not by any means equally developed; and my necessities made me think often of the old library at the Hall, which might contain somewhere in its ruins every book I wanted. Not only, however, would it have been useless to go searching in the formless mass for this or that volume, but, unable to grant Sir Giles the desire of his heart in respect of my poor field, I did not care to ask of him the comparatively small favour of being allowed to burrow in his dust-heap of literature.

I was sitting, one hot noon, almost in despair over a certain little point concerning which I could find no definite information, when Mr Coningham called. After some business matters had been discussed, I mentioned, merely for the sake of talk, the difficulty I was in—the sole disadvantage of a residence in the country as compared with London, where the British Museum was the unfailing resort of all who required such aid as I was in want of.

‘But there is the library at Moldwarp Hall,’ he said.

‘Yes, there it is; but there is not here.’

‘I have no doubt Sir Giles would make you welcome to borrow what books you wanted. He is a good-natured man, Sir Giles.’

I explained my reason for not troubling him.

‘Besides,’ I added, ‘the library is in such absolute chaos, that I might with less loss of time run up to London, and find any volume I happened to want among the old-book-shops. You have no idea what a mess Sir Giles’s books are in—scarcely two volumes of the same book to be found even in proximity. It is one of the most painful sights I ever saw.’

He said little more, but from what followed, I suspect either he or his father spoke to Sir Giles on the subject; for, one day, as I was walking past the park-gates, which I had seldom entered since my return, I saw him just within, talking to old Mr Coningham. I saluted him in passing, and he not only returned the salutation in a friendly manner, but made a step towards me as if he wished to speak to me. I turned and approached him. He came out and shook hands with me.

‘I know who you are, Mr Cumbermede, although I have never had the pleasure of speaking to you before,’ he said frankly.

‘There you are mistaken, Sir Giles,’ I returned; ‘but you could hardly be expected to remember the little boy who, many years ago, having stolen one of your apples, came to you to comfort him.’

He laughed heartily.

‘I remember the circumstance well,’ he said. ‘And you were that unhappy culprit? Ha! ha! ha! To tell the truth, I have thought of it many times. It was a remarkably fine thing to do.’

‘What! steal the apple, Sir Giles?’

‘Make the instant reparation you did.’

‘There was no reparation in asking you to box my ears.’

‘It was all you could do, though.’

‘To ease my own conscience, it was. There is always a satisfaction, I suppose, in suffering for your sins. But I have thought a thousand times of your kindness in shaking hands with me instead. You treated me as the angels treat the repentant sinner, Sir Giles.’

‘Well, I certainly never thought of it in that light,’ he said; then, as if wishing to change the subject,—‘Don’t you find it lonely now your uncle is gone?’ he said.

‘I miss him more than I can tell.’

‘A very worthy man he was—too good for this world, by all accounts.’

‘He’s not the worse off for that now, Sir Giles, I trust.’ ‘No; of course not,’ he returned quickly, with the usual shrinking from the slightest allusion to what is called the other world.—‘Is there anything I can do for you? You are a literary man, they tell me. There are a good many books of one sort and another lying at the Hall. Some of them might be of use to you. They are at your service. I am sure you are to be trusted even with mouldy books, which, from what I hear, must be a greater temptation to you now than red-cheeked apples,’ he added with another merry laugh.

‘I will tell you what,’ Sir Giles, I answered. ‘It has often grieved me to think of the state of your library. It would be scarcely possible for me to find a book in it now. But if you would trust me, I should be delighted, in my spare hours, of which I can command a good many, to put the whole in order for you.’

‘I should be under the greatest obligation. I have always intended having some capable man down from London to arrange it. I am no great reader myself, but I have the highest respect for a good library. It ought never to have got into the condition in which I found it.’

‘The books are fast going to ruin, I fear.’

‘Are they indeed?’ he exclaimed, with some consternation. ‘I was not in the least aware of that. I thought so long as I let no one meddle with them, they were safe enough.’

‘The law of the moth and rust holds with books as well as other unused things,’ I answered.

‘Then, pray, my dear sir, undertake the thing at once,’ he said, in a tone to which the uneasiness of self-reproach gave a touch of imperiousness. ‘But really,’ he added, ‘it seems trespassing on your goodness much too far. Your time is valuable. Would it be a long job?’

‘It would doubtless take some months; but the pleasure of seeing order dawn from confusion would itself repay me. And I might come upon certain books of which I am greatly in want. You will have to allow me a carpenter though, for the shelves are not half sufficient to hold the books; and I have no doubt those there are stand in need of repair.’

‘I have a carpenter amongst my people. Old houses want constant attention. I shall put him under your orders with pleasure. Come and dine with me to-morrow, and we’ll talk it all over.’

‘You are very kind,’ I said. ‘Is Mr Brotherton at home?’

‘I am sorry to say he is not.’

‘I heard the other day that he had sold his commission.’

‘Yes—six months ago. His regiment was ordered to India, and—and—his mother–But he does not give us much of his company,’ added the old man. ‘I am sorry he is not at home, for he would have been glad to meet you.’

Instead of responding, I merely made haste to accept Sir Giles’s invitation. I confess I did not altogether relish having anything to do with the future property of Geoffrey Brotherton; but the attraction of the books was great, and in any case I should be under no obligation to him; neither was the nature of the service I was about to render him such as would awaken any sense of obligation in a mind like his.

I could not help recalling the sarcastic criticisms of Clara when I entered the drawing-room of Moldwarp Hall—a long, low-ceiled room, with its walls and stools and chairs covered with tapestry, some of it the work of the needle, other some of the Gobelin loom; but although I found Lady Brotherton a common enough old lady, who showed little of the dignity of which she evidently thought much, and was more condescending to her yeoman neighbour than was agreeable, I did not at once discover ground for the severity of those remarks. Miss Brotherton, the eldest of the family, a long-necked lady, the flower of whose youth was beginning to curl at the edges, I found well-read, but whether in books or the reviews of them, I had to leave an open question as yet. Nor was I sufficiently taken with her not to feel considerably dismayed when she proffered me her assistance in arranging the library. I made no objection at the time, only hinting that the drawing up of a catalogue afterwards might be a fitter employment for her fair fingers; but I resolved to create such a fearful pother at the very beginning, that her first visit should be her last. And so I doubt not it would have fallen out, but for something else. The only other person who dined with us was a Miss Pease—at least so I will call her—who, although the law of her existence appeared to be fetching and carrying for Lady Brotherton, was yet, in virtue of a poor-relationship, allowed an uneasy seat at the table. Her obedience was mechanically perfect. One wondered how the mere nerves of volition could act so instantaneously upon the slightest hint. I saw her more than once or twice withdraw her fork when almost at her lips, and, almost before she had laid it down, rise from her seat to obey some half-whispered, half-nodded behest. But her look was one of injured meekness and self-humbled submission. Sir Giles now and then gave her a kind or merry word, but she would reply to it with almost abject humility. Her face was grey and pinched, her eyes were very cold, and she ate as if she did not know one thing from another.