Wilfrid Cumbermede

I was not thoroughly in love with Clara; but it was certainly the hope of seeing her, and not the pleasure of handling the dusty books, that drew me back to the library that afternoon. I had got rather tired of the whole affair in the morning. It was very hot, and the dust was choking, and of the volumes I opened as they passed through my hands, not one was of the slightest interest to me. But for the chance of seeing Clara I should have lain in the grass instead.

No one came. I grew weary, and for a change retreated into the armoury. Evidently, not the slightest heed was paid to the weapons now, and I was thinking with myself that, when I had got the books in order, I might give a few days to furbishing and oiling them, when the door from the gallery opened, and Clara entered.

‘What! a truant?’ she said.

‘You take accusation at least by the forelock, Clara. Who is the real truant now—if I may suggest a mistake?’

‘I never undertook anything. How many guesses have you made as to the cause of your desertion to-day?’

‘Well, three or four.’

‘Have you made one as to the cause of Miss Brotherton’s graciousness to you yesterday?’

‘At least I remarked the change.’

‘I will tell you. There was a short notice of some of your writings in a certain magazine which I contrived should fall in her way.’

‘Impossible!’ I exclaimed. ‘I have never put my name to anything.’

‘But you have put the same name to all your contributions.’

‘How should the reviewer know it meant me?’

‘Your own name was never mentioned.’

I thought she looked a little confused as she said this.

‘Then how should Miss Brotherton know it meant me?’

She hesitated a moment—then answered:

‘Perhaps from internal evidence.—I suppose I must confess I told her.’

‘Then how did you know?

‘I have been one of your readers for a long time.’

‘But how did you come to know my work?’

‘That has oozed out.’

‘Some one must have told you,’ I said.

‘That is my secret,’ she replied, with the air of making it a mystery in order to tease me.

‘It must be all a mistake,’ I said. ‘Show me the magazine.’

‘As you won’t take my word for it, I won’t.’

‘Well, I shall soon find out. There is but one could have done it. It is very kind of him, no doubt; but I don’t like it. That kind of thing should come of itself—not through friends.’

‘Who do you fancy has done it?’

‘If you have a secret, so have I.’

My answer seemed to relieve her, though I could not tell what gave me the impression.

‘You are welcome to yours, and I will keep mine,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to explain Miss Brotherton’s condescension yesterday.’

‘I thought you were going to explain why you didn’t come to-day.’

‘That is only a re-action. I have no doubt she thinks she went too far yesterday.’

‘That is absurd. She was civil; that was all.’

‘In reading your thermometer, you must know its zero first,’ she replied sententiously. ‘Is the sword you call yours there still?’

‘Yes, and I call it mine still.’

‘Why don’t you take it, then? I should have carried it off long ago.’

‘To steal my own would be to prejudice my right,’ I returned. ‘But I have often thought of telling Sir Giles about it.’

‘Why don’t you, then?’

‘I hardly know. My head has been full of other things, and any time will do. But I should like to see it in its own place once more.’

I had taken it from the wall, and now handed it to her.

‘Is this it?’ she said carelessly.

‘It is—just as it was carried off my bed that night.’

‘What room were you in?’ she asked, trying to draw it from the sheath.

‘I can’t tell. I’ve never been in it since.’

‘You don’t seem to me to have the curiosity natural to a—’

‘To a woman—no,’ I said.

‘To a man of spirit,’ she retorted, with an appearance of indignation. ‘I don’t believe you can tell even how it came into your possession!’

‘Why shouldn’t it have been in the family from time immemorial?’

‘So!—And you don’t care either to recover it, or to find out how you lost it!’

‘How can I? Where is Mr Close?’

‘Why, dead, years and years ago.’

‘So I understood. I can’t well apply to him, then, and I am certain no one else knows.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that. Perhaps Sir Giles—’

‘I am positive Sir Giles knows nothing about it.’

‘I have reason to think the story is not altogether unknown in the family.’

‘Have you told it, then?’

‘No, but I have heard it alluded to.’

‘By Sir Giles?’

‘No.’

‘By whom, then?’

‘I will answer no more questions.’

‘Geoffrey, I suppose?’

‘You are not polite. Do you suppose I am bound to tell you all I know?’

‘Not by any means. Only, you oughtn’t to pique a curiosity you don’t mean to satisfy.’

‘But if I’m not at liberty to say more?—All I meant to say was that, if I were you, I would get back that sword.’

‘You hint at a secret, and yet suppose I could carry off its object as I might a rusty nail, which any passer-by would be made welcome to!’

‘You might take it first, and mention the thing to Sir Giles afterwards.’

‘Why not mention it first?’

‘Only on the supposition you had not the courage to claim it.’

‘In that case I certainly shouldn’t have the courage to avow the deed afterwards. I don’t understand you, Clara.’

She laughed.

‘That is always your way,’ she said. ‘You take everything so seriously! Why couldn’t I make a proposition without being supposed to mean it?’

{Illustration: “Glued,” she echoed, “What do you mean?"}

I was not satisfied. There was something short of uprightness in the whole tone of her attempted persuasion—which indeed I could hardly believe to have been so lightly intended as she now suggested. The effect of my feeling for her was that of a slight frost on the Spring blossoms.

She had been examining the hilt with a look of interest, and was now for the third time trying to draw the blade from the sheath.

‘It’s no use, Clara,’ I said. ‘It has been too many years glued to the scabbard.’

‘Glued!’ she echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

I did not reply. An expression almost of horror shadowed her face, and at the same moment, to my astonishment, she drew it half-way.

‘Why! You enchantress!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never saw so much of it before. It is wonderfully bright—when one thinks of the years it has been shut in darkness.’

She handed it to me as it was, saying,

‘If that weapon was mine, I should never rest until I had found out everything concerning it.’

‘That is easily said, Clara; but how can I? My uncle knew nothing about it. My grandmother did, no doubt, but almost all I can remember her saying was something about my great-grandfather and Sir Marmaduke.’

As I spoke, I tried to draw it entirely, but it would yield no further. I then sought to replace it, but it would not move. That it yielded to Clara’s touch gave it a fresh interest and value.

‘I was sure it had a history,’ said Clara. ‘Have you no family papers? Your house you say is nearly as old as this: are there no papers of any kind in it?’

‘Yes, a few,’ I answered—‘the lease of the farm—and—’

‘Oh! rubbish!’ she said. ‘Isn’t the house your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘And have you ever thoroughly searched it?’

‘I haven’t had time yet.’

‘Not had time!’ she repeated, in a tone of something so like the uttermost contempt that I was bewildered.

‘I mean some day or other to have a rummage in the old lumber-room,’ I said.

‘Well, I do think that is the least you can do—if only out of respect to your ancestors. Depend on it, they don’t like to be forgotten any more than other people.’

The intention I had just announced was, however, but just born of her words. I had never yet searched even my grandmother’s bureau, and had but this very moment fancied there might be papers in some old chest in the lumber-room. That room had already begun to occupy my thoughts from another point of view, and hence, in part, no doubt the suggestion. I was anxious to have a visit from Charley. He might bring with him some of our London friends. There was absolutely no common room in the house except the hall-kitchen. The room we had always called the lumber-room was over it, and nearly as large. It had a tall stone chimney-piece, elaborately carved, and clearly had once been a room for entertainment. The idea of restoring it to its original dignity arose in my mind; and I hoped that, furnished after as antique a fashion as I could compass, it would prove a fine room. The windows were small, to be sure, and the pitch rather low, but the whitewashed walls were pannelled, and I had some hopes of the ceiling.

‘Who knows,’ I said to myself, as I walked home that evening, ‘but I may come upon papers? I do remember something in the furthest corner that looks like a great chest.’

Little more had passed between us, but Clara left me with the old Dissatisfaction beginning to turn itself, as if about to awake once more. For the present I hung the half-naked blade upon the wall, for I dared not force it lest the scabbard should go to pieces.

When I reached home, I found a letter from Charley, to the effect that, if convenient, he would pay me a visit the following week. His mother and sister, he said, had been invited to Moldwarp Hall. His father was on the continent for his health. Without having consulted them on the matter, which might involve them in after-difficulty, he would come to me, and so have an opportunity of seeing them in the sunshine of his father’s absence. I wrote at once that I should be delighted to receive him.

The next morning I spent with my man in the lumber-room; and before mid-day the rest of the house looked like an old curiosity shop—it was so littered with odds and ends of dust-bloomed antiquity. It was hard work, and in the afternoon I found myself disinclined for more exercise of a similar sort. I had Lilith out, and took a leisurely ride instead. The next day, and the next also, I remained at home. The following morning I went again to Moldwarp Hall. I had not been busy more than an hour or so when Clara, who, I presume, had in passing heard me at work, looked in.

‘Who is a truant now?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Here has Miss Brotherton been almost curious concerning your absence, and Sir Giles more than once on the point of sending to inquire after you!’

‘Why didn’t he, then?’

‘Oh! I suppose he was afraid it might look like an assertion of—of—of baronial rights, or something of the sort. How could you behave in such an inconsiderate fashion!’

‘You must allow me to have some business of my own.’

‘Certainly. But with so many anxious friends, you ought to have given a hint of your intentions.’

‘I had none, however.’

‘Of which? Friends or intentions?’

‘Either.’

‘What! No friends? I verily surprised Miss Pease in the act of studying her “Cookery for Invalids”—in the hope of finding a patient in you, no doubt. She wanted to come and nurse you, but daren’t propose it.’

‘It was very kind of her.’

‘No doubt. But then you see she’s ready to commit suicide any day, poor old thing, but for lack of courage!’

‘It must be dreary for her!’

‘Dreary! I should poison the old dragon.’

‘Well, perhaps I had better tell you, for Miss Pease’s sake, who is evidently the only one that cares a straw about me in the matter, that possibly I shall be absent a good many days this week, and perhaps the next too.’

‘Why, then—if I may ask—Mr Absolute?’

‘Because a friend of mine is going to pay me a visit. You remember Charley Osborne, don’t you? Of course you do. You remember the ice-cave, I am sure.’

‘Yes, I do—quite well,’ she answered.

I fancied I saw a shadow cross her face.

‘When do you expect him?’ she asked, turning away, and picking a book from the floor.

‘In a week or so, I think. He tells me his mother and sister are coming here on a visit.’

‘Yes—so I believe—to-morrow, I think. I wonder if I ought to be going. I don’t think I will. I came to please them—at all events not to please myself; but as I find it pleasanter than I expected, I won’t go without a hint and a half at least.’

‘Why should you? There is plenty of room.’

‘Yes; but don’t you see?—so many inferiors in the house at once might be too much for Madame Dignity. She finds one quite enough, I suspect.’

‘You do not mean that she regards the Osbornes as inferiors?’

‘Not a doubt of it. Never mind. I can take care of myself. Have you any work for me to-day?’

‘Plenty, if you are in a mood for it.’

‘I will fetch Miss Brotherton.’

‘I can do without her.’

She went, however, and did not return. As I walked home to dinner, she and Miss Brotherton passed me in the carriage, on their way, as I learned afterwards, to fetch the Osborne ladies from the rectory, some ten miles off. I did not return to Moldwarp Hall, but helped Styles in the lumber-room, which before night we had almost emptied.

The next morning I was favoured with a little desultory assistance from the two ladies, but saw nothing of the visitors. In the afternoon, and both the following days, I took my servant with me, who got through more work than the two together, and we advanced it so far that I was able to leave the room next the armoury in the hands of the carpenter and the housemaid, with sufficient directions, and did not return that week.

CHAPTER XXXV. A TALK WITH CHARLEY

The following Monday, in the evening, Charley arrived, in great spirits, more excited indeed than I liked to see him. There was a restlessness in his eye which made me especially anxious, for it raised a doubt whether the appearance of good spirits was not the result merely of resistance to some anxiety. But I hoped my companionship, with the air and exercise of the country, would help to quiet him again. In the late twilight we took a walk together up and down my field.

‘I suppose you let your mother know you were coming, Charley?’ I said.

‘I did not,’ he answered. ‘My father must have nothing to lay to their charge in case he should hear of our meeting.’

‘But he has not forbidden you to go home, has he?’

‘No, certainly. But he as good as told me I was not to go home while he was away. He does not wish me to be there without his presence to counteract my evil influences. He seems to regard my mere proximity as dangerous. I sometimes wonder whether the severity of his religion may not have affected his mind. Almost all madness, you know, turns either upon love or religion.’

‘So I have heard. I doubt it—with men. It may be with women.—But you won’t surprise them? It might startle your mother too much. She is not strong, you say. Hadn’t I better tell Clara Coningham? She can let them know you are here.’

‘It would be better.’

‘What do you say to going there with me to-morrow? I will send my man with a note in the morning.’

He looked a little puzzled and undetermined, but said at length,

‘I dare say your plan is the best. How long has Miss Coningham been here?’

‘About ten days, I think.’

He looked thoughtful and made no answer.

‘I see, you are afraid of my falling in love with her again,’ I said. ‘I confess I like her much better than I did, but I am not quite sure about her yet. She is very bewitching anyhow, and a little more might make me lose my heart to her. The evident dislike she has to Brotherton would of itself recommend her to any friend of yours or mine.’

He turned his face away.

‘Do not be anxious about me,’ I went on. ‘The first shadowy conviction of any untruthfulness in her, if not sufficient to change my feelings at once, would at once initiate a backward movement in them.’

He kept his face turned away, and I was perplexed. After a few moments of silence, he turned it towards me again, as if relieved by some resolution suddenly formed, and said with a smile under a still clouded brow,

‘Well, old fellow, we’ll see. It’ll all come right, I dare say. Write your note early, and we’ll follow it. How glad I shall be to have a glimpse of that blessed mother of mine without her attendant dragon!’

‘For God’s sake don’t talk of your father so! Surely, after all, he is a good man!’

‘Then I want a new reading of the word.’

‘He loves God, at least.’

‘I won’t stop to inquire—’ said Charley, plunging at once into argument—‘what influence for good it might or might not have to love a non-existence: I will only ask—Is it a good God he loves or a bad one? If the latter, he can hardly be called good for loving him.’

‘But if there be a God at all, he must be a good God.’

‘Suppose the true God to be the good God, it does not follow that my father worships him. There is such a thing as worshipping a false God. At least the Bible recognizes it. For my part, I find myself compelled to say—either that the true God is not a good God, or that my father does not worship the true God. If you say he worships the God of the Bible, I either admit or dispute the assertion, but set it aside as altering nothing; for if I admit it, the argument lies thus: my father worships a bad God; my father worships the God of the Bible: therefore the God of the Bible is a bad God; and if I admit the authority of the Bible, then the true God is a bad God. If, however, I dispute the assertion that he worships the God of the Bible, I am left to show, if I can, that the God of the Bible is a good God, and, if I admit the authority of the Bible, to worship another than my father’s God. If I do not admit the authority of the Bible, there may, for all that, be a good God, or, which is next best to a perfectly good God, there may be no God at all.’

‘Put like a lawyer, Charley: and yet I would venture to join issue with your first assertion—on which the whole argument is founded—that your father worships a bad God.’

‘Assuredly what he asserts concerning his God is bad.’

‘Admitted; but does he assert only bad things of his God?’

‘I daren’t say that. But God is one. You will hardly dare the proposition that an infinite being may be partly good and partly bad.’

‘No. I heartily hold that God must be one—a proposition far more essential than that there is one God—so far, at least, as my understanding can judge. It is only in the limited human nature that good and evil can co-exist. But there is just the point: we are not speaking of the absolute God, but of the idea of a man concerning that God. You could suppose yourself utterly convinced of a good God long before your ideas of goodness were so correct as to render you incapable of attributing anything wrong to that God. Supposing such to be the case, and that you came afterwards to find that you had been thinking something wrong about him, do you think you would therefore grant that you had been believing either in a wicked or in a false God?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then you must give your father the same scope. He attributes what we are absolutely certain are bad things to his God—and yet he may believe in a good God, for the good in his idea of God is that alone in virtue of which he is able to believe in him. No mortal can believe in the bad.’

‘He puts the evil foremost in his creed and exhortations.’

‘That may be. Few people know their own deeper minds. The more potent a power in us, I suspect it is the more hidden from our scrutiny.’

‘If there be a God, then, Wilfrid, he is very indifferent to what his creatures think of him.’

‘Perhaps very patient and hopeful, Charley—who knows? Perhaps he will not force himself upon them, but help them to grow into the true knowledge of him. Your father may worship the true God, and yet have only a little of that knowledge.’

A silence followed. At length—‘Thank you for my father,’ said Charley.

‘Thank my uncle,’ I said.

‘For not being like my father?—I do,’ he returned.

It was the loveliest evening that brooded round us as we walked. The moon had emerged from a rippled sea of grey cloud, over which she cast her dull opaline halo. Great masses and banks of cloud lay about the rest of the heavens, and, in the dark rifts between, a star or two were visible, gazing from the awful distance.

‘I wish I could let it into me, Wilfrid,’ said Charley, after we had been walking in silence for some time along the grass.

‘Let what into you, Charley?’

‘The night and the blue and the stars.’

‘Why don’t you, then?’

‘I hate being taken in. The more pleasant a self-deception, the less I choose to submit to it.’

‘That is reasonable. But where lies the deception?’

‘I don’t say it’s a deception. I only don’t know that it isn’t.’

‘Please explain.’

‘I mean what you call the beauty of the night.’

‘Surely there can be little question of that?’

‘Ever so little is enough. Suppose I asked you wherein its beauty consisted: would you be satisfied if I said—In the arrangement of the blue and the white, with the sparkles of yellow, and the colours about the scarce visible moon?’

‘Certainly not. I should reply that it lay in the gracious peace of the whole—troubled only with the sense of some lovely secret behind, of which itself was but the half-modelled representation, and therefore the reluctant outcome.’

‘Suppose I rejected the latter half of what you say, admitting the former, but judging it only the fortuitous result of the half-necessary, half-fortuitous concurrences of nature. Suppose I said:—The air which is necessary to our life, happens to be blue; the stars can’t help shining through it and making it look deep; and the clouds are just there because they must be somewhere till they fall again; all which is more agreeable to us than fog because we feel more comfortable in weather of the sort, whence, through complacency and habit, we have got to call it beautiful:—suppose I said this, would you accept it?’

‘Such a theory would destroy my delight in nature altogether.’

‘Well, isn’t it the truth?’

‘It would be easy to show that the sense of beauty does not spring from any amount of comfort; but I do not care to pursue the argument from that starting-point.—I confess when you have once waked the questioning spirit, and I look up at the clouds and the stars with what I may call sharpened eyes—eyes, that is, which assert their seeing, and so render themselves incapable for the time of submitting to impressions, I am as blind as any Sadducee could desire. I see blue, and white, and gold, and, in short, a tent-roof somewhat ornate. I dare say if I were in a miserable mood, having been deceived and disappointed like Hamlet, I should with him see there nothing but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. But I know that when I am passive to its powers, I am aware of a presence altogether different—of a something at once soothing and elevating, powerful to move shame—even contrition and the desire of amendment.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Charley hastily. ‘But let me suppose further—and, perhaps you will allow, better—that this blueness—I take a part for the whole—belongs essentially and of necessity to the atmosphere, itself so essential to our physical life; suppose also that this blue has essential relation to our spiritual nature—taking for the moment our spiritual nature for granted—suppose, in a word, all nature so related, not only to our physical but to our spiritual nature, that it and we form an organic whole full of action and reaction between the parts—would that satisfy you? Would it enable you to look on the sky this night with absolute pleasure? would you want nothing more?’

I thought for a little before I answered.

‘No, Charley,’ I said at last—‘it would not satisfy me. For it would indicate that beauty might be, after all, but the projection of my own mind—the name I gave to a harmony between that around me and that within me. There would then be nothing absolute in beauty. There would be no such thing in itself. It would exist only as a phase of me when I was in a certain mood; and when I was earthly-minded, passionate, or troubled, it would be nowhere. But in my best moods I feel that in nature lies the form and fashion of a peace and grandeur so much beyond anything in me, that they rouse the sense of poverty and incompleteness and blame in the want of them.’