Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘It would be a shame to cover it up again—would it not, Sir Giles?’ I remarked.

‘Indeed it would,’ he assented.

‘If it weren’t for that broken piece,’ said Clara. ‘That spoils it altogether. I should have the books up again as soon as possible.’

‘It does look shabby,’ said Charley. ‘I can’t say I should enjoy having anything so defective always before my eyes.’

‘We must have it taken down very carefully, Hobbes,’ said Sir Giles, turning to the carpenter.

‘Must it come down, Sir Giles?’ I interposed. ‘I think it would be risky. No one knows how long it has been there, and though it might hang where it is for a century yet, and look nothing the worse, it can’t be strong, and at best we could not get it down without some injury, while it is a great chance if it would fit any other place half as well.’

‘What do you propose, then?’

‘This is the largest room of the six, and the best lighted—with that lovely oriel window: I would venture to propose, Sir Giles, that it should be left clear of books and fitted up as a reading-room.’

‘But how would you deal with that frightful lacuna in the tapestry?’ said Charley.

‘Yes,’ said Sir Giles; ‘it won’t look handsome, I fear—do what you will.’

‘I think I know how to manage it,’ I said. ‘If I succeed to your satisfaction, will you allow me to carry out the project?’

‘But what are we to do with the books, then? We shan’t have room for them.’

‘Couldn’t you let me have the next room beyond?’

‘You mean to turn me out, I suppose,’ said Clara.

‘Is there tapestry on your walls?’ I asked.

‘Not a thread—all wainscot—painted.’

‘Then your room would be the very thing.’

‘It is much larger than any of these,’ she said.

‘Then do let us have it for the library, Sir Giles,’ I entreated.

‘I will see what Lady Brotherton says,’ he replied, and left the room.

In a few minutes we heard his step returning.

‘Lady Brotherton has no particular objection to giving up the room you want,’ he said. ‘Will you see Mrs Wilson, Clara, and arrange with her for your accommodation?’

‘With pleasure. I don’t mind where I’m put—unless it be in Lord Edward’s room—where the ghost is.’

‘You mean the one next to ours? There is no ghost there, I assure you,’ said Sir Giles, laughing, as he again left the room with short, heavy steps. ‘Manage it all to your own mind, Mr Cumbermede. I shall be satisfied,’ he called back as he went.

‘Until further notice,’ I said, with grandiloquence, ‘I request that no one may come into this room. If you are kind enough to assort the books we put up yesterday, oblige me by going through the armoury. I must find Mrs Wilson.’

‘I will go with you,’ said Clara. ‘I wonder where the old thing will want to put me. I’m not going where I don’t like, I can tell her,’ she added, following me down the stair and across the hall and the court.

We found the housekeeper in her room. I accosted her in a friendly way. She made but a bare response.

‘Would you kindly show me where I slept that night I lost my sword, Mrs Wilson?’ I said.

‘I know nothing about your sword, Mr Cumbermede,’ she answered, shaking her head and pursing up her mouth.

‘I don’t ask you anything about it, Mrs Wilson; I only ask you where I slept the night I lost it.’

‘Really, Mr Cumbermede, you can hardly expect me to remember in what room a visitor slept—let me see—it must be twelve or fifteen years ago! I do not take it upon me.’

‘Oh! never mind, then. I referred to the circumstances of that night, thinking they might help you to remember the room; but it is of no consequence; I shall find it for myself. Miss Coningham will, I hope, help me in the search. She knows the house better than I do.’

‘I must attend to my own business first, if you please, sir,’ said Clara. ‘Mrs Wilson, I am ordered out of my room by Mr Cumbermede. You must find me fresh quarters, if you please.’

Mrs Wilson stared.

‘Do you mean, miss, that you want your things moved to another bed-room?’

‘That is what I mean, Mrs Wilson.’

‘I must see what Lady Brotherton says to it, miss.’

‘Do, by all means.’

I saw that Clara was bent on annoying her old enemy, and interposed.

‘Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton have agreed to let me have Miss Coningham’s room for an addition to the library, Mrs Wilson,’ I said.

She looked very grim, but made no answer. We turned and left her. She stood for a moment as if thinking, and then, taking down her bunch of keys, followed us.

‘If you will come this way,’ she said, stopping just behind us at another door in the court, ‘I think I can show you the room you want. But really, Mr Cumbermede, you are turning the place upside down. If I had thought it would come to this—’

‘I hope to do so a little more yet, Mrs Wilson,’ I interrupted. ‘But I am sure you will be pleased with the result.’

She did not reply, but led the way up a stair, across the little open gallery, and by passages I did not remember, to the room I wanted. It was in precisely the same condition as when I occupied it.

‘This is the room, I believe,’ she said, as she unlocked and threw open the door. ‘Perhaps it would suit you, Miss Coningham?’

‘Not in the least,’ answered Clara. ‘Who knows which of my small possessions might vanish before the morning!’

The housekeeper’s face grew turkey-red with indignation.

‘Mr Cumbermede has been filling your head with some of his romances, I see, Miss Clara!’

I laughed, for I did not care to show myself offended with her rudeness.

‘Never you mind,’ said Clara; ‘I am not going to sleep there.’

‘Very good,’ said Mrs Wilson, in a tone of offence severely restrained.

‘Will you show me the way to the library?’ I requested.

‘I will,’ said Clara; ‘I know it as well as Mrs Wilson—every bit.’

‘Then that is all I want at present, Mrs Wilson,’ I said, as we came out of the room. ‘Don’t lock the door, though, please,’ I added. ‘Or, if you do, give me the key.’

She left the door open, and us in the passage. Clara led me to the library. There we found Charley waiting our return.

‘Will you take that little boy to his mother, Clara?’ I said. ‘I don’t want him here to-day. We’ll have a look over those papers in the evening, Charley.’

‘That’s right,’ said Clara. ‘I hope Charley will help you to a little rational interest in your own affairs. I am quite bewildered to think that an author, not to say a young man, the sole remnant of an ancient family, however humble, shouldn’t even know whether he had any papers in the house or not.’

‘We’ve come upon a glorious nest of such addled eggs, Clara. Charley and I are going to blow them to-night,’ I said.

‘You never know when such eggs are addled,’ retorted Clara. ‘You’d better put them under some sensible fowl or other first,’ she added, looking back from the door as they went.

I turned to the carpenter’s tool-basket, and taking from it an old chisel, a screw-driver, and a pair of pincers, went back to the room we had just left.

There could be no doubt about it. There was the tip of the dog’s tail, and the top of the hunter’s crossbow.

But my reader may not have retained in her memory the facts to which I implicitly refer. I would therefore, to spare repetition, beg her to look back to chapter xiv., containing the account of the loss of my sword.

In the consternation caused me by the discovery that this loss was no dream of the night, I had never thought of examining the wall of the chamber, to see whether there was in it a door or not; but I saw now at once plainly enough that the inserted patch did cover a small door. Opening it, I found within, a creaking wooden stair, leading up to another low door, which, fashioned like the door of a companion, opened upon the roof:—nowhere, except in the towers, had the Hall more than two stories. As soon as I had drawn back the bolt and stepped out, I found myself standing at the foot of an ornate stack of chimneys, and remembered quite well having tried the door that night Clara and I were shut out on the leads—the same night on which my sword was stolen.

For the first time the question now rose in my mind whether Mrs Wilson could have been in league with Mr Close. Was it likely I should have been placed in a room so entirely fitted to his purposes by accident? But I could not imagine any respectable woman running such a risk of terrifying a child out of his senses, even if she could have connived at his being robbed of what she might well judge unsuitable for his possession.

Descending again to the bed-room, I set to work with my tools. The utmost care was necessary, for the threads were weak with old age. I had only one or two slight mishaps, however, succeeding on the whole better than I had expected. Leaving the door denuded of its covering, I took the patch on my arm, and again sought the library. Hobbes’s surprise, and indeed pleasure, when he saw that my plunder not only fitted the gap, but completed the design, was great. I directed him to get the whole piece down as carefully as he could, and went to extract, if possible, a favour from Lady Brotherton.

She was of course very stiff—no doubt she would have called it dignified; but I did all I could to please her, and perhaps in some small measure succeeded. After representing, amongst other advantages, what an addition a suite of rooms filled with a valuable library must be to the capacity of the house for the reception and entertainment of guests, I ventured at last to beg the services of Miss Pease for the repair of the bit of the tapestry.

She rang the bell, sent for Miss Pease, and ordered her, in a style of the coldest arrogance, to put herself under my direction. She followed me to the door in the meekest manner, but declined the arm I offered. As we went I explained what I wanted, saying I could not trust it to any hands but those of a lady, expressing a hope that she would not think I had taken too great a liberty, and begging her to say nothing about the work itself, as I wished to surprise Sir Giles and my assistants. She said she would be most happy to help me, but when she saw how much was wanted, she did look a little dismayed. She went and fetched her work-basket at once, however, and set about it, tacking the edges to a strip of canvas, in preparation for some kind of darning, which would not, she hoped, be unsightly.

For a whole week she and the carpenter were the only persons I admitted, and while she gave to her darning every moment she could redeem from her attendance on Lady Brotherton, the carpenter and I were busy—he cleaning and polishing, and I ranging the more deserted parts of the house to find furniture suitable for our purpose. In Clara’s room was an old Turkey-carpet which we appropriated, and when we had the tapestry up again, which Miss Pease had at length restored in a marvellous manner—surpassing my best hopes, and more like healing than repairing—the place was to my eyes a very nest of dusky harmonies.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE OLD CHEST

I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark, sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were the sole furniture.

Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.

‘We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,’ she said; ‘and—’

‘That will be some time yet,’ I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; ‘and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich as that one.’

‘I believe old books are expensive now-a-days,’ she returned. ‘They are more sought after, I understand.’

We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara and Mary were assiduous in their help.

To go back for a little to my own old chest—we found it, as I said, full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not inclined to expend on them—for I had no pleasure in such details as involved nothing of the picturesque—I threw the one in my hand upon the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley, who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least a quarter of an hour, exclaimed—

‘Come, Charley; I’m sick of the rubbish. Let’s go and have a walk before supper.’

‘Rubbish!’ he repeated; ‘I am ashamed of you!’

‘I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she’s got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.’

‘Very like it!’ said Charley—‘calling such a chestful as this rubbish!’

‘I am pleased enough to possess it,’ I said; ‘but if they had been such books as some of those at the Hall—’

‘Look here, then,’ he said, stooping over the chest, and with some difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but had not yet examined—‘just see what you can make of that.’

I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was written—‘Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.’ Then followed what I will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty room hugging the folio. ‘Have you lost your senses?’ said Charley; but when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself—

‘Well, Charley, what are you finding there?’ I asked.

‘Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,’ he answered; ‘proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.’

‘You don’t mean I’m of the same blood as—as Geoffrey Brotherton!’ I said. ‘I would rather not, if it’s the same to you, Charley.’

‘I can’t help it: that’s the way things point,’ he answered, throwing down the parchment. ‘But I can’t read more now. Let’s go and have a walk. I’ll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.’

‘I’ll stop with you.’

‘No, you won’t. You’ll go and get on with your library. I shall do better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as well!’

‘But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look here, though,’ I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal. ‘Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at the Hall.’

‘That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!’

‘Or, like the mole or squint that re-appears in successive generations, the legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor,’ I said—and several things unexplained occurred to me as possibly having a common solution.

‘I find, however,’ said Charley, ‘that the name of Cumbermede is not mentioned in your papers more than about a hundred years back—as far as I have yet made out.’

‘That is odd,’ I returned, ‘seeing that in the same chest we find that book with my name, surname and Christian, and the date 1630.’

‘It is strange,’ he acquiesced, ‘and will perhaps require a somewhat complicated theory to meet it.’

We began to talk of other matters, and, naturally enough, soon came to Clara.

Charley was never ready to talk of her—indeed, avoided the subject in a way that continued to perplex me.

‘I confess to you, Charley,’ I said, ‘there is something about her I do not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were—I will not say underhand—but as if she had some object in view—some design upon you—’

‘Upon me!’ exclaimed Charley, looking at me suddenly and with a face from which all the colour had fled.

‘No, no, Charley, not that,’ I answered, laughing. ‘I used the word impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been talking about a witch—or a demon-lady—you are so frightened at the notion of her having you in her eye.’

He did not seem altogether relieved, and I caught an uneasy glance seeking my countenance.

‘But isn’t she charming?’ I went on. ‘It is only to you I could talk about her so. And after all it may be only a fancy.’

He kept his face downwards and aside, as if he were pondering and coming to no conclusion. The silence grew and grew until expectation ceased, and when I spoke again it was of something different.

My reader may be certain from all this that I was not in love with Clara. Her beauty and liveliness, with a gaiety which not seldom assumed the form of grace, attracted me much, it is true; but nothing interferes more with the growth of any passion than a spirit of questioning, and, that once roused, love begins to cease and pass into pain. Few, perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not make myself sure that Clara was upright;—perhaps the more commonplace word straightforward would express my meaning better.

Anxious to get the books arranged before they all left me, for I knew I should have but little heart for it after they were gone, I grudged Charley the forenoon he wanted amongst my papers, and prevailed upon him to go with me the next day as usual. Another fortnight, which was almost the limit of their stay, would, I thought, suffice; and giving up everything else, Charley and I worked from morning till night, with much though desultory assistance from the ladies. I contrived to keep the carpenter and housemaid in work, and by the end of the week began to see the inroads of order ‘scattering the rear of darkness thin.’

CHAPTER XXXVIII. MARY OSBORNE

All this time the acquaintance between Mary Osborne and myself had not improved. Save as the sister of my friend I had not, I repeat, found her interesting. She did not seem at all to fulfil the promise of her childhood. Hardly once did she address me; and, when I spoke to her, would reply with a simple, dull directness which indicated nothing beyond the fact of the passing occasion. Rightly or wrongly, I concluded that the more indulgence she cherished for Charley, the less she felt for his friend—that to him she attributed the endlessly sad declension of her darling brother. Once on her face I surprised a look of unutterable sorrow resting on Charley’s; but the moment she saw that I observed her, the look died out, and her face stiffened into its usual dulness and negation. On me she turned only the unenlightened disc of her soul. Mrs Osborne, whom I seldom saw, behaved with much more kindness, though hardly more cordiality. It was only that she allowed her bright indulgence for Charley to cast the shadow of his image over the faults of his friend; and except by the sadness that dwelt in every line of her sweet face, she did not attract me. I was ever aware of an inward judgment which I did not believe I deserved, and I would turn from her look with a sense of injury which greater love would have changed into keen pain.

Once, however, I did meet a look of sympathy from Mary. On the second Monday of the fortnight I was more anxious than ever to reach the end of my labours, and was in the court, accompanied by Charley, as early as eight o’clock. From the hall a dark passage led past the door of the dining-room to the garden. Through the dark tube of the passage we saw the bright green of a lovely bit of sward, and upon it Mary and Clara, radiant in white morning dresses. We joined them.

‘Here come the slave-drivers!’ remarked Clara.

‘Already!’ said Mary, in a low voice, which I thought had a tinge of dismay in its tone.

‘Never mind, Polly,’ said her companion—‘we’re not going to bow to their will and pleasure. We’ll have our walk in spite of them.’

As she spoke she threw a glance at us which seemed to say—‘You may come if you like;’ then turned to Mary with another which said—‘We shall see whether they prefer old books or young ladies.’

Charley looked at me—interrogatively.

‘Do as you like, Charley,’ I said.

‘I will do as you do,’ he answered.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have no right—’

‘Oh! bother!’ said Clara. ‘You’re so magnificent always with your rights and wrongs! Are you coming, or are you not?’

‘Yes, I’m coming,’ I replied, convicted by Clara’s directness, for I was quite ready to go.

We crossed the court, and strolled through the park, which was of great extent, in the direction of a thick wood, covering a rise towards the east. The morning air was perfectly still; there was a little dew on the grass, which shone rather than sparkled; the sun was burning through a light fog, which grew deeper as we approached the wood; the decaying leaves filled the air with their sweet, mournful scent. Through the wood went a wide opening or glade, stretching straight and far towards the east, and along this we walked, with that exhilaration which the fading Autumn so strangely bestows. For some distance the ground ascended softly, but the view was finally closed in by a more abrupt swell, over the brow of which the mist hung in dazzling brightness.

Notwithstanding the gaiety of animal spirits produced by the season, I felt unusually depressed that morning. Already, I believe, I was beginning to feel the home-born sadness of the soul whose wings are weary and whose foot can find no firm soil on which to rest. Sometimes I think the wonder is that so many men are never sad. I doubt if Charley would have suffered so but for the wrongs his father’s selfish religion had done him; which perhaps were therefore so far well, inasmuch as otherwise he might not have cared enough about religion even to doubt concerning it. But in my case now, it may have been only the unsatisfying presence of Clara, haunted by a dim regret that I could not love her more than I did. For with regard to her my soul was like one who in a dream of delight sees outspread before him a wide river, wherein he makes haste to plunge that he may disport himself in the fine element; but, wading eagerly, alas! finds not a single pool deeper than his knees.

‘What’s the matter with you, Wilfrid?’ said Charley, who, in the midst of some gay talk, suddenly perceived my silence. ‘You seem to lose all your spirits away from your precious library. I do believe you grudge every moment not spent upon those ragged old books.’