Wilfrid Cumbermede

We came out upon a country road, which ran between the wall of the park and a wooden fence along a field of grass. I offered James one of my apples, which he accepted.

‘There, now!’ he said, ‘there’s a field!—A right good bit o’ grass that! Our people has wanted to throw it into the park for hundreds of years. But they won’t part with it for love or money. It ought by rights to be ours, you see, by the lie of the country. It’s all one grass with the park. But I suppose them as owns it ain’t of the same mind.—Cur’ous old box!’ he added, pointing with his whip a long way off. ‘You can just see the roof of it.’

I looked in the direction he pointed. A rise in the ground hid all but an ancient, high-peaked roof. What was my astonishment to discover in it the roof of my own home! I was certain it could be no other. It caused a strange sensation, to come upon it thus from the outside, as it were, when I thought myself miles and miles away from it, I fell a-pondering over the matter; and as I reflected, I became convinced that the trees from which we had just emerged were the same which used to churn the wind for my childish fancies. I did not feel inclined to share my feelings with my new acquaintance; but presently he put his whip in the socket and fell to eating his apple. There was nothing more in the conversation he afterwards resumed deserving of record. He pulled up at the gate of the school, where I bade him good-night and rang the bell.

There was great rejoicing over me when I entered, for the boys had arrived without me a little while before, having searched all about the place where we had parted company, and come at length to the conclusion that I had played them a trick in order to get home without them, there having been some fun on the road concerning my local stupidity. Mr Elder, however, took me to his own room, and read me a lecture on the necessity of not abusing my privileges. I told him the whole affair from beginning to end, and thought he behaved very oddly. He turned away every now and then, blew his nose, took off his spectacles, wiped them carefully, and replaced them before turning again to me.

‘Go on, go on, my boy. I’m listening,’ he would say.

I cannot tell whether he was laughing or crying. I suspect both. When I had finished, he said, very solemnly—

‘Wilfrid, you have had a narrow escape. I need not tell you how wrong you were about the apple, for you know that as well as I do. But you did the right thing when your eyes were opened. I am greatly pleased with you, and greatly obliged to Sir Giles. I will write and thank him this very night.’

‘Please, sir, ought I to tell the boys? I would rather not.’

‘No. I do not think it necessary.’

He rose and rang the bell.

‘Ask Master Fox to step this way.’

Fox was the oldest boy, and was on the point of leaving.

‘Fox,’ said Mr Elder, ‘Cumbermede has quite satisfied me. Will you oblige me by asking him no questions. I am quite aware such a request must seem strange, but I have good reasons for making it,’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Fox, glancing at me.

‘Take him with you, then, and tell the rest. It is as a favour to myself that I put it, Fox.’

‘That is quite enough, sir.’

Fox took me to Mrs Elder, and had a talk with the rest before I saw them. Some twenty years after, Fox and I had it out. I gave him a full explanation, for by that time I could smile over the affair. But what does the object matter?—an apple, or a thousand pounds? It is but the peg on which the act hangs. The act is everything.

To the honour of my school-fellows I record that not one of them ever let fall a hint in the direction of the mystery. Neither did Mr or Mrs Elder once allude to it. If possible they were kinder than before.

CHAPTER X. I BUILD CASTLES

My companions had soon found out, and I think the discovery had something to do with the kindness they always showed me, that I was a good hand at spinning a yarn: the nautical phrase had got naturalized in the school. We had no chance, if we would have taken it, of spending any part of school-hours in such a pastime; but it formed an unfailing amusement when weather or humour interfered with bodily exercises. Nor were we debarred from the pleasure after we had retired for the night,—only, as we were parted in three rooms, I could not have a large audience then. I well remember, however, one occasion on which it was otherwise. The report of a super-excellent invention having gone abroad, one by one they came creeping into my room, after I and my companion were in bed, until we lay three in each bed, all being present but Fox. At the very heart of the climax, when a spectre was appearing and disappearing momently with the drawing in and sending out of his breath, so that you could not tell the one moment where he might show himself the next, Mr Elder walked into the room with his chamber-candle in his hand, straightway illuminating six countenances pale with terror—for I took my full share of whatever emotion I roused in the rest. But instead of laying a general interdict on the custom, he only said,

‘Come, come, boys! it’s time you were asleep. Go to your rooms directly.’

‘Please, sir,’ faltered one—Moberly by name—the dullest and most honourable boy, to my thinking, amongst us, ‘mayn’t I stay where I am? Cumbermede has put me all in a shiver.’

Mr Elder laughed, and turning to me, asked with his usual good-humour,

‘How long will your story take, Cumbermede?’

‘As long as you please, sir,’ I answered.

‘I can’t let you keep them awake all night, you know.’

‘There’s no fear of that, sir,’ I replied. ‘Moberly would have been asleep long ago if it hadn’t been a ghost. Nothing keeps him awake but ghosts.’

‘Well, is the ghost nearly done with?’

‘Not quite, sir. The worst is to come yet.’

‘Please, sir,’ interposed Moberly, ‘if you’ll let me stay where I am, I’ll turn round on my deaf ear, and won’t listen to a word more of it. It’s awful, I do assure you, sir.’ Mr Elder laughed again.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Make haste and finish your story, Cumbermede, and let them go to sleep. You, Moberly, may stay where you are for the night, but I can’t have this made a practice of.’

‘No, no, sir,’ said several at once.

‘But why don’t you tell your stories by daylight, Cumbermede? I’m sure you have time enough for them then.’

‘Oh, but he’s got one going for the day and another for the night.’

‘Then do you often lie three in a bed?’ asked Mr Elder with some concern.

‘Oh no, sir. Only this is an extra good one, you see.’

Mr Elder laughed again, bade us good-night, and left us. The horror, however, was broken. I could not call up one ‘shiver more, and in a few minutes Moberly, as well as his two companions, had slipped away to roomier quarters.

The material of the tales I told my companions was in part supplied from some of my uncle’s old books, for in his little library there were more than the Arcadia of the same sort. But these had not merely afforded me the stuff to remodel and imitate; their spirit had wrought upon my spirit, and armour and war-horses and mighty swords were only the instruments with which faithful knights wrought honourable deeds.

I had a tolerably clear perception that such deeds could not be done in our days; that there were no more dragons lying in the woods: and that ladies did not now fall into the hands of giants. But I had the witness of an eternal impulse in myself that noble deeds had yet to be done, and therefore might be done, although I knew not how. Hence a feeling of the dignity of ancient descent, as involving association with great men and great actions of old, and therefore rendering such more attainable in the future, took deep root in my mind. Aware of the humbleness of my birth, and unrestrained by pride in my parents—I had lost them so early—I would indulge in many a day-dream of what I would gladly have been. I would ponder over the delights of having a history, and how grand it would be to find I was descended from some far-away knight who had done deeds of high emprise. In such moods the recollection of the old sword that had vanished from the wall would return: indeed the impression it had made upon me may have been at the root of it all. How I longed to know the story of it! But it had gone to the grave with grannie. If my uncle or aunt knew it, I had no hope of getting it from either of them; for I was certain they had no sympathy with any such fancies as mine. My favourite invention, one for which my audience was sure to call when I professed incompetence, and which I enlarged and varied every time I returned to it, was of a youth in humble life who found at length he was of far other origin then he had supposed. I did not know then, that the fancy, not uncommon with boys, has its roots in the deepest instincts of our human nature. I need not add that I had not yet read Jean Paul’s Titan, or Hesperus, or Comet.

This tendency of thought-received a fresh impulse from my visit to Moldwarp Hall, as I choose to name the great house whither my repentance had led me. It was the first I had ever seen to wake the sense of the mighty antique. My home was, no doubt, older than some parts of the hall; but the house we are born in never looks older than the last generation until we begin to compare it with others. By this time, what I had learned of the history of my country, and the general growth of the allied forces of my intellect, had rendered me capable of feeling the hoary eld of the great Hall. Henceforth it had a part in every invention of my boyish imagination.

I was therefore not undesirous of keeping the half-engagement I had made with Mrs Wilson, but it was not she that drew me. With all her kindness, she had not attracted me, for cupboard-love is not the sole, or always the most powerful, operant on the childish mind: it is in general stronger in men than in either children or women. I would rather not see Mrs Wilson again—she had fed my body, she had not warmed my heart. It was the grand old house that attracted me. True, it was associated with shame, but rather with the recovery from it than with the fall itself; and what memorials of ancient grandeur and knightly ways must lie within those walls, to harmonize with my many dreams!

On the next holiday, Mr Elder gave me a ready permission to revisit Moldwarp Hall. I had made myself acquainted with the nearest way by crossroads and footpaths, and full of expectation, set out with my companions. They accompanied me the greater part of the distance, and left me at a certain gate, the same by which they had come out of the park on the day of my first visit. I was glad when they were gone, for I could then indulge my excited fancy at will. I heard their voices draw away into the distance. I was alone on a little footpath which led through a wood. All about me were strangely tall and slender oaks; but as I advanced into the wood, the trees grew more various, and in some of the opener spaces great old oaks, short and big-headed, stretched out their huge shadow-filled arms in true oak-fashion. The ground was uneven, and the path led up and down over hollow and hillock, now crossing a swampy bottom, now climbing the ridge of a rocky eminence. It was a lovely forenoon, with grey-blue sky and white clouds. The sun shone plentifully into the wood, for the leaves were thin. They hung like clouds of gold and royal purple above my head, layer over layer, with the blue sky and the snowy clouds shining through. On the ground it was a world of shadows and sunny streaks, kept ever in interfluent motion by such a wind as John Skelton describes:

     ‘There blew in that gardynge a soft piplyng cold      Enbrethyng of Zepherus with his pleasant wynde.’

I went merrily along. The birds were not singing, but my heart did not need them. It was Spring-time there, whatever it might be in the world. The heaven of my childhood wanted no lark to make it gay. Had the trees been bare, and the frost shining on the ground, it would have been all the same. The sunlight was enough.

I was standing on the root of a great beech-tree, gazing up into the gulf of its foliage, and watching the broken lights playing about in the leaves and leaping from twig to branch, like birds yet more golden than the leaves, when a voice startled me.

‘You’re not looking for apples in a beech-tree, hey? it said.

I turned instantly, with my heart in a flutter. To my great relief I saw that the speaker was not Sir Giles, and that probably no allusion was intended. But my first apprehension made way only for another pang, for, although I did not know the man, a strange dismay shot through me at sight of him. His countenance was associated with an undefined but painful fact that lay crouching in a dusky hollow of my memory. I had no time now to entice it into the light of recollection. I took heart and spoke.

‘No,’ I answered; ‘I was only watching the sun on the leaves.’

‘Very pretty, ain’t it? Ah, it’s lovely! It’s quite beautiful—ain’t it now? You like good timber, don’t you? Trees, I mean?’ he explained, aware, I suppose, of some perplexity on my countenance.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I like big old ones best.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he returned, with an energy that sounded strange and jarring to my mood; ‘big old ones, that have stood for ages—the monarchs of the forest. Saplings ain’t bad things either, though. But old ones are best. Just come here, and I’ll show you one worth looking at. It wasn’t planted yesterday, I can tell you.’

I followed him along the path, until we came out of the wood. Beyond us the ground rose steep and high, and was covered with trees; but here in the hollow it was open. A stream ran along between us and the height. On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the stem looked stunted between them.

‘There!’ said my companion; ‘there’s a tree! there’s something like a tree! How a man must feel to call a tree like that his own! That’s Queen Elizabeth’s oak. It is indeed. England is dotted with would-be Queen Elizabeth’s oaks; but there is the very oak which she admired so much that she ordered luncheon to be served under it.... Ah! she knew the value of timber—did good Queen Bess. That’s now—now—let me see—the year after the Armada—nine from fifteen—ah well, somewhere about two hundred and thirty years ago.’

‘How lumpy and hard it looks!’ I remarked.

‘That’s the breed and the age of it,’ he returned. ‘The wonder to me is they don’t turn to stone and last for ever, those trees. Ah! there’s something to live for now!’

He had turned away to resume his walk, but as he finished the sentence, he turned again towards the tree, and shook his finger at it, as if reproaching it for belonging to somebody else than himself.

‘Where are you going now?’ he asked, wheeling round upon me sharply, with a keen look in his magpie-eyes, as the French would call them, which hardly corresponded with the bluntness of his address.

‘I’m going to the Hall,’ I answered, turning away.

‘You’ll never get there that way. How are you to cross the river?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been this way before.’

‘You’ve been to the Hall before, then? Whom do you know there?’

‘Mrs Wilson,’ I answered.

‘H’m! Ah! You know Mrs Wilson, do you? Nice woman, Mrs Wilson!’

He said this as if he meant the opposite.

‘Here,’ he went on—‘come with me. I’ll show you the way.’

I obeyed, and followed him along the bank of the stream.

‘What a curious bridge!’ I exclaimed, as we came in sight of an ancient structure lifted high in the middle on the point of a Gothic arch.

‘Yes, ain’t it? he said. ‘Curious? I should think so! And well it may be! It’s as old as the oak there at least. There’s a bridge now for a man like Sir Giles to call his own!’

‘He can’t keep it though,’ I said, moralizing; for, in carrying on the threads of my stories, I had come to see that no climax could last for ever.

‘Can’t keep it! He could carry off every stone of it if he liked.’

‘Then it wouldn’t be the bridge any longer.’

‘You’re a sharp one,’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, truly enough. I seemed to myself to be talking sense, that was all.

‘Well, I do. What do you mean by saying he couldn’t keep it?’

‘It’s been a good many people’s already, and it’ll be somebody else’s some day,’ I replied.

He did not seem to relish the suggestion, for he gave a kind of grunt, which gradually broke into a laugh as he answered,

‘Likely enough! likely enough!’

We had now come round to the end of the bridge, and I saw that it was far more curious than I had perceived before.

‘Why is it so narrow?’ I asked, wonderingly, for it was not three feet wide, and had a parapet of stone about three feet high on each side of it.

‘Ah!’ he replied, ‘that’s it, you see. As old as the hills. It was built, this bridge was, before ever a carriage was made—yes, before ever a carrier’s cart went along a road. They carried everything then upon horses’ backs. They call this the pack-horse bridge. You see there’s room for the horses’ legs, and their loads could stick out over the parapets. That’s the way they carried everything to the Hall then. That was a few years before you were born, young gentleman.’

‘But they couldn’t get their legs—the horses, I mean—couldn’t get their legs through this narrow opening,’ I objected; for a flat stone almost blocked up each end.

‘No; that’s true enough. But those stones have been up only a hundred years or so. They didn’t want it for pack-horses any more then, and the stones were put up to keep the cattle, with which at some time or other I suppose some thrifty owner had stocked the park, from crossing to this meadow. That would be before those trees were planted up there.’

When we had crossed the stream, he stopped at the other end of the bridge and said,

‘Now, you go that way—up the hill. There’s a kind of path, if you can find it, but it doesn’t much matter. Good morning.’

He walked away down the bank of the stream, while I struck into the wood.

When I reached the top, and emerged from the trees that skirted the ridge, there stood the lordly Hall before me, shining in autumnal sunlight, with gilded vanes and diamond-paned windows, as if it were a rock against which the gentle waves of the sea of light rippled and broke in flashes. When you looked at its foundation, which seemed to have torn its way up through the clinging sward, you could not tell where the building began and the rock ended. In some parts indeed the rock was wrought into the walls of the house; while in others it was faced up with stone and mortar. My heart beat high with vague rejoicing. Grand as the aged oak had looked, here was a grander growth—a growth older too than the oak, and inclosing within it a thousand histories.

I approached the gate by which Mrs Wilson had dismissed me. A flight of rude steps cut in the rock led to the portcullis, which still hung, now fixed in its place in front of the gate; for though the Hall had no external defences, it had been well fitted for the half-sieges of troublous times. A modern mansion stands, with its broad sweep up to the wide door, like its hospitable owner in full dress and broad-bosomed shirt on his own hearth-rug: this ancient house stood with its back to the world, like one of its ancient owners, ready to ride, in morion, breast-plate, and jack-boots—yet not armed cap-à-pie, not like a walled castle, that is.

I ascended the steps, and stood before the arch—filled with a great iron-studded oaken gate—which led through a square tower into the court. I stood gazing for some minutes before I rang the bell. Two things in particular I noticed. The first was—over the arch of the doorway, amongst others—one device very like the animal’s head upon the watch and the seal which my great-grandmother had given me. I could not be sure it was the same, for the shape—both in the stone and in my memory—was considerably worn. The other interested me far more. In the great gate was a small wicket, so small that there was hardly room for me to pass without stooping. A thick stone threshold lay before it. The spot where the right foot must fall in stepping out of the wicket was worn into the shape of a shoe, to the depth of between three and four inches I should judge, vertically into the stone. The deep foot-mould conveyed to me a sense of the coming and going of generations, such as I could not gather from the age-worn walls of the building.

A great bell-handle at the end of a jointed iron-rod hung down by the side of the wicket. I rang. An old woman opened the wicket, and allowed me to enter. I thought I remembered the way to Mrs Wilson’s door well enough, but when I ascended the few broad steps, curved to the shape of the corner in which the entrance stood, and found myself in the flagged court, I was bewildered, and had to follow the retreating portress for directions. A word set me right, and I was soon in Mrs Wilson’s presence. She received me kindly, and expressed her satisfaction that I had kept what she was pleased to consider my engagement.

After some refreshment and a little talk, Mrs Wilson said,

‘Now, Master Cumbermede, would you like to go and see the gardens, or take a walk in the park and look at the deer?’

‘Please, Mrs Wilson,’ I returned, ‘you promised to show me the house.’

‘You would like that, would you?’

‘Yes,’ I answered,—‘better than anything.’

‘Come, then,’ she said, and took a bunch of keys from the wall. ‘Some of the rooms I lock up when the family’s away.’

It was a vast place. Roughly it may be described as a large oblong which the great hall, with the kitchen and its offices, divided into two square courts—the one flagged, the other gravelled. A passage dividing the hall from the kitchen led through from the one court to the other. We entered this central portion through a small tower; and, after a peep at the hall, ascended to a room above the entrance, accessible from an open gallery which ran along two sides of the hall. The room was square, occupying the area-space of the little entrance tower. To my joyous amazement, its walls were crowded with swords, daggers—weapons in endless variety, mingled with guns and pistols, for which I cared less. Some which had hilts curiously carved and even jewelled, seemed of foreign make. Their character was different from that of the rest; but most were evidently of the same family with the one sword I knew. Mrs Wilson could tell me nothing about them. All she knew was that this was the armoury, and that Sir Giles had a book with something written in it about every one of the weapons. They were no chance collection: each had a history. I gazed in wonder and delight. Above the weapons hung many pieces of armour—no entire suits, however; of those there were several in the hall below. Finding that Mrs Wilson did not object to my handling the weapons within my reach, I was soon so much absorbed in the examination of them that I started when she spoke.

‘You shall come again, Master Cumbermede,’ she said. ‘We must go now.’ I replaced a Highland broadsword, and turned to follow her. She was evidently pleased with the alacrity of my obedience, and for the first time bestowed on me a smile as she led the way from the armoury by another door. To my enhanced delight this door led into the library. Gladly would I have lingered, but Mrs Wilson walked on, and I followed through rooms and rooms, low-pitched, and hung with tapestry, some carpeted, some floored with black polished oak, others with some kind of cement or concrete, all filled with ancient furniture whose very aspect was a speechless marvel. Out of one into another, along endless passages, up and down winding stairs, now looking from the summit of a lofty tower upon terraces and gardens below—now lost in gloomy arches, again out upon acres of leads, and now bathed in the sweet gloom of the ancient chapel with its stained windows of that old glass which seems nothing at first, it is so modest and harmonious, but which for that very reason grows into a poem in the brain: you see it last and love it best—I followed with unabating delight.

When at length Mrs Wilson said I had seen the whole, I begged her to let me go again into the library, for she had not given me a moment to look at it. She consented.