Wilfrid Cumbermede

It was a part of the house not best suited for the purpose, connected with the armoury by a descent of a few steps. It lay over some of the housekeeping department, was too near the great hall, and looked into the flagged court. A library should be on the ground-floor in a quiet wing, with an outlook on grass, and the possibility of gaining it at once without going through long passages. Nor was the library itself, architecturally considered, at all superior to its position. The books had greatly outgrown the space allotted to them, and several of the neighbouring rooms had been annexed as occasion required; hence it consisted of half-a-dozen rooms, some of them merely closets intended for dressing-rooms, and all very ill lighted. I entered it however in no critical spirit, but with a feeling of reverential delight. My uncle’s books had taught me to love books. I had been accustomed to consider his five hundred volumes a wonderful library; but here were thousands—as old, as musty, as neglected, as dilapidated, therefore as certainly full of wonder and discovery, as man or boy could wish.—Oh the treasures of a house that has been growing for ages! I leave a whole roomful of lethal weapons, to descend three steps into six roomfuls of books—each ‘the precious life-blood of a master-spirit’—for as yet in my eyes all books were worthy! Which did I love best? Old swords or old books? I could not tell! I had only the grace to know which I ought to love best.

As we passed from the first room into the second, up rose a white thing from the corner of the window-seat, and came towards us. I started. Mrs Wilson exclaimed:

‘La! Miss Clara! how ever—?

The rest was lost in the abyss of possibility.

‘They told me you were somewhere about, Mrs Wilson, and I thought I had better wait here. How do you do?’

‘La, child, you’ve given me such a turn!’ said Mrs Wilson. ‘You might have been a ghost if it had been in the middle of the night.’

‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Wilson,’ said the girl merrily. ‘Only you see if it had been a ghost it couldn’t have been me.’

‘How’s your papa, Miss Clara?’

‘Oh! he’s always quite well.’

‘When did you see him?’

‘To-day. He’s at home with grandpapa now.’

‘And you ran away and left him?’

‘Not quite that. He and grandpapa went out about some business—to the copse at Deadman’s Hollow, I think. They didn’t want my advice—they never do; so I came to see you, Mrs Wilson.’

By this time I had been able to look at the girl. She was a year or two older than myself, I thought, and the loveliest creature I had ever seen. She had large blue eyes of the rare shade called violet, a little round perhaps, but the long lashes did something to rectify that fault; and a delicate nose—turned up a little of course, else at her age she could not have been so pretty. Her mouth was well curved, expressing a full share of Paley’s happiness; her chin was something large and projecting, but the lines were fine. Her hair was a light brown, but dark for her eyes, and her complexion would have been enchanting to any one fond of the ‘sweet mixture, red and white.’ Her figure was that of a girl of thirteen, undetermined—but therein I was not critical. ‘An exceeding fair forehead,’ to quote Sir Philip Sidney, and plump, white, dimple-knuckled hands complete the picture sufficiently for the present. Indeed it would have been better to say only that I was taken with her, and then the reader might fancy her such as he would have been taken with himself. But I was not fascinated. It was only that I was a boy and she was a girl, and there being no element of decided repulsion, I felt kindly disposed towards her.

Mrs Wilson turned to me.

‘Well, Master Cumbermede, you see I am able to give you more than I promised.’

‘Yes,’ I returned; ‘you promised to show me the old house—’

‘And here,’ she interposed, ‘I show you a young lady as well.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said simply. But I had a feeling that Mrs Wilson was not absolutely well-pleased.

I was rather shy of Miss Clara—not that I was afraid of her, but that I did not exactly know what was expected of me, and Mrs Wilson gave us no further introduction to each other. I was not so shy, however, as not to wish Mrs Wilson would leave us together, for then, I thought, we should get on well enough; but such was not her intent. Desirous of being agreeable, however—as far as I knew how, and remembering that Mrs Wilson had given me the choice before, I said to her—

‘Mightn’t we go and look at the deer, Mrs Wilson?’

‘You had better not,’ she answered. ‘They are rather ill-tempered just now. They might run at you. I heard them fighting last night, and knocking their horns together dreadfully.’

‘Then we’d better not,’ said Clara. ‘They frightened me very much yesterday.’

We were following Mrs Wilson from the room. As we passed the hall-door, we peeped in.

‘Do you like such great high places?’ asked Clara.

‘Yes, I do,’ I answered. ‘I like great high places. It makes you gasp somehow.’

‘Are you fond of gasping? Does it do you good?’ she asked, with a mock-simplicity which might be humour or something not so pleasant.

‘Yes, I think it does,’ I answered. ‘It pleases me.’

‘I don’t like it. I like a quiet snug place like the library—not a great wide place like this, that looks as if it had swallowed you and didn’t know it.’

‘What a clever creature she is!’ I thought. We turned away and followed Mrs Wilson again.

I had expected to spend the rest of the day with her, but the moment we reached her apartment, she got out a bottle of her home-made wine and some cake, saying it was time for me to go home. I was much disappointed—the more that the pretty Clara remained behind; but what could I do? I strolled back to Aldwick with my head fuller than ever of fancies new and old. But Mrs Wilson had said nothing of going to see her again, and without an invitation I could not venture to revisit the Hall.

In pondering over the events of the day, I gave the man I had met in the wood a full share in my meditations.

CHAPTER XI. A TALK WITH MY UNCLE

When I returned home for the Christmas holidays, I told my uncle, amongst other things, all that I have just recorded; for although the affair seemed far away from me now, I felt that he ought to know it. He was greatly pleased with my behaviour in regard to the apple. He did not identify the place, however, until he heard the name of the housekeeper: then I saw a cloud pass over his face. It grew deeper when I told him of my second visit, especially while I described the man I had met in the wood.

‘I have a strange fancy about him, uncle,’ I said. ‘I think he must be the same man that came here one very stormy night—long ago—and wanted to take me away.’

‘Who told you of that?’ asked my uncle startled.

I explained that I had been a listener.

‘You ought not to have listened.’

‘I know that now; but I did not know then. I woke frightened, and heard the voices.’

‘What makes you think he was the same man?’

‘I can’t be sure, you know. But as often as I think of the man I met in the wood, the recollection of that night comes back to me.’

‘I dare say. What was he like?’

I described him as well as I could.

‘Yes,’ said my uncle, ‘I dare say. He is a dangerous man.’

‘What did he want with me?’

‘He wanted to have something to do with your education. He is an old friend—acquaintance I ought to say—of your father’s. I should be sorry you had any intercourse with him. He is a very worldly kind of man. He believes in money and rank and getting on. He believes in nothing else that, I know.’

‘Then I am sure I shouldn’t like him,’ I said.

‘I am pretty sure you wouldn’t,’ returned my uncle.

I had never before heard him speak so severely of any one. But from this time he began to talk to me more as if I had been a grown man. There was a simplicity in his way of looking at things, however, which made him quite intelligible to a boy as yet uncorrupted by false aims or judgments. He took me about with him constantly, and I began to see him as he was, and to honour and love him more than ever.

Christmas-day this year fell on a Sunday. It was a model Christmas-day. My uncle and I walked to church in the morning. When we started, the grass was shining with frost, and the air was cold; a fog hung about the horizon, and the sun shone through it with red rayless countenance. But before we reached the church, which was some three miles from home, the fog was gone, and the frost had taken shelter with the shadows; the sun was dazzling without being clear, and the golden cock on the spire was glittering keen in the moveless air.

‘What do they put a cock on the spire for, uncle?’ I asked.

‘To end off with an ornament, perhaps,’ he answered.

‘I thought it had been to show how the wind blew.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time great things—I mean the spire, not the cock—had been put to little uses.’

‘But why should it be a cock,’ I asked, ‘more than any other bird?’

‘Some people—those to whom the church is chiefly historical—would tell you it is the cock that rebuked St Peter. Whether it be so or not, I think a better reason for putting it there would be that the cock is the first creature to welcome the light, and tell people that it is coming. Hence it is a symbol of the clergyman.’

‘But our clergyman doesn’t wake the people, uncle. I’ve seen him send you to sleep sometimes.’

My uncle laughed.

‘I dare say there are some dull cocks too,’ he answered.

‘There’s one at the farm,’ I said, ‘which goes on crowing every now and then all night—in his sleep—Janet says. But it never wakes till all the rest are out in the yard.’

My uncle laughed again. We had reached the churchyard, and by the time we had visited grannie’s grave—that was the only one I thought of in the group of family mounds—the bells had ceased, and we entered.

I at least did not sleep this morning; not however because of the anti-somnolence of the clergyman—but that, in a pew not far off from me, sat Clara. I could see her as often as I pleased to turn my head half-way round. Church is a very favourable place for falling in love. It is all very well for the older people to shake their heads and say you ought to be minding the service—that does not affect the fact stated—especially when the clergyman is of the half-awake order who take to the church as a gentleman-like profession. Having to sit so still, with the pretty face so near, with no obligation to pay it attention, but with perfect liberty to look at it, a boy in the habit of inventing stories could hardly help fancying himself in love with it. Whether she saw me or not, I cannot tell. Although she passed me close as we came out, she did not look my way, and I had not the hardihood to address her.

As we were walking home, my uncle broke the silence.

‘You would like to be an honourable man, wouldn’t you, Willie?’ he said.

‘Yes, that I should, uncle.’

‘Could you keep a secret now?’

‘Yes, uncle.’

‘But there are two ways of keeping a secret.’

‘I don’t know more than one.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Not to tell it.’

‘Never to show that you knew it, would be better still.’

‘Yes, it would—’

‘But, suppose a thing:—suppose you knew that there was a secret; suppose you wanted very much to find it out, and yet would not try to find it out: wouldn’t that be another way of keeping it?’

‘Yes, it would. If I knew there was a secret, I should like to find it out.’

‘Well, I am going to try you. There is a secret. I know it; you do not. You have a right to know it some day, but not yet. I mean to tell it you, but I want you to learn a great deal first. I want to keep the secret from hurting you. Just as you would keep things from a baby which would hurt him, I have kept some things from you.’

‘Is the sword one of them, uncle?’ I asked.

‘You could not do anything with the secret if you did know it,’ my uncle went on, without heeding my question; ‘but there may be designing people who would make a tool of you for their own ends. It is far better you should be ignorant. Now will you keep my secret?—or, in other words, will you trust me?’ I felt a little frightened. My imagination was at work on the formless thing. But I was chiefly afraid of the promise—lest I should anyway break it.

‘I will try to keep the secret—keep it from myself, that is—ain’t it, uncle?’

‘Yes. That is just what I mean.’

‘But how long will it be for, uncle?’

‘I am not quite sure. It will depend on how wise and sensible you grow. Some boys are men at eighteen—some not at forty. The more reasonable and well-behaved you are, the sooner shall I feel at liberty to tell it you.’

He ceased, and I remained silent. I was not astonished. The vague news fell in with all my fancies. The possibility of something pleasant, nay even wonderful and romantic, of course suggested itself, and the hope which thence gilded the delay tended to reconcile me to my ignorance.

‘I think it better you should not go back to Mr Elder’s, Willie,’ said my uncle.

I was stunned at the words. Where could a place be found to compare for blessedness with Mr Elder’s school? Not even the great Hall, with its acres of rooms and its age-long history, could rival it.

Some moments passed before I could utter a faltering ‘Why?’

‘That is part of my secret, Willie,’ answered my uncle. ‘I know it will be a disappointment to you, for you have been very happy with Mr Elder.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ I answered. It was all I could say, for the tears were rolling down my cheeks, and there was a great lump in my throat.

‘I am very sorry indeed to give you pain, Willie,’ he said kindly.

‘It’s not my blame, is it, uncle?’ I sobbed.

‘Not in the least, my boy.’

‘Oh! then, I don’t mind it so much.’

‘There’s a brave boy! Now the question is, what to do with you.’

‘Can’t I stop at home, then?’

‘No, that won’t do either, Willie. I must have you taught, and I haven’t time to teach you myself. Neither am I scholar enough for it now; my learning has got rusty. I know your father would have wished to send you to college, and although I do not very well see how I can manage it, I must do the best I can. I’m not a rich man, you see, Willie, though I have a little laid by. I never could do much at making money, and I must not leave your aunt unprovided for.’

‘No, uncle. Besides, I shall soon be able to work for myself and you too.’

‘Not for a long time if you go to college, Willie. But we need not talk about that yet.’

In the evening I went to my uncle’s room. He was sitting by his fire reading the New Testament.

‘Please, uncle,’ I said, ‘will you tell me something about my father and mother?’

‘With pleasure, my boy,’ he answered, and after a moment’s thought began to give me a sketch of my father’s life, with as many touches of the man himself as he could at the moment recall. I will not detain my reader with the narrative. It is sufficient to say that my father was a simple honourable man, without much education, but a great lover of plain books. His health had always been delicate; and before he died he had been so long an invalid that my mother’s health had given way in nursing him, so that she very soon followed him. As his narrative closed my uncle said: ‘Now, Willie, you see, with a good man like that for your father, you are bound to be good and honourable! Never mind whether people praise you or not; you do what you ought to do. And don’t be always thinking of your rights. There are people who consider themselves very grand because they can’t bear to be interfered with. They think themselves lovers of justice, when it is only justice to themselves they care about. The true lover of justice is one who would rather die a slave than interfere with the rights of others. To wrong any one is the most terrible thing in the world. Injustice to you is not an awful thing like injustice in you. I should like to see you a great man, Willie. Do you know what I mean by a great man?’

‘Something else than I know, I’m afraid, uncle,’ I answered.

‘A great man is one who will try to do right against the devil himself: one who will not do wrong to please anybody or to save his life.’

I listened, but I thought with myself a man might do all that, and be no great man. I would do something better—some fine deed or other—I did not know what now, but I should find out by-and-by. My uncle was too easily pleased: I should demand more of a great man. Not so did the knights of old gain their renown. I was silent.

‘I don’t want you to take my opinions as yours, you know, Willie,’ my uncle resumed. ‘But I want you to remember what my opinion is.’

As he spoke, he went to a drawer in the room, and brought out something which he put in my hands. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was the watch grannie had given me.

‘There,’ he said, ‘is your father’s watch. Let it keep you in mind that to be good is to be great.’

‘Oh, thank you, uncle!’ I said, heeding only my recovered treasure. ‘But didn’t it belong to somebody before my father? Grannie gave it me as if it had been hers.’

‘Your grandfather gave it to your father; but when he died, your great-grandmother took it. Did she tell you anything about it?’

‘Nothing particular. She said it was her husband’s.’

‘So it was, I believe.’

‘She used to call him my father.’

‘Ah, you remember that!’

‘I’ve had so much time to think about things, uncle!’

‘Yes. Well—I hope you will think more about things yet.’

‘Yes, uncle. But there’s something else I should like to ask you about.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The old sword.’

My uncle smiled, and rose again, saying, ‘Ah! I thought as much. Is that anything like it?’ he added, bringing it from the bottom of a cupboard.

I took it from his hands with awe. It was the same. If I could have mistaken the hilt, I could not mistake the split sheath.

‘Oh, uncle!’ I exclaimed, breathless with delight.

‘That’s it—isn’t it?’ he said, enjoying my enjoyment.

‘Yes, that it is! Now tell me all about it, please.’

‘Indeed I can tell you very little. Some ancestor of ours fought with it somewhere. There was a story about it, but I have forgot it. You may have it if you like.’

‘No, uncle! May I? To take away with me?’

‘Yes. I think you are old enough now not to do any mischief with it.’

I do not believe there was a happier boy in England that night. I did not mind where I went now. I thought I could even bear to bid Mrs Elder farewell. Whether therefore possession had done me good, I leave my reader to judge. But happily for our blessedness, the joy of possession soon palls, and not many days had gone by before I found I had a heart yet. Strange to say, it was my aunt who touched it.

I do not yet know all the reasons which brought my uncle to the resolution of sending me abroad: it was certainly an unusual mode of preparing one for the university; but the next day he disclosed the plan to me. I was pleased with the notion. But my aunt’s apron went up to her eyes. It was a very hard apron, and I pitied those eyes although they were fierce.

‘Oh, auntie!’ I said, ‘what are you crying for? Don’t you like me to go?’

‘It’s too far off, child. How am I to get to you if you should be taken ill?’

Moved both by my own pleasure and her grief, I got up and threw my arms round her neck. I had never done so before. She returned my embrace and wept freely.

As it was not a fit season for travelling, and as my uncle had not yet learned whither it would be well to send me, it was after all resolved that I should return to Mr Elder’s for another half-year. This gave me unspeakable pleasure; and I set out for school again in such a blissful mood as must be rare in the experience of any life.

CHAPTER XII. THE HOUSE-STEWARD

My uncle had had the watch cleaned and repaired for me, so that, notwithstanding its great age, it was yet capable of a doubtful sort of service. Its caprices were almost human, but they never impaired the credit of its possession in the eyes of my school-fellows; rather they added to the interest of the little machine, inasmuch as no one could foretell its behaviour under any circumstances. We were far oftener late now, when we went out for a ramble. Heretofore we had used our faculties and consulted the sky—now we trusted to the watch, and indeed acted as if it could regulate the time to our convenience, and carry us home afterwards. We regarded it, in respect Of time, very much as some people regard the Bible in respect of eternity. And the consequences were similar. We made an idol of it, and the idol played us the usual idol-pranks.

But I think the possession of the sword, in my own eyes too a far grander thing than the watch, raised me yet higher in the regard of my companions. We could not be on such intimate terms with the sword, for one thing, as with the watch. It was in more senses than one beyond our sphere—a thing to be regarded with awe and reverence. Mr Elder had most wisely made no objection to my having it in our bed-room; but he drove two nails into the wall and hung it high above my reach, saying the time had not come for my handling it. I believe the good man respected the ancient weapon, and wished to preserve it from such usage as it might have met with from boys. It was the more a constant stimulus to my imagination, and I believe insensibly to my moral nature as well, connecting me in a kind of dim consciousness with foregone ancestors who had, I took it for granted, done well on the battle-field. I had the sense of an inherited character to sustain in the new order of things. But there was more in its influence which I can hardly define—the inheritance of it even gave birth to a certain sense of personal dignity.

Although I never thought of visiting Moldwarp Hall again without an invitation, I took my companions more than once into the woods which lay about it: thus far I used the right of my acquaintance with the housekeeper. One day in Spring, I had gone with them to the old narrow bridge. I was particularly fond of visiting it. We lingered a long time about Queen Elizabeth’s oak; and by climbing up on each other’s shoulders, and so gaining some stumps of vanished boughs, had succeeded in clambering, one after another, into the wilderness of its branches, where the young buds were now pushing away the withered leaves before them, as the young generations of men push the older into the grave. When my turn came, I climbed and climbed until I had reached a great height in its top.

Then I sat down, holding by the branch over my head, and began to look about me. Below was an entangled net, as it seemed—a labyrinth of boughs, branches, twigs, and shoots. If I had fallen I could hardly have reached the earth. Through this environing mass of lines, I caught glimpses of the country around—green fields, swelling into hills, where the fresh foliage was bursting from the trees; and below, the little stream was pursuing its busy way by a devious but certain path to its unknown future. Then my eyes turned to the tree-clad ascent on the opposite side: through the topmost of its trees, shone a golden spark, a glimmer of yellow fire. It was the vane on the highest tower of the Hall. A great desire seized me to look on the lordly pile once more. I descended in haste, and proposed to my companions that we should climb through the woods, and have a peep at the house. The eldest, who was in a measure in charge of us—his name was Bardsley, for Fox was gone—proposed to consult my watch first. Had we known that the faithless thing had stopped for an hour and a half, and then resumed its onward course as if nothing had happened, we should not have delayed our return. As it was, off we scampered for the pack-horse bridge, which we left behind us only after many frog-leaps over the obstructing stones at the ends. Then up through the wood we went like wild creatures, abstaining however from all shouting and mischief, aware that we were on sufferance only. At length we stood on the verge of the descent, when to our surprise we saw the sun getting low in the horizon. Clouds were gathering overhead, and a wailful wind made one moaning sweep through the trees behind us in the hollow. The sun had hidden his shape, but not his splendour, in the skirts of the white clouds which were closing in around him. Spring as it was, I thought I smelled snow in the air. But the vane which had drawn me shone brilliant against a darkening cloud, like a golden bird in the sky. We looked at each other, not in dismay exactly, but with a common feeling that the elements were gathering against us. The wise way would of course have been to turn at once and make for home; but the watch had to be considered. Was the watch right, or was the watch wrong? Its health and conduct were of the greatest interest to the commonweal. That question must be answered. We looked from the watch to the sun, and back from the sun to the watch. Steady to all appearance as the descending sun itself, the hands were trotting and crawling along their appointed way, with a look of unconscious innocence, in the midst of their diamond coronet. I volunteered to settle the question: I would run to the Hall, ring the bell, and ask leave to go as far into the court as to see the clock on the central tower. The proposition was applauded. I ran, rang, and being recognized by the portress, was at once admitted. In a moment I had satisfied myself of the treachery of my bosom-friend, and was turning to leave the court, when a lattice opened, and I heard a voice calling my name. It was Mrs Wilson’s. She beckoned me. I went up under the window.