Wilfrid Cumbermede

As we stood, I discovered that I had been a little mistaken about the position of the Hall. I saw that, although from some points in front it seemed to stand on an isolated rock, the ground rose behind it, terrace upon terrace, the uppermost of which terraces were crowned with rows of trees. Over them, the moon was now gathering her strength.

‘It is rather cold; I think we had better go in,’ said Clara, after we had remained there for some minutes without seeing any fresh arrivals.

‘Very well,’ I answered. ‘What shall we do? Shall you go home?’

‘No, certainly not. We must see a good deal more of the fun first.’

‘How will you manage that? You will go to the ball-room, I suppose. You can go where you please, of course.’

‘Oh no! I’m not grand enough to be invited. Oh, dear no! At least I am not old enough.’

‘But you will be some day.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. We’ll see. Meantime we must make the best of it. What are you going to do?’

‘I shall go back to the library.’

‘Then I’ll go with you—till the music begins; and then I’ll take you where you can see a little of the dancing. It’s great fun.’

‘But how will you manage that?’

‘You leave that to me.’

We descended at once to the armoury, where I had left my candle; and thence we returned to the library.

‘Would you like me to read to you?’ I asked.

‘I don’t mind—if it’s anything worth hearing.’

‘Well, I’ll read you a bit of the book I was reading when you came in.’

‘What! that musty old book! No, thank you. It’s enough to give one the horrors—the very sight of it is enough. How can you like such frumpy old things?’

‘Oh! you mustn’t mind the look of it,’ I said. ‘It’s very nice inside!’

‘I know where there is a nice one,’ she returned. ‘Give me the candle.’

I followed her to another of the rooms, where she searched for some time. At length—‘There it is!’ she said, and put into my hand The Castle of Otranto. The name promised well. She next led the way to a lovely little bay window, forming almost a closet, which looked out upon the park, whence, without seeing the moon, we could see her light on the landscape, and the great deep shadows cast over the park from the towers of the Hall. There we sat on the broad window-sill, and I began to read. It was delightful. Does it indicate loss of power, that the grown man cannot enjoy the book in which the boy delighted? Or is it that the realities of the book, as perceived by his keener eyes, refuse to blend with what imagination would supply if it might?

No sooner however did the first notes of the distant violins enter the ear of my companion than she started to her feet.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, looking up from the book.

‘Don’t you hear the music?’ she said, half-indignantly.

‘I hear it now,’ I answered; ‘but why—?’

‘Come along,’ she interrupted, eagerly. ‘We shall just be in time to see them go across from the drawing-room to the ball-room. Come, come. Leave your candle.’

I put down my book with some reluctance. She led me into the armoury, and from the armoury out on the gallery half-encompassing the great hall, which was lighted up, and full of servants. Opening another door in the gallery, she conducted me down a stair which led almost into the hall, but, ascending again behind it, landed us in a little lobby, on one side of which was the drawing-room, and on the other the ball-room, on another level, reached by a few high, semi-circular steps.

‘Quick! quick!’ said Clara, and turning sharply round, she opened another door, disclosing a square-built stone staircase. She pushed the door carefully against the wall, ran up a few steps, I following in some trepidation, turned abruptly, and sat down. I did as she did, questioning nothing: I had committed myself to her superior knowledge.

The quick ear of my companion had caught the first sounds of the tuning of the instruments, and here we were, before the invitation to dance, a customed observance at Moldwarp Hall, had begun to play. In a few minutes thereafter, the door of the drawing-room opened; when, pair after pair, the company, to the number of over a hundred and fifty, I should guess, walked past the foot of the stair on which we were seated, and ascended the steps into the ball-room. The lobby was dimly lighted, except from the two open doors, and there was little danger of our being seen.

I interrupt my narrative to mention the odd fact that so fully was my mind possessed with the antiquity of the place, which it had been the pride of generation after generation to keep up, that now, when I recall the scene, the guests always appear dressed not as they were then, but in a far more antique style with which after knowledge supplied my inner vision.

Last of all came Lady Brotherton, Sir Giles’s wife, a pale, delicate-looking woman, leaning on the arm of a tall, long-necked, would-be-stately, yet insignificant-looking man. She gave a shiver as, up the steps from the warm drawing-room, she came at once opposite our open door.

‘What a draught there is here!’ she said, adjusting her rose-coloured scarf about her shoulders. ‘It feels quite wintry. Will you oblige me, Mr Mellon, by shutting that door? Sir Giles will not allow me to have it built up. I am sure there are plenty of ways to the leads besides that.’

‘This door, my lady?’ asked Mr Mellon.

I trembled lest he should see us.

‘Yes. Just throw it to. There’s a spring lock on it. I can’t think—’

The slam and echoing bang of the closing door cut off the end of the sentence. Even Clara was a little frightened, for her hand stole into mine for a moment before she burst out laughing.

‘Hush! hush!’ I said. ‘They will hear you.’

‘I almost wish they would,’ she said. ‘What a goose I was to be frightened, and not speak! Do you know where we are?’

‘No,’ I answered; ‘how should I? Where are we?’

My fancy of knowing the place had vanished utterly by this time. All my mental charts of it had got thoroughly confused, and I do not believe I could have even found my way back to the library.

‘Shut out on the leads,’ she answered. ‘Come along. We may as well go to meet our fate.’

I confess to a little palpitation of the heart as she spoke, for I was not yet old enough to feel that Clara’s companionship made the doom a light one. Up the stairs we went—here no twisting corkscrew, but a broad flight enough, with square turnings. At the top was a door, fastened only with a bolt inside—against no worse housebreakers than the winds and rains. When we emerged, we found ourselves in the open night.

‘Here we are in the moon’s drawing-room!’ said Clara.

The scene was lovely. The sky was all now—the earth only a background or pedestal for the heavens. The river, far below, shone here and there in answer to the moon, while the meadows and fields lay as in the oblivion of sleep, and the wooded hills were only dark formless masses. But the sky was the dwelling-place of the moon, before whose radiance, penetratingly still, the stars shrunk as if they would hide in the flowing skirts of her garments. There was scarce a cloud to be seen, and the whiteness of the moon made the blue thin. I could hardly believe in what I saw. It was as if I had come awake without getting out of the dream.

We were on the roof of the ball-room. We felt the rhythmic motion of the dancing feet shake the building in time to the music. ‘A low melodious thunder’ buried beneath—above, the eternal silence of the white moon!

We passed to the roof of the drawing-room. From it, upon one side, we could peep into the great gothic window of the hall, which rose high above it. We could see the servants passing and repassing, with dishes for the supper which was being laid in the dining-room under the drawing-room, for the hall was never used for entertainment now, except on such great occasions as a coming of age, or an election-feast, when all classes met.

‘We mustn’t stop here,’ said Clara. ‘We shall get our deaths of cold.’

‘What shall we do, then?’ I asked.

‘There are plenty of doors,’ she answered—‘only Mrs Wilson has a foolish fancy for keeping them all bolted. We must try, though.’

Over roof after roof we went; now descending, now ascending a few steps; now walking along narrow gutters, between battlement and sloping roof; now crossing awkward junctions—trying doors many in tower and turret—all in vain! Every one was bolted on the inside. We had grown quite silent, for the case looked serious.

‘This is the last door,’ said Clara—‘the last we can reach. There are more in the towers, but they are higher up. What shall we do? Unless we go down a chimney, I don’t know what’s to be done.’ Still her voice did not falter, and my courage did not give way. She stood for a few moments, silent. I stood regarding her, as one might listen for a doubtful oracle.

‘Yes. I’ve got it!’ she said at length. ‘Have you a good head, Wilfrid?’

‘I don’t quite know what you mean,’ I answered.

‘Do you mind being on a narrow place, without much to hold by?’

‘High up?’ I asked with a shiver.

‘Yes.’

For a moment I did not answer. It was a special weakness of my physical nature, one which my imagination had increased tenfold—the absolute horror I had of such a transit as she was evidently about to propose. My worst dreams—from which I would wake with my heart going like a fire-engine—were of adventures of the kind. But before a woman, how could I draw back? I would rather lie broken at the bottom of the wall. And if the fear should come to the worst, I could at least throw myself down and end it so.

‘Well?’ I said, as if I had only been waiting for her exposition of the case.

‘Well!’ she returned.—‘Come along then.’

I did go along—like a man to the gallows; only I would not have turned back to save my life. But I should have hailed the slightest change of purpose in her, with such pleasure as Daniel must have felt when he found the lions would rather not eat him. She retraced our steps a long way—until we reached the middle of the line of building which divided the two courts.

‘There!’ she said, pointing to the top of the square tower over the entrance to the hall, from which we had watched the arrival of the guests: it rose about nine feet only above where we now stood in the gutter—‘I know I left the door open when we came down. I did it on purpose. I hate Goody Wilson. Lucky, you see!—that is if you have a head. And if you haven’t, it’s all the same: I have.’

So saying, she pointed to a sort of flying buttress which sprung sideways, with a wide span, across the angle the tower made with the hall, from an embrasure of the battlement of the hall to the outer corner of the tower, itself more solidly buttressed. I think it must have been made to resist the outward pressure of the roof of the hall; but it was one of those puzzling points which often occur—and oftenest in domestic architecture—where additions and consequent alterations have been made from time to time. Such will occasion sometimes as much conjecture towards their explanation as a disputed passage in Shakspere or Aeschylus.

Could she mean me to cross that hair-like bridge? The mere thought was a terror. But I would not blench. Fear I confess—cowardice if you will:—poltroonery, not.

‘I see,’ I answered. ‘I will try. If I fall, don’t blame me. I will do my best.’

‘You don’t think,’ she returned, ‘I’m going to let you go alone! I should have to wait hours before you found a door to let me down—unless indeed you went and told Goody Wilson, and I had rather die where I am. No, no. Come along. I’ll show you how.’

With a rush and a scramble, she was up over the round back of the buttress before I had time to understand that she meant as usual to take the lead. If she could but have sent me back a portion of her skill, or lightness, or nerve, or whatever it was, just to set me off with a rush like that! But I stood preparing at once and hesitating. She turned and looked over the battlements of the tower.

‘Never mind, Wilfrid,’ she said; ‘I’ll fetch you presently.’

‘No, no,’ I cried. ‘Wait for me. I’m coming.’

I got astride of the buttress, and painfully forced my way up. It was like a dream of leap-frog, prolonged under painfully recurring difficulties. I shut my eyes, and persuaded myself that all I had to do was to go on leap-frogging. At length, after more trepidation and brain-turning than I care to dwell upon, lest even now it should bring back a too keen realization of itself, I reached the battlement, seizing which with one shaking hand, and finding the other grasped by Clara, I tumbled on the leads of the tower.

‘Come along!’ she said. ‘You see, when the girls like, they can beat the boys—even at their own games. We’re all right now.’

‘I did my best,’ I returned, mightily relieved. ‘I’m not an angel, you know. I can’t fly like you.’

She seemed to appreciate the compliment.

‘Never mind. I’ve done it before. It was game of you to follow.’

Her praise elated me. And it was well.

‘Come along,’ she added.

She seemed to be always saying Come along.

I obeyed, full of gratitude and relief. She skipped to the tiny turret which rose above our heads, and lifted the door-latch. But, instead of disappearing within, she turned and looked at me in white dismay. The door was bolted. Her look roused what there was of manhood in me. I felt that, as it had now come to the last gasp, it was mine to comfort her.

‘We are no worse than we were,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’

‘I don’t know that,’ she answered mysteriously.—‘Can you go back as you came? I can’t.’

I looked over the edge of the battlement where I stood. There was the buttress crossing the angle of moonlight, with its shadow lying far down on the wall. I shuddered at the thought of renewing my unspeakable dismay. But what must be must.

Besides, Clara had praised me for creeping where she could fly: now I might show her that I could creep where she could not fly.

‘I will try,’ I returned, putting one leg through an embrasure, and holding on by the adjoining battlement.

‘Do take care, Wilfrid,’ she cried, stretching out her hands, as if to keep me from falling.

A sudden pulse of life rushed through me. All at once I became not only bold, but ambitious.

‘Give me a kiss,’ I said, ‘before I go.’

‘Do you make so much of it?’ she returned, stepping back a pace.—How much a woman she was even then!

Her words roused something in me which to this day I have not been able quite to understand. A sense of wrong had its share in the feeling; but what else I can hardly venture to say. At all events, an inroad of careless courage was the consequence. I stepped at once upon the buttress, and stood for a moment looking at her—no doubt with reproach. She sprang towards me.

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.

The end of the buttress was a foot or two below the level of the leads, where Clara stood. She bent over the battlement, stooped her face towards me, and kissed me on the mouth. My only answer was to turn and walk down the buttress, erect; a walk which, as the arch of the buttress became steeper, ended in a run and a leap on to the gutter of the hall. There I turned, and saw her stand like a lady in a ballad leaning after me in the moonlight. I lifted my cap and sped away, not knowing whither, but fancying that out of her sight I could make up my mind better. Nor was I mistaken. The moment I sat down, my brains began to go about, and in another moment I saw what might be attempted.

In going from roof to roof, I had seen the little gallery along which I had passed with Mrs Wilson on my way to the library. It crossed what might be called an open shaft in the building. I thought I could manage, roofed as it was, to get in by the open side. It was some time before I could find it again; but when I did come upon it at last, I saw that it might be done. By the help of a projecting gargoyle, curiously carved in the days when the wall to which it clung had formed part of the front of the building, I got my feet upon the wooden rail of the gallery, caught hold of one of the small pillars which supported the roof, and slewed myself in. I was almost as glad as when I had crossed the buttress, for below me was a paved bottom, between high walls, without any door, like a dry well in the midst of the building.

My recollection of the way to the armoury, I found, however, almost obliterated. I knew that I must pass through a bedroom at the end of the gallery, and that was all I remembered. I opened the door, and found myself face to face with a young girl with wide eyes. She stood staring and astonished, but not frightened. She was younger than Clara, and not so pretty. Her eyes looked dark, and also the hair she had been brushing. Her face would have been quite pale, but for the rosy tinge of surprise. She made no exclamation, only stared with her brush in her hand, and questions in her eyes. I felt far enough from comfortable; but with a great effort I spoke.

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