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Wilfrid Cumbermede

G >> George MacDonald >> Wilfrid Cumbermede




He rejoined me in a far quieter mood, and for a moment or two I was
silent with the terror of learning that he had become acquainted with
my unhappy blunder. After a little pause, he said,

'I'm very sorry I didn't see Brotherton. I should have liked just a
word or two with him.'

'It's just as well not,' I said. 'You would only have made another row.
Didn't you see any of them?'

'I saw the old man. He seemed really cut up about it, and professed
great concern. He didn't even refer to you by name--and spoke only in
general terms. I told him you were incapable of what was laid to your
charge; that I had not the slightest doubt of your claim to the
sword,--your word being enough for me,--and that I trusted time would
right you. I went too far there, however, for I haven't the slightest
hope of anything of the sort.'

'How did he take all that?'

'He only smiled--incredulously and sadly,--so that I couldn't find it
in my heart to tell him all my mind. I only insisted on my own perfect
confidence in you.--I'm afraid I made a poor advocate, Wilfrid. Why
should I mind his grey hairs where justice is concerned? I am afraid I
was false to you, Wilfrid.'

'Nonsense; you did just the right thing, old boy. Nobody could have
done better.'

'_Do_ you think so? I am _so_ glad! I have been feeling ever since as
if I ought to have gone into a rage, and shaken the dust of the place
from my feet for a witness against the whole nest of them! But somehow
I couldn't--what with the honest face and the sorrowful look of the old
man.'

'You are always too much of a partisan, Charley; I don't mean so much
in your actions--for this very one disproves that--but in your notions
of obligation. You forget that you had to be just to Sir Giles as well
as to me, and that he must be judged--not by the absolute facts of the
case, but by what appeared to him to be the facts. He could not help
misjudging me. But you ought to help misjudging him. So you see your
behaviour was guided by an instinct or a soul, or what you will, deeper
than your judgment.'

'That may be--but he ought to have known you better than believe you
capable of misconduct.'

'I don't know that. He had seen very little of me. But I dare say he
puts it down to cleptomania. I think he will be kind enough to give the
ugly thing a fine name for my sake. Besides, he must hold either by his
son or by me.'

'That's the worst that can be said on my side of the question. He must
by this time be aware that that son of his is nothing better than a low
scoundrel.'

'It takes much to convince a father of such an unpleasant truth as
that, Charley.'

'Not much, if my experience goes for anything.'

'I trust it is not typical, Charley.'

'I suppose you're going to stand up for Geoffrey next?'

'I have no such intention. But if I did, it would be but to follow your
example. We seem to change sides every now and then. You remember how
you used to defend Clara when I expressed my doubts about her.'

'And wasn't I right? Didn't you come over to my side?'

'Yes, I did,' I said, and hastened to change the subject; adding, 'As
for Geoffrey, there is room enough to doubt whether he believes what he
says, and that makes a serious difference. In thinking over the affair
since you left me, I have discovered further grounds for questioning
his truthfulness.'

'As if that were necessary!' he exclaimed, with an accent of scorn.'
But tell me what you mean?' he added.

'In turning the thing over in my mind, this question has occurred to
me.--He read from the manuscript that oh the blade of the sword, near
the hilt, were the initials of Wilfrid Cumbermede. Now, if the sword
had never been drawn from the scabbard, how was that to be known to the
writer?'

'Perhaps it was written about that time,' said Charley.

'No; the manuscript was evidently written some considerable time after.
It refers to tradition concerning it.'

'Then the writer knew it by tradition.'

The moment Charley's logical faculty was excited his perception was
impartial.

'Besides,' he went on,' it does not follow that the sword had really
never been drawn before. Mr Close even may have done so, for his
admiration was apparently quite as much for weapons themselves as for
their history. Clara could hardly have drawn it as she did if it had
not been meddled with before.'

The terror lest he should ask me how I came to carry it home without
the scabbard hurried my objection.

'That supposition, however, would only imply that Brotherton might have
learned the fact from the sword itself, not from the book. I should
just like to have one peep of the manuscript to see whether what he
read was all there!'

'Or any of it, for that matter,' said Charley. 'Only it would have been
a more tremendous risk than I think he would have run.'

'I wish I had thought of it sooner, though.'

My suspicion was that Clara had examined the blade thoroughly, and
given him a full description of it. He _might_, however, have been at
the Hall on some previous occasion, without my knowledge, and might
have seen the half-drawn blade on the wall, examined it, and pushed it
back into the sheath; which might have so far loosened the blade that
Clara was afterwards able to draw it herself. I was all but certain by
this time that it was no other than she that had laid it on my bed. But
then why had she drawn it? Perhaps that I might leave proof of its
identity behind me--for the carrying out of her treachery, whatever the
object of it might be. But this opened a hundred questions not to be
discussed, even in silent thought, in the presence of another.

'Did you see your mother, Charley?' I asked.

'No, I thought it better not to trouble her. They are going to-morrow.
Mary had persuaded her--why, I don't know--to return a day or two
sooner than they had intended.'

'I hope Brotherton will not succeed in prejudicing them against me.'

'I wish that were possible,' he answered. 'But the time for prejudice
is long gone by.'

I could not believe this to be the case in respect of Mary; for I could
not but think her favourably inclined to me.

'Still,' I said, 'I should not like their bad opinion of me to be
enlarged as well as strengthened by the belief that I had attempted to
steal Sir Giles's property. You _must_ stand my friend there, Charley.'

'Then you _do_ doubt me, Wilfrid?'

'Not a bit, you foolish fellow.'

'You know, I can't enter that house again, and I don't care about
writing to my mother, for my father is sure to see it; but I will
follow my mother and Mary the moment they are out of the grounds
to-morrow, and soon see whether they've got the story by the right
end.'

The evening passed with me in alternate fits of fierce indignation and
profound depression, for, while I was clear to my own conscience in
regard of my enemies, I had yet thrown myself bound at their feet by my
foolish lie; and I all but made up my mind to leave the country, and
only return after having achieved such a position--of what sort I had
no more idea than the school-boy before he sets himself to build a new
castle in the air--as would buttress any assertion of the facts I might
see fit to make in after-years.

When we had parted for the night, my brains began to go about, and the
centre of their gyrations was not Mary now, but Clara. What could have
induced her to play me false? All my vanity, of which I had enough, was
insufficient to persuade me that it could be out of revenge for the
gradual diminution of my attentions to her. She had seen me pay none to
Mary, I thought, unless she had caught a glimpse from the next room of
the little passage of the ring, and that I did not believe. Neither did
I believe she had ever cared enough about me to be jealous of whatever
attentions I might pay to another. But in all my conjectures, I had to
confess myself utterly foiled. I could imagine no motive. Two
possibilities alone, both equally improbable, suggested themselves--the
one, that she did it for pure love of mischief, which, false as she was
to me, I could not believe; the other, which likewise I rejected, that
she wanted to ingratiate herself with Brotherton. I had still, however,
scarcely a doubt that she had laid the sword on my bed. Trying to
imagine a connection between this possible action and Mary's mistake, I
built up a conjectural form of conjectural facts to this effect--that
Mary had seen her go into my room, had taken it for the room she was to
share with her, and had followed her either at once--in which case I
supposed Clara to have gone out by the stair to the roof to avoid being
seen--or afterwards, from some accident, without a light in her hand.
But I do not care to set down more of my speculations, for none
concerning this either were satisfactory to myself, and I remain almost
as much in the dark to this day. In any case the fear remained that
Clara must be ever on the borders of the discovery of Mary's secret, if
indeed she did not know it already, which was a dreadful thought--more
especially as I could place no confidence in her. I was glad to think,
however, that they were to be parted so soon, and I had little fear of
any correspondence between them.

The next morning Charley set out to waylay them at a certain point on
their homeward journey. I did not propose to accompany him. I preferred
having him speak for me first, not knowing how much they might have
heard to my discredit, for it was far from probable the matter had been
kept from them. After he had started, however, I could not rest, and
for pure restlessness sent Styles to fetch my mare. The loss of my
sword was a trifle to me now, but the proximity of the place where I
should henceforth be regarded as what I hardly dared to realize, was
almost unendurable. As if I had actually been guilty of what was laid
to my charge, I longed to hide myself in some impenetrable depth, and
kept looking out impatiently for Styles's return. At length I caught
sight of my Lilith's head rising white from the hollow in which the
farm lay, and ran up to my room to make a little change in my attire.
Just as I snatched my riding-whip from a hook by the window, I spied a
horseman approaching from the direction of the park gates. Once more it
was Mr Coningham, riding hitherward from the windy trees. In no degree
inclined to meet him, I hurried down the stair, and arriving at the
very moment Styles drew up, sprung into the saddle, and would have
galloped off in the opposite direction, confident that no horse of Mr
Coningham's could overtake my Lilith. But the moment I was in the
saddle, I remembered there was a pile of books on the window-sill of my
uncle's room, belonging to the library at the Hall, and I stopped a
moment to give Styles the direction to take them home at once, and,
having asked a word of Miss Pease, to request her, with my kind
regards, to see them safely deposited amongst the rest. In consequence
of this delay, just as I set off at full speed from the door, Mr
Coningham rode round the corner of the house.

'What a devil of a hurry you are in, Mr Cumbermede!' he cried. 'I was
just coming to see you. Can't you spare me a word?'

I was forced to pull up, and reply as civilly as might be.

'I am only going for a ride,' I said, 'and will go part of your way
with you if you like.'

'Thank you. That will suit me admirably, I am going Gastford way. Have
you ever been there?'

'No,' I answered. 'I have only just heard the name of the village.'

'It is a pretty place. But there's the oddest old church you ever saw,
within a couple of miles of it--alone in the middle of a forest--or at
least it was a forest not long ago. It is mostly young trees now. There
isn't a house within a mile of it, and the nearest stands as lonely as
the church--quite a place to suit the fancy of a poet like you! Come
along and see it. You may as well go one way as another, if you only
want a ride.'

'How far is it?' I asked.

'Only seven or eight miles across country. I can take you all the way
through lanes and fields.'

Perplexed or angry I was always disinclined for speech; and it was only
after things had arranged themselves in my mind, or I had mastered my
indignation, that I would begin to feel communicative. But something
prudential inside warned me that I could not afford to lose any friend
I had; and although I was not prepared to confide my wrongs to Mr
Coningham, I felt I might some day be glad of his counsel.




CHAPTER XLV.


UMBERDEN CHURCH.

My companion chatted away, lauded my mare, asked if I had seen Clara
lately, and how the library was getting on. I answered him carelessly,
without even a hint at my troubles.

'You seem out of spirits, Mr Cumbermede?' he said. 'You've been taking
too little exercise. Let's have a canter. It will do you good. Here's a
nice bit of sward.'

I was only too ready to embrace the excuse for dropping a conversation
towards which I was unable to contribute my share.

Having reached a small roadside inn, we gave our horses a little
refreshment; after which, crossing a field or two by jumping the
stiles, we entered the loveliest lane I had ever seen. It was so narrow
that there was just room for horses to pass each other, and covered
with the greenest sward rarely trodden. It ran through the midst of a
wilderness of tall hazels. They stood up on both sides of it, straight
and trim as walls, high above our heads as we sat on our horses; and
the lane was so serpentine that we could never see further than a few
yards ahead; while, towards the end, it kept turning so much in one
direction that we seemed to be following the circumference of a little
circle. It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to
which we tied our horses before entering the churchyard. But instead of
a neat burial-place, which the whole approach would have given us to
expect, we found a desert. The grass was of extraordinary coarseness,
and mingled with quantities of vile-looking weeds. Several of the
graves had not even a spot of green upon them, but were mere heaps of
yellow earth in huge lumps, mixed with large stones. There was not
above a score of graves in the whole place, two or three of which only
had gravestones on them. One lay open, with the rough yellow lumps all
about it, and completed the desolation. The church was nearly
square--small, but shapeless, with but four latticed windows, two on
one side, one in the other, and the fourth in the east end. It was
built partly of bricks and partly of flint stones, the walls bowed and
bent, and the roof waved and broken. Its old age had gathered none of
the graces of age to soften its natural ugliness, or elevate its
insignificance. Except a few lichens, there was not a mark of
vegetation about it. Not a single ivy leaf grew on its spotted and
wasted walls. It gave a hopeless, pagan expression to the whole
landscape--for it stood on a rising ground, from which we had an
extensive prospect of height and hollow, cornfield and pasture and
wood, away to the dim blue horizon.

'You don't find it enlivening, do you--eh?' said my companion.

'I never saw such a frightfully desolate spot,' I said, 'to have yet
the appearance of a place of Christian worship. It looks as if there
were a curse upon it. Are all those the graves of suicides and
murderers? It cannot surely be consecrated ground?'

'It's not nice,' he said. 'I didn't expect you to like it. I only said
it was odd.'

'Is there any service held in it?' I asked.

'Yes--once a fortnight or so. The rector has another living a few miles
off.'

'Where can the congregation come from?'

'Hardly from anywhere. There ain't generally more than five or six, I
believe. Let's have a look at the inside of it.'

'The windows are much too high, and no foothold.'

'We'll go in.'

'Where can you get the key? It must be a mile off at least, by your own
account. There's no house nearer than that, you say.'

He made me no reply, but going to the only flat gravestone, which stood
on short thick pillars, he put his hand beneath it, and drew out a
great rusty key.

'Country lawyers know a secret or two,' he said.

'Not always much worth knowing,' I rejoined,--'if the inside be no
better than the outside.'

'We'll have a look, anyhow,' he said, as he turned the key in the dry
lock.

The door snarled on its hinges, and disclosed a space drearier
certainly, and if possible uglier, than its promise.

'Really, Mr Coningham,' I said, 'I don't see why you should have
brought me to look at this place.'

'It answered for a bait, at all events. You've had a good long ride,
which was the best thing for you. Look what a wretched little vestry
that is!'

It was but a corner of the east end, divided off by a faded red
curtain.

'I suppose they keep a parish register here,' he said. 'Let us have a
look.'

Behind the curtain hung a dirty surplice and a gown. In the corner
stood a desk like the schoolmaster's in a village school. There was a
shelf with a few vellum-bound books on it, and nothing else, not even a
chair in the place.

'Yes; there they are!' he said, as he took down one of the volumes from
the shelf. 'This one comes to a close in the middle of the last
century. I dare say there is something in this, now, that would be
interesting enough to somebody. Who knows how many properties it might
make change hands?'

'Not many, I should think. Those matters are pretty well seen to now.'

[Illustration: "COUNTRY LAWYERS KNOW A SECRET OR TWO," HE SAID.]

'By some one or other--not always the rightful heirs. Life is full of
the strangest facts, Mr Cumbermede. If I were a novelist, now, like
you, my experience would make me dare a good deal more in the way of
invention than any novelist I happen to have read. Look there, for
instance.'

He pointed to the top of the last page, or rather the last half of the
cover. I read as follows:

'MARRIAGES, 1748.

'Mr Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll, of the Parish of [----] second son of
Sir Richard Daryll of Moldwarp Hall in the County of [----] and
Mistress Elizabeth Woodruffe were married by a license Jan. 15.'

'I don't know the name of Daryll,' I said.

'It was your own great-grandfather's name,' he returned. 'I happen to
know that much.'

'You knew this was here, Mr Coningham,' I said. 'That is why you
brought me here.'

'You are right. I did know it. Was I wrong in thinking it would
interest you?'

'Certainly not. I am obliged to you. But why this mystery? Why not have
told me what you wanted me to go for?'

'I will why you in turn. Why should I have wanted to show you now more
than any other time what I have known for as many years almost as you
have lived? You spoke of a ride--why shouldn't I give a direction to it
that might pay you for your trouble? And why shouldn't I have a little
amusement out of it if I pleased? Why shouldn't I enjoy your surprise
at finding in a place you had hardly heard of, and would certainly
count most uninteresting, the record of a fact that concerned your own
existence so nearly? There!'

'I confess it interests me more than you will easily think--inasmuch as
it seems to offer to account for things that have greatly puzzled me
for some time. I have of late met with several hints of a connection at
one time or other between the Moat and the Hall, but these hints were
so isolated that I could weave no theory to connect them. Now I dare
say they will clear themselves up.'

'Not a doubt of-that, if you set about it in earnest.'

'How did he come to drop his surname?'

'That has to be accounted for.'

'It follows--does it not?--that I am of the same blood as the present
possessors of Moldwarp Hall?'

'You are--but the relation is not a close one,' said Mr Coningham.

'Sir Giles was but distantly related to the stock of which you come.'

'Then--but I must turn it over in my mind. I am rather in a maze.'

'You have got some papers at the Moat?' he said--interrogatively.

'Yes; my friend Osborne has been looking over them. He found out this
much--that there was once some connection between the Moat and the
Hall, but at a far earlier date than this points to, or any of the
hints to which I just now referred. The other day, when I dined at Sir
Giles's, Mr Alderforge said that Cumbermede was a name belonging to Sir
Giles's ancestry--or something to that effect; but that again could
have had nothing to do with those papers, or with the Moat at all.'

Here I stopped, for I could not bring myself to refer to the sword. It
was not merely that the subject was too painful: of all things I did
not want to be cross-questioned by my lawyer-companion.

'It is not amongst those you will find anything of importance, I
suspect. Did your great-grandmother--the same, no doubt, whose marriage
is here registered--leave no letters or papers behind her?'

'I've come upon a few letters. I don't know if there is anything more.'

'You haven't read them, apparently.'

'I have not. I've been always going to read them, but I haven't opened
one of them yet.'

'Then I recommend you--that is, if you care for an interesting piece of
family history--to read those letters carefully, that is
constructively.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean--putting two and two together, and seeing what comes of it;
trying to make everything fit into one, you know.'

'Yes. I understand you. But how do you happen to know that those
letters contain a history, or that it will prove interesting when I
have found it?'

'All family history ought to be interesting--at least to the last of
his race,' he returned, replying only to the latter half of my
question.' It must, for one thing, make him feel his duty to his
ancestors more strongly.'

'His duty to marry, I suppose you mean?' I said with some inward
bitterness. 'But to tell the truth, I don't think the inheritance worth
it in my case.'

'It might be better,' he said, with an expression which seemed odd
beside the simplicity of the words.

'Ah! you think then to urge me to make money; and for the sake of my
dead ancestors increase the inheritance of those that may come after
me? But I believe I am already as diligent as is good for me--that is,
in the main, for I have been losing time of late.'

'I meant no such thing, Mr Cumbermede. I should be very doubtful
whether any amount of success in literature would enable you to restore
the fortunes of your family.'

'Were they so very ponderous, do you think? But in truth I have little
ambition of that sort. All I will readily confess to is a strong desire
not to shirk what work falls to my share in the world.'

'Yes,' he said, in a thoughtful manner--'if one only knew what his
share of the work was.'

The remark was unexpected, and I began to feel a little more interest
in him.

'Hadn't you better take a copy of that entry?' he said.

'Yes--perhaps I had. But I have no materials.'

It did not strike me that attorneys do not usually, like excise-men,
carry about an ink-bottle, when he drew one from the breast-pocket of
his coat, along with a folded sheet of writing-paper, which he opened
and spread out on the desk. I took the pen he offered me, and copied
the entry.

When I had finished, he said--

'Leave room under it for the attestation of the parson. We can get that
another time, if necessary. Then write, "Copied by me"--and then your
name and the date. It may be useful some time. Take it home and lay it
with your grandmother's papers.'

'There can be no harm in that,' I said, as I folded it up, and put it
in my pocket. 'I am greatly obliged to you for bringing me here, Mr
Coningham. Though I am not ambitious of restoring the family to a
grandeur of which every record has departed, I am quite sufficiently
interested in its history, and shall consequently take care of this
document.'

'Mind you read your grandmother's papers, though,' he said.

'I will,' I answered.

He replaced the volume on the shelf, and we left the church; he locked
the door and replaced the key under the gravestone; we mounted our
horses, and after riding with me about half the way to the Moat, he
took his leave at a point where our roads, diverged. I resolved to
devote that very evening, partly in the hope of distracting my
thoughts, to the reading of my grandmother's letters.




CHAPTER XLVI.


MY FOLIO.

When I reached home I found Charley there, as I had expected.

But a change had again come over him. He was nervous, restless,
apparently anxious. I questioned him about his mother and sister. He
had met them as planned, and had, he assured me, done his utmost to
impress them with the truth concerning me. But he had found his mother
incredulous, and had been unable to discover from her how much she had
heard; while Mary maintained an obstinate silence, and, as he said,
looked more stupid than usual. He did not tell me that Clara had
accompanied them so far, and that he had walked with her back to the
entrance of the park. This I heard afterwards. When we had talked a
while over the sword-business--for we could not well keep off it
long--Charley seeming all the time more uncomfortable than ever, he
said, perhaps merely to turn the talk into a more pleasant channel--

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