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Wilfrid Cumbermede

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By the way, where have you put your folio? I've been looking for it
ever since I came in, but I can't find it. A new reading started up in
my head the other day, and I want to try it both with the print and the
context.'

'It's in my room,' I answered, 'I will go and fetch it.'

'We will go together,' he said.

I looked where I thought I had laid it, but there it was not. A pang of
foreboding terror invaded me. Charley told me afterwards that I turned
as white as a sheet. I looked everywhere, but in vain; ran and searched
my uncle's room, and then Charley's, but still in vain; and at last,
all at once, remembered with certainty that two nights before I had
laid it on the window-sill in my uncle's room. I shouted for Styles,
but he was gone home with the mare, and I had to wait, in little short
of agony, until he returned. The moment he entered I began to question
him.

'You took those books home, Styles?' I said, as quietly as I could,
anxious not to startle him, lest it should interfere with the just
action of his memory.

'Yes, sir. I took them at once, and gave them into Miss Pease's own
hands;--at least I suppose it was Miss Pease. She wasn't a young lady,
sir.'

'All right, I dare say. How many were there of them?'

'Six, sir.'

'I told you five,' I said, trembling with apprehension and wrath.

'You said four or five, and I never thought but the six were to go.
They were all together on the window-sill.'

I stood speechless. Charley took up the questioning.

'What sized books were they?' he asked.

'Pretty biggish--one of them quite a large one--the same I've seen you,
gentlemen, more than once, putting your heads together over. At least
it looked like it.'

'Charley started up and began pacing about the room. Styles saw he had
committed some dreadful mistake, and began a blundering expression of
regret, but neither of us took any notice of him, and he crept out in
dismay.

It was some time before either of us could utter a word. The loss of
the sword was a trifle to this. Beyond a doubt the precious tome was
now lying in the library of Moldwarp Hall--amongst old friends and
companions, possibly--where years on years might elapse before one
loving hand would open it, or any eyes gaze on it with reverence.

'Lost, Charley!' I said at last.--'Irrecoverably lost!'

'I will go and fetch it,' he cried, starting up. 'I will tell Clara to
bring it out to me. It is beyond endurance this. Why should you not go
and claim what both of us can take our oath to as yours?'

'You forget, Charley, how the sword-affair cripples us--and how the
claiming of this volume would only render their belief with regard to
the other the more probable. You forget, too, that I _might_ have
placed it in the chest first, and, above all, that the name on the
title-page is the same as the initials on the blade of the sword,--the
same as my own.'

'Yes--I see it won't do. And yet if I were to represent the thing to
Sir Giles?--He doesn't care for old books----'

'You forget again, Charley, that the volume is of great money-value.
Perhaps my late slip has made me fastidious; but though the book be
mine--and if I had it, the proof of the contrary would lie with them--I
could not take advantage of Sir Giles's ignorance to recover it.'

'I might, however, get Clara--she is a favourite with him, you know--'

'I will not hear of it,' I said, interrupting him, and he was forced to
yield.

'No, Charley,' I said again; 'I must just bear it. Harder things _have_
been borne, and men have got through the world and out of it
notwithstanding. If there isn't another world, why should we care much
for the loss of what _must_ go with the rest?--and if there is, why
should we care at all?'

'Very fine, Wilfrid! but when you come to the practice--why, the less
said the better.'

'But that is the very point: we don't come to the practice. If we did,
then the ground of it would be proved unobjectionable.'

'True;--but if the practice be unattainable--'

'It would take much proving to prove that to my--dissatisfaction I
should say; and more failure besides, I can tell you, than there will
be time for in this world. If it were proved, however--don't you see it
would disprove both suppositions equally? If such a philosophical
spirit be unattainable, it discredits both sides of the alternative on
either of which it would have been reasonable.'

'There is a sophism there of course, but I am not in the mood for
pulling your logic to pieces,' returned Charley, still pacing up and
down the room.

In sum, nothing would come of all our talk but the assurance that the
volume was equally irrecoverable with the sword, and indeed with my
poor character--at least, in the eyes of my immediate neighbours.

[Illustration: I SAT DOWN AGAIN BY THE FIRE TO READ, IN MY
GREAT-GRANDMOTHER'S CHAIR.]




CHAPTER XLVII.


THE LETTERS AND THEIR STORY.

As soon as Charley went to bed, I betook myself to my grandmother's
room, in which, before discovering my loss, I had told Styles to kindle
a fire. I had said nothing to Charley about my ride, and the old
church, and the marriage-register. For the time, indeed, I had almost
lost what small interest I had taken in the matter--my new bereavement
was so absorbing and painful; but feeling certain, when he left me,
that I should not be able to sleep, but would be tormented all night by
innumerable mental mosquitoes if I made the attempt, and bethinking me
of my former resolution, I proceeded to carry it out.

The fire was burning brightly, and my reading lamp was on the table,
ready to be lighted. But I sat down first in my grandmother's chair and
mused for I know not how long. At length my wandering thoughts
rehearsed again the excursion with Mr Coningham. I pulled the copy of
the marriage-entry from my pocket, and in reading it over again, my
curiosity was sufficiently roused to send me to the bureau. I lighted
my lamp at last, unlocked what had seemed to my childhood a treasury of
unknown marvels, took from it the packet of yellow withered letters,
and sat down again by the fire to read, in my great-grandmother's
chair, the letters of Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll--for so he signed
himself in all of them--my great-grandfather. There were amongst them a
few of her own in reply to his--badly written and badly spelt, but
perfectly intelligible. I will not transcribe any of them--I have them
to show if needful--but not at my command at the present moment;--for I
am writing neither where I commenced my story--on the outskirts of an
ancient city, nor at the Moat, but in a dreary old square in London;
and those letters lie locked again in the old bureau, and have lain
unvisited through thousands of desolate days and slow creeping nights,
in that room which I cannot help feeling sometimes as if the ghost of
that high-spirited, restless-hearted grandmother of mine must now and
then revisit, sitting in the same old chair, and wondering to find how
far it was all receded from her--wondering, also, to think what a work
she made, through her long and weary life, about things that look to
her now such trifles.

I do not then transcribe any of the letters, but give, in a connected
form, what seem to me the facts I gathered from them; not hesitating to
present, where they are required, self-evident conclusions as if they
were facts mentioned in them. I repeat that none of my names are real,
although they all point at the real names.

Wilfrid Cumbermede was the second son of Richard and Mary Daryll of
Moldwarp Hall. He was baptized Cumbermede from the desire to keep in
memory the name of a celebrated ancestor, the owner, in fact, of the
disputed sword--itself alluded to in the letters,--who had been more
mindful of the supposed rights of his king than the next king was of
the privations undergone for his sake, for Moldwarp Hall at least was
never recovered from the Roundhead branch of the family into whose
possession it had drifted. In the change, however, which creeps on with
new generations, there had been in the family a re-action of sentiment
in favour of the more distinguished of its progenitors; and Richard
Daryll, a man of fierce temper and overbearing disposition, had named
his son after the cavalier. A tyrant in his family, at least in the
judgment of the writers of those letters, he apparently found no
trouble either with his wife or his eldest or youngest son; while,
whether his own fault or not, it was very evident that from Wilfrid his
annoyances had been numerous.

A legal feud had for some time existed between the Ahab of Moldwarp
Hall and the Naboth of the Moat, the descendant of an ancient yeoman
family of good blood, and indeed related to the Darylls themselves, of
the name of Woodruffe. Sir Richard had cast covetous eyes upon the
field surrounding Stephen's comparatively humble abode, which had at
one time formed a part of the Moldwarp property. In searching through
some old parchments, he had found, or rather, I suppose, persuaded
himself he had found, sufficient evidence that this part of the
property of the Moat, then of considerable size, had been willed away
in contempt of the entail which covered it, and belonged by right to
himself and his heirs. He had therefore instituted proceedings to
recover possession, during the progress of which their usual bickerings
and disputes augmented in fierceness. A decision having at length been
given in favour of the weaker party, the mortification of Sir Richard
was unendurable to himself, and his wrath and unreasonableness, in
consequence, equally unendurable to his family. One may then imagine
the paroxysm of rage with which he was seized when he discovered that,
during the whole of the legal process, his son Wilfrid had been making
love to Elizabeth Woodruffe, the only child of his enemy. In Wilfrid's
letters, the part of the story which follows is fully detailed for
Elizabeth's information, of which the reason is also plain--that the
writer had spent such a brief period afterwards in Elizabeth's society
that he had not been able for very shame to recount the particulars.

No sooner had Sir Richard come to a knowledge of the hateful fact,
evidently through one of his servants, than, suppressing the outburst
of his rage for the moment, he sent for his son Wilfrid, and informed
him, his lips quivering with suppressed passion, of the discovery he
had made; accused him of having brought disgrace on the family, and of
having been guilty of falsehood and treachery; and ordered him to go
down on his knees and abjure the girl before heaven, or expect a
father's vengeance.

But evidently Wilfrid was as little likely as any man to obey such a
command. He boldly avowed his love for Elizabeth, and declared his
intention of marrying her. His father, foaming with rage, ordered his
servants to seize him. Overmastered in spite of his struggles, he bound
him to a pillar, and taking a horse-whip, lashed him furiously; then,
after his rage was thus in a measure appeased, ordered them to carry
him to his bed. There he remained, hardly able to move, the whole of
that night and the next day. On the following night, he made his escape
from the Hall, and took refuge with a farmer-friend a few miles off--in
the neighbourhood, probably, of Umberden Church.

Here I would suggest a conjecture of my own--namely, that my ancestor's
room was the same I had occupied, so--fatally, shall I say?--to myself,
on the only two occasions on which I had slept at the Hall; that he
escaped by the stair to the roof, having first removed the tapestry
from the door, as a memorial to himself and a sign to those he left;
that he carried with him the sword and the volume--both probably lying
in his room at the time, and the latter little valued by any other. But
all this, I repeat, is pure conjecture.

As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he communicated with
Elizabeth, prevailed upon her to marry him at once at Umberden Church,
and within a few days, as near as I could judge; left her to join, as a
volunteer, the army of the Duke of Cumberland, then fighting the French
in the Netherlands. Probably from a morbid fear lest the disgrace his
father's brutality had inflicted should become known in his regiment,
he dropped the surname of Daryll when he joined it; and--for what
precise reasons I cannot be certain--his wife evidently never called
herself by any other name than Cumbermede. Very likely she kept her
marriage a secret, save from her own family, until the birth of my
grandfather, which certainly took place before her husband's return.
Indeed I am almost sure that he never returned from that campaign, but
died fighting, not unlikely, at the battle of Laffeldt; and that my
grannie's letters, which I found in the same packet, had been, by the
kindness of some comrade, restored to the young widow.

When I had finished reading the letters, and had again thrown myself
back in the old chair, I began to wonder why nothing of all this should
ever have been told me. That the whole history should have dropped out
of the knowledge of the family, would have been natural enough, had my
great-grandmother, as well as my great-grandfather, died in youth; but
that she should have outlived her son, dying only after I, the
representative of the fourth generation, was a boy at school, and yet
no whisper have reached me of these facts, appeared strange. A moment's
reflection showed me that the causes and the reasons of the fact must
have lain with my uncle. I could not but remember how both he and my
aunt had sought to prevent me from seeing my grannie alone, and how the
last had complained of this in terms far more comprehensible to me now
than they were then. But what could have been the reasons for this
their obstruction of the natural flow of tradition? They remained
wrapped in a mystery which the outburst from it of an occasional gleam
of conjectural light only served to deepen.

The letters lying open on the table before me, my eyes rested upon one
of the dates--the third day of March, 1747. It struck me that this date
involved a discrepancy with that of the copy I had made from the
register. I referred to it, and found my suspicion correct. According
to the copy, my ancestors were not married until the 15th of January,
1748. I must have made a blunder--and yet I could hardly believe I had,
for I had reason to consider myself accurate. If there _was_ no
mistake, I should have to reconstruct my facts, and draw fresh
conclusions.

By this time, however, I was getting tired and sleepy and cold; my lamp
was nearly out; my fire was quite gone; and the first of a frosty dawn
was beginning to break in the east. I rose and replaced the papers,
reserving all further thought on the matter for a condition of
circumstances more favourable to a correct judgment. I blew out the
lamp, groped my way to bed in the dark, and was soon fast asleep, in
despite of insult, mortification, perplexity, and loss.




CHAPTER XLVIII.


ONLY A LINK.

It may be said of the body in regard of sleep as well as in regard of
death, 'It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.' For me, the
next morning, I could almost have said, 'I was sown in dishonour and
raised in glory.' No one can deny the power of the wearied body to
paralyze the soul; but I have a correlate theory which I love, and
which I expect to find true--that, while the body wearies the mind, it
is the mind that restores vigour to the body, and then, like the man
who has built him a stately palace, rejoices to dwell in it. I believe
that, if there be a living, conscious love at the heart of the
universe, the mind, in the quiescence of its consciousness in sleep,
comes into a less disturbed contact with its origin, the heart of the
creation; whence gifted with calmness and strength for itself, it grows
able to impart comfort and restoration to the weary frame. The
cessation of labour affords but the necessary occasion; makes it
possible, as it were, for the occupant of an outlying station in the
wilderness to return to his father's house for fresh supplies of all
that is needful for life and energy. The child-soul goes home at night,
and returns in the morning to the labours of the school. Mere physical
rest could never of its own negative self build up the frame in such
light and vigour as come through sleep.

It was from no blessed vision that I woke the next morning, but from a
deep and dreamless sleep. Yet the moment I became aware of myself and
the world, I felt strong and courageous, and I began at once to look my
affairs in the face. Concerning that which was first in consequence, I
soon satisfied myself: I could not see that I had committed any serious
fault in the whole affair. I was not at all sure that a lie in defence
of the innocent, and to prevent the knowledge of what no one had any
right to know, was wrong--seeing such involves no injustice on the one
side, and does justice on the other. I have seen reason since to change
my mind, and count my liberty restricted to silence--not extending,
that is, to the denial or assertion of what the will of God, inasmuch
as it exists or does not exist, may have declared to be or not to be
the fact. I now think that to lie is, as it were, to snatch the reins
out of God's hand.

At all events, however, I had done the Brothertons no wrong. 'What
matter, then,' I said to myself, 'of what they believe me guilty, so
long as before God and my own conscience I am clear and clean?'

Next came the practical part:--What was I to do? To right myself either
in respect of their opinion, or in respect of my lost property, was
more hopeless than important, and I hardly wasted two thoughts upon
that. But I could not remain where I was, and soon came to the
resolution to go with Charley to London at once, and taking lodgings in
some obscure recess near the Inns of Court, there to give myself to
work, and work alone, in the foolish hope that one day fame might
buttress reputation. In this resolution I was more influenced by the
desire to be near the brother of Mary Osborne than the desire to be
near my friend Charley, strong as that was. I expected thus to hear of
her oftener, and even cherished the hope of coming to hear from her--of
inducing her to honour me with a word or two of immediate
communication. For I could see no reason why her opinions should
prevent her from corresponding with one who, whatever might or might
not seem to him true, yet cared for the truth, and must treat with
respect every form in which he could descry its predominating presence.

I would have asked Charley to set out with me that very day, but for
the desire to clear up the discrepancy between the date of my
ancestor's letters, all written within the same year, and that of the
copy I had made of the registration of their marriage--with which
object I would compare the copy and the original. I wished also to have
some talk with Mr Coningham concerning the contents of the letters
which at his urgency I had now read. I got up and wrote to him
therefore, asking him to ride with me again to Umberden Church, as soon
as he could make it convenient, and sent Styles off at once on the mare
to carry the note to Minstercombe, and bring me back an answer.

As we sat over our breakfast, Charley said suddenly, 'Clara was
regretting yesterday that she had not seen the Moat. She said you had
asked her once, but had never spoken of it again.'

'And now I suppose she thinks, because I'm in disgrace with her friends
at the Hall, that she mustn't come near me,' I said, with another
bitterness than belonged to the words.

'Wilfrid!' he said reproachfully; 'she didn't say anything of the sort.
I will write and ask her if she couldn't contrive to come over. She
might meet us at the park gates.'

'No,' I returned; 'there isn't time. I mean to go back to
London--perhaps to-morrow evening. It is like turning you out, Charley,
but we shall be nearer each other in town than we were last time.'

'I am delighted to hear it,' he said. 'I had been thinking myself that
I had better go back this evening. My father is expected home in a day
or two, and it would be just like him to steal a march on my chambers.
Yes, I think I shall go to-night.'

'Very well, old boy,' I answered. 'That will make it all right. It's a
pity we couldn't take the journey together, but it doesn't matter much.
I shall follow you as soon as I can.'

'Why can't you go with me?' he asked.

Thereupon I gave him a full report of my excursion with Mr Coningham,
and the after reading of the letters, with my reason for wishing to
examine the register again; telling him that I had asked Mr Coningham
to ride with me once more to Umberden Church.

When Styles returned, he informed me that Mr Coningham at first
proposed to ride back with him, but probably bethinking himself that
another sixteen miles would be too much for my mare, had changed his
mind and sent me the message that he would be with me early the next
day.

After Charley was gone, I spent the evening in a thorough search of the
old bureau. I found in it several quaint ornaments besides those
already mentioned, but only one thing which any relation to my story
would justify specific mention of--namely, an ivory label, discoloured
with age, on which was traceable the very number Sir Giles had read
from the scabbard of Sir Wilfrid's sword. Clearly, then, my sword was
the one mentioned in the book, and as clearly it had not been at
Moldwarp Hall for a long time before I lost it there. If I were in any
fear as to my reader's acceptance of my story, I should rejoice in the
possession of that label more than in the restoration of sword or book;
but amidst all my troubles, I have as yet been able to rely upon her
justice and her knowledge of myself. Yes--I must mention one thing more
I found--a long, sharp-pointed, straight-backed, snake-edged Indian
dagger, inlaid with silver--a fierce, dangerous, almost
venomous-looking weapon, in a curious case of old green morocco. It
also may have once belonged to the armoury of Moldwarp Hall. I took it
with me when I left my grannie's room, and laid it in the portmanteau I
was going to take to London.

My only difficulty was what to do with Lilith; but I resolved for the
mean time to leave her, as before, in the care of Styles, who seemed
almost as fond of her as I was myself.




CHAPTER XLIX.


A DISCLOSURE.

Mr Coningham was at my door by ten o'clock, and we set out together for
Umberden Church. It was a cold clear morning. The dying Autumn was
turning a bright thin defiant face upon the conquering Winter. I was in
great spirits, my mind being full of Mary Osborne. At one moment I saw
but her own ordinary face, only what I had used to regard as dulness I
now interpreted as the possession of her soul in patience; at another I
saw the glorified countenance of my Athanasia, knowing that, beneath
the veil of the other, this, the real, the true face ever lay. Once in
my sight the frost-clung flower had blossomed; in full ideal of glory
it had shone for a moment, and then folding itself again away, had
retired into the regions of faith. And while I knew that such could
dawn out of such, how could I help hoping that from the face of the
universe, however to my eyes it might sometimes seem to stare like the
seven-days dead, one morn might dawn the unspeakable face which even
Moses might not behold lest he should die of the great sight? The keen
air, the bright sunshine, the swift motion--all combined to raise my
spirits to an unwonted pitch; but it was a silent ecstasy, and I almost
forgot the presence of Mr Coningham. When he spoke at last, I started.

'I thought from your letter you had something to tell me, Mr
Cumbermede,' he said, coming alongside of me.

'Yes, to be sure. I have been reading my grannie's papers, as I told
you.'

I recounted the substance of what I had found in them.

'Does it not strike you as rather strange that all this should have
been kept a secret from you?' he asked.

'Very few know anything about their grandfathers,' I said; 'so I
suppose very few fathers care to tell their children about them.'

'That is because there are so few concerning whom there is anything
worth telling.'

'For my part,' I returned, 'I should think any fact concerning one of
those who link me with the infinite past out of which I have come,
invaluable. Even a fact which is not to the credit of an ancestor may
be a precious discovery to the man who has in himself to fight the evil
derived from it.'

'That, however, is a point of view rarely taken. What the ordinary man
values is also rare; hence few regard their ancestry, or transmit any
knowledge they may have of those who have gone before them to those
that come after them.'

'My uncle, however, I suppose, told _me_ nothing because, unlike the
many, he prized neither wealth nor rank, nor what are commonly
considered great deeds.'

'You are not far from the truth there,' said Mr Coningham in a
significant tone.

'Then _you_ know why he never told me anything!' I exclaimed.

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