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Wilfrid Cumbermede

G >> George MacDonald >> Wilfrid Cumbermede




Anxious to keep out of Charley's way--for the secret would make me
wretched in his presence--I went into the City, and, after an early
dinner, sauntered out to the Zoological Gardens, to spend the time till
the hour of meeting. But there, strange to say, whether from insight or
fancy, in every animal face I saw such gleams of a troubled humanity
that at last I could bear it no longer, and betook myself to Primrose
Hill.

It was a bright afternoon, wonderfully clear, with a crisp frosty feel
in the air. But the sun went down, and one by one, here and there,
above and below, the lights came out and the stars appeared, until at
length sky and earth were full of flaming spots, and it was time to
seek our rendezvous.

I had hardly reached it when the graceful form of Clara glided towards
me. She perceived in a moment that I did not mean to shake hands with
her. It was not so dark but that I saw her bosom heave and a flush
overspread her countenance.

'You wished to see me, Miss Coningham,' I said. 'I am at your service.'

'What is wrong, Mr Cumbermede? You never used to speak to me in such a
tone.'

'There is nothing wrong if you are not more able than I to tell what it
is.'

'Why did you come if you were going to treat me so?'

'Because you requested it.'

'Have I offended you, then, by asking you to meet me? I trusted you. I
thought _you_ would never misjudge me.'

'I should be but too happy to find I had been unjust to you, Miss
Coningham. I would gladly go on my knees to you to confess that fault,
if I could only be satisfied of its existence. Assure me of it, and I
will bless you.'

'How strangely you talk! Some one has been maligning me.'

'No one. But I have come to the knowledge of what only one besides
yourself could have told me.'

'You mean--'

'Geoffrey Brotherton.'

'_He!_ He has been telling you--'

'No--thank heaven! I have not yet sunk to the slightest communication
with _him_.'

She turned her face aside. Veiled as it was by the gathering gloom, she
yet could not keep it towards me. But after a brief pause she looked at
me and said,

'You know more than--I do not know what you mean.'

'I do know more than you think I know. I will tell you under what
circumstances I came to such knowledge.'

She stood motionless.

'One evening,' I went on, 'after leaving Moldwarp Hall with Charles
Osborne, I returned to the library to fetch a book. As I entered the
room where it lay, I heard voices in the armoury. One was the voice of
Geoffrey Brotherton--a man you told me you hated. The other was yours.'

She drew herself up, and stood stately before me.

'Is that your accusation?' she said. 'Is a woman never to speak to a
man because she detests him?'

She laughed--I thought drearily.

'Apparently not--for then I presume you would not have asked me to meet
you.'

'Why should you think I hate _you_?'

'Because you have been treacherous to me.'

'In talking to Geoffrey Brotherton? I do hate him. I hate him more than
ever. I spoke the truth when I told you that.'

'Then you do not hate me?'

'No.'

'And yet you delivered me over to my enemy bound hand and foot, as
Delilah did Samson.--I heard what you said to Brotherton.'

She seemed to waver, but stood--speechless, as if waiting for more.

'I heard you tell him that I had taken that sword--the sword you had
always been urging me to take--the sword you unsheathed and laid on my
bed that I might be tempted to take it--why I cannot understand, for I
never did you a wrong to my poor knowledge. I fell into your snare, and
you made use of the fact you had achieved to ruin my character, and
drive me from the house in which I was foolish enough to regard myself
as conferring favours rather than receiving them. You have caused me to
be branded as a thief for taking--at your suggestion--that which was
and still is my own!'

'Does Charley know this?' she asked, in a strangely altered voice.

'He does. He learned it yesterday.'

'O my God!' she cried, and fell kneeling on the grass at my feet.
'Wilfrid! Wilfrid! I will tell you all. It was to tell you all about
this very thing that I asked you to come. I could not bear it longer.
Only your tone made me angry. I did not know you knew so much.'

The very fancy of such submission from such a creature would have
thrilled me with a wild compassion once; but now I thought of Charley
and felt cold to her sorrow as well as her loveliness. When she lifted
her eyes to mine, however--it was not so dark but I could see their
sadness--I began to hope a little for my friend. I took her hand and
raised her. She was now weeping with down-bent head.

'Clara, you shall tell me all. God forbid I should be hard upon you!
But you know I cannot understand it. I have no clue to it. How could
you serve me so?'

'It is very hard for me--but there is no help now: I must confess
disgrace, in order to escape infamy. Listen to me, then--as kindly as
you can, Wilfrid. I beg your pardon; I have no right to use any old
familiarity with you. Had my father's plans succeeded, I should still
have had to make an apology to you, but under what different
circumstances! I will be as brief as I can. My father believed you the
rightful heir to Moldwarp Hall. Your own father believed it, and made
my father believe it--that was in case your uncle should leave no heir
behind him. But your uncle was a strange man, and would neither lay
claim to the property himself, nor allow you to be told of your
prospects. He did all he could to make you, like himself, indifferent
to worldly things; and my father feared you would pride yourself on
refusing to claim your rights, unless some counter-influence were
used.'

'But why should your father have taken any trouble in the matter?' I
asked.

'Well, you know--one in his profession likes to see justice done; and,
besides, to conduct such a case must, of course, be of professional
advantage to him. You must not think him under obligation to the
present family: my grandfather held the position he still occupies
before they came into the property.--I am too unhappy to mind what I
say now. My father was pleased when you and I--indeed I fancy he had a
hand in our first meeting. But while your uncle lived he had to be
cautious. Chance, however, seemed to favour his wishes. We met more
than once, and you liked me, and my father thought I might wake you up
to care about your rights, and--and--but--'

'I see. And it might have been, Clara, but for--'

'Only, you see, Mr Cumbermede,' she interrupted with a half-smile, and
a little return of her playful manner--'_I_ didn't wish it.'

'No. You preferred the man who _had_ the property.'

It was a speech both cruel and rude. She stepped a pace back, and
looked me proudly in the face.

Prefer that man to _you_, Wilfrid! No. I could never have fallen so low
as that. But I confess I didn't mind letting papa understand that Mr
Brotherton was polite to me--just to keep him from urging me
to--to--You _will_ do me the justice that I did not try to make you--to
make you--care for me, Wilfrid?'

'I admit it heartily. I will be as honest as you, and confess that you
might have done so--easily enough at one time. Indeed I am only half
honest after all: I loved you once--after a boyish fashion.'

She half smiled again. 'I am glad you are believing me now,' she said.

'Thoroughly,' I answered. 'When you speak the truth, I must believe
you.'

'I was afraid to let papa know the real state of things. I was always
afraid of him, though I love him dearly, and he is very good to me. I
dared not disappoint him by telling him that I loved Charley Osborne.
That time--you remember--when we met in Switzerland, his strange ways
interested me so much! I was only a girl--but--'

'I understand well enough. I don't wonder at any woman falling in love
with my Charley.'

'Thank you,' she said, with a sigh which seemed to come from the bottom
of her heart. 'You were always generous. You will do what you can to
right me with Charley--won't you? He is very strange sometimes.'

'I will indeed. But, Clara, why didn't Charley let _me_ know that you
and he loved each other?'

'Ah! there my shame comes in again! I wanted--for my father's sake, not
for my own--I need not tell you that--I wanted to keep my influence
over you a little while--that is, until I could gain my father's end.
If I should succeed in rousing you to enter an action for the recovery
of your rights, I thought my father might then be reconciled to my
marrying Charley instead--'

'Instead of me, Clara. Yes--I see. I begin to understand the whole
thing. It's not so bad as I thought--not by any means.'

'Oh, Wilfrid! how good of you! I shall love you next to Charley all my
life.'

She caught hold of my hand, and for a moment seemed on the point of
raising it to her lips.

'But I can't easily get over the disgrace you have done me, Clara.
Neither, I confess, can I get over your degrading yourself to a private
interview with such a beast as I know--and can't help suspecting you
knew--Brotherton to be.'

She dropped my hand, and hid her face in both her own.

'I did know what he was; but the thought of Charley made me able to go
through with it.'

'With the sacrifice of his friend to his enemy?'

'It was bad. It was horridly wicked. I hate myself for it. But you know
I thought it would do you no harm in the end.'

'How much did Charley know of it all?' I asked.

'Nothing whatever. How could I trust his innocence? He's the simplest
creature in the world, Wilfrid.'

'I know that well enough.'

'I could not confess one atom of it to him. He would have blown up the
whole scheme at once. It was all I could do to keep him from telling
you of our engagement; and that made him miserable.'

'Did you tell him I was in love with you? You knew I was, well enough.'

'I dared not do that,' she said, with a sad smile. 'He would have
vanished--would have killed himself to make way for you.'

'I see you understand him, Clara.'

'That will give me some feeble merit in your eyes--won't it, Wilfrid?'

'Still I don't see quite why you betrayed me to Brotherton. I dare say
I should if I had time to think it over.'

'I wanted to put you in such a position with regard to the Brothertons
that you could have no scruples in respect of them such as my father
feared from what he called the over-refinement of your ideas of honour.
The treatment you must receive would, I thought, rouse every feeling
against them. But it was not _all_ for my father's sake, Wilfrid. It
was, however mistaken, yet a good deal for the sake of Charley's friend
that I thus disgraced myself. Can you believe me?'

'I do. But nothing can wipe out the disgrace to me.'

'The sword was your own. Of course I never for a moment doubted that.'

'But they believed I was lying.'

'I can't persuade myself it signifies greatly what such people think
about you. I except Sir Giles. The rest are--'

'Yet you consented to visit them.'

'I was in reality Sir Giles's guest. Not one of the others would have
asked me.'

'Not Geoffrey?'

'I owe _him_ nothing but undying revenge for Charley.' Her eyes flashed
through the darkness; and she looked as if she could have killed him.

'But you were plotting against Sir Giles all the time you were his
guest?'

'Not unjustly, though. The property was not his, but yours--that is, as
we then believed. As far as I knew, the result would have been a real
service to him, in delivering him from unjust possession--a thing he
would himself have scorned. It was all very wrong--very low, if you
like--but somehow it then seemed simple enough--a lawful stratagem for
the right.'

'Your heart was so full of Charley!'

'Then you do forgive me, Wilfrid?'

'With all my soul. I hardly feel now as if I had anything to forgive.'

I drew her towards me and kissed her on the forehead. She threw her
arms round me, and clung to me, sobbing like a child.

'You will explain it all to Charley--won't you?' she said, as soon as
she could speak, withdrawing herself from the arm which had
involuntarily crept around her, seeking to comfort her.

'I will,' I said.

We were startled by a sound in the clump of trees behind us. Then over
their tops passed a wailful gust of wind, through which we thought came
the fall of receding footsteps.

'I hope we haven't been overheard,' I said. 'I shall go at once and
tell Charley all about it. I will just see you home first.'

'There's no occasion for that, Wilfrid; and I'm sure I don't deserve
it.'

'You deserve a thousand thanks. You have lifted a mountain off me. I
see it all now. When your father found it was no use--'

'Then I saw I had wronged you, and I couldn't bear myself till I had
confessed all.'

'Your father is satisfied, then, that the register would not stand in
evidence?'

'Yes. He told me all about it.'

'He has never said a word to me on the matter; but just dropped me in
the dirt, and let me lie there.'

'You must forgive him too, Wilfrid. It was a dreadful blow to him, and
it was weeks before he told me. We couldn't think what was the matter
with him. You see he had been cherishing the scheme ever since your
father's death, and it was a great humiliation to find he had been
sitting so many years on an addled egg,' she said, with a laugh in
which her natural merriment once more peeped out.

I walked home with her, and we parted like old friends. On my way to
the Temple I was anxiously occupied as to how Charley would receive the
explanation I had to give him. That Clara's confession would be a
relief I could not doubt; but it must cause him great pain
notwithstanding. His sense of honour was so keen, and his ideal of
womankind so lofty, that I could not but dread the consequences of the
revelation. At the same time I saw how it might benefit him. I had
begun to see that it is more divine to love the erring than to love the
good, and to understand how there is more joy over the one than over
the ninety and nine. If Charley, understanding that he is no divine
lover, who loves only so long as he is able to flatter himself that the
object of his love is immaculate, should find that he must love Clara
in spite of her faults and wrong-doings, he might thus grow to be less
despairful over his own failures; he might, through his love for Clara,
learn to hope for himself, notwithstanding the awful distance at which
perfection lay removed.

But as I went I was conscious of a strange oppression. It was not
properly mental, for my interview with Clara had raised my spirits. It
was a kind of physical oppression I felt, as if the air, which was in
reality clear and cold, had been damp and close and heavy.

I went straight to Charley's chambers. The moment I opened the door, I
knew that something was awfully wrong. The room was dark--but he would
often sit in the dark. I called him, but received no answer. Trembling,
I struck a light, for I feared to move lest I should touch something
dreadful. But when I had succeeded in lighting the lamp, I found the
room just as it always was. His hat was on the table. He must be in his
bed-room. And yet I did not feel as if anything alive was near me. Why
was everything so frightfully still? I opened the door as slowly and
fearfully as if I had dreaded arousing a sufferer whose life depended
on his repose. There he lay on his bed, in his clothes--fast asleep, as
I thought, for he often slept so, and at any hour of the day--the
natural relief of his much-perturbed mind. His eyes were closed, and
his face was very white. As I looked, I heard a sound--a drop--another!
There was a slow drip somewhere. God in heaven! Could it be? I rushed
to him, calling him aloud. There was no response. It was too true! He
was dead. The long snake-like Indian dagger was in his heart, and the
blood was oozing slowly from around it.

I dare not linger over that horrible night, or the horrible days that
followed. Such days! such nights! The letters to write!--The friends to
tell!--Clara!--His father!--The police!--The inquest!

* * * * *

Mr Osborne took no notice of my letter, but came up at once. Entering
where I sat with my head on my arms on the table, the first
announcement I had of his presence was a hoarse deep broken voice
ordering me out of the room. I obeyed mechanically, took up Charley's
hat instead of my own, and walked away with it. But the neighbours were
kind, and although I did not attempt to approach again all that was
left of my friend, I watched from a neighbouring window, and following
at a little distance, was present when they laid his form, late at
night, in the unconsecrated ground of a cemetery.

I may just mention here what I had not the heart to dwell upon in the
course of my narrative--that since the talk about suicide occasioned by
the remarks of Sir Thomas Browne, he had often brought up the
subject--chiefly, however, in a half-humorous tone, and from what may
be called an aesthetic point of view as to the best mode of
accomplishing it. For some of the usual modes he expressed abhorrence,
as being so ugly; and on the whole considered--I well remember the
phrase, for he used it more than once--that a dagger--and on one of
those occasions he took up the Indian weapon already described and
said--'such as this now,'--was 'the most gentleman-like usher into the
presence of the Great Nothing.' As I had, however, often heard that
those who contemplated suicide never spoke of it, and as his manner on
the occasions to which I refer was always merry, such talk awoke little
uneasiness; and I believe that he never had at the moment any conscious
attraction to the subject stronger than a speculative one. At the same
time, however, I believe that the speculative attraction itself had its
roots in the misery with which in other and prevailing moods he was so
familiar.




CHAPTER LIV.


ISOLATION.

After writing to Mr Osborne to acquaint him with the terrible event,
the first thing I did was to go to Clara. I will not attempt to
describe what followed. The moment she saw me, her face revealed, as in
a mirror, the fact legible on my own, and I had scarcely opened my
mouth when she cried 'He is dead!' and fell fainting on the floor. Her
aunt came, and we succeeded in recovering her a little. But she lay
still as death on the couch where we had laid her, and the motion of
her eyes hither and thither, as if following the movements of some one
about the room, was the only sign of life in her. We spoke to her, but
evidently she heard nothing; and at last, leaving her when the doctor
arrived, I waited for her aunt in another room, and told her what had
happened.

Some days after, Clara sent for me, and I had to tell her the whole
story. Then, with agony in every word she uttered, she managed to
inform me that, when she went in after I had left her at the door that
night, she found waiting her a note from Charley; and this she now gave
me to read. It contained a request to meet him that evening at the very
place which I had appointed. It was their customary rendezvous when she
was in town. In all probability he was there when we were, and heard
and saw--heard too little and saw too much, and concluded that both
Clara and I were false to him. The frightful perturbation which a
conviction such as that must cause in a mind like his could be nothing
short of madness. For, ever tortured by a sense of his own impotence,
of the gulf to all appearance eternally fixed between his actions and
his aspirations, and unable to lay hold of the Essential, the Causing
Goodness, he had clung, with the despair of a perishing man, to the dim
reflex of good he saw in her and me. If his faith in that was indeed
destroyed, the last barrier must have given way, and the sea of madness
ever breaking against it must have broken in and overwhelmed him. But
oh, my friend! surely long ere now thou knowest that we were not false;
surely the hour will yet dawn when I shall again hold thee to my heart;
yea, surely, even if still thou countest me guilty, thou hast already
found for me endless excuse and forgiveness.

I can hardly doubt, however, that he inherited a strain of madness from
his father, a madness which that father had developed by forcing upon
him the false forms of a true religion.

It is not then strange that I should have thought and speculated much
about madness.--What does its frequent impulse to suicide indicate? May
it not be its main instinct to destroy itself as an evil thing? May not
the impulse arise from some unconscious conviction that there is for it
no remedy but the shuffling off of this mortal coil--nature herself
dimly urging through the fumes of the madness to the one blow which
lets in the light and air? Doubtless, if in the mind so sadly unhinged,
the sense of a holy presence could be developed--the sense of a love
that loves through all vagaries--of a hiding-place from forms of evil
the most fantastic--of a fatherly care that not merely holds its insane
child in its arms, but enters into the chaos of his imagination, and
sees every wildest horror with which it swarms; if, I say, the
conviction of such a love dawned on the disordered mind, the man would
live in spite of his imaginary foes, for he would pray against them as
sure of being heard as St Paul when he prayed concerning the thorn from
which he was not delivered, but against which he was sustained. And who
can tell how often this may be the fact--how often the lunatic also
lives by faith? Are not the forms of madness most frequently those of
love and religion? Certainly, if there be a God, he does not forget his
frenzied offspring; certainly he is more tender over them than any
mother over her idiot darling; certainly he sees in them what the eye
of brother or sister cannot see. But some of them, at least, have not
enough of such support to be able to go on living; and, for my part, I
confess I rejoice as often as I hear that one has succeeded in breaking
his prison bars. When the crystal shrine has grown dim, and the fair
forms of nature are in their entrance contorted hideously; when the
sunlight itself is as blue lightning, and the wind in the summer trees
is as 'a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a rebounding echo from
the hollow mountains;' when the body is no longer a mediator between
the soul and the world, but the prison-house of a lying gaoler and
torturer--how can I but rejoice to hear that the tormented captive has
at length forced his way out into freedom?

When I look behind me, I can see but little through the surging lurid
smoke of that awful time. The first sense of relief came when I saw the
body of Charley laid in the holy earth. For the earth _is_ the
Lord's--and none the less holy that the voice of the priest may have
left it without his consecration. Surely if ever the Lord laughs in
derision, as the Psalmist says, it must be when the voice of a man
would in _his_ name exclude his fellows from their birthright. O Lord,
gather thou the outcasts of thy Israel, whom the priests and the rulers
of thy people have cast out to perish.

I remember for the most part only a dull agony, interchanging with
apathy. For days and days I could not rest, but walked hither and
thither, careless whither. When at length I would lie down weary and
fall asleep, suddenly I would start up, hearing the voice of Charley
crying for help, and rush in the middle of the Winter night into the
wretched streets there to wander till daybreak. But I was not utterly
miserable. In my most wretched dreams I never dreamed of Mary, and
through all my waking distress I never forgot her. I was sure in my
very soul that she did me no injustice. I had laid open the deepest in
me to her honest gaze, and she had read it, and could not but know me.
Neither did what had occurred quench my growing faith. I had never been
able to hope much for Charley in this world; for something was out of
joint with him, and only in the region of the unknown was I able to
look for the setting right of it. Nor had many weeks passed before I
was fully aware of relief when I remembered that he was dead. And
whenever the thought arose that God might have given him a fairer
chance in this world, I was able to reflect that apparently God does
not care for this world save as a part of the whole; and on that whole
I had yet to discover that he could have given him a fairer chance.




CHAPTER LV.


ATTEMPTS AND COINCIDENCES.

It was months before I could resume my work. Not until Charley's
absence was, as it were, so far established and accepted that hope had
begun to assert itself against memory; that is, not until the form of
Charley ceased to wander with despairful visage behind me and began to
rise amongst the silvery mists before me, was I able to invent once
more, or even to guide the pen with certainty over the paper. The
moment, however, that I took the pen in my hand another necessity
seized me.

Although Mary had hardly been out of my thoughts, I had heard no word
of her since her brother's death. I dared not write to her father or
mother after the way the former had behaved to me, and I shrunk from
approaching Mary with a word that might suggest a desire to intrude the
thoughts of myself upon the sacredness of her grief. Why should she
think of me? Sorrow has ever something of a divine majesty, before
which one must draw nigh with bowed head and bated breath:

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