Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald

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'He's your father, Charley. Nothing can alter that.'

'That's the misery of it. And then to tell people God is their father!
If he's like mine, he's done us a mighty favour in creating us! I can't
say I feel grateful for it. I must turn out to-morrow.'

'No, Charley. The place has no attraction for me without you, and it
was yours first. Besides, I can't afford to pay so much. I will find
another to-morrow. But we shall see each other often, and perhaps get
through more work apart. I hope he didn't insist on your never seeing
me.'

'He did try it on; but there I stuck fast, threatening to vanish and
scramble for my living as I best might. I told him you were a far
better man than I, and did me nothing but good. But that only made the.
matter worse, proving your influence over me. Let's drop it. It's no
use. Let's go to the Olympic.'

The next day I looked for a lodging in Camden Town, attracted by the
probable cheapness, and by the grass in the Regent's Park; and having
found a decent place, took my things away while Charley was out. I had
not got them, few as they were, in order in my new quarters before he
made his appearance; and as long as I was there few days passed on
which we did not meet.

One evening he walked in, accompanied by a fine-looking young fellow,
whom I thought I must know, and presently recognized as Home, our old
school-fellow, with whom I had fought in Switzerland. We had become
good friends before we parted, and Charley and he had met repeatedly
since.

'What are you doing now, Home?' I asked him.

'I've just taken deacon's orders,' he answered. 'A friend of my
father's has promised me a living. I've been hanging-about quite long
enough now. A fellow ought to do something for his existence.'

'I can't think how a strong fellow like you can take to mumbling
prayers and reading sermons,' said Charley.

'It ain't nice,' said Home, 'but it's a very respectable profession.
There are viscounts in it, and lots of honourables.'

'I dare say,' returned Charley, with drought. 'But a nerveless creature
like me, who can't even hit straight from the shoulder, would be good
enough for that. A giant like you, Home!'

'Ah! by-the-by, Osborne,' said Home, not in love with the prospect, and
willing to turn the conversation, 'I thought you were a church-calf
yourself.'

'Honestly, Home, I don't know whether it isn't the biggest of all big
humbugs.'

'Oh, but--Osborne!--it ain't the thing, you know, to talk like that of
a profession adopted by so many great men fit to honour any
profession,' returned Home, who was not one of the brightest of
mortals, and was jealous for the profession just in as much as it was
destined for his own.

'Either the profession honours the men, or the men dishonour
themselves,' said Charley. 'I believe it claims to have been founded by
a man called Jesus Christ, if such a man ever existed except in the
fancy of his priesthood.'

'Well, really,' expostulated Home, looking, I must say, considerably
shocked, 'I shouldn't have expected that from the son of a clergyman!'

'I couldn't help my father. I wasn't consulted,' said Charley, with an
uncomfortable grin. 'But, at any rate, my father fancies he believes
all the story. I fancy I don't.'

'Then you're an infidel, Osborne.'

'Perhaps. Do you think that so very horrible?'

'Yes, I do. Tom Paine, and all the rest of them, you know!'

'Well, Home, I'll tell you one thing I think worse than being an
infidel.'

'What is that?'

'Taking to the Church for a living.'

'I don't see that.'

'Either the so-called truths it advocates are things to live and die
for, or they are the veriest old wives' fables going. Do you know who
was the first to do what you are about now?'

'No. I can't say. I'm not up in Church history yet.'

'It was Judas.'

I am not sure that Charley was right, but that is what he said. I was
taking no part in the conversation, but listening eagerly, with a
strong suspicion that Charley had been leading Home to this very point.

'A man must live,' said Home.

'That's precisely what I take it Judas said: for my part I don't see
it.'

'Don't see what?'

'That a man must live. It would be a far more incontrovertible
assertion that a man must die--and a more comfortable one, too.'

'Upon my word, I don't understand you, Osborne! You make a fellow feel
deuced queer with your remarks.'

'At all events, you will allow that the first of them--they call them
apostles, don't they?--didn't take to preaching the gospel for the sake
of a living. What a satire on the whole kit of them that word _living_,
so constantly in all their mouths, is! It seems to me that Messrs Peter
and Paul and Matthew, and all the rest of them, forsook their livings
for a good chance of something rather the contrary.'

'Then it _was_ true--what they said about you at Forest's?'

'I don't know what they said,' returned Charley; 'but before I would
pretend to believe what I didn't--'

'But I _do_ believe it, Osborne.'

'May I ask on what grounds?'

'Why--everybody does.'

'That would be no reason, even if it were a fact, which it is not. You
believe it, or rather, choose to think you believe it, because you've
been told it. Sooner than pretend to teach what I have never learned,
and be looked up to as a pattern of godliness, I would 'list in the
ranks. There, at least, a man might earn an honest living.'

'By Jove! You do make a fellow feel uncomfortable!' repeated Home.
'You've got such a--such an uncompromising way of saying things--to use
a mild expression.'

'I think it's a sneaking thing to do, and unworthy of a gentleman.'

'I don't see what right you've got to bully me in that way,' said Home,
getting angry.

It was time to interfere.

'Charley is so afraid of being dishonest, Home,' I said, 'that he is
rude.--You are rude now, Charley.'

'I beg your pardon, Home,' exclaimed Charley at once.

'Oh, never mind!' returned Home with gloomy good-nature.

'You ought to make allowance, Charley,' I pursued. 'When a man has been
accustomed all his life to hear things spoken of in a certain way, he
cannot help having certain notions to start with.'

'If I thought as Osborne does,' said Home, 'I _would_ sooner 'list than
go into the Church.'

'I confess,' I rejoined, 'I do not see how any one can take orders,
unless he not only loves God with all his heart, but receives the story
of the New Testament as a revelation of him, precious beyond utterance.
To the man who accepts it so, the calling is the noblest in the world.'

The others were silent, and the conversation turned away. From whatever
cause, Home did not go into the Church, but died fighting in India.

He soon left us--Charley remaining behind.

'What a hypocrite I am!' he exclaimed;--'following a profession in
which I must often, if I have any practice at all, defend what I know
to be wrong, and seek to turn justice from its natural course.'

'But you can't always know that your judgment is right, even if it
should be against your client. I heard an eminent barrister say once
that he had come out of the court convinced by the arguments of the
opposite counsel.'

'And having gained the case?'

'That I don't know.'

'He went in believing his own side anyhow, and that made it all right
for him.'

'I don't know that either. His private judgment was altered, but
whether it was for or against his client, I do not remember. The fact,
however, shows that one might do a great wrong by refusing a client
whom he judged in the wrong.'

'On the contrary, to refuse a brief on such grounds would be best for
all concerned. Not believing in it, you could not do your best, and
might be preventing one who would believe in it from taking it up.'

'The man might not get anybody to take it up.'

'Then there would be little reason to expect that a jury charged under
ordinary circumstances would give a verdict in his favour.'

'But it would be for the barristers to constitute themselves the
judges.'

'Yes--of their own conduct--only that. There I am again! The finest
ideas about the right thing--and going on all the same, with open eyes
running my head straight into the noose! Wilfrid, I'm one of the
weakest animals in creation. What if you found at last that I had been
deceiving _you_! What would you say?'

'Nothing, Charley--to any one else.'

'What would you say to yourself, then?'

'I don't know. I know what I should do.'

'What?'

'Try to account for it, and find as many reasons as I could to justify
you. That is, I would do just as you do for every one but yourself.'

He was silent--plainly from emotion, which I attributed to his pleasure
at the assurance of the strength of my friendship.

'Suppose you could find none?' he said, recovering himself a little.

'I should still believe there _were_ such. _Tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner_, you know.'

He brightened at this.

'You _are_ a friend, Wilfrid! What a strange condition mine is!--for
ever feeling I could do this and that difficult thing, were it to fall
in my way, and yet constantly failing in the simplest duties--even to
that of common politeness. I behaved like a brute to Home. He's a fine
fellow, and only wants to see a thing to do it. _I_ see it well enough,
and don't do it. Wilfrid, I shall come to a bad end. When it comes,
mind I told you so, and blame nobody but myself. I mean what I say.

'Nonsense, Charley! It's only that you haven't active work enough, and
get morbid with brooding over the germs of things.'

'Oh, Wilfrid, how beautiful a life might be! Just look at that one in
the New Testament! Why shouldn't _I_ be like that? _I_ don't know why.
I feel as if I could. But I'm not, you see--and never shall be. I'm
selfish, and ill-tempered, and--'

'Charley! Charley! There never was a less selfish or better-tempered
fellow in the world.'

'Don't make me believe that, Wilfrid, or I shall hate the world as well
as myself. It's all my hypocrisy makes you think so. Because I am
ashamed of what I am, and manage to hide it pretty well, you think me a
saint. That is heaping damnation on me.'

'Take a pipe, Charley, and shut up. That's rubbish!' I said. I doubt
much if it was what I ought to have said, but I was alarmed for the
consequences of such brooding. 'I wonder what the world would be like
if every one considered himself acting up to his own ideal!'

'If he was acting so, then it would do the world no harm that he knew
it.'

'But his ideal must then be a low one, and that would do himself and
everybody the worst kind of harm. The greatest men have always thought
the least of themselves.'

'Yes, but that was because they _were_ the greatest. A man may think
little of himself just for the reason that he _is_ little, and can't
help knowing it.'

'Then it's a mercy he does know it! for most small people think much of
themselves.'

'But to know it--and to feel all the time you ought to be and could be
something very different, and yet never get a step nearer it! That is
to be miserable. Still it is a mercy to know it. There is always a last
help.'

I mistook what he meant, and thought it well to say no more. After
smoking a pipe or two, he was quieter, and left me with a merry remark.
One lovely evening in Spring, I looked from my bed-room window, and saw
the red sunset burning in the thin branches of the solitary poplar that
graced the few feet of garden behind the house. It drew me out to the
park, where the trees were all in young leaf, each with its shadow
stretching away from its foot, like its longing to reach its kind
across dividing space. The grass was like my own grass at home, and I
went wandering over it in all the joy of the new Spring, which comes
every year to our hearts as well as to their picture outside. The
workmen were at that time busy about the unfinished botanical gardens,
and I wandered thitherward, lingering about, and pondering and
inventing, until the sun was long withdrawn, and the shades of night
had grown very brown.

I was at length sauntering slowly home to put a few finishing touches
to a paper I had been at work upon all day, when something about a
young couple in front of me attracted my attention. They were walking
arm in arm, talking eagerly, but so low that I heard only a murmur. I
did not quicken my pace, yet was gradually gaining upon them, when
suddenly the conviction started up in my mind that the gentleman was
Charley. I could not mistake his back, or the stoop of his shoulders as
he bent towards his companion. I was so certain of him that I turned at
once from the road, and wandered away across the grass: if he did not
choose to tell me about the lady, I had no right to know. But I confess
to a strange trouble that he had left me out. I comforted myself,
however, with the thought that perhaps when we next met he would
explain, or at least break, the silence.

After about an hour, he entered, in an excited mood, merry but
uncomfortable. I tried to behave as if I knew nothing, but could not
help feeling much disappointed when he left me without a word of his
having had a second reason for being in the neighbourhood.

What effect the occurrence might have had, whether the cobweb veil of
which I was now aware between us would have thickened to opacity or
not, I cannot tell. I dare not imagine that it might. I rather hope
that by degrees my love would have got the victory, and melted it away.
But now came a cloud which swallowed every other in my firmament. The
next morning brought a letter from my aunt, telling me that my uncle
had had a stroke, as she called it, and at that moment was lying
insensible. I put my affairs in order at once, and Charley saw me away
by the afternoon coach.

It was a dreary journey. I loved my uncle with perfect confidence and
profound veneration, a result of the faithful and open simplicity with
which he had always behaved towards me. If he were taken away, and
already he might be gone, I should be lonely indeed, for on whom
besides could I depend with anything like the trust which I reposed in
him? For, conceitedly or not, I had always felt that Charley rather
depended on me--that I had rather to take care of him than to look for
counsel from him.

The weary miles rolled away. Early in the morning we reached
Minstercombe. There I got a carriage, and at once continued my journey.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHANGES.

I met no one at the house-door, or in the kitchen, and walked straight
up the stair to my uncle's room. The blinds were down, and the curtains
were drawn, and I could but just see the figure of my aunt seated
beside the bed. She rose, and, without a word of greeting, made way for
me to approach the form which lay upon it stretched out straight and
motionless. The conviction that I was in the presence of death seized
me; but instead of the wretchedness of heart and soul which I had
expected to follow the loss of my uncle, a something deeper than any
will of my own asserted itself, and as it were took the matter from me.
It was as if my soul avoided the sorrow of separation by breaking with
the world of material things, asserting the shadowy nature of all the
visible, and choosing its part with the something which had passed
away. It was as if my deeper self said to my outer consciousness: 'I
too am of the dead--one with them, whether they live or are no more.
For a little while I am shut out from them, and surrounded with things
that seem: let me gaze on the picture while it lasts; dream or no
dream, let me live in it according to its laws, and await what will
come next; if an awaking, it is well: if only a perfect because
dreamless sleep, I shall not be able to lament the endless
separation--but while I know myself, I will hope for something better.'
Like this, at least, was the blossom into which, under my
after-brooding, the bud of that feeling broke.

I laid my hand upon my uncle's forehead. It was icy cold, just like my
grannie's when my aunt had made me touch it. And I knew that my uncle
was gone, that the slow tide of the eternal ocean had risen while he
lay motionless within the wash of its waves, and had floated him away
from the shore of our world. I took the hand of my aunt, who stood like
a statue behind me, and led her from the room.

'He is gone, aunt,' I said, as calmly as I could.

She made no reply, but gently withdrew her hand from mine, and returned
into the chamber. I stood a few moments irresolute, but reverence for
her sorrow prevailed, and I went down the stair and seated myself by
the fire. There the servant told me that my uncle had never moved since
they laid him in his bed. Soon after the doctor arrived, and went
up-stairs; but returned in a few minutes, only to affirm the fact. I
went again to the room, and found my aunt lying with her face on the
bosom of the dead man. She allowed me to draw her away, but when I
would have led her down, she turned aside and sought her own chamber,
where she remained for the rest of the day.

I will not linger over that miserable time. Greatly as I revered my
uncle, I was not prepared to find how much he had been respected, and
was astonished at the number of faces I had never seen which followed
to the churchyard. Amongst them were the Coninghams, father and son;
but except by a friendly grasp of the hand, and a few words of
condolence, neither interrupted the calm depression rather than grief
in which I found myself. When I returned home, there was with my aunt a
married sister, whom I had never seen before. Up to this time she had
shown an arid despair, and been regardless of everything about her; but
now she was in tears. I left them together, and wandered for hours up
and down the lonely playground of my childhood, thinking of many
things--most of all, how strange it was that, if there were a
_hereafter_ for us, we should know positively nothing concerning it;
that not a whisper should cross the invisible line; that the something
which had looked from its windows so lovingly should have in a moment
withdrawn, by some back-way unknown either to itself or us, into a
region of which all we can tell is that thence no prayers and no tears
will entice it to lift for an instant again the fallen curtain, and
look out once more. Why should not God, I thought, if a God there be,
permit one single return to each, that so the friends left behind in
the dark might be sure that death was not the end, and so live in the
world as not of the world?

[Illustration: I went again to the room, and found my aunt lying with
her face on the bosom of the dead man]

When I re-entered, I found my aunt looking a little cheerful. She was
even having something to eat with her sister--an elderly
country-looking woman, the wife of a farmer in a distant shire. Their
talk had led them back to old times, to their parents and the friends
of their childhood; and the memory of the long dead had comforted her a
little over the recent loss; for all true hearts death is a uniting,
not a dividing power.

'I suppose you will be going back to London, Wilfrid?' said my aunt,
who had already been persuaded to pay her sister a visit.

'I think I had better,' I answered. 'When I have a chance of publishing
a book, I should like to come and write it, or at least finish it,
here, if you will let me.'

'The place is your own, Wilfrid. Of course I shall be very glad to have
you here.'

'The place is yours as much as mine, aunt,' I replied. 'I can't bear to
think that my uncle has no right over it still. I believe he has, and
therefore it is yours just the same--not to mention my own wishes in
the matter.'

She made no reply, and I saw that both she and her sister were shocked
either at my mentioning the dead man, or at my supposing he had any
earthly rights left. The next day they set out together, leaving in the
house the wife of the head man at the farm, to attend to me until I
should return to town. I had purposed to set out the following morning,
but I found myself enjoying so much the undisturbed possession of the
place, that I remained there for ten days; and when I went, it was with
the intention of making it my home as soon as I might: I had grown
enamoured of the solitude so congenial to labour. Before I left I
arranged my uncle's papers, and in doing so found several early
sketches which satisfied me that he might have distinguished himself in
literature if his fate had led him thitherward.

Having given the house in charge to my aunt's deputy, Mrs Herbert, I at
length returned to my lodging in Camden Town. There I found two letters
waiting me, the one announcing the serious illness of my aunt, and the
other her death. The latter was two days old. I wrote to express my
sorrow, and excuse my apparent neglect, and having made a long journey
to see her also laid in the earth, I returned to my old home, in order
to make fresh arrangements.

CHAPTER XXX.

PROPOSALS.

Mrs Herbert attended me during the forenoon, but left me after my early
dinner. I made my tea for myself, and a tankard filled from a barrel of
ale of my uncle's brewing, with a piece of bread and cheese, was my
unvarying supper. The first night I felt very lonely, almost indeed
what the Scotch call _eerie_. The place, although inseparably
interwoven with my earliest recollections, drew back and stood apart
from me--a thing to be thought about; and, in the ancient house, amidst
the lonely field, I felt like a ghost condemned to return and live the
vanished time over again. I had had a fire lighted in my own room; for,
although the air was warm outside, the thick stone walls seemed to
retain the chilly breath of the last Winter. The silent rooms that
filled the house forced the sense of their presence upon me. I seemed
to see the forsaken things in them staring at each other, hopeless and
useless, across the dividing space, as if saying to themselves, 'We
belong to the dead, are mouldering to the dust after them, and in the
dust alone we meet.' From the vacant rooms my soul seemed to float out
beyond, searching still--to find nothing but loneliness and emptiness
betwixt me and the stars; and beyond the stars more loneliness and more
emptiness still--no rest for the sole of the foot of the wandering
Psyche--save--one mighty saving--an exception which, if true, must be
the one all-absorbing rule. 'But,' I was saying to myself, 'love
unknown is not even equal to love lost,' when my reverie was broken by
the dull noise of a horse's hoofs upon the sward. I rose and went to
the window. As I crossed the room, my brain rather than myself suddenly
recalled the night when my pendulum drew from the churning trees the
unwelcome genius of the storm. The moment I reached the window--there
through the dim Summer twilight, once more from the trees, now as still
as sleep, came the same figure.

Mr Coningham saw me at the fire-lighted window, and halted.

'May I be admitted?' he asked ceremoniously.

I made a sign to him to ride round to the door, for I could not speak
aloud: it would have been rude to the memories that haunted the silent
house.

'May I come in for a few minutes, Mr Cumbermede?' he asked again,
already at the door by the time I had opened it.

'By all means, Mr Coningham,' I replied. 'Only you must tie your horse
to this ring, for we--I--have no stable here.'

'I've done this before,' he answered, as he made the animal fast. 'I
know the ways of the place well enough. But surely you're not here in
absolute solitude?'

'Yes, I am. I prefer being alone at present.'

'Very unhealthy, I must say! You will grow hypochondriacal if you mope
in this fashion,' he returned, following me up-stairs to my room.

'A day or two of solitude now and then would, I suspect, do most people
more good than harm,' I answered. 'But you must not think I intend
leading a hermit's life. Have you heard that my aunt--?'

'Yes, yes.--You are left alone in the world. But relations are not a
man's only friends--and certainly not always his best friends.'

I made no reply, thinking of my uncle.

'I did not know you were down,' he resumed. 'I was calling at my
father's, and seeing your light across the park, thought it possible
you might be here, and rode over to see. May I take the liberty of
asking what your plans are?' he added, seating himself by the fire.

'I have hardly had time to form new ones; but I mean to stick to my
work, anyhow.'

'You mean your profession?'

'Yes, if you will allow me to call it such. I have had success enough
already to justify me in going on.'

'I am more pleased than surprised to hear it,' he answered.

'But what will you do with the old nest?'

'Let the old nest wait for the old bird, Mr Coningham--keep it to die
in.'

'I don't like to hear a young fellow talking that way,' he
remonstrated. 'You've got a long life to live yet--at least I hope so.
But if you leave the house untenanted till the period to which you
allude, it will be quite unfit by that time even for the small service
you propose to require of it. Why not let it--for a term of years? I
could find you a tenant, I make no doubt.'

'I won't let it. I shall meet the world all the better if I have a
place of my own to take refuge in.'

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