Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald
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George MacDonald >> Wilfrid Cumbermede
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For the first time the question now rose in my mind whether Mrs Wilson
could have been in league with Mr Close. Was it likely I should have
been placed in a room so entirely fitted to his purposes by accident?
But I could not imagine any respectable woman running such a risk of
terrifying a child out of his senses, even if she could have connived
at his being robbed of what she might well judge unsuitable for his
possession.
Descending again to the bed-room, I set to work with my tools. The
utmost care was necessary, for the threads were weak with old age. I
had only one or two slight mishaps, however, succeeding on the whole
better than I had expected. Leaving the door denuded of its covering, I
took the patch on my arm, and again sought the library. Hobbes's
surprise, and indeed pleasure, when he saw that my plunder not only
fitted the gap, but completed the design, was great. I directed him to
get the whole piece down as carefully as he could, and went to extract,
if possible, a favour from Lady Brotherton.
She was of course very stiff--no doubt she would have called it
dignified; but I did all I could to please her, and perhaps in some
small measure succeeded. After representing, amongst other advantages,
what an addition a suite of rooms filled with a valuable library must
be to the capacity of the house for the reception and entertainment of
guests, I ventured at last to beg the services of Miss Pease for the
repair of the bit of the tapestry.
She rang the bell, sent for Miss Pease, and ordered her, in a style of
the coldest arrogance, to put herself under my direction. She followed
me to the door in the meekest manner, but declined the arm I offered.
As we went I explained what I wanted, saying I could not trust it to
any hands but those of a lady, expressing a hope that she would not
think I had taken too great a liberty, and begging her to say nothing
about the work itself, as I wished to surprise Sir Giles and my
assistants. She said she would be most happy to help me, but when she
saw how much was wanted, she did look a little dismayed. She went and
fetched her work-basket at once, however, and set about it, tacking the
edges to a strip of canvas, in preparation for some kind of darning,
which would not, she hoped, be unsightly.
For a whole week she and the carpenter were the only persons I
admitted, and while she gave to her darning every moment she could
redeem from her attendance on Lady Brotherton, the carpenter and I were
busy--he cleaning and polishing, and I ranging the more deserted parts
of the house to find furniture suitable for our purpose. In Clara's
room was an old Turkey-carpet which we appropriated, and when we had
the tapestry up again, which Miss Pease had at length restored in a
marvellous manner--surpassing my best hopes, and more like healing than
repairing--the place was to my eyes a very nest of dusky harmonies.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE OLD CHEST.
I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of
the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady
Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of
Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was
brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where
the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the
heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the
fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue
of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of
the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among
them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on
one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water
where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was
bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark,
sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door
of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and
from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the
weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered
settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a
skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved
sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were
the sole furniture.
Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to
enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.
'We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,' she
said; 'and--'
'That will be some time yet,' I interrupted, not desiring the
invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; 'and I fear
there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity
and value of the library--if the other rooms should turn out as rich as
that one.'
'I believe old books _are_ expensive now-a-days,' she returned. 'They
are more sought after, I understand.'
We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara
and Mary were assiduous in their help.
To go back for a little to my own old chest--we found it, as I said,
full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my
uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was
evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not
inclined to expend on them--for I had no pleasure in such details as
involved nothing of the picturesque--I threw the one in my hand upon
the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley,
who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least
a quarter of an hour, exclaimed--
'Come, Charley; I'm sick of the rubbish. Let's go and have a walk
before supper.'
'Rubbish!' he repeated; 'I am ashamed of you!'
'I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she's got in her
head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and
all that.'
'Very like it!' said Charley--'calling such a chestful as this
rubbish!'
'I am pleased enough to possess it,' I said; 'but if they had been such
books as some of those at the Hall--'
'Look here, then,' he said, stooping over the chest, and with some
difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but
had not yet examined--'just see what you can make of that.'
I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my
eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was
written--'Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.' Then followed what I
will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the
hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a
shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty
room hugging the folio. 'Have you lost your senses?' said Charley; but
when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as
myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers
again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my
treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient
verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked
up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself--
'Well, Charley, what are you finding there?' I asked.
'Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,' he
answered; 'proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp
property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the
same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present
baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can
hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.'
'You don't mean I'm of the same blood as--as Geoffrey Brotherton!' I
said. 'I would rather not, if it's the same to you, Charley.'
'I can't help it: that's the way things point,' he answered, throwing
down the parchment. 'But I can't read more now. Let's go and have a
walk. I'll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.'
'I'll stop with you.'
[Illustration: "Well. Charley. What are you finding there?" I asked.]
'No, you won't. You'll go and get on with your library. I shall do
better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as
well!'
'But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look
here, though,' I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal.
'Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at
the Hall.'
'That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How
strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the
gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!'
'Or, like the mole or squint that re-appears in successive generations,
the legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor,' I said--and several
things unexplained occurred to me as possibly having a common solution.
'I find, however,' said Charley, 'that the name of Cumbermede is not
mentioned in your papers more than about a hundred years back--as far
as I have yet made out.'
'That is odd,' I returned, 'seeing that in the same chest we find that
book with my name, surname and Christian, and the date 1630.'
'It is strange,' he acquiesced, 'and will perhaps require a somewhat
complicated theory to meet it.'
We began to talk of other matters, and, naturally enough, soon came to
Clara.
Charley was never ready to talk of her--indeed, avoided the subject in
a way that continued to perplex me.
'I confess to you, Charley,' I said, 'there is something about her I do
not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were--I will
not say underhand--but as if she had some object in view--some design
upon you--'
'Upon me!' exclaimed Charley, looking at me suddenly and with a face
from which all the colour had fled.
'No, no, Charley, not that,' I answered, laughing. 'I used the word
impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been
talking about a witch--or a demon-lady--you are so frightened at the
notion of her having you in her eye.'
He did not seem altogether relieved, and I caught an uneasy glance
seeking my countenance.
'But isn't she charming?' I went on. 'It is only to you I could talk
about her so. And after all it may be only a fancy.'
He kept his face downwards and aside, as if he were pondering and
coming to no conclusion. The silence grew and grew until expectation
ceased, and when I spoke again it was of something different.
My reader may be certain from all this that I was not in love with
Clara. Her beauty and liveliness, with a gaiety which not seldom
assumed the form of grace, attracted me much, it is true; but nothing
interferes more with the growth of any passion than a spirit of
questioning, and, that once roused, love begins to cease and pass into
pain. Few, perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had
reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing
passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope
of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a
reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not
make myself sure that Clara was upright;--perhaps the more commonplace
word _straightforward_ would express my meaning better.
Anxious to get the books arranged before they all left me, for I knew I
should have but little heart for it after they were gone, I grudged
Charley the forenoon he wanted amongst my papers, and prevailed upon
him to go with me the next day as usual. Another fortnight, which was
almost the limit of their stay, would, I thought, suffice; and giving
up everything else, Charley and I worked from morning till night, with
much though desultory assistance from the ladies. I contrived to keep
the carpenter and housemaid in work, and by the end of the week began
to see the inroads of order 'scattering the rear of darkness thin.'
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MARY OSBORNE.
All this time the acquaintance between Mary Osborne and myself had not
improved. Save as the sister of my friend I had not, I repeat, found
her interesting. She did not seem at all to fulfil the promise of her
childhood. Hardly once did she address me; and, when I spoke to her,
would reply with a simple, dull directness which indicated nothing
beyond the fact of the passing occasion. Rightly or wrongly, I
concluded that the more indulgence she cherished for Charley, the less
she felt for his friend--that to him she attributed the endlessly sad
declension of her darling brother. Once on her face I surprised a look
of unutterable sorrow resting on Charley's; but the moment she saw that
I observed her, the look died out, and her face stiffened into its
usual dulness and negation. On me she turned only the unenlightened
disc of her soul. Mrs Osborne, whom I seldom saw, behaved with much
more kindness, though hardly more cordiality. It was only that she
allowed her bright indulgence for Charley to cast the shadow of his
image over the faults of his friend; and except by the sadness that
dwelt in every line of her sweet face, she did not attract me. I was
ever aware of an inward judgment which I did not believe I deserved,
and I would turn from her look with a sense of injury which greater
love would have changed into keen pain.
Once, however, I did meet a look of sympathy from Mary. On the second
Monday of the fortnight I was more anxious than ever to reach the end
of my labours, and was in the court, accompanied by Charley, as early
as eight o'clock. From the hall a dark passage led past the door of the
dining-room to the garden. Through the dark tube of the passage we saw
the bright green of a lovely bit of sward, and upon it Mary and Clara,
radiant in white morning dresses. We joined them.
'Here come the slave-drivers!' remarked Clara.
'Already!' said Mary, in a low voice, which I thought had a tinge of
dismay in its tone.
'Never mind, Polly,' said her companion--'we're not going to bow to
their will and pleasure. We'll have our walk in spite of them.'
As she spoke she threw a glance at us which seemed to say--'You may
come if you like;' then turned to Mary with another which said--'We
shall see whether they prefer old books or young ladies.'
Charley looked at me--interrogatively.
'Do as you like, Charley,' I said.
'I will do as you do,' he answered.
'Well,' I said, 'I have no right--'
'Oh! bother!' said Clara. 'You're so magnificent always with your
rights and wrongs! Are you coming, or are you not?'
'Yes, I'm coming,' I replied, convicted by Clara's directness, for I
was quite ready to go.
We crossed the court, and strolled through the park, which was of great
extent, in the direction of a thick wood, covering a rise towards the
east. The morning air was perfectly still; there was a little dew on
the grass, which shone rather than sparkled; the sun was burning
through a light fog, which grew deeper as we approached the wood; the
decaying leaves filled the air with their sweet, mournful scent.
Through the wood went a wide opening or glade, stretching straight and
far towards the east, and along this we walked, with that exhilaration
which the fading Autumn so strangely bestows. For some distance the
ground ascended softly, but the view was finally closed in by a more
abrupt swell, over the brow of which the mist hung in dazzling
brightness.
Notwithstanding the gaiety of animal spirits produced by the season, I
felt unusually depressed that morning. Already, I believe, I was
beginning to feel the home-born sadness of the soul whose wings are
weary and whose foot can find no firm soil on which to rest. Sometimes
I think the wonder is that so many men are never sad. I doubt if
Charley would have suffered so but for the wrongs his father's selfish
religion had done him; which perhaps were therefore so far well,
inasmuch as otherwise he might not have cared enough about religion
even to doubt concerning it. But in my case now, it may have been only
the unsatisfying presence of Clara, haunted by a dim regret that I
could not love her more than I did. For with regard to her my soul was
like one who in a dream of delight sees outspread before him a wide
river, wherein he makes haste to plunge that he may disport himself in
the fine element; but, wading eagerly, alas! finds not a single pool
deeper than his knees.
'What's the matter with you, Wilfrid?' said Charley, who, in the midst
of some gay talk, suddenly perceived my silence. 'You seem to lose all
your spirits away from your precious library. I do believe you grudge
every moment not spent upon those ragged old books.'
'I wasn't thinking of that, Charley; I was wondering what lies beyond
that mist.'
'I see!--A chapter of the _Pilgrim's Progress_! Here we are--Mary,
you're Christiana, and, Clara, you're Mercy. Wilfrid, you're--what?--I
should have said Hopeful any other day, but this morning you look
like--let me see--like Mr Ready-to-Halt. The celestial city lies behind
that fog--doesn't it, Christiana?'
'I don't like to hear you talk so, Charley,' said his sister, smiling
in his face.
'They ain't in the Bible,' he returned.
'No--and I shouldn't mind if you were only merry, but you know you are
scoffing at the story, and I love it--so I can't be pleased to hear
you.'
'I beg your pardon, Mary--but your celestial city lies behind such a
fog that not one crystal turret, one pearly gate of it was ever seen.
At least _we_ have never caught a glimmer of it, and must go tramp,
tramp--we don't know whither, any more than the blind puppy that has
crawled too far from his mother's side.'
'I do see the light of it, Charley dear,' said Mary, sadly--not as if
the light were any great comfort to her at the moment.
'If you do see something--how can you tell what it's the light of? It
may come from the city of Dis, for anything you know.'
'I don't know what that is.'
'Oh! the red-hot city--down below. You will find all about it in
Dante.'
'It doesn't look like that--the light I see,' said Mary, quietly.
'How very ill-bred you are--to say such wicked things, Charley!' said
Clara.
'Am I? They _are_ better unmentioned. Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die! Only don't allude to the unpleasant subject.'
He burst out singing: the verses were poor, but I will give them.
'Let the sun shimmer!
Let the wind blow!
All is a notion--What
do we know?
Let the moon glimmer!
Let the stream flow!
All is but motion
To and fro!
'Let the rose wither!
Let the stars glow!
Let the rain batter--
Drift sleet and snow!
Bring the tears hither!
Let the smiles go!
What does it matter?
To and fro!
'To and fro ever,
Motion and show!
Nothing goes onward--
Hurry or no!
All is one river--
Seaward and so
Up again sunward--
To and fro!
'Pendulum sweeping
High, and now low!
That star--_tic_, blot it!
_Tac_, let it go!
Time he is reaping
Hay for his mow;
That flower--he's got it!
To and fro!
'Such a scythe swinging,
Mighty and slow!
Ripping and slaying--
Hey nonny no!
Black Ribs is singing--
Chorus--Hey, ho!
What is he saying--
To and fro?
'Singing and saying
"Grass is hay--ho!
Love is a longing;
Water is snow."
Swinging and swaying,
Toll the bells go!
Dinging and donging
To and fro!'
'Oh, Charley!' said his sister, with suppressed agony, 'what a wicked
song!'
'It _is_ a wicked song,' I said. 'But I meant----it only represents an
unbelieving, hopeless mood.'
'_You_ wrote it, then!' she said, giving me--as it seemed,
involuntarily--a look of reproach.
'Yes, I did; but--'
'Then I think you are very horrid,' said Clara, interrupting.
'Charley!' I said, 'you must not leave your sister to think so badly of
me! You know why I wrote it--and what I meant.'
'I wish I had written it myself,' he returned. 'I think it splendid.
Anybody might envy you that song.'
'But you know I didn't mean it for a true one.'
'Who knows whether it is true or false?'
'_I_ know,' said Mary: 'I know it is false.'
'And _I_ hope it,' I adjoined.
'Whatever put such horrid things into your head, Wilfrid?' asked Clara.
'Probably the fear lest they should be true. The verses came as I sat
in a country church once, not long ago.'
'In a church!' exclaimed Mary.
'Oh! he does go to church sometimes,' said Charley, with a laugh.
'How could you think of it in church?' persisted Mary.
'It's more like the churchyard,' said Clara.
'It was in an old church in a certain desolate sea-forsaken town,' I
said. 'The pendulum of the clock--a huge, long, heavy, slow
thing--hangs far down into the church, and goes swing, swang over your
head, three or four seconds to every swing. When you have heard the
_tic_, your heart grows faint every time between--waiting for the
_tac_, which seems as if it would never come.'
We were ascending the acclivity, and no one spoke again before we
reached the top. There a wide landscape lay stretched before us. The
mist was rapidly melting away before the gathering strength of the sun:
as we stood and gazed we could see it vanishing. By slow degrees the
colours of the Autumn woods dawned out of it. Close under us lay a
great wave of gorgeous red--beeches, I think--in the midst of which,
here and there, stood up, tall and straight and dark, the unchanging
green of a fir-tree. The glow of a hectic death was over the landscape,
melting away into the misty fringe of the far horizon. Overhead the sky
was blue, with a clear thin blue that told of withdrawing suns and
coming frosts.
'For my part,' I said, 'I cannot believe that beyond this loveliness
there lies no greater. Who knows, Charley, but death may be the first
recognizable step of the progress of which you despair?'
It was then I caught the look from Mary's eye, for the sake of which I
have recorded the little incidents of the morning. But the same moment
the look faded, and the veil or the mask fell over her face.
'I am afraid,' she said, 'if there has been no progress before, there
will be little indeed after.'
Now of all things, I hated the dogmatic theology of the party in which
she had been brought up, and I turned from her with silent dislike.
'Really,' said Clara, 'you gentlemen have been very entertaining this
morning. One would think Polly and I had come out for a stroll with a
couple of undertaker's-men. There's surely time enough to think of such
things yet! None of us are at death's door exactly.'
'"Sweet remembrancer!"--Who knows?' said Charley.
'"Now I, to comfort him,"' I followed, quoting Mrs Quickly concerning
Sir John Falstaff, '"bid him, 'a should not think of God: I hoped there
was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet."'
'I beg your pardon,' said Mary--'there was no word of Him in the
matter.'
'I see,' said Clara: 'you meant that at me, Wilfrid. But I assure you I
am no heathen. I go to church regularly--once a Sunday when I can, and
twice when I can't help it. That's more than you do, Mr Cumbermede, I
suspect.'
'What makes you think so?' I asked.
'I can't imagine you enjoying anything but the burial service.'
'It is to my mind the most consoling of them all,' I answered.
'Well, I haven't reached the point of wanting that consolation yet,
thank heaven.'
'Perhaps some of us would rather have the consolation than give thanks
that we didn't need it,' I said.
'I can't say I understand you, but I know you mean something
disagreeable. Polly, I think we had better go home to breakfast.'
Mary turned, and we all followed. Little was said on the way home. We
divided in the hall--the ladies to breakfast, and we to our work.
We had not spoken for an hour, when Charley broke the silence.
'What a brute I am, Wilfrid!' he said. 'Why shouldn't I be as good as
Jesus Christ? It seems always as if a man might. But just look at me!
Because I was miserable myself, I went and made my poor little sister
twice as miserable as she was before. She'll never get over what I said
this morning.'
'It _was_ foolish of you, Charley.'
'It was brutal. I am the most selfish creature in the world--always
taken up with myself. I do believe there is a devil, after all. _I_ am
_a_ devil. And the universal self is _the_ devil. If there were such a
thing as a self always giving itself away--that self would be God.'
'Something very like the God of Christianity, I think.'
'If it were so, there would be a chance for us. We might then one day
give the finishing blow to the devil in us. But no: _he_ does all for
his own glory.'
'It depends on what his glory is. If what the self-seeking self would
call glory, then I agree with you--that is not the God we need. But if
his glory should be just the opposite--the perfect giving of himself
away--then--Of course I know nothing about it. My uncle used to say
things like that.'
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