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Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald

G >> George MacDonald >> Wilfrid Cumbermede




With my many speculations as to why the mechanism of the forgery had
assumed this shape, I need not trouble my reader. Suffice it to say
that on more than one supposition, I can account for it satisfactorily
to myself. One other remark only will I make concerning it: I have no
doubt it was an old forgery. One after another those immediately
concerned in it had died, and there the falsehood lurked--in latent
power--inoperative until my second visit to Umberden Church. But what
differences might there not have been had it not started into activity
for the brief space betwixt then and my sorrow?

I left the parchment still attached to the cover at the bottom, and,
laying a sheet of paper between the formerly adhering surfaces, lest
they should again adhere, closed and replaced the volume. Then, looking
at my watch, I found that, instead of an hour as I had supposed, I had
been in the church three hours. It was nearly eleven o'clock, too late
for anything further that night.

When I came out, the sky was clear and the stars were shining. The
storm had blown over. Much rain had fallen. But when the wind ceased or
the rain began, I had no recollection; the storm had vanished
altogether from my consciousness. I found Styles where I had left him,
smoking his pipe and leaning against Lilith, who--I cannot call her
_which_--was feeding on the fine grass of the lane. The horse he had
picketed near. We mounted and rode home.

The next thing was to see the rector of Umberden. He lived in his other
parish, and thither I rode the following day to call upon him. I found
him an old gentleman, of the squire-type of rector. As soon as he heard
my name, he seemed to know who I was, and at once showed himself
hospitable.

I told him that I came to him as I might, were I a Catholic, to a
father-confessor. This Startled him a little.

'Don't tell me anything I ought not to keep secret,' he said; and it
gave me confidence in him at once.

'I will not,' I returned. 'The secret is purely my own. Whatever crime
there is in it, was past punishment long before I was born; and it was
committed against, not by my family. But it is rather a long story, and
I hope I shall not be tedious.'

He assured me of his perfect leisure.

I told him everything, from my earliest memory, which bore on the
discovery I had at length made. He soon showed signs of interest; and
when I had ended the tale with the facts of the preceding night, he
silently rose and walked about the room. After a few moments, he said:

'And what do you mean to do, Mr Cumbermede?'

'Nothing,' I answered, 'so long as Sir Giles is alive. He was kind to
me when I was a boy.'

He came up behind me where I was seated, and laid his hand gently on my
head; then, without a word, resumed his walk.

'And if you survive him, what then?'

'Then I must be guided partly by circumstances,' I said.

'And what do you want of me?'

'I want you to go with me to the church, and see the book, that, in
case of anything happening to it, you may be a witness concerning its
previous contents.'

'I am too old to be the only witness,' he said. 'You ought to have
several of your own age.'

'I want as few to know the secret as may be,' I answered.

'You should have your lawyer one of them.'

'He would never leave me alone about it,' I replied; 'and positively I
shall take no measures at present. Some day I hope to punish him for
deserting me as he did.'

For I had told him how Mr Coningham had behaved.

'Revenge, Mr Cumbermede?'

'Not a serious one. All the punishment I hope to give him is but to
show him the fact of the case, and leave him to feel as he may about
it.'

'There can't be much harm in that.'

He reflected a few moments, and then said:

'I will tell you what will be best. We shall go and see the book
together. I will make an extract of both entries, and give a
description of the state of the volume, with an account of how the
second entry--or more properly the first--came to be discovered. This I
shall sign in the presence of two witnesses, who need know nothing of
the contents of the paper. Of that you shall yourself take charge.'

We went together to the church. The old man, after making a good many
objections, was at length satisfied, and made notes for his paper. He
started the question whether it would not be better to secure that
volume at least under lock and key. For this I thought there was no
occasion--that in fact it was safer where it was, and more certain of
being forthcoming when wanted. I did suggest that the key of the church
might be deposited in a place of safety; but he answered that it had
been kept there ever since he came to the living forty years ago, and
for how long before that he could not tell; and so a change would
attract attention, and possibly make some talk in the parish, which had
better be avoided.

Before the end of the week, he had his document ready. He signed it in
my presence, and in that of two of his parishioners, who as witnesses
appended their names and abodes. I have it now in my possession. I
shall enclose it, with my great-grandfather and mother's letters--and
something besides--in the packet containing this history.

That same week Sir Giles Brotherton died.




CHAPTER LXII.


A FOOLISH TRIUMPH.

I should have now laid claim to my property, but for Mary. To turn Sir
Geoffrey with his mother and sister out of it, would have caused me
little compunction, for they would still be rich enough; I confess
indeed it would have given me satisfaction. Nor could I say what real
hurt of any kind it would occasion to Mary; and if I were writing for
the public, instead of my one reader, I know how foolishly incredible
it must appear that for her sake I should forego such claims. She
would, however, I trust, have been able to believe it without the
proofs which I intend to give her. The fact was simply this: I could
not, even for my own sake, bear the thought of taking, in any manner or
degree, a position if but apparently antagonistic to her. My enemy was
her husband: he should reap the advantage of being her husband; for her
sake he should for the present retain what was mine. So long as there
should be no reason to fear his adopting a different policy from his
father's in respect of his tenants, I felt myself at liberty to leave
things as they were; for Sir Giles had been a good landlord, and I knew
the son was regarded with favour in the county. Were he to turn out
unjust or oppressive, however, then duty on my part would come in. But
I must also remind my reader that I had no love for affairs; that I had
an income perfectly sufficient for my wants; that, both from my habits
of thought and from my sufferings, my regard was upon life itself--was
indeed so far from being confined to this chrysalid beginning thereof,
that I had lost all interest in this world save as the porch to the
house of life. And, should I ever meet her again, in any possible
future of being, how much rather would I not stand before her as one
who had been even Quixotic for her sake--as one who for a
hair's-breadth of her interest had felt the sacrifice of a fortune a
merely natural movement of his life! She would then know not merely
that I was true to her, but that I had been true in what I professed to
believe when I sought her favour. And if it had been a pleasure to
me--call it a weakness, and I will not oppose the impeachment;--call it
self-pity, and I will confess to that as having a share in it;--but, if
it had been a shadowy pleasure to me to fancy I suffered for her sake,
my present resolution, while it did not add the weight of a feather to
my suffering, did yet give me a similar vague satisfaction.

I must also confess to a certain satisfaction in feeling that I had
power over my enemy--power of making him feel my power--power of
vindicating my character against him as well, seeing one who could thus
abstain from asserting his own rights could hardly have been one to
invade the rights of another; but the enjoyment of this consciousness
appeared to depend on my silence. If I broke that, the strength would
depart from me; but while I held my peace, I held my foe in an
invisible mesh. I half deluded myself into fancying that, while I kept
my power over him unexercised, I retained a sort of pledge for his
conduct to Mary, of which I was more than doubtful; for a man with such
antecedents as his, a man who had been capable of behaving as he had
behaved to Charley, was less than likely to be true to his wife: he was
less than likely to treat the sister as a lady, who to the brother had
been a traitorous seducer.

I have now to confess a fault as well as an imprudence--punished, I
believe, in the results.

The behaviour of Mr. Coningham still rankled a little in my bosom. From
Geoffrey I had never looked for anything but evil; of Mr Coningham I
had expected differently, and I began to meditate the revenge of
holding him up to himself: I would punish him in a manner which, with
his confidence in his business faculty, he must feel: I would simply
show him how the precipitation of selfish disappointment had led him
astray, and frustrated his designs. For if he had given even a decent
attention to the matter, he would have found in the forgery itself
hints sufficient to suggest the desirableness of further investigation.

I had not, however, concluded upon anything, when one day I
accidentally met him, and we had a little talk about business, for he
continued to look after the rent of my field. He informed me that Sir
Geoffrey Brotherton had been doing all he could to get even temporary
possession of the park, as we called it; and, although I said nothing
of it to Mr Coningham, my suspicion is that, had he succeeded, he
would, at the risk of a law-suit, in which he would certainly have been
cast, have ploughed it up. He told me, also, that Clara was in poor
health; she who had looked as if no blight could ever touch her had
broken down utterly. The shadow of her sorrow was plain enough on the
face of her father, and his confident manner had a little yielded,
although he was the old man still. His father had died a little before
Sir Giles. The new baronet had not offered him the succession.

I asked him to go with me yet once more to Umberden Church--for I
wanted to show him something he had over-looked in the register--not, I
said, that it would be of the slightest furtherance to his former
hopes. He agreed at once, already a little ashamed, perhaps, of the way
in which he had abandoned me. Before we parted we made an appointment
to meet at the church.

We went at once to the vestry. I took down the volume, and laid it
before him. He opened it, with a curious look at me first. But the
moment he lifted the cover, its condition at once attracted and as
instantly riveted his attention. He gave me one glance more, in which
questions and remarks and exclamations numberless lay in embryo; then
turning to the book, was presently absorbed, first in reading the
genuine entry, next in comparing it with the forged one.

'Right, after all!' he exclaimed at length.

'In what?' I asked.' In dropping me without a word, as if I had been an
impostor? In forgetting that you yourself had raised in me the hopes
whose discomfiture you took as a personal injury?'

'My dear sir!' he stammered in an expostulatory tone, 'you must make
allowance. It was a tremendous disappointment to me.'

'I cannot say I felt it quite so much myself, but at least you owed me
an apology for having misled me.'

'I had _not_ misled you,' he retorted angrily, pointing to the
register.--'There!'

'You left _me_ to find that out, though. _You_ took no further pains in
the matter.'

'How _did_ you find it out?' he asked, clutching at a change in the
tone of the conversation.

I said nothing of my dream, but I told him everything else concerning
the discovery. When I had finished--

'It's all plain sailing now,' he cried. 'There is not an obstacle in
the way. I will set the thing in motion the instant I get home.--It
will be a victory worth achieving,' he added, rubbing his hands.

'Mr Coningham, I have not the slightest intention of moving in the
matter,' I said.

His face fell.

'You do not mean--when you hold them in your very hands--to throw away
every advantage of birth and fortune, and be a nobody in the world?'

'Infinite advantages of the kind you mean, Mr Coningham, could make me
not one whit more than I am; they _might_ make me less.'

'Come, come,' he expostulated; 'you must not allow disappointment to
upset your judgment of things.'

'My judgment of things lies deeper than any disappointment I have yet
had,' I replied. 'My uncle's teaching has at last begun to bear fruit
in me.'

'Your uncle was a fool!' he exclaimed.

'But for my uncle's sake, I would knock you down for daring to couple
such a word with _him_.'

He turned on me with a sneer. His eyes had receded in his head, and in
his rage he grinned. The old ape-face, which had lurked in my memory
ever since the time I first saw him, came out so plainly that I
started: the child had read his face aright! the following judgment of
the man had been wrong! the child's fear had not imprinted a false
eidolon upon the growing brain.

'What right had, you,' he said, 'to bring me all this way for such
tomfoolery?'

'I told you it would not further your wishes.--But who brought me here
for nothing first?' I added, most foolishly.

'I was myself deceived. I did not intend to deceive you.'

'I know that. God forbid I should be unjust to you! But you have proved
to me that your friendship was all a pretence; that your private ends
were all your object. When you discovered that I could not serve those,
you dropped me like a bit of glass you had taken for a diamond. Have
you any right to grumble if I give you the discipline of a passing
shame?'

'Mr Cumbermede,' he said, through his teeth, 'you will repent this.'

I gave him no answer, and he left the church in haste. Having replaced
the register, I was following at my leisure, when I heard sounds that
made me hurry to the door. Lilith was plunging and rearing and pulling
at the bridle which I had thrown over one of the spiked bars of the
gate. Another moment and she must have broken loose, or dragged the
gate upon her--more likely the latter, for the bridle was a new one
with broad reins--when some frightful injury would in all probability
have been the consequence to herself. But a word from me quieted her,
and she stood till I came up. Every inch of her was trembling. I
suspected at once, and in a moment discovered plainly that Mr Coningham
had struck her with his whip: there was a big weal on the fine skin of
her hip and across, her croup. She shrunk like a hurt child when my
hand approached the injured part, but moved neither hoof nor head.

Having patted and petted and consoled her a little, I mounted and rode
after Mr Coningham. Nor was it difficult to overtake him, for he was
going a foot-pace. He was stooping in his saddle, and when I drew near,
I saw that he was looking very pale. I did not, however, suspect that
he was in pain.

'It was a cowardly thing to strike the poor dumb animal,' I cried.

'You would have struck her yourself,' he answered with a curse,' if she
had broken your leg.'

I rode nearer. I knew well enough that she would not have kicked him if
he had not struck her first; and I could see that his leg was not
broken; but evidently he was in great suffering.

'I am very sorry,' I said. Can I help you?'

'Go to the devil!' he groaned.

I am ashamed to say the answer made me so angry that I spoke the truth.

'Don't suppose you deceive me,' I said. 'I know well enough my mare did
not kick you before you struck her. Then she lashed out, of course.'

I waited for no reply, but turned and rode back to the church, the door
of which, in my haste, I had left open. I locked it, replaced the key,
and then rode quietly home.

But as I went, I began to feel that I had done wrong. No doubt, Mr
Coningham deserved it, but the law was not in my hands. No man has a
right to _punish_ another. Vengeance belongs to a higher region, and
the vengeance of God is a very different thing from the vengeance of
man. However it may be softened with the name of retribution, revenge
runs into all our notions of justice; and until we love purely, so it
must ever be.

All I had gained was self-rebuke, and another enemy. Having reached
home, I read the Manual of Epictetus right through before I laid it
down, and, if it did not teach me to love my enemies, it taught me at
least to be ashamed of myself. Then I wrote to Mr Coningham, saying I
was sorry I had spoken to him as I did, and begging him to let by-gones
be by-gones; assuring him that, if ever I moved in the matter of our
difference, he should be the first to whom I applied for assistance.

He returned me no answer.




CHAPTER LXIII.


A COLLISION.

And now came a dreary time of re-action. There seemed nothing left for
me to do, and I felt listless and weary. Something kept urging me to
get away and hide myself, and I soon made up my mind to yield to the
impulse and go abroad. My intention was to avoid cities, and, wandering
from village to village, lay my soul bare to the healing influences of
nature. As to any healing in the power of Time, I despised the old
bald-pate as a quack who performed his seeming cures at the expense of
the whole body. The better cures attributed to him are not his at all,
but produced by the operative causes whose servant he is. A thousand
holy balms require his services for their full action, but they, and
not he, are the saving powers. Along with Time I ranked, and with
absolute hatred shrunk from--all those means which offered to cure me
by making me forget. From a child I had a horror of forgetting; it
always seemed to me like a loss of being, like a hollow scooped out of
my very existence--almost like the loss of identity. At times I even
shrunk from going to sleep, so much did it seem like yielding to an
absolute death--a death so deep that the visible death is but a picture
or type of it. If I could have been sure of dreaming, it would have
been different, but in the uncertainty it seemed like consenting to
nothingness. That one who thus felt should ever have been tempted to
suicide, will reveal how painful if not valueless his thoughts and
feelings--his conscious life--must have grown to him; and that the only
thing which withheld him from it should be the fear that no death, but
a more intense life might be the result, will reveal it yet more
clearly. That in that sleep I might at least dream--there was the rub.

All such relief, in a word, as might come of a lowering of my life,
either physically, morally, or spiritually, I hated, detested,
despised. The man who finds solace for a wounded heart in
self-indulgence may indeed be _capable_ of angelic virtues, but in the
mean time his conduct is that of the devils who went into the swine
rather than be bodiless. The man who can thus be consoled for the loss
of a woman could never have been worthy of her, possibly would not have
remained true to her beyond the first delights of possession. The
relief to which I could open my door must be such alone as would
operate through the enlarging and elevating of what I recognized as
_myself_. Whatever would make me greater, so that my torture,
intensified, it might well be, should yet have room to dash itself
hither and thither without injuring the walls of my being, would be
welcome. If I might become so great that, my grief yet stinging me to
agony, the infinite _I_ of me should remain pure and calm, God-loving
and man-cherishing, then I should be saved. God might be able to do
more for me--I could not tell: I looked for no more. I would myself be
such as to inclose my pain in a mighty sphere of out-spacing life, in
relation to which even such sorrow as mine should be but a little
thing. Such deliverance alone, I say, could I consent with myself to
accept, and such alone, I believed, would God offer me--for such alone
seemed worthy of him, and such alone seemed not unworthy of me.

The help that Nature could give me, I judged to be of this ennobling
kind. For either nature was nature in virtue of having been born
(_nata_) of God, or she was but a phantasm of my own brain--against
which supposition the nature in me protested with the agony of a
tortured man. To nature, then, I would go. Like the hurt child who
folds himself in the skirt of his mother's velvet garment, I would fold
myself in the robe of Deity.

But to give honour and gratitude where both are due, I must here
confess obligation with a willing and thankful heart. The _Excursion_
of Wordsworth was published ere I was born, but only since I left
college had I made acquaintance with it: so long does it take for the
light of a new star to reach a distant world! To this book I owe so
much that to me it would alone justify the conviction that Wordsworth
will never be forgotten. That he is no longer the fashion, militates
nothing against his reputation. We, the old ones, hold fast by him for
no sentimental reminiscence of the fashion of our youth, but simply
because his humanity has come into contact with ours. The men of the
new generation have their new loves and worships: it remains to be seen
to whom the worthy amongst them will turn long ere the frosts of age
begin to gather and the winds of the human autumn to blow. Wordsworth
will recede through the gliding ages until, with the greater Chaucer,
and the greater Shakspere, and the greater Milton, he is yet a star in
the constellated crown of England.

Before I was able to leave home, however, a new event occurred.

I received an anonymous letter, in a hand-writing I did not recognize.
Its contents were as follows:--

'SIR,--Treachery is intended you. If you have anything worth watching,
_watch_ it.'

For one moment--so few were the places in which through my possessions
I was vulnerable--I fancied the warning might point to Lilith, but I
soon dismissed the idea. I could make no inquiries, for it had been
left an hour before my return from a stroll by an unknown messenger. I
could think of nothing besides but the register, and if this was what
my correspondent aimed at, I had less reason to be anxious concerning
it, because of the attested copy, than my informant probably knew.
Still its safety was far from being a matter of indifference to me. I
resolved to ride over to Umberden Church, and see if it was as I had
left it.

The twilight was fast thickening into darkness when I entered the
gloomy building. There was light enough, however, to guide my hand to
the right volume, and by carrying it to the door, I was able to satisfy
myself that it was as I had left it.

Thinking over the matter once more as I stood, I could not help wishing
that the book were out of danger just for the present; but there was
hardly a place in the bare church where it was possible to conceal it.
At last I thought of one--half groped my way to the pulpit, ascended
its creaking stair, lifted the cushion of the seat, and laid the book,
which was thin, open in the middle, and flat on its face, under it. I
then locked the door, mounted, and rode off.

It was now more than dusk. Lilith was frolicsome, and, rejoicing in the
grass under her feet, broke into a quick canter along the noiseless,
winding lane. Suddenly there was a great shock, and I lay senseless.

I came to myself under the stinging blows of a whip, only afterwards
recognized as such, however. I sprung staggering to my feet, and rushed
at the dim form of an assailant, with such a sudden and, I suppose,
unexpected assault, that he fell under me. Had he not fallen I should
have had little chance with him, for, as I now learned by his voice, it
was Sir Geoffrey Brotherton.

'Thief! Swindler! Sneak!' he cried, making a last harmless blow at me
as he fell.

All the wild beast in my nature was roused. I had no weapon--not even a
whip, for Lilith never needed one. It was well, for what I might have
done in the first rush of blood to my reviving brain, I dare hardly
imagine. I seized him by the throat with such fury that, though far the
stronger, he had no chance as he lay. I kneeled on his chest. He
struggled furiously, but could not force my gripe from his throat. I
soon perceived that I was strangling him, and tightened my grasp.

His efforts were already growing feebler, when I became aware of a soft
touch apparently trying to take hold of my hair. Glancing up without
relaxing my hold, I saw the white head of Lilith close to mine. Was it
the whiteness--was it the calmness of the creature--I cannot pretend to
account for the fact, but the same instant before my mind's eye rose
the vision of one standing speechless before his accusers, bearing on
his form the marks of ruthless blows. I did not then remember that just
before I came out I had been gazing, as I often gazed, upon an Ecce
Homo of Albert Duerer's that hung in my room. Immediately my heart awoke
within me. My whole being still trembling with passionate struggle and
gratified hate, a rush of human pity swept across it. I took my hand
from my enemy's throat, rose, withdrew some paces, and burst into
tears. I could have embraced him, but I dared not even minister to him
for the insult at would appear. He did not at once rise, and when he
did, he stood for a few moments, half-unconscious, I think, staring at
me. Coming to himself, he felt for and found his whip--I thought with
the intention of attacking me again, but he moved towards his horse,
which was quietly eating the grass, now wet with dew. Gathering its
bridle from around its leg, he mounted, and rode back the way he had
come.

Scottish book of the year goes to Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman

The barrister Constance Briscoe has won the libel case brought against her by her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, over her bestselling misery memoir Ugly, in which she accused Briscoe-Mitchell of childhood cruelty and neglect.

Briscoe-Mitchell claimed the allegations were "a piece of fiction", and sued Briscoe and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton for libel.

A 10-day hearing at the high court in London concluded earlier today with a unanimous verdict from the jury after more than a day's deliberation. Speaking outside the court, Briscoe, a part-time judge, said she was "very happy" with the verdict.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me. Now I just want to get on with my career," she said. "I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial, but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors, it should never be swept under the carpet."

The hearing saw Briscoe tell Mr Justice Tugendhat and a jury how her mother beat her with a stick for wetting the bed, called her a "dirty little whore" and drove her to attempt suicide by drinking bleach.

Briscoe's account of her upbringing was published in 2006 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK.

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Would you have your ashes scattered in Jane Austen's garden?
American film producer to publish version of the Bible in which God says it is better to be gay than straight

The royal family doesn't need a poet

The power of Jane Austen never ceases to amaze: the myriad film and TV adaptations, the biopics, the spin-off self-help books, the novels about Austen book clubs and Austen obsessives and even, next spring, the publication of a book about "how Jane Austen conquered the world" (Jane's Fame, by Clare Harman). And now comes the just-too-weird story that deceased fans of Jane Austen have been banned from having their ashes scattered in her garden. In a letter to the Jane Austen Society, Louise West, the collections manager of Jane Austen's House Museum, wrote: "While we understand many admirers of Jane Austen would love to have ashes laid here, it is something we do not allow. It is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash, particularly so for our gardener. Also, it is of no benefit to the garden!" (Or is it? Surely a small quantity of fresh ashes judiciously placed beneath a hydrangea bush is just the ticket?)

Anyway, leaving aside the Gardeners' Question Time minutiae, what on earth is going on here? I like an Austen novel as much as the next person – I probably reread my way through the complete works every couple of years – but I am baffled as to why one would want to be laid to rest among the flowerbeds of Chawton. The only explanation is the currently unstoppable power of the Austen cult, fuelled by Colin Firth in a wet blouse, by Andrew Davies's adaptations, and by Hollywood. I'm all for enjoying books, but the cult of Austen has reached ridiculous proportions. In a post-feminist world that should know better, she seems to be adored as the comforting provider of romantic, happy-endings nonsense instead of the sharp and acerbic social satirist she deserves to be seen as.

(Does anyone actually believe her, by the way, when she foretells a happy marriage for Darcey and Elizabeth? I fear a woman as interesting as Elizabeth would be sorely disappointed with this standard-issue British Repressed Public-school Man - hopeless emotionally, and probably hopeless in bed.)

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