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Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald

G >> George MacDonald >> Wilfrid Cumbermede




'Shall I go and fetch auntie?' I whispered.

She shook her head feebly, and looked wistfully at me. Her lips moved
again. I guessed that she wanted me to sit beside her. I got a chair,
placed it by the bedside, and sat down. She put out her hand, as if
searching for something. I laid mine in it. She closed her fingers upon
it and seemed satisfied. When I looked again, she was asleep and
breathing quietly. I was afraid to take my hand from hers lest I should
wake her. I laid my head on the side of the bed, and was soon fast
asleep also.

I was awaked by a noise in the room. It was Nannie laying the fire.
When she saw me she gave a cry of terror.

'Hush, Nannie!' I said; 'you will wake grannie:' and as I spoke I rose,
for I found my hand was free.

'Oh, Master Willie!' said Nannie, in a low voice; 'how did you come
here? You sent my heart into my mouth.'

'Swallow it again, Nannie,' I answered, 'and don't tell auntie. I came
to see grannie, and fell asleep. I'm rather cold. I'll go to bed now.
Auntie's not up, is she?

'No. It's not time for anybody to be up yet.'

Nannie ought to have spent the night in grannie's room, for it was her
turn to watch; but finding her nicely asleep as she thought, she had
slipped away for just an hour of comfort in bed. The hour had grown to
three. When she returned the fire was out.

When I came down to breakfast the solemn look upon my uncle's face
caused me a foreboding of change.

'God has taken grannie away in the night, Willie,' said he, holding the
hand I had placed in his.

'Is she dead?' I asked.

'Yes,' he answered.

'Oh, then, you will let her go to her grave now, won't you?' I
said--the recollection of her old grievance coming first in association
with her death, and occasioning a more childish speech than belonged to
my years.

'Yes. She'll get to her grave now,' said my aunt, with a trembling in
her voice I had never heard before.

'No,' objected my uncle. 'Her body will go to the grave, but her soul
will go to heaven.'

'Her soul!' I said. 'What's that?'

'Dear me, Willie! don't you know that?' said my aunt. 'Don't you know
you've got a soul as well as a body?'

'I'm sure _I_ haven't,' I returned. 'What was grannie's like?'

'That I can't tell you,' she answered.

'Have you got one, auntie?'

'Yes.'

'What is yours like then?'

'I don't know.'

'But,' I said, turning to my uncle, 'if her body goes to the grave, and
her soul to heaven, what's to become of poor grannie--without either of
them, you see?'

My uncle had been thinking while we talked.

'That can't be the way to represent the thing, Jane; it puzzles the
child. No, Willie; grannie's body goes to the grave, but grannie
herself is gone to heaven. What people call her soul is just grannie
herself.'

'Why don't they say so, then?'

My uncle fell a-thinking again. He did not, however, answer this last
question, for I suspect he found that it would not be good for me to
know the real cause--namely, that people hardly believed it, and
therefore did not say it. Most people believe far more in their bodies
than in their souls. What my uncle did say was--

'I hardly know. But grannie's gone to heaven anyhow.'

'I'm so glad!' I said. 'She will be more comfortable there. She was too
old, you know, uncle.'

He made no reply. My aunt's apron was covering her face, and when she
took it away, I observed that those eager almost angry eyes were red
with weeping. I began to feel a movement at my heart, the first
fluttering physical sign of a waking love towards her. 'Don't cry,
auntie,' I said. 'I don't see anything to cry about. Grannie has got
what she wanted.'

She made me no answer, and I sat down to my breakfast. I don't know how
it was, but I could not eat it. I rose and took my way to the hollow in
the field. I felt a strange excitement, not sorrow. Grannie was
actually dead at last. I did not quite know what it meant. I had never
seen a dead body. Neither did I know that she had died while I slept
with my hand in hers. Nannie, seeing something peculiar, had gone to
her the moment I left the room, and had found her quite cold. Had we
been a talking family, I might have been uneasy until I had told the
story of my last interview with her; but I never thought of saying a
word about it. I cannot help thinking now that I was waked up and sent
to the old woman, my great-grandmother, in the middle of the night, to
help her to die in comfort. Who knows? What we can neither prove nor
comprehend forms, I suspect, the infinitely larger part of our being.

When I was taken to see what remained of grannie, I experienced nothing
of the dismay which some children feel at the sight of death. It was as
if she had seen something just in time to leave the look of it behind
her there, and so the final expression was a revelation. For a while
there seems to remain this one link between some dead bodies and their
living spirits. But my aunt, with a common superstition, would have me
touch the face. That, I confess, made me shudder: the cold of death is
so unlike any other cold! I seemed to feel it in my hand all the rest
of the day.

I saw what seemed grannie--I am too near death myself to consent to
call a dead body the man or the woman--laid in the grave for which she
had longed, and returned home with a sense that somehow there was a
barrier broken down between me and my uncle and aunt. I felt as near my
uncle now as I had ever been. That evening he did not go to his own
room, but sat with my aunt and me in the kitchen-hall. We pulled the
great high-backed oaken settle before the fire, and my aunt made a
great blaze, for it was very cold. They sat one in each corner, and I
sat between them, and told them many things concerning the school. They
asked me questions and encouraged my prattle, seeming well pleased that
the old silence should be broken. I fancy I brought them a little
nearer to each other that night. It was after a funeral, and yet they
both looked happier than I had ever seen them before.




CHAPTER IX.


I SIN AND REPENT.

The Christmas holidays went by more rapidly than I had expected. I
betook myself with enlarged faculty to my book-mending, and more than
ever enjoyed making my uncle's old volumes tidy. When I returned to
school, it was with real sorrow at parting from my uncle; and even
towards my aunt I now felt a growing attraction.

I shall not dwell upon my school history. That would be to spin out my
narrative unnecessarily. I shall only relate such occurrences as are
guide-posts in the direction of those main events which properly
constitute my history.

I had been about two years with Mr Elder. The usual holidays had
intervened, upon which occasions I found the pleasures of home so
multiplied by increase of liberty and the enlarged confidence of my
uncle, who took me about with him everywhere, that they were now almost
capable of rivalling those of school. But before I relate an incident
which occurred in the second Autumn, I must say a few words about my
character at this time.

My reader will please to remember that I had never been driven, or
oppressed in any way. The affair of the watch was quite an isolated
instance, and so immediately followed by the change and fresh life of
school that it had not left a mark behind. Nothing had yet occurred to
generate in me any fear before the face of man. I had been vaguely
uneasy in relation to my grandmother, but that uneasiness had almost
vanished before her death. Hence the faith natural to childhood had
received no check. My aunt was at worst cold; she had never been harsh;
while over Nannie I was absolute ruler. The only time that evil had
threatened me, I had been faithfully defended by my guardian uncle. At
school, while I found myself more under law, I yet found myself
possessed of greater freedom. Every one was friendly and more than
kind. From all this the result was that my nature was unusually
trusting.

We had a whole holiday, and, all seven, set out to enjoy ourselves. It
was a delicious morning in Autumn, clear and cool, with a great light
in the east, and the west nowhere. Neither the autumnal tints nor the
sharpening wind had any sadness in those young years which we call the
old years afterwards. How strange it seems to have--all of us--to say
with the Jewish poet: I have been young, and now am old! A wood in the
distance, rising up the slope of a hill, was our goal, for we were
after hazel-nuts. Frolicking, scampering, leaping over stiles, we felt
the road vanish under our feet. When we gained the wood, although we
failed in our quest we found plenty of amusement; that grew everywhere.
At length it was time to return, and we resolved on going home by
another road--one we did not know.

After walking a good distance, we arrived at a gate and lodge, where we
stopped to inquire the way. A kind-faced woman informed us that we
should shorten it much by going through the park, which, as we seemed
respectable boys, she would allow us to do. We thanked her, entered,
and went walking along a smooth road, through open sward, clumps of
trees and an occasional piece of artful neglect in the shape of rough
hillocks covered with wild shrubs, such as brier and broom. It was very
delightful, and we walked along merrily. I can yet recall the
individual shapes of certain hawthorn trees we passed, whose extreme
age had found expression in a wild grotesqueness which would have been
ridiculous but for a dim, painful resemblance to the distortion of old
age in the human family.

After walking some distance, we began to doubt whether we might not
have missed the way to the gate of which the woman had spoken. For a
wall appeared, which, to judge from the tree-tops visible over it, must
surround a kitchen garden or orchard; and from this we feared we had
come too nigh the house. We had not gone much further before a branch,
projecting over the wall, from whose tip, as if the tempter had gone
back to his old tricks, hung a rosy-cheeked apple, drew our eyes and
arrested our steps. There are grown people who cannot, without an
effort of the imagination, figure to themselves the attraction between
a boy and an apple; but I suspect there are others the memories of
whose boyish freaks will render it yet more difficult for them to
understand a single moment's contemplation of such an object without
the endeavour to appropriate it. To them the boy seems made for the
apple, and the apple for the boy. Rosy, round-faced, spectacled Mr
Elder, however, had such a fine sense of honour in himself that he had
been to a rare degree successful in developing a similar sense in his
boys, and I do believe that not one of us would, under any
circumstances, except possibly those of terrifying compulsion, have
pulled that apple. We stood in rapt contemplation for a few moments,
and then walked away. But although there are no degrees in Virtue, who
will still demand her uttermost farthing, there are degrees in the
virtuousness of human beings.

As we walked away, I was the last, and was just passing from under the
branch when something struck the ground at my heel. I turned. An apple
must fall some time, and for this apple that some time was then. It lay
at my feet. I lifted it and stood gazing at it--I need not say with
admiration. My mind fell a-working. The adversary was there, and the
angel too. The apple had dropped at my feet; I had not pulled it. There
it would lie wasting, if some one with less right than I--said the
prince of special pleaders--was not the second to find it. Besides,
what fell in the road was public property. Only this was not a public
road, the angel reminded me. My will fluttered from side to side, now
turning its ear to my conscience, now turning away and hearkening to my
impulse. At last, weary of the strife, I determined to settle it by a
just contempt of trifles--and, half in desperation, bit into the ruddy
cheek.

The moment I saw the wound my teeth had made, I knew what I had done,
and my heart died within me. I was self-condemned. It was a new and an
awful sensation--a sensation that could not be for a moment endured.
The misery was too intense to leave room for repentance even. With a
sudden resolve born of despair, I shoved the type of the broken law
into my pocket and followed my companions. But I kept at some distance
behind them, for as yet I dared not hold further communication with
respectable people. I did not, and do not now, believe that there was
one amongst them who would have done as I had done. Probably also not
one of them would have thought of my way of deliverance from
unendurable self-contempt. The curse had passed upon me, but I saw a
way of escape.

A few yards further, they found the road we thought we had missed. It
struck off into a hollow, the sides of which were covered with trees.
As they turned into it they looked back and called me to come on. I ran
as if I wanted to overtake them, but the moment they were out of sight,
left the road for the grass, and set off at full speed in the same
direction as before. I had not gone far before I was in the midst of
trees, overflowing the hollow in which my companions had disappeared,
and spreading themselves over the level above. As I entered their
shadow, my old awe of the trees returned upon me--an awe I had nearly
forgotten, but revived by my crime. I pressed along, however, for to
turn back would have been more dreadful than any fear. At length, with
a sudden turn, the road left the trees behind, and what a scene opened
before me! I stood on the verge of a large space of greensward, smooth
and well-kept as a lawn, but somewhat irregular in surface. From all
sides it rose towards the centre. There a broad, low rock seemed to
grow out of it, and upon the rock stood the lordliest house my childish
eyes had ever beheld. Take situation and all, and I have scarcely yet
beheld one to equal it. Half castle, half old English country seat, it
covered the rock with a huge square of building, from various parts of
which rose towers, mostly square also, of different heights. I stood
for one brief moment entranced with awful delight. A building which has
grown for ages, the outcome of the life of powerful generations, has
about it a majesty which, in certain moods, is overpowering. For one
brief moment I forgot my sin and its sorrow. But memory awoke with a
fresh pang. To this lordly place I, poor miserable sinner, was a debtor
by wrong and shame. Let no one laugh at me because my sin was small: it
was enough for me, being that of one who had stolen for the first time,
and that without previous declension, and searing of the conscience. I
hurried towards the building, anxiously looking for some entrance.

I had approached so near that, seated on its rock, it seemed to shoot
its towers into the zenith, when, rounding a corner, I came to a part
where the height sank from the foundation of the house to the level by
a grassy slope, and at the foot of the slope espied an elderly
gentleman, in a white hat, who stood with his hands in his
breeches-pockets, looking about him. He was tall and stout, and carried
himself in what seemed to me a stately manner. As I drew near him I
felt somewhat encouraged by a glimpse of his face, which was rubicund
and, I thought, good-natured; but, approaching him rather from behind,
I could not see it well. When I addressed him he started,

'Please, sir,' I said, 'is this your house?'

'Yes, my man; it is my house,' he answered, looking down on me with
bent neck, his hands still in his pockets.

'Please, sir,' I said, but here my voice began to tremble, and he grew
dim and large through the veil of my gathering tears. I hesitated.

'Well, what do you want?' he asked, in a tone half jocular, half kind.

I made a great effort and recovered my self-possession.

'Please, sir,' I repeated, 'I want you to box my ears.'

'Well, you are a funny fellow! What should I box your ears for, pray?'

'Because I've been very wicked,' I answered; and, putting my hand into
my pocket, I extracted the bitten apple, and held it up to him.

'Ho! ho!' he said, beginning to guess what I must mean, but hardly the
less bewildered for that; 'is that one of my apples?'

'Yes, sir. It fell down from a branch that hung over the wall. I took
it up, and--and--I took a bite of it, and--and--I'm so sorry!'

Here I burst into a fit of crying which I choked as much as I could. I
remember quite well how, as I stood holding out the apple, my arm would
shake with the violence of my sobs.

'I'm not fond of bitten apples,' he said. 'You had better eat it up
now.'

This brought me to myself. If he had shown me sympathy, I should have
gone on crying.

'I would rather not. Please box my ears.'

'I don't want to box your ears. You're welcome to the apple. Only don't
take what's not your own another time.' 'But, please, sir, I'm so
miserable!'

'Home with you! and eat your apple as you go,' was his unconsoling
response.

'I can't eat it; I'm so ashamed of myself.'

'When people do wrong, I suppose they must be ashamed of themselves.
That's all right, isn't it?'

'Why won't you box my ears, then?' I persisted.

[Illustration: "HERE IS A YOUNG GENTLEMAN, MRS. WILSON, WHO SEEMS TO
HAVE LOST HIS WAY."]

It was my sole but unavailing prayer. He turned away towards the house.
My trouble rose to agony. I made some wild motion of despair, and threw
myself on the grass. He turned, looked at me for a moment in silence,
and then said in a changed tone--

'My boy, I am sorry for you. I beg you will not trouble yourself any
more. The affair is not worth it. Such a trifle! What can I do for
you?'

I got up. A new thought of possible relief had crossed my mind.

'Please, sir, if you won't box my ears, will you shake hands with me?'

'To be sure I will,' he answered, holding out his hand, and giving mine
a very kindly shake. 'Where do you live?'

'I am at school at Aldwick, at Mr Elder's.'

'You're a long way from home!'

'Am I, sir? Will you tell me how to go? But it's of no consequence. I
don't mind anything now you've forgiven me. I shall soon run home.'

'Come with me first. You must have something to eat.'

I wanted nothing to eat, but how could I oppose anything he said? I
followed him at once, drying my eyes as I went. He led me to a great
gate which I had passed before, and opening a wicket, took me across a
court, and through another building where I saw many servants going
about; then across a second court, which was paved with large flags,
and so to a door which he opened, calling--

'Mrs Wilson! Mrs Wilson! I want you a moment.'

'Yes, Sir Giles,' answered a tall, stiff-looking elderly woman who
presently appeared descending, with upright spine, a corkscrew
staircase of stone.

'Here is a young gentleman, Mrs Wilson, who seems to have lost his way.
He is one of Mr Elder's pupils at Aldwick. Will you get him something
to eat and drink, and then send him home?'

'I will, Sir Giles.'

'Good-bye, my man,' said Sir Giles, again shaking hands with me. Then
turning anew to the housekeeper, for such I found she was, he added:

'Couldn't you find a bag for him, and fill it with some of those brown
pippins? They're good eating, ain't they?'

'With pleasure, Sir Giles.'

Thereupon Sir Giles withdrew, closing the door behind him, and leaving
me with the sense of life from the dead.

'What's your name, young gentleman?' asked Mrs Wilson, with, I thought,
some degree of sternness.

'Wilfrid Cumbermede,' I answered.

She stared at me a little, with a stare which would have been a start
in most women. I was by this time calm enough to take a quiet look at
her. She was dressed in black silk, with a white neckerchief crossing
in front, and black mittens on her hands. After gazing at me fixedly
for a moment or two, she turned away and ascended the stair, which went
up straight from the door, saying--

'Come with me, Master Cumbermede. You must have some tea before you
go.'

I obeyed, and followed her into a long, low-ceiled room, wainscotted
all over in panels, with a square moulding at the top, which served for
a cornice. The ceiling was ornamented with plaster reliefs. The windows
looked out, on one side into the court, on the other upon the park. The
floor was black and polished like a mirror, with bits of carpet here
and there, and a rug before the curious, old-fashioned grate, where a
little fire was burning and a small kettle boiling fiercely on the top
of it. The tea-tray was already on the table. She got another cup and
saucer, added a pot of jam to the preparations, and said:

'Sit down and have some bread and butter, while I make the tea.'

She cut me a great piece of bread, and then a great piece of butter,
and I lost no time in discovering that the quality was worthy of the
quantity. Mrs Wilson kept a grave silence for a good while. At last, as
she was pouring out the second cup, she looked at me over the teapot,
and said--

'You don't remember your mother, I suppose, Master Cumbermede?'

'No, ma'am. I never saw my mother.'

'Within your recollection, you mean. But you must have seen her, for
you were two years old when she died.'

'Did you know my mother, then, ma'am?' I asked, but without any great
surprise, for the events of the day had been so much out of the
ordinary that I had for the time almost lost the faculty of wonder.

She compressed her thin lips, and a perpendicular wrinkle appeared in
the middle of her forehead, as she answered--

'Yes; I knew your mother.'

'She was very good, wasn't she, ma'am?' I said, with my mouth full of
bread and butter.

'Yes. Who told you that?'

'I was sure of it. Nobody ever told me.'

'Did they never talk to you about her?'

'No, ma'am.'

'So you are at Mr Elder's, are you?' she said, after another long
pause, during which I was not idle, for my trouble being gone I could
now be hungry.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How did you come here, then?'

'I walked with the rest of the boys; but they are gone home without
me.'

Thanks to the kindness of Sir Giles, my fault had already withdrawn so
far into the past, that I wished to turn my back upon it altogether. I
saw no need for confessing it to Mrs Wilson; and there was none.

'Did you lose your way?'

'No, ma'am.'

'What brought you here, then? I suppose you wanted to see the place.'

'The woman at the lodge told us the nearest way was through the park.'

I quite expected she would go on cross-questioning me, and then all the
truth would have had to come out. But to my great relief, she went no
further, only kept eyeing me in a manner so oppressive as to compel me
to eat bread and butter and strawberry jam with self-defensive
eagerness. I presume she trusted to find out the truth by-and-by. She
contented herself in the mean time with asking questions about my uncle
and aunt, the farm, the school, and Mr and Mrs Elder, all in a cold,
stately, refraining manner, with two spots of red in her face--one on
each cheek-bone, and a thin rather peevish nose dividing them. But her
forehead was good, and when she smiled, which was not often, her eyes
shone. Still, even I, with my small knowledge of womankind, was dimly
aware that she was feeling her way with me, and I did not like her
much.

'Have you nearly done?' she asked at length.

'Yes, quite, thank you,' I answered.

'Are you going back to school to-night?'

'Yes, ma'am; of course.'

'How are you going?'

'If you will tell me the way--'

'Do you know how far you are from Aldwick?'

'No, ma'am.'

'Eight miles,' she answered; 'and it's getting rather late.'

I was seated opposite the windows to the park, and, looking up, saw
with some dismay that the air was getting dusky. I rose at once,
saying--

'I must make haste. They will think I am lost.'

'But you can never walk so far, Master Cumbermede.'

'Oh, but I must! I can't help it. I must get back as fast as possible.'

'You never can walk such a distance. Take another bit of cake while I
go and see what can be done.'

Another piece of cake being within the bounds of possibility, I might
at least wait and see what Mrs Wilson's design was. She left the room,
and I turned to the cake. In a little while she came back, sat down,
and went on talking. I was beginning to get quite uneasy, when a maid
put her head in at the door, and said--

'Please, Mrs Wilson, the dog-cart's ready, ma'am.'

'Very well,' replied Mrs Wilson, and turning to me, said--more kindly
than she had yet spoken--

'Now, Master Cumbermede, you must come and see me again. I'm too busy
to spare much time when the family is at home; but they are all going
away the week after next, and if you will come and see me then, I shall
be glad to show you over the house.'

As she spoke she rose and led the way from the room, and out of the
court by another gate from that by which I had entered. At the bottom
of a steep descent, a groom was waiting with the dog-cart.

'Here, James,' said Mrs Wilson, 'take good care of the young gentleman,
and put him down safe at Mr Elder's. Master Wilfrid, you'll find a
hamper of apples underneath. You had better not eat them all yourself,
you know. Here are two or three for you to eat by the way.'

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