My companion chatted away, lauded my mare, asked if I had seen Clara lately, and how the library was getting on. I answered him carelessly, without even a hint at my troubles.
‘You seem out of spirits, Mr Cumbermede?’ he said. ‘You’ve been taking too little exercise. Let’s have a canter. It will do you good. Here’s a nice bit of sward.’
I was only too ready to embrace the excuse for dropping a conversation towards which I was unable to contribute my share.
Having reached a small roadside inn, we gave our horses a little refreshment; after which, crossing a field or two by jumping the stiles, we entered the loveliest lane I had ever seen. It was so narrow that there was just room for horses to pass each other, and covered with the greenest sward rarely trodden. It ran through the midst of a wilderness of tall hazels. They stood up on both sides of it, straight and trim as walls, high above our heads as we sat on our horses; and the lane was so serpentine that we could never see further than a few yards ahead; while, towards the end, it kept turning so much in one direction that we seemed to be following the circumference of a little circle. It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to which we tied our horses before entering the churchyard. But instead of a neat burial-place, which the whole approach would have given us to expect, we found a desert. The grass was of extraordinary coarseness, and mingled with quantities of vile-looking weeds. Several of the graves had not even a spot of green upon them, but were mere heaps of yellow earth in huge lumps, mixed with large stones. There was not above a score of graves in the whole place, two or three of which only had gravestones on them. One lay open, with the rough yellow lumps all about it, and completed the desolation. The church was nearly square—small, but shapeless, with but four latticed windows, two on one side, one in the other, and the fourth in the east end. It was built partly of bricks and partly of flint stones, the walls bowed and bent, and the roof waved and broken. Its old age had gathered none of the graces of age to soften its natural ugliness, or elevate its insignificance. Except a few lichens, there was not a mark of vegetation about it. Not a single ivy leaf grew on its spotted and wasted walls. It gave a hopeless, pagan expression to the whole landscape—for it stood on a rising ground, from which we had an extensive prospect of height and hollow, cornfield and pasture and wood, away to the dim blue horizon.
‘You don’t find it enlivening, do you—eh?’ said my companion.
‘I never saw such a frightfully desolate spot,’ I said, ‘to have yet the appearance of a place of Christian worship. It looks as if there were a curse upon it. Are all those the graves of suicides and murderers? It cannot surely be consecrated ground?’
‘It’s not nice,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to like it. I only said it was odd.’
‘Is there any service held in it?’ I asked.
‘Yes—once a fortnight or so. The rector has another living a few miles off.’
‘Where can the congregation come from?’
‘Hardly from anywhere. There ain’t generally more than five or six, I believe. Let’s have a look at the inside of it.’
‘The windows are much too high, and no foothold.’
‘We’ll go in.’
‘Where can you get the key? It must be a mile off at least, by your own account. There’s no house nearer than that, you say.’
He made me no reply, but going to the only flat gravestone, which stood on short thick pillars, he put his hand beneath it, and drew out a great rusty key.
‘Country lawyers know a secret or two,’ he said.
‘Not always much worth knowing,’ I rejoined,—‘if the inside be no better than the outside.’
‘We’ll have a look, anyhow,’ he said, as he turned the key in the dry lock.
The door snarled on its hinges, and disclosed a space drearier certainly, and if possible uglier, than its promise.
‘Really, Mr Coningham,’ I said, ‘I don’t see why you should have brought me to look at this place.’
‘It answered for a bait, at all events. You’ve had a good long ride, which was the best thing for you. Look what a wretched little vestry that is!’
It was but a corner of the east end, divided off by a faded red curtain.
‘I suppose they keep a parish register here,’ he said. ‘Let us have a look.’
Behind the curtain hung a dirty surplice and a gown. In the corner stood a desk like the schoolmaster’s in a village school. There was a shelf with a few vellum-bound books on it, and nothing else, not even a chair in the place.
‘Yes; there they are!’ he said, as he took down one of the volumes from the shelf. ‘This one comes to a close in the middle of the last century. I dare say there is something in this, now, that would be interesting enough to somebody. Who knows how many properties it might make change hands?’
‘Not many, I should think. Those matters are pretty well seen to now.’
{Illustration: “COUNTRY LAWYERS KNOW A SECRET OR TWO,” HE SAID.}
‘By some one or other—not always the rightful heirs. Life is full of the strangest facts, Mr Cumbermede. If I were a novelist, now, like you, my experience would make me dare a good deal more in the way of invention than any novelist I happen to have read. Look there, for instance.’
He pointed to the top of the last page, or rather the last half of the cover. I read as follows:
‘Mr Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll, of the Parish of {——} second son of Sir Richard Daryll of Moldwarp Hall in the County of {——} and Mistress Elizabeth Woodruffe were married by a license Jan. 15.’
‘I don’t know the name of Daryll,’ I said.
‘It was your own great-grandfather’s name,’ he returned. ‘I happen to know that much.’
‘You knew this was here, Mr Coningham,’ I said. ‘That is why you brought me here.’
‘You are right. I did know it. Was I wrong in thinking it would interest you?’
‘Certainly not. I am obliged to you. But why this mystery? Why not have told me what you wanted me to go for?’
‘I will why you in turn. Why should I have wanted to show you now more than any other time what I have known for as many years almost as you have lived? You spoke of a ride—why shouldn’t I give a direction to it that might pay you for your trouble? And why shouldn’t I have a little amusement out of it if I pleased? Why shouldn’t I enjoy your surprise at finding in a place you had hardly heard of, and would certainly count most uninteresting, the record of a fact that concerned your own existence so nearly? There!’
‘I confess it interests me more than you will easily think—inasmuch as it seems to offer to account for things that have greatly puzzled me for some time. I have of late met with several hints of a connection at one time or other between the Moat and the Hall, but these hints were so isolated that I could weave no theory to connect them. Now I dare say they will clear themselves up.’
‘Not a doubt of-that, if you set about it in earnest.’
‘How did he come to drop his surname?’
‘That has to be accounted for.’
‘It follows—does it not?—that I am of the same blood as the present possessors of Moldwarp Hall?’
‘You are—but the relation is not a close one,’ said Mr Coningham.
‘Sir Giles was but distantly related to the stock of which you come.’
‘Then—but I must turn it over in my mind. I am rather in a maze.’
‘You have got some papers at the Moat?’ he said—interrogatively.
‘Yes; my friend Osborne has been looking over them. He found out this much—that there was once some connection between the Moat and the Hall, but at a far earlier date than this points to, or any of the hints to which I just now referred. The other day, when I dined at Sir Giles’s, Mr Alderforge said that Cumbermede was a name belonging to Sir Giles’s ancestry—or something to that effect; but that again could have had nothing to do with those papers, or with the Moat at all.’
Here I stopped, for I could not bring myself to refer to the sword. It was not merely that the subject was too painful: of all things I did not want to be cross-questioned by my lawyer-companion.
‘It is not amongst those you will find anything of importance, I suspect. Did your great-grandmother—the same, no doubt, whose marriage is here registered—leave no letters or papers behind her?’
‘I’ve come upon a few letters. I don’t know if there is anything more.’
‘You haven’t read them, apparently.’
‘I have not. I’ve been always going to read them, but I haven’t opened one of them yet.’
‘Then I recommend you—that is, if you care for an interesting piece of family history—to read those letters carefully, that is constructively.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean—putting two and two together, and seeing what comes of it; trying to make everything fit into one, you know.’
‘Yes. I understand you. But how do you happen to know that those letters contain a history, or that it will prove interesting when I have found it?’
‘All family history ought to be interesting—at least to the last of his race,’ he returned, replying only to the latter half of my question.’ It must, for one thing, make him feel his duty to his ancestors more strongly.’
‘His duty to marry, I suppose you mean?’ I said with some inward bitterness. ‘But to tell the truth, I don’t think the inheritance worth it in my case.’
‘It might be better,’ he said, with an expression which seemed odd beside the simplicity of the words.
‘Ah! you think then to urge me to make money; and for the sake of my dead ancestors increase the inheritance of those that may come after me? But I believe I am already as diligent as is good for me—that is, in the main, for I have been losing time of late.’
‘I meant no such thing, Mr Cumbermede. I should be very doubtful whether any amount of success in literature would enable you to restore the fortunes of your family.’
‘Were they so very ponderous, do you think? But in truth I have little ambition of that sort. All I will readily confess to is a strong desire not to shirk what work falls to my share in the world.’
‘Yes,’ he said, in a thoughtful manner—‘if one only knew what his share of the work was.’
The remark was unexpected, and I began to feel a little more interest in him.
‘Hadn’t you better take a copy of that entry?’ he said.
‘Yes—perhaps I had. But I have no materials.’
It did not strike me that attorneys do not usually, like excise-men, carry about an ink-bottle, when he drew one from the breast-pocket of his coat, along with a folded sheet of writing-paper, which he opened and spread out on the desk. I took the pen he offered me, and copied the entry.
When I had finished, he said—
‘Leave room under it for the attestation of the parson. We can get that another time, if necessary. Then write, “Copied by me”—and then your name and the date. It may be useful some time. Take it home and lay it with your grandmother’s papers.’
‘There can be no harm in that,’ I said, as I folded it up, and put it in my pocket. ‘I am greatly obliged to you for bringing me here, Mr Coningham. Though I am not ambitious of restoring the family to a grandeur of which every record has departed, I am quite sufficiently interested in its history, and shall consequently take care of this document.’
‘Mind you read your grandmother’s papers, though,’ he said.
‘I will,’ I answered.
He replaced the volume on the shelf, and we left the church; he locked the door and replaced the key under the gravestone; we mounted our horses, and after riding with me about half the way to the Moat, he took his leave at a point where our roads, diverged. I resolved to devote that very evening, partly in the hope of distracting my thoughts, to the reading of my grandmother’s letters.
But a change had again come over him. He was nervous, restless, apparently anxious. I questioned him about his mother and sister. He had met them as planned, and had, he assured me, done his utmost to impress them with the truth concerning me. But he had found his mother incredulous, and had been unable to discover from her how much she had heard; while Mary maintained an obstinate silence, and, as he said, looked more stupid than usual. He did not tell me that Clara had accompanied them so far, and that he had walked with her back to the entrance of the park. This I heard afterwards. When we had talked a while over the sword-business—for we could not well keep off it long—Charley seeming all the time more uncomfortable than ever, he said, perhaps merely to turn the talk into a more pleasant channel—
By the way, where have you put your folio? I’ve been looking for it ever since I came in, but I can’t find it. A new reading started up in my head the other day, and I want to try it both with the print and the context.’
‘It’s in my room,’ I answered, ‘I will go and fetch it.’
‘We will go together,’ he said.
I looked where I thought I had laid it, but there it was not. A pang of foreboding terror invaded me. Charley told me afterwards that I turned as white as a sheet. I looked everywhere, but in vain; ran and searched my uncle’s room, and then Charley’s, but still in vain; and at last, all at once, remembered with certainty that two nights before I had laid it on the window-sill in my uncle’s room. I shouted for Styles, but he was gone home with the mare, and I had to wait, in little short of agony, until he returned. The moment he entered I began to question him.
‘You took those books home, Styles?’ I said, as quietly as I could, anxious not to startle him, lest it should interfere with the just action of his memory.
‘Yes, sir. I took them at once, and gave them into Miss Pease’s own hands;—at least I suppose it was Miss Pease. She wasn’t a young lady, sir.’
‘All right, I dare say. How many were there of them?’
‘Six, sir.’
‘I told you five,’ I said, trembling with apprehension and wrath.
‘You said four or five, and I never thought but the six were to go. They were all together on the window-sill.’
I stood speechless. Charley took up the questioning.
‘What sized books were they?’ he asked.
‘Pretty biggish—one of them quite a large one—the same I’ve seen you, gentlemen, more than once, putting your heads together over. At least it looked like it.’
‘Charley started up and began pacing about the room. Styles saw he had committed some dreadful mistake, and began a blundering expression of regret, but neither of us took any notice of him, and he crept out in dismay.
It was some time before either of us could utter a word. The loss of the sword was a trifle to this. Beyond a doubt the precious tome was now lying in the library of Moldwarp Hall—amongst old friends and companions, possibly—where years on years might elapse before one loving hand would open it, or any eyes gaze on it with reverence.
‘Lost, Charley!’ I said at last.—‘Irrecoverably lost!’
‘I will go and fetch it,’ he cried, starting up. ‘I will tell Clara to bring it out to me. It is beyond endurance this. Why should you not go and claim what both of us can take our oath to as yours?’
‘You forget, Charley, how the sword-affair cripples us—and how the claiming of this volume would only render their belief with regard to the other the more probable. You forget, too, that Imighthave placed it in the chest first, and, above all, that the name on the title-page is the same as the initials on the blade of the sword,—the same as my own.’
‘Yes—I see it won’t do. And yet if I were to represent the thing to Sir Giles?—He doesn’t care for old books——’
‘You forget again, Charley, that the volume is of great money-value. Perhaps my late slip has made me fastidious; but though the book be mine—and if I had it, the proof of the contrary would lie with them—I could not take advantage of Sir Giles’s ignorance to recover it.’
‘I might, however, get Clara—she is a favourite with him, you know—’
‘I will not hear of it,’ I said, interrupting him, and he was forced to yield.
‘No, Charley,’ I said again; ‘I must just bear it. Harder thingshavebeen borne, and men have got through the world and out of it notwithstanding. If there isn’t another world, why should we care much for the loss of whatmustgo with the rest?—and if there is, why should we care at all?’
‘Very fine, Wilfrid! but when you come to the practice—why, the less said the better.’
‘But that is the very point: we don’t come to the practice. If we did, then the ground of it would be proved unobjectionable.’
‘True;—but if the practice be unattainable—’
‘It would take much proving to prove that to my—dissatisfaction I should say; and more failure besides, I can tell you, than there will be time for in this world. If it were proved, however—don’t you see it would disprove both suppositions equally? If such a philosophical spirit be unattainable, it discredits both sides of the alternative on either of which it would have been reasonable.’
‘There is a sophism there of course, but I am not in the mood for pulling your logic to pieces,’ returned Charley, still pacing up and down the room.
In sum, nothing would come of all our talk but the assurance that the volume was equally irrecoverable with the sword, and indeed with my poor character—at least, in the eyes of my immediate neighbours.
{Illustration: I SAT DOWN AGAIN BY THE FIRE TO READ, IN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CHAIR.}
As soon as Charley went to bed, I betook myself to my grandmother’s room, in which, before discovering my loss, I had told Styles to kindle a fire. I had said nothing to Charley about my ride, and the old church, and the marriage-register. For the time, indeed, I had almost lost what small interest I had taken in the matter—my new bereavement was so absorbing and painful; but feeling certain, when he left me, that I should not be able to sleep, but would be tormented all night by innumerable mental mosquitoes if I made the attempt, and bethinking me of my former resolution, I proceeded to carry it out.
The fire was burning brightly, and my reading lamp was on the table, ready to be lighted. But I sat down first in my grandmother’s chair and mused for I know not how long. At length my wandering thoughts rehearsed again the excursion with Mr Coningham. I pulled the copy of the marriage-entry from my pocket, and in reading it over again, my curiosity was sufficiently roused to send me to the bureau. I lighted my lamp at last, unlocked what had seemed to my childhood a treasury of unknown marvels, took from it the packet of yellow withered letters, and sat down again by the fire to read, in my great-grandmother’s chair, the letters of Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll—for so he signed himself in all of them—my great-grandfather. There were amongst them a few of her own in reply to his—badly written and badly spelt, but perfectly intelligible. I will not transcribe any of them—I have them to show if needful—but not at my command at the present moment;—for I am writing neither where I commenced my story—on the outskirts of an ancient city, nor at the Moat, but in a dreary old square in London; and those letters lie locked again in the old bureau, and have lain unvisited through thousands of desolate days and slow creeping nights, in that room which I cannot help feeling sometimes as if the ghost of that high-spirited, restless-hearted grandmother of mine must now and then revisit, sitting in the same old chair, and wondering to find how far it was all receded from her—wondering, also, to think what a work she made, through her long and weary life, about things that look to her now such trifles.
I do not then transcribe any of the letters, but give, in a connected form, what seem to me the facts I gathered from them; not hesitating to present, where they are required, self-evident conclusions as if they were facts mentioned in them. I repeat that none of my names are real, although they all point at the real names.
Wilfrid Cumbermede was the second son of Richard and Mary Daryll of Moldwarp Hall. He was baptized Cumbermede from the desire to keep in memory the name of a celebrated ancestor, the owner, in fact, of the disputed sword—itself alluded to in the letters,—who had been more mindful of the supposed rights of his king than the next king was of the privations undergone for his sake, for Moldwarp Hall at least was never recovered from the Roundhead branch of the family into whose possession it had drifted. In the change, however, which creeps on with new generations, there had been in the family a re-action of sentiment in favour of the more distinguished of its progenitors; and Richard Daryll, a man of fierce temper and overbearing disposition, had named his son after the cavalier. A tyrant in his family, at least in the judgment of the writers of those letters, he apparently found no trouble either with his wife or his eldest or youngest son; while, whether his own fault or not, it was very evident that from Wilfrid his annoyances had been numerous.
A legal feud had for some time existed between the Ahab of Moldwarp Hall and the Naboth of the Moat, the descendant of an ancient yeoman family of good blood, and indeed related to the Darylls themselves, of the name of Woodruffe. Sir Richard had cast covetous eyes upon the field surrounding Stephen’s comparatively humble abode, which had at one time formed a part of the Moldwarp property. In searching through some old parchments, he had found, or rather, I suppose, persuaded himself he had found, sufficient evidence that this part of the property of the Moat, then of considerable size, had been willed away in contempt of the entail which covered it, and belonged by right to himself and his heirs. He had therefore instituted proceedings to recover possession, during the progress of which their usual bickerings and disputes augmented in fierceness. A decision having at length been given in favour of the weaker party, the mortification of Sir Richard was unendurable to himself, and his wrath and unreasonableness, in consequence, equally unendurable to his family. One may then imagine the paroxysm of rage with which he was seized when he discovered that, during the whole of the legal process, his son Wilfrid had been making love to Elizabeth Woodruffe, the only child of his enemy. In Wilfrid’s letters, the part of the story which follows is fully detailed for Elizabeth’s information, of which the reason is also plain—that the writer had spent such a brief period afterwards in Elizabeth’s society that he had not been able for very shame to recount the particulars.
No sooner had Sir Richard come to a knowledge of the hateful fact, evidently through one of his servants, than, suppressing the outburst of his rage for the moment, he sent for his son Wilfrid, and informed him, his lips quivering with suppressed passion, of the discovery he had made; accused him of having brought disgrace on the family, and of having been guilty of falsehood and treachery; and ordered him to go down on his knees and abjure the girl before heaven, or expect a father’s vengeance.
But evidently Wilfrid was as little likely as any man to obey such a command. He boldly avowed his love for Elizabeth, and declared his intention of marrying her. His father, foaming with rage, ordered his servants to seize him. Overmastered in spite of his struggles, he bound him to a pillar, and taking a horse-whip, lashed him furiously; then, after his rage was thus in a measure appeased, ordered them to carry him to his bed. There he remained, hardly able to move, the whole of that night and the next day. On the following night, he made his escape from the Hall, and took refuge with a farmer-friend a few miles off—in the neighbourhood, probably, of Umberden Church.
Here I would suggest a conjecture of my own—namely, that my ancestor’s room was the same I had occupied, so—fatally, shall I say?—to myself, on the only two occasions on which I had slept at the Hall; that he escaped by the stair to the roof, having first removed the tapestry from the door, as a memorial to himself and a sign to those he left; that he carried with him the sword and the volume—both probably lying in his room at the time, and the latter little valued by any other. But all this, I repeat, is pure conjecture.
As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he communicated with Elizabeth, prevailed upon her to marry him at once at Umberden Church, and within a few days, as near as I could judge; left her to join, as a volunteer, the army of the Duke of Cumberland, then fighting the French in the Netherlands. Probably from a morbid fear lest the disgrace his father’s brutality had inflicted should become known in his regiment, he dropped the surname of Daryll when he joined it; and—for what precise reasons I cannot be certain—his wife evidently never called herself by any other name than Cumbermede. Very likely she kept her marriage a secret, save from her own family, until the birth of my grandfather, which certainly took place before her husband’s return. Indeed I am almost sure that he never returned from that campaign, but died fighting, not unlikely, at the battle of Laffeldt; and that my grannie’s letters, which I found in the same packet, had been, by the kindness of some comrade, restored to the young widow.
When I had finished reading the letters, and had again thrown myself back in the old chair, I began to wonder why nothing of all this should ever have been told me. That the whole history should have dropped out of the knowledge of the family, would have been natural enough, had my great-grandmother, as well as my great-grandfather, died in youth; but that she should have outlived her son, dying only after I, the representative of the fourth generation, was a boy at school, and yet no whisper have reached me of these facts, appeared strange. A moment’s reflection showed me that the causes and the reasons of the fact must have lain with my uncle. I could not but remember how both he and my aunt had sought to prevent me from seeing my grannie alone, and how the last had complained of this in terms far more comprehensible to me now than they were then. But what could have been the reasons for this their obstruction of the natural flow of tradition? They remained wrapped in a mystery which the outburst from it of an occasional gleam of conjectural light only served to deepen.
The letters lying open on the table before me, my eyes rested upon one of the dates—the third day of March, 1747. It struck me that this date involved a discrepancy with that of the copy I had made from the register. I referred to it, and found my suspicion correct. According to the copy, my ancestors were not married until the 15th of January, 1748. I must have made a blunder—and yet I could hardly believe I had, for I had reason to consider myself accurate. If therewasno mistake, I should have to reconstruct my facts, and draw fresh conclusions.
By this time, however, I was getting tired and sleepy and cold; my lamp was nearly out; my fire was quite gone; and the first of a frosty dawn was beginning to break in the east. I rose and replaced the papers, reserving all further thought on the matter for a condition of circumstances more favourable to a correct judgment. I blew out the lamp, groped my way to bed in the dark, and was soon fast asleep, in despite of insult, mortification, perplexity, and loss.
It may be said of the body in regard of sleep as well as in regard of death, ‘It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.’ For me, the next morning, I could almost have said, ‘I was sown in dishonour and raised in glory.’ No one can deny the power of the wearied body to paralyze the soul; but I have a correlate theory which I love, and which I expect to find true—that, while the body wearies the mind, it is the mind that restores vigour to the body, and then, like the man who has built him a stately palace, rejoices to dwell in it. I believe that, if there be a living, conscious love at the heart of the universe, the mind, in the quiescence of its consciousness in sleep, comes into a less disturbed contact with its origin, the heart of the creation; whence gifted with calmness and strength for itself, it grows able to impart comfort and restoration to the weary frame. The cessation of labour affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible, as it were, for the occupant of an outlying station in the wilderness to return to his father’s house for fresh supplies of all that is needful for life and energy. The child-soul goes home at night, and returns in the morning to the labours of the school. Mere physical rest could never of its own negative self build up the frame in such light and vigour as come through sleep.
It was from no blessed vision that I woke the next morning, but from a deep and dreamless sleep. Yet the moment I became aware of myself and the world, I felt strong and courageous, and I began at once to look my affairs in the face. Concerning that which was first in consequence, I soon satisfied myself: I could not see that I had committed any serious fault in the whole affair. I was not at all sure that a lie in defence of the innocent, and to prevent the knowledge of what no one had any right to know, was wrong—seeing such involves no injustice on the one side, and does justice on the other. I have seen reason since to change my mind, and count my liberty restricted to silence—not extending, that is, to the denial or assertion of what the will of God, inasmuch as it exists or does not exist, may have declared to be or not to be the fact. I now think that to lie is, as it were, to snatch the reins out of God’s hand.
At all events, however, I had done the Brothertons no wrong. ‘What matter, then,’ I said to myself, ‘of what they believe me guilty, so long as before God and my own conscience I am clear and clean?’
Next came the practical part:—What was I to do? To right myself either in respect of their opinion, or in respect of my lost property, was more hopeless than important, and I hardly wasted two thoughts upon that. But I could not remain where I was, and soon came to the resolution to go with Charley to London at once, and taking lodgings in some obscure recess near the Inns of Court, there to give myself to work, and work alone, in the foolish hope that one day fame might buttress reputation. In this resolution I was more influenced by the desire to be near the brother of Mary Osborne than the desire to be near my friend Charley, strong as that was. I expected thus to hear of her oftener, and even cherished the hope of coming to hear from her—of inducing her to honour me with a word or two of immediate communication. For I could see no reason why her opinions should prevent her from corresponding with one who, whatever might or might not seem to him true, yet cared for the truth, and must treat with respect every form in which he could descry its predominating presence.
I would have asked Charley to set out with me that very day, but for the desire to clear up the discrepancy between the date of my ancestor’s letters, all written within the same year, and that of the copy I had made of the registration of their marriage—with which object I would compare the copy and the original. I wished also to have some talk with Mr Coningham concerning the contents of the letters which at his urgency I had now read. I got up and wrote to him therefore, asking him to ride with me again to Umberden Church, as soon as he could make it convenient, and sent Styles off at once on the mare to carry the note to Minstercombe, and bring me back an answer.
As we sat over our breakfast, Charley said suddenly, ‘Clara was regretting yesterday that she had not seen the Moat. She said you had asked her once, but had never spoken of it again.’
‘And now I suppose she thinks, because I’m in disgrace with her friends at the Hall, that she mustn’t come near me,’ I said, with another bitterness than belonged to the words.
‘Wilfrid!’ he said reproachfully; ‘she didn’t say anything of the sort. I will write and ask her if she couldn’t contrive to come over. She might meet us at the park gates.’
‘No,’ I returned; ‘there isn’t time. I mean to go back to London—perhaps to-morrow evening. It is like turning you out, Charley, but we shall be nearer each other in town than we were last time.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ he said. ‘I had been thinking myself that I had better go back this evening. My father is expected home in a day or two, and it would be just like him to steal a march on my chambers. Yes, I think I shall go to-night.’
‘Very well, old boy,’ I answered. ‘That will make it all right. It’s a pity we couldn’t take the journey together, but it doesn’t matter much. I shall follow you as soon as I can.’
‘Why can’t you go with me?’ he asked.
Thereupon I gave him a full report of my excursion with Mr Coningham, and the after reading of the letters, with my reason for wishing to examine the register again; telling him that I had asked Mr Coningham to ride with me once more to Umberden Church.
When Styles returned, he informed me that Mr Coningham at first proposed to ride back with him, but probably bethinking himself that another sixteen miles would be too much for my mare, had changed his mind and sent me the message that he would be with me early the next day.
After Charley was gone, I spent the evening in a thorough search of the old bureau. I found in it several quaint ornaments besides those already mentioned, but only one thing which any relation to my story would justify specific mention of—namely, an ivory label, discoloured with age, on which was traceable the very number Sir Giles had read from the scabbard of Sir Wilfrid’s sword. Clearly, then, my sword was the one mentioned in the book, and as clearly it had not been at Moldwarp Hall for a long time before I lost it there. If I were in any fear as to my reader’s acceptance of my story, I should rejoice in the possession of that label more than in the restoration of sword or book; but amidst all my troubles, I have as yet been able to rely upon her justice and her knowledge of myself. Yes—I must mention one thing more I found—a long, sharp-pointed, straight-backed, snake-edged Indian dagger, inlaid with silver—a fierce, dangerous, almost venomous-looking weapon, in a curious case of old green morocco. It also may have once belonged to the armoury of Moldwarp Hall. I took it with me when I left my grannie’s room, and laid it in the portmanteau I was going to take to London.
My only difficulty was what to do with Lilith; but I resolved for the mean time to leave her, as before, in the care of Styles, who seemed almost as fond of her as I was myself.
Mr Coningham was at my door by ten o’clock, and we set out together for Umberden Church. It was a cold clear morning. The dying Autumn was turning a bright thin defiant face upon the conquering Winter. I was in great spirits, my mind being full of Mary Osborne. At one moment I saw but her own ordinary face, only what I had used to regard as dulness I now interpreted as the possession of her soul in patience; at another I saw the glorified countenance of my Athanasia, knowing that, beneath the veil of the other, this, the real, the true face ever lay. Once in my sight the frost-clung flower had blossomed; in full ideal of glory it had shone for a moment, and then folding itself again away, had retired into the regions of faith. And while I knew that such could dawn out of such, how could I help hoping that from the face of the universe, however to my eyes it might sometimes seem to stare like the seven-days dead, one morn might dawn the unspeakable face which even Moses might not behold lest he should die of the great sight? The keen air, the bright sunshine, the swift motion—all combined to raise my spirits to an unwonted pitch; but it was a silent ecstasy, and I almost forgot the presence of Mr Coningham. When he spoke at last, I started.
‘I thought from your letter you had something to tell me, Mr Cumbermede,’ he said, coming alongside of me.
‘Yes, to be sure. I have been reading my grannie’s papers, as I told you.’
I recounted the substance of what I had found in them.
‘Does it not strike you as rather strange that all this should have been kept a secret from you?’ he asked.
‘Very few know anything about their grandfathers,’ I said; ‘so I suppose very few fathers care to tell their children about them.’
‘That is because there are so few concerning whom there is anything worth telling.’
‘For my part,’ I returned, ‘I should think any fact concerning one of those who link me with the infinite past out of which I have come, invaluable. Even a fact which is not to the credit of an ancestor may be a precious discovery to the man who has in himself to fight the evil derived from it.’
‘That, however, is a point of view rarely taken. What the ordinary man values is also rare; hence few regard their ancestry, or transmit any knowledge they may have of those who have gone before them to those that come after them.’
‘My uncle, however, I suppose, toldmenothing because, unlike the many, he prized neither wealth nor rank, nor what are commonly considered great deeds.’
‘You are not far from the truth there,’ said Mr Coningham in a significant tone.
‘Thenyouknow why he never told me anything!’ I exclaimed.
‘I do—from the best authority.’
‘His own, you mean, I suppose.’
‘I do.’
‘But—but—I didn’t know you were ever—at all—intimate with my uncle,’ I said.
He laughed knowingly.
‘You would say, if you didn’t mind speaking the truth, that you thought your uncle disliked me—disapproved of me. Come, now—did he not try to make you avoid me? You needn’t mind acknowledging the fact, for, when I have explained the reason of it, you will see that it involves no discredit to either of us.’
‘I have no fear for my uncle.’
‘You are honest, if not over-polite,’ he rejoined. ‘—You do not feel so sure about my share. Well, I don’t mind who knows it, for my part. I roused the repugnance, to the knowledge of which your silence confesses, merely by acting as any professional man ought to have acted—and with the best intentions. At the same time, all the blame I should ever think of casting upon him is that he allowed his high-strung, saintly, I had almost said superhuman ideas to stand in the way of his nephew’s prosperity.’
‘Perhaps he was afraid of that prosperity standing in the way of a better.’
‘Precisely so. You understand him perfectly. He was one of the best and simplest-minded men in the world.’
‘I am glad you do him that justice.’
‘At the same time I do not think he intended you to remain in absolute ignorance of what I am going to tell you. But, you see, he died very suddenly. Besides, he could hardly expect I should hold my tongue after he was gone.’
‘Perhaps, however, he might expect me not to cultivate your acquaintance,’ I said, laughing to take the sting out of the words.
‘You cannot accuse yourself of having taken any trouble in that direction,’ he returned, laughing also.
‘I believe, however,’ I resumed, ‘from what I can recall of things he said, especially on one occasion, on which he acknowledged the existence of a secret in which I was interested, he did not intend that I should always remain in ignorance of everything he thought proper to conceal from me then.’
‘I presume you are right. I think his conduct in this respect arose chiefly from anxiety that the formation of your character should not be influenced by the knowledge of certain facts which might unsettle you, and prevent you from reaping the due advantages of study and self-dependence in youth. I cannot, however, believe that by being open with you I shall now be in any danger of thwarting his plans, for you have already proved yourself a wise, moderate, conscientious man, diligent and painstaking. Forgive me for appearing to praise you. I had no such intention. I was only uttering as a fact to be considered in the question, what upon my honour I thoroughly believe.’
‘I should be happy in your good opinion, if I were able to appropriate it,’ I said. ‘But a man knows his own faults better than his neighbour knows his virtues.’
‘Spoken like the man I took you for, Mr Cumbermede,’ he rejoined gravely.
‘But to return to the matter in hand,’ I resumed; ‘what can there be so dangerous in the few facts I have just come to the knowledge of, that my uncle should have cared to conceal them from me? That a man born in humble circumstances should come to know that he had distinguished ancestors, could hardly so fill him with false notions as to endanger his relation to the laws of his existence.’
‘Of course—but you are too hasty. Those facts are of more importance than you are aware—involve other facts. Moldwarp Hall isyourproperty, and not Sir Giles Brotherton’s.’
‘Then the apple was my own, after all!’ I said to myself exultingly. It was a strange fantastic birth of conscience and memory—forgotten the same moment, and followed by an electric flash—not of hope, not of delight, not of pride, but of pure revenge. My whole frame quivered with the shock; yet for a moment I seemed to have the strength of a Hercules. In front of me was a stile through a high hedge: I turned Lilith’s head to the hedge, struck my spurs into her, and over or through it, I know not which, she bounded. Already, with all the strength of will I could summon, I struggled to rid myself of the wicked feeling; and although I cannot pretend to have succeeded for long after, yet by the time Mr Coningham had popped over the stile, I was waiting for him, to all appearance, I believe, perfectly calm. He, on the other hand, from whatever cause, was actually trembling. His face was pale, and his eye flashing. Was it that he had roused me more effectually than he had hoped?
‘Take care, take care, my boy,’ he said, ‘or you won’t live to enjoy your own. Permit me the honour of shaking hands with Sir Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll.’
After this ceremonial of prophetic investiture, we jogged away quietly, and he told me a long story about the death of the last proprietor, the degree in which Sir Giles was related to him, and his undisputed accession to the property. At that time, he said, my father was in very bad health, and indeed died within six months of it.
‘I knew your father well, Mr Cumbermede,’ he went on, ‘—one of the best of men, with more spirit, more ambition than your uncle. It washiswish that his child, if a boy, should be called Wilfrid,—for though they had been married five or six years, their only child was born after his death. Your uncle did not like the name, your mother told me, but made no objection to it. So you were named after your grandfather, and great-grandfather, and I don’t know how many of the race besides.—When the last of the Darylls died—’
‘Then,’ I interrupted, ‘my father was the heir.’
‘No; you mistake: your uncle was the elder—Sir David Cumbermede Daryll, of Moldwarp Hall and The Moat,’ said Mr Coningham, evidently bent on making the most of my rights.
‘He never even told me he was the eldest,’ I said. ‘I always thought, from his coming home to manage the farm when my father was ill, that he was the second of the two sons.’
‘On the contrary, he was several years older than your father, but taking more kindly to reading than farming, was sent by his father to Oxford to study for the Church, leaving the farm, as was tacitly understood, to descend to your father at your grandfather’s death. After the idea of the Church was abandoned he took a situation, refusing altogether to subvert the order of things already established at the Moat. So you see you are not to suppose that he kept you back from any of your rights. They were his, not yours, while he lived.’
‘I will not ask,’ I said, ‘why he did not enforce them. That is plain enough from what I know of his character. The more I think of that, the loftier and simpler it seems to grow. He could not bring himself to spend the energies of a soul meant for higher things on the assertion and recovery of earthly rights.’
‘I rather differ from you there; and I do not know,’ returned my companion, whose tone was far more serious than I had ever heard it before, ‘whether the explanation I am going to offer will raise your uncle as much in your estimation as it does in mine. I confess I do not rank such self-denial as you attribute to him so highly as you do. On the contrary I count it a fault. How could the world go on if everybody was like your uncle?’
‘If everybody was like my uncle, he would have been forced to accept the position,’ I said; ‘for there would have been no one to take it from him.’
‘Perhaps. But you must not think Sir Giles knew anything of your uncle’s claim. He knows nothing of it now.’
I had not thought of Sir Giles in connection with the matter—only of Geoffrey; and my heart recoiled from the notion of dispossessing the old man who, however misled with regard to me at last, had up till then shown me uniform kindness. In that moment I had almost resolved on taking no steps till after his death. But Mr Coningham soon made me forget Sir Giles in a fresh revelation of my uncle.
‘Although,’ he resumed, ‘all you say of your uncle’s indifference to this world and its affairs is indubitably correct, I do not believe, had there not been a prospect of your making your appearance, that he would have shirked the duty of occupying the property which was his both by law and by nature. But he knew it might be an expensive suit—for no one can tell by what tricks of the law such may be prolonged—in which case all the money he could command would soon be spent, and nothing left either to provide for your so-called aunt, for whom he had a great regard, or to give you that education, which, whether you were to succeed to the property or not, he counted indispensable. He cared far more, he said, about your having such a property in yourself as was at once personal and real, than for your having any amount of property out of yourself. Expostulation was of no use. I had previously learned—from the old lady herself—the true state of the case, and, upon the death of Sir Geoffrey Daryll, had at once communicated with him—which placed me in a position for urging him, as I did again and again, considerably to his irritation, to assert and prosecute his claim to the title and estates. I offered to take the whole risk upon myself; but he said that would be tantamount to giving up his personal liberty until the matter was settled, which might not be in his lifetime. I may just mention, however, that, besides his religious absorption, I strongly suspect there was another cause of his indifference to worldly affairs: I have grounds for thinking that he was disappointed in a more than ordinary attachment to a lady he met at Oxford—in station considerably above any prospects he had then. To return: he was resolved that, whatever might be your fate, you should not have to meet it without such preparation as he could afford you. As you have divined, he was most anxious that your character should have acquired some degree of firmness before you knew anything of the possibility of your inheriting a large property and historical name; and I may appropriate the credit of a negative share in the carrying out of his plans, for you will bear me witness how often I might have upset them by informing you of the facts of the case.’
‘I am heartily obliged to you,’ I said, ‘for not interfering with my uncle’s wishes, for I am very glad indeed that I have been kept in ignorance of my rights until now. The knowledge would at one time have gone far to render me useless for personal effort in any direction worthy of it. It would have made me conceited, ambitious, boastful: I don’t know how many bad adjectives would have been necessary to describe me.’
‘It is all very well to be modest, but I venture to think differently.’
‘I should like to ask you one question, Mr Coningham,’ I said.
‘As many as you please.’
‘How is it that you have so long delayed giving me the information which on my uncle’s death you no doubt felt at liberty to communicate?’
‘I did not know how far you might partake of your uncle’s disposition, and judged that the wider your knowledge of the world, and the juster your estimate of the value of money and position, the more willing you would be to listen to the proposals I had to make.’
‘Do you remember,’ I asked, after a canter, led off by my companion, ‘one very stormy night on which you suddenly appeared at the Moat, and had a long talk with my uncle on the subject?’
‘Perfectly,’ he answered. ‘But how did you come to know?Hedid not tell you of my visit!’
‘Certainly not. But, listening in my night-gown on the stair, which is open to the kitchen, I heard enough of your talk to learn the object of your visit—namely, to carry off my skin to make bagpipes with.’
He laughed so heartily that I told him the whole story of the pendulum.
‘On that occasion,’ he said, ‘I made the offer to your uncle, on condition of his sanctioning the commencement of legal proceedings, to pledge myself to meet every expense of those, and of your education as well, and to claim nothing whatever in return, except in case of success.’
This quite corresponded with my own childish recollections of the interview between them. Indeed there was such an air of simple straightforwardness about his whole communication, while at the same time it accounted so thoroughly for the warning my uncle had given me against him, that I felt I might trust him entirely, and so would have told him all that had taken place at the Hall, but for the share his daughter had borne in it, and the danger of discovery to Mary.