Wilfrid Cumbermede

Enbrethyng of Zepherus with his pleasant wynde.’

I went merrily along. The birds were not singing, but my heart did not need them. It was Spring-time there, whatever it might be in the world. The heaven of my childhood wanted no lark to make it gay. Had the trees been bare, and the frost shining on the ground, it would have been all the same. The sunlight was enough.

I was standing on the root of a great beech-tree, gazing up into the gulf of its foliage, and watching the broken lights playing about in the leaves and leaping from twig to branch, like birds yet more golden than the leaves, when a voice startled me.

‘You’re not looking for apples in a beech-tree, hey? it said.

I turned instantly, with my heart in a flutter. To my great relief I saw that the speaker was not Sir Giles, and that probably no allusion was intended. But my first apprehension made way only for another pang, for, although I did not know the man, a strange dismay shot through me at sight of him. His countenance was associated with an undefined but painful fact that lay crouching in a dusky hollow of my memory. I had no time now to entice it into the light of recollection. I took heart and spoke.

‘No,’ I answered; ‘I was only watching the sun on the leaves.’

‘Very pretty, ain’t it? Ah, it’s lovely! It’s quite beautiful—ain’t it now? You like good timber, don’t you? Trees, I mean?’ he explained, aware, I suppose, of some perplexity on my countenance.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I like big old ones best.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he returned, with an energy that sounded strange and jarring to my mood; ‘big old ones, that have stood for ages—the monarchs of the forest. Saplings ain’t bad things either, though. But old ones are best. Just come here, and I’ll show you one worth looking at. It wasn’t planted yesterday, I can tell you.’

I followed him along the path, until we came out of the wood. Beyond us the ground rose steep and high, and was covered with trees; but here in the hollow it was open. A stream ran along between us and the height. On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the stem looked stunted between them.

‘There!’ said my companion; ‘there’s a tree! there’s something like a tree! How a man must feel to call a tree like that his own! That’s Queen Elizabeth’s oak. It is indeed. England is dotted with would-be Queen Elizabeth’s oaks; but there is the very oak which she admired so much that she ordered luncheon to be served under it.... Ah! she knew the value of timber—did good Queen Bess. That’s now—now—let me see—the year after the Armada—nine from fifteen—ah well, somewhere about two hundred and thirty years ago.’

‘How lumpy and hard it looks!’ I remarked.

‘That’s the breed and the age of it,’ he returned. ‘The wonder to me is they don’t turn to stone and last for ever, those trees. Ah! there’s something to live for now!’

He had turned away to resume his walk, but as he finished the sentence, he turned again towards the tree, and shook his finger at it, as if reproaching it for belonging to somebody else than himself.

‘Where are you going now?’ he asked, wheeling round upon me sharply, with a keen look in his magpie-eyes, as the French would call them, which hardly corresponded with the bluntness of his address.

‘I’m going to the Hall,’ I answered, turning away.

‘You’ll never get there that way. How are you to cross the river?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been this way before.’

‘You’ve been to the Hall before, then? Whom do you know there?’

‘Mrs Wilson,’ I answered.

‘H’m! Ah! You know Mrs Wilson, do you? Nice woman, Mrs Wilson!’

He said this as if he meant the opposite.

‘Here,’ he went on—‘come with me. I’ll show you the way.’

I obeyed, and followed him along the bank of the stream.

‘What a curious bridge!’ I exclaimed, as we came in sight of an ancient structure lifted high in the middle on the point of a Gothic arch.

‘Yes, ain’t it? he said. ‘Curious? I should think so! And well it may be! It’s as old as the oak there at least. There’s a bridge now for a man like Sir Giles to call his own!’

‘He can’t keep it though,’ I said, moralizing; for, in carrying on the threads of my stories, I had come to see that no climax could last for ever.

‘Can’t keep it! He could carry off every stone of it if he liked.’

‘Then it wouldn’t be the bridge any longer.’

‘You’re a sharp one,’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, truly enough. I seemed to myself to be talking sense, that was all.

‘Well, I do. What do you mean by saying he couldn’t keep it?’

‘It’s been a good many people’s already, and it’ll be somebody else’s some day,’ I replied.

He did not seem to relish the suggestion, for he gave a kind of grunt, which gradually broke into a laugh as he answered,

‘Likely enough! likely enough!’

We had now come round to the end of the bridge, and I saw that it was far more curious than I had perceived before.

‘Why is it so narrow?’ I asked, wonderingly, for it was not three feet wide, and had a parapet of stone about three feet high on each side of it.

‘Ah!’ he replied, ‘that’s it, you see. As old as the hills. It was built, this bridge was, before ever a carriage was made—yes, before ever a carrier’s cart went along a road. They carried everything then upon horses’ backs. They call this the pack-horse bridge. You see there’s room for the horses’ legs, and their loads could stick out over the parapets. That’s the way they carried everything to the Hall then. That was a few years before you were born, young gentleman.’

‘But they couldn’t get their legs—the horses, I mean—couldn’t get their legs through this narrow opening,’ I objected; for a flat stone almost blocked up each end.

‘No; that’s true enough. But those stones have been up only a hundred years or so. They didn’t want it for pack-horses any more then, and the stones were put up to keep the cattle, with which at some time or other I suppose some thrifty owner had stocked the park, from crossing to this meadow. That would be before those trees were planted up there.’

When we had crossed the stream, he stopped at the other end of the bridge and said,

‘Now, you go that way—up the hill. There’s a kind of path, if you can find it, but it doesn’t much matter. Good morning.’

He walked away down the bank of the stream, while I struck into the wood.

When I reached the top, and emerged from the trees that skirted the ridge, there stood the lordly Hall before me, shining in autumnal sunlight, with gilded vanes and diamond-paned windows, as if it were a rock against which the gentle waves of the sea of light rippled and broke in flashes. When you looked at its foundation, which seemed to have torn its way up through the clinging sward, you could not tell where the building began and the rock ended. In some parts indeed the rock was wrought into the walls of the house; while in others it was faced up with stone and mortar. My heart beat high with vague rejoicing. Grand as the aged oak had looked, here was a grander growth—a growth older too than the oak, and inclosing within it a thousand histories.

I approached the gate by which Mrs Wilson had dismissed me. A flight of rude steps cut in the rock led to the portcullis, which still hung, now fixed in its place in front of the gate; for though the Hall had no external defences, it had been well fitted for the half-sieges of troublous times. A modern mansion stands, with its broad sweep up to the wide door, like its hospitable owner in full dress and broad-bosomed shirt on his own hearth-rug: this ancient house stood with its back to the world, like one of its ancient owners, ready to ride, in morion, breast-plate, and jack-boots—yet not armed cap-à-pie, not like a walled castle, that is.

I ascended the steps, and stood before the arch—filled with a great iron-studded oaken gate—which led through a square tower into the court. I stood gazing for some minutes before I rang the bell. Two things in particular I noticed. The first was—over the arch of the doorway, amongst others—one device very like the animal’s head upon the watch and the seal which my great-grandmother had given me. I could not be sure it was the same, for the shape—both in the stone and in my memory—was considerably worn. The other interested me far more. In the great gate was a small wicket, so small that there was hardly room for me to pass without stooping. A thick stone threshold lay before it. The spot where the right foot must fall in stepping out of the wicket was worn into the shape of a shoe, to the depth of between three and four inches I should judge, vertically into the stone. The deep foot-mould conveyed to me a sense of the coming and going of generations, such as I could not gather from the age-worn walls of the building.

A great bell-handle at the end of a jointed iron-rod hung down by the side of the wicket. I rang. An old woman opened the wicket, and allowed me to enter. I thought I remembered the way to Mrs Wilson’s door well enough, but when I ascended the few broad steps, curved to the shape of the corner in which the entrance stood, and found myself in the flagged court, I was bewildered, and had to follow the retreating portress for directions. A word set me right, and I was soon in Mrs Wilson’s presence. She received me kindly, and expressed her satisfaction that I had kept what she was pleased to consider my engagement.

After some refreshment and a little talk, Mrs Wilson said,

‘Now, Master Cumbermede, would you like to go and see the gardens, or take a walk in the park and look at the deer?’

‘Please, Mrs Wilson,’ I returned, ‘you promised to show me the house.’