Wilfrid Cumbermede

Now, although I had little special reason to love Mr Osborne, and knew him to be a tyrant, I knew also that my old Charley could not have thus coolly uttered a disrespectful word of him, and I had therefore a painful though at the same time an undefined conviction that some degree of moral degeneracy must have taken place before he could express himself as now. To many, such a remark will appear absurd, but I am confident that disrespect for the preceding generation, and especially for those in it nearest to ourselves, is a sure sign of relaxing dignity, and, in any extended manifestation, an equally sure symptom of national and political decadence. My reader knows, however, that there was much to be said in excuse of Charley.

His friend sauntered away, and we went on talking. My heart longed to rest with his for a moment on the past.

‘I had a dreary time of it after you left, Charley,’ I said.

‘Not so dreary as I had, Wilfrid, I am certain. You had at least the mountains to comfort you. Anywhere is better than at home, with a meal of Bible oil and vinegar twice a day for certain, and a wine-glassful of it now and then in between. Damnation’s better than a spoony heaven. To be away from home is heaven enough for me.’

‘But your mother, Charley!’ I ventured to say.

‘My mother is an angel. I could almost be good for her sake. But I never could, I never can get near her. My father reads every letter she writes before it comes to me—I know that by the style of it; and I’m equally certain he reads every letter of mine before it reaches her.’

‘Is your sister at home?’

‘No. She’s at school at Clapham—being sand-papered into a saint, I suppose.’

His mouth twitched and quivered. He was not pleased with himself for talking as he did.

‘Your father means it for the best,’ I said.

‘I know that. He means his best. If I thought it was the best, I should cut my throat and have done with it.’

‘But, Charley, couldn’t we do something to find out, after all?’

‘Find out what, Wilfrid?’

‘The best thing, you know; what we are here for.’

‘I’m sick of it all, Wilfrid. I’ve tried till I am sick of it. If you should find out anything, you can let me know. I am busy trying not to think. I find that quite enough. If I were to think, I should go mad.’

‘Oh, Charley! I can’t bear to hear you talk like that,’ I exclaimed; but there was a glitter in his eye which I did not like, and which made me anxious to change the subject.—‘Don’t you like being here?’ I asked, in sore want of something to say.

‘Yes, well enough,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t see what’s to come of it, for I can’t work. Even if my father were a millionnaire, I couldn’t go on living on him. The sooner that is over, the better!’

He was looking down, and gnawing at that tremulous upper lip. I felt miserable.

‘I wish we were at the same college, Charley!’ I said.

‘It’s better as it is,’ he rejoined. ‘I should do you no good. You go in for reading, I suppose?’

‘Well, I do. I mean my uncle to have the worth of his money.’

Charley looked no less miserable than I felt. I saw that his conscience was speaking, and I knew he was the last in the world to succeed in excusing himself. But I understood him better than he understood himself, and believed that his idleness arose from the old unrest, the weariness of that never satisfied questioning which the least attempt at thought was sure to awaken. Once invaded by a question, Charley must answer it, or fail and fall into a stupor. Not an ode of Horace could he read without finding himself plunged into metaphysics. Enamoured of repose above all things, he was from every side stung to inquiry which seldom indeed afforded what seemed solution. Hence, in part at least, it came that he had begun to study not merely how to avoid awakening the Sphinx, but by what opiates to keep her stretched supine with her lovely woman face betwixt her fierce lion-paws. This also, no doubt, had a share in his becoming the associate of Geoffrey Brotherton, from whose company, if he had been at peace with himself, he would have recoiled upon the slightest acquaintance. I am at some loss to imagine what could have made Geoffrey take such a liking to Charley; but I presume it was the confiding air characterizing all Charley’s behaviour that chiefly pleased him. He seemed to look upon him with something of the tenderness a coarse man may show for a delicate Italian greyhound, fitted to be petted by a lady.

That same evening Charley came to my rooms. His manner was constrained, and yet suggested a whole tide of pent-up friendship which, but for some undeclared barrier, would have broken out and overflowed our intercourse. After this one evening, however, it was some time before I saw him again. When I called upon him next he was not at home, nor did he come to see me. Again I sought him, but with like failure. After a third attempt I desisted, not a little hurt, I confess, but not in the least inclined to quarrel with him. I gave myself the more diligently to my work.

And now Oxford began to do me harm. I saw so much idleness, and so much wrong of all kinds about me, that I began to consider myself a fine exception. Because I did my poor duty—no better than any honest lad must do it—I became conceited; and the manner in which Charley’s new friend treated me not only increased the fault, but aided in the development of certain other stems from the same root of self-partiality. He never saluted me with other than what I regarded as a supercilious nod of the head. When I met him in company with Charley, and the latter stopped to speak to me, he would walk on without the least change of step. The indignation which this conduct aroused drove me to think as I had never thought before concerning my social position. I found it impossible to define. As I pondered, however, a certainty dawned upon me, rather than was arrived at by me, that there was some secret connected with my descent, upon which bore the history of the watch I carried, and of the sword I had lost. On the mere possibility of something, utterly forgetful that, if the secret existed at all, it might be of a very different nature from my hopes, I began to build castles innumerable. Perceiving, of course, that one of a decayed yeoman family could stand no social comparison with the heir to a rich baronetcy, I fell back upon absurd imaginings; and what with the self-satisfaction of doing my duty, what with the vanity of my baby manhood, and what with the mystery I chose to believe in and interpret according to my desires, I was fast sliding into a moral condition contemptible indeed.

But still my heart was true to Charley. When, after late hours of hard reading, I retired at last to my bed, and allowed my thoughts to wander where they would, seldom was there a night on which they did not turn as of themselves towards the memory of our past happiness. I vowed, although Charley had forsaken me, to keep his chamber in my heart ever empty, and closed against the entrance of another. If ever he pleased to return, he should find he had been waited for. I believe there was much of self-pity, and of self-approval as well, mingling with my regard for him; but the constancy was there notwithstanding, and I regarded the love I thus cherished for Charley as the chief saving element in my condition at the time.

One night—I cannot now recall with certainty the time or season—I only know it was night, and I was reading alone in my room—a knock came to the door, and Charley entered. I sprang from my seat and bounded to meet him.

‘At last, Charley!’ I exclaimed.

But he almost pushed me aside, left me to shut the door he had opened, sat down in a chair by the fire, and began gnawing the head of his cane. I resumed my seat, moved the lamp so that I could see him, and waited for him to speak. Then first I saw that his face was unnaturally pale and worn, almost even haggard. His eyes were weary, and his whole manner as of one haunted by an evil presence of which he is ever aware.

‘You are an enviable fellow, Wilfrid,’ he said at length, with something between a groan and a laugh.

‘Why do you say that, Charley?’ I returned. ‘Why am I enviable?’

‘Because you can work. I hate the very sight of a book. I am afraid I shall be plucked. I see nothing else for it. And what will the old man say? I have grace enough left to be sorry for him. But he will take it out in sour looks and silences.’

‘There’s time enough yet. I wish you were not so far ahead of me: we might have worked together.’

‘I can’t work, I tell you. I hate it. It will console my father, I hope, to find his prophecies concerning me come true. I’ve heard him abuse me to my mother.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk so of your father, Charley. It’s not like you. I can’t bear to hear it.’

‘It’s not like what I used to be, Wilfrid. But there’s none of that left. What do you take me for—honestly now?’

He hung his head low, his eyes fixed on the hearth-rug, not on the fire, and kept gnawing at the head of his cane.

‘I don’t like some of your companions,’ I said. ‘To be sure I don’t know much of them.’

‘The less you know, the better! If there be a devil, that fellow. Brotherton will hand me over to him—bodily, before long.’

‘Why don’t you give him up?’ said I.

‘It’s no use trying. He’s got such a hold of me. Never let a man you don’t know to the marrow pay even a toll-gate for you, Wilfrid.’

‘I am in no danger, Charley. Such people don’t take to me,’ I said, self-righteously. ‘But it can’t be too late to break with him. I know my uncle would—I could manage a five-pound note now, I think.’

‘My dear boy, if I had borrowed—. But I have let him pay for me again and again, and I don’t know how to rid the obligation. But it don’t signify. It’s too late anyhow.’

‘What have you done, Charley? Nothing very wrong, I trust.’

The lost look deepened.

‘It’s all over, Wilfrid,’ he said. ‘But it don’t matter. I can take to the river when I please.’

‘But then you know you might happen to go right through the river, Charley.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said, with a defiant sound like nothing I had ever heard.

‘Charley!’ I cried, ‘I can’t bear to hear you. You can’t have changed so much already as not to trust me. I will do all I can to help you. What have you done?’

‘Oh, nothing!’ he rejoined, and tried to laugh: it was a dreadful failure. ‘But I can’t bear to think of that mother of mine! I wish I could tell you all; but I can’t. How Brotherton would laugh at me now! I can’t be made quite like other people, Wilfrid! You would never have been such a fool.’

‘You are more delicately made than most people, Charley—“touched to finer issues,” as Shakspere says.’