Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘I must attend to my own business first, if you please, sir,’ said Clara. ‘Mrs Wilson, I am ordered out of my room by Mr Cumbermede. You must find me fresh quarters, if you please.’

Mrs Wilson stared.

‘Do you mean, miss, that you want your things moved to another bed-room?’

‘That is what I mean, Mrs Wilson.’

‘I must see what Lady Brotherton says to it, miss.’

‘Do, by all means.’

I saw that Clara was bent on annoying her old enemy, and interposed.

‘Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton have agreed to let me have Miss Coningham’s room for an addition to the library, Mrs Wilson,’ I said.

She looked very grim, but made no answer. We turned and left her. She stood for a moment as if thinking, and then, taking down her bunch of keys, followed us.

‘If you will come this way,’ she said, stopping just behind us at another door in the court, ‘I think I can show you the room you want. But really, Mr Cumbermede, you are turning the place upside down. If I had thought it would come to this—’

‘I hope to do so a little more yet, Mrs Wilson,’ I interrupted. ‘But I am sure you will be pleased with the result.’

She did not reply, but led the way up a stair, across the little open gallery, and by passages I did not remember, to the room I wanted. It was in precisely the same condition as when I occupied it.

‘This is the room, I believe,’ she said, as she unlocked and threw open the door. ‘Perhaps it would suit you, Miss Coningham?’

‘Not in the least,’ answered Clara. ‘Who knows which of my small possessions might vanish before the morning!’

The housekeeper’s face grew turkey-red with indignation.

‘Mr Cumbermede has been filling your head with some of his romances, I see, Miss Clara!’

I laughed, for I did not care to show myself offended with her rudeness.

‘Never you mind,’ said Clara; ‘I am not going to sleep there.’

‘Very good,’ said Mrs Wilson, in a tone of offence severely restrained.

‘Will you show me the way to the library?’ I requested.

‘I will,’ said Clara; ‘I know it as well as Mrs Wilson—every bit.’

‘Then that is all I want at present, Mrs Wilson,’ I said, as we came out of the room. ‘Don’t lock the door, though, please,’ I added. ‘Or, if you do, give me the key.’

She left the door open, and us in the passage. Clara led me to the library. There we found Charley waiting our return.

‘Will you take that little boy to his mother, Clara?’ I said. ‘I don’t want him here to-day. We’ll have a look over those papers in the evening, Charley.’

‘That’s right,’ said Clara. ‘I hope Charley will help you to a little rational interest in your own affairs. I am quite bewildered to think that an author, not to say a young man, the sole remnant of an ancient family, however humble, shouldn’t even know whether he had any papers in the house or not.’

‘We’ve come upon a glorious nest of such addled eggs, Clara. Charley and I are going to blow them to-night,’ I said.

‘You never know when such eggs are addled,’ retorted Clara. ‘You’d better put them under some sensible fowl or other first,’ she added, looking back from the door as they went.

I turned to the carpenter’s tool-basket, and taking from it an old chisel, a screw-driver, and a pair of pincers, went back to the room we had just left.

There could be no doubt about it. There was the tip of the dog’s tail, and the top of the hunter’s crossbow.

But my reader may not have retained in her memory the facts to which I implicitly refer. I would therefore, to spare repetition, beg her to look back to chapter xiv., containing the account of the loss of my sword.

In the consternation caused me by the discovery that this loss was no dream of the night, I had never thought of examining the wall of the chamber, to see whether there was in it a door or not; but I saw now at once plainly enough that the inserted patch did cover a small door. Opening it, I found within, a creaking wooden stair, leading up to another low door, which, fashioned like the door of a companion, opened upon the roof:—nowhere, except in the towers, had the Hall more than two stories. As soon as I had drawn back the bolt and stepped out, I found myself standing at the foot of an ornate stack of chimneys, and remembered quite well having tried the door that night Clara and I were shut out on the leads—the same night on which my sword was stolen.

For the first time the question now rose in my mind whether Mrs Wilson could have been in league with Mr Close. Was it likely I should have been placed in a room so entirely fitted to his purposes by accident? But I could not imagine any respectable woman running such a risk of terrifying a child out of his senses, even if she could have connived at his being robbed of what she might well judge unsuitable for his possession.

Descending again to the bed-room, I set to work with my tools. The utmost care was necessary, for the threads were weak with old age. I had only one or two slight mishaps, however, succeeding on the whole better than I had expected. Leaving the door denuded of its covering, I took the patch on my arm, and again sought the library. Hobbes’s surprise, and indeed pleasure, when he saw that my plunder not only fitted the gap, but completed the design, was great. I directed him to get the whole piece down as carefully as he could, and went to extract, if possible, a favour from Lady Brotherton.

She was of course very stiff—no doubt she would have called it dignified; but I did all I could to please her, and perhaps in some small measure succeeded. After representing, amongst other advantages, what an addition a suite of rooms filled with a valuable library must be to the capacity of the house for the reception and entertainment of guests, I ventured at last to beg the services of Miss Pease for the repair of the bit of the tapestry.

She rang the bell, sent for Miss Pease, and ordered her, in a style of the coldest arrogance, to put herself under my direction. She followed me to the door in the meekest manner, but declined the arm I offered. As we went I explained what I wanted, saying I could not trust it to any hands but those of a lady, expressing a hope that she would not think I had taken too great a liberty, and begging her to say nothing about the work itself, as I wished to surprise Sir Giles and my assistants. She said she would be most happy to help me, but when she saw how much was wanted, she did look a little dismayed. She went and fetched her work-basket at once, however, and set about it, tacking the edges to a strip of canvas, in preparation for some kind of darning, which would not, she hoped, be unsightly.

For a whole week she and the carpenter were the only persons I admitted, and while she gave to her darning every moment she could redeem from her attendance on Lady Brotherton, the carpenter and I were busy—he cleaning and polishing, and I ranging the more deserted parts of the house to find furniture suitable for our purpose. In Clara’s room was an old Turkey-carpet which we appropriated, and when we had the tapestry up again, which Miss Pease had at length restored in a marvellous manner—surpassing my best hopes, and more like healing than repairing—the place was to my eyes a very nest of dusky harmonies.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE OLD CHEST

I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark, sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were the sole furniture.

Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.

‘We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,’ she said; ‘and—’

‘That will be some time yet,’ I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; ‘and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library—if the other rooms should turn out as rich as that one.’

‘I believe old books are expensive now-a-days,’ she returned. ‘They are more sought after, I understand.’

We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara and Mary were assiduous in their help.

To go back for a little to my own old chest—we found it, as I said, full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not inclined to expend on them—for I had no pleasure in such details as involved nothing of the picturesque—I threw the one in my hand upon the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley, who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least a quarter of an hour, exclaimed—

‘Come, Charley; I’m sick of the rubbish. Let’s go and have a walk before supper.’

‘Rubbish!’ he repeated; ‘I am ashamed of you!’

‘I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she’s got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.’

‘Very like it!’ said Charley—‘calling such a chestful as this rubbish!’

‘I am pleased enough to possess it,’ I said; ‘but if they had been such books as some of those at the Hall—’

‘Look here, then,’ he said, stooping over the chest, and with some difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but had not yet examined—‘just see what you can make of that.’