Wilfrid Cumbermede

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.’

‘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:

‘MARRIAGES, 1748

‘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.