Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘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 is your property, 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 was his wish 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? He did 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.

CHAPTER L. THE DATES

I have given, of course, only an epitome of our conversation, and by the time we had arrived at this point we had also reached the gate of the churchyard. Again we fastened up our horses; again he took the key from under the tombstone; and once more we entered the dreary little church, and drew aside the curtain of the vestry. I took down the volume of the register. The place was easy to find, seeing, as I have said, it was at the very end of the volume.

The copy I had taken was correct: the date of the marriage in the register was January 15, and it was the first under the 1748, written at the top of the page. I stood for a moment gazing at it; then my eye turned to the entry before it, the last on the preceding page. It bore the date December 13—under the general date at the top of the page, 1747. The next entry after it was dated March 29. At the bottom of the page, or cover rather, was the attestation of the clergyman to the number of marriages in that year; but there was no such attestation at the bottom of the preceding page. I turned to Mr Coningham, who had stood regarding me, and, pointing to the book, said:

‘Look here, Mr Coningham. I cannot understand it. Here the date of the marriage is 1748; and that of all their letters, evidently written after the marriage, is 1747.’

He looked, and stood looking, but made me no reply. In my turn I looked at him. His face expressed something not far from consternation; but the moment he became aware that I was observing him, he pulled out his handkerchief, and wiping his forehead with an attempt at a laugh, said:

‘How hot it is! Yes; there’s something awkward there. I hadn’t observed it before. I must inquire into that. I confess I cannot explain it all at once. It does certainly seem queer. I must look into those dates when I go home.’

He was evidently much more discomposed than he was willing I should perceive. He always spoke rather hurriedly, but I had never heard him stammer before. I was certain that he saw or at least dreaded something fatal in the discrepancy I had pointed out. As to looking into it when he got home, that sounded very like nonsense. He pulled out a note-book, however, and said:

‘I may just as well make a note of the blunder—for blunder it must be—a very awkward one indeed, I am afraid. I should think so—I cannot—but then—’

He went on uttering disjointed and unfinished expressions, while he made several notes. His manner was of one who regards the action he is about as useless, yet would have it supposed the right thing to do.

‘There!’ he said, shutting up his note-book with a slam; and turning away he strode out of the place—much, it seemed to me, as if his business there was over for ever. I gave one more glance at the volume, and replaced it on the shelf. When I rejoined him, he was already mounted and turning to move off.

‘Wait a moment, Mr Coningham,’ I said. ‘I don’t exactly know where to put the key.’

‘Fling it under the gravestone, and come along,’ he said, muttering something more, in which, perhaps, I only fancied I heard certain well-known maledictions.

By this time my spirits had sunk as much below their natural level as, a little before, they had risen above it. But I felt that I must be myself, and that no evil any more than good fortune ought for a moment to perturb the tenor of my being. Therefore, having locked the door deliberately and carefully, I felt about along the underside of the gravestone until I found the ledge where the key had lain. I then made what haste I could to mount and follow Mr Coningham, but Lilith delayed the operation by her eagerness. I gave her the rein, and it was well no one happened to be coming in the opposite direction through that narrow and tortuous passage, for she flew round the corners—‘turning close to the ground, like a cat when scratchingly she wheels about after a mouse,’ as my old favourite, Sir Philip Sidney, says. Notwithstanding her speed, however, when I reached the mouth of the lane, there was Mr Coningham half across the first field, with his coat-tails flying out behind him. I would not allow myself to be left in such a discourteous fashion, and gave chase. Before he had measured the other half of the field, I was up with him.

‘That mare of yours is a clever one,’ he said, as I ranged alongside of him. ‘I thought I would give her a breather. She hasn’t enough to do.’

‘She’s not breathing so very fast,’ I returned. ‘Her wind is as good as her legs.’

‘Let’s get along then, for I’ve lost a great deal of time this morning. I ought to have been at Squire Strode’s an hour ago. How hot the sun is, to be sure, for this time of the year!’

As he spoke, he urged his horse, but I took and kept the lead, feeling, I confess, a little angry, for I could not help suspecting he had really wanted to run away from me. I did what I could, however, to behave as if nothing had happened. But he was very silent, and his manner towards me was quite altered. Neither could I help thinking it scarcely worthy of a man of the world, not to say a lawyer, to show himself so much chagrined. For my part, having simply concluded that the new-blown bubble hope had burst, I found myself just where I was before-with a bend sinister on my scutcheon, it might be, but with a good conscience, a tolerably clear brain, and the dream of my Athanasia.

The moment we reached the road, Mr Coningham announced that his way was in the opposite direction to mine, said his good morning, shook hands with me, and jogged slowly away. I knew that was not the nearest way to Squire Strode’s.

I could not help laughing—he had so much the look of a dog with his tail between his legs, or a beast of prey that had made his spring and missed his game. I watched him for some time, for Lilith being pulled both ways—towards home, and after her late companion—was tolerably quiescent, but he never cast a glance behind him. When at length a curve in the road hid him from my sight, I turned and went quietly home, thinking what the significance of the unwelcome discovery might be. If the entry of the marriage under that date could not be proved a mere blunder, of which I could see no hope, then certainly my grandfather must be regarded as born out of wedlock, a supposition which, if correct, would account for the dropping of the Daryll.

On the way home I jumped no hedges.

Having taken my farewell of Lilith, I packed my ‘bag of needments,’ locked the door of my uncle’s room, which I would have no one enter in my absence, and set out to meet the night mail.