Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘Charley,’ I said, ‘I have had for a good while something on my mind, which I cannot keep from you longer.’

He looked alarmed instantly. I went on.

‘I have not been quite open with you about that affair of the sword.’

He looked yet more dismayed; but I must go on, though it tore my very heart. When I came to the point of my overhearing Clara talking to Brotherton, he started up, and, without waiting to know the subject of their conversation, came close up to me, and, his face distorted with the effort to keep himself quiet, said, in a voice hollow and still and far-off, like what one fancies of the voice of the dead:

‘Wilfrid, you said Brotherton, I think?’

‘I did, Charley.’

‘She never told me that!’

‘How could she when she was betraying your friend?’

‘No no!’ he cried, with a strange mixture of command and entreaty; ‘don’t say that. There is some explanation. There must be.’

‘She told me she hated him,’ I said.

‘I know she hates him. What was she saying to him?’

‘I tell you she was betraying me, your friend, who had never done her any wrong, to the man she had told me she hated, and whom I had heard her ridicule.’

‘What do you mean by betraying you?’

I recounted what I had overheard. He listened with clenched teeth and trembling white lips; then burst into a forced laugh. ‘What a fool I am! Distrust her! I will not. There is some explanation! There must be!’

The dew of agony lay thick on his forehead. I was greatly alarmed at what I had done, but I could not blame myself.

‘Do be calm, Charley,’ I entreated.

‘I am as calm as death,’ he replied, striding up and down the room with long strides.

He stopped and came up to me again.

‘Wilfrid,’ he said, ‘I am a damned fool. I am going now. Don’t be frightened—I am perfectly calm. I will come and explain it all to you to-morrow—no—the next day—or the next at latest. She had some reason for hiding it from me, but I shall have it all the moment I ask her. She is not what you think her. I don’t for a moment blame you—but—are you sure it was—Clara’s—voice you heard?’ he added with forced calmness and slow utterance.

‘A man is not likely to mistake the voice of a woman he ever fancied himself in love with.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Wilfrid. You’ll drive me mad. How should she know you had taken the sword?’

‘She was always urging me to take it. There lies the main sting of the treachery. But I never told you where I found the sword.’

‘What can that have to do with it?’

‘I found it on my bed that same morning when I woke. It could not have been there when I lay down.’

‘Well?’

‘Charley, I believe she laid it there.’

He leaped at me like a tiger. Startled, I jumped to my feet. He laid hold of me by the throat, and griped me with a quivering grasp. Recovering my self-possession, I stood perfectly still, making no effort even to remove his hand, although it was all but choking me. In a moment or two he relaxed his hold, burst into tears, took up his hat, and walked to the door.

‘Charley! Charley! you must not leave me so,’ I cried, starting forwards.

‘To-morrow, Wilfrid; to-morrow,’ he said, and was gone.

He was back before I could think what to do next. Opening the door half way, he said—as if a griping hand had been on his throat—

‘I—I—I—don’t believe it, Wilfrid. You only said you believed it. I don’t. Good night. I’m all right now. Mind, I don’t believe it.’

He, shut the door. Why did I not follow him?

But if I had followed him, what could I have said or done? In every man’s life come awful moments when he must meet his fate—dree his weird—alone. Alone, I say, if he have no God—for man or woman cannot aid him, cannot touch him, cannot come near him. Charley was now in one of those crises, and I could not help him. Death is counted an awful thing: it seems to me that life is an infinitely more awful thing.

In the morning I received the following letter:—

‘Dear Mr Cumbermede,

‘You will be surprised at receiving a note from me—still more at its contents. I am most anxious to see you—so much so that I venture to ask you to meet me where we can have a little quiet talk. I am in London, and for a day or two sufficiently my own mistress to leave the choice of time and place with you—only let it be when and where we shall not be interrupted. I presume on old friendship in making this extraordinary request, but I do not presume in my confidence that you will not misunderstand my motives. One thing only I beg—that you will not inform C.O. of the petition I make.

‘Your old friend,

    ‘C.C.’

What was I to do? To go, of course. She might have something to reveal which would cast light on her mysterious conduct. I cannot say I expected a disclosure capable of removing Charley’s misery, but I did vaguely hope to learn something that might alleviate it. Anyhow, I would meet her, for I dared not refuse to hear her. To her request of concealing it from Charley, I would grant nothing beyond giving it quarter until I should see whither the affair tended. I wrote at once—making an appointment for the same evening. But was it from a suggestion of Satan, from an evil impulse of human spite, or by the decree of fate, that I fixed on that part of the Regent’s Park in which I had seen him and the lady I now believed to have been Clara walking together in the dusk? I cannot now tell. The events which followed have destroyed all certainty, but I fear it was a flutter of the wings of revenge, a shove at the spokes of the wheel of time to hasten the coming of its circle.

Anxious to keep out of Charley’s way—for the secret would make me wretched in his presence—I went into the City, and, after an early dinner, sauntered out to the Zoological Gardens, to spend the time till the hour of meeting. But there, strange to say, whether from insight or fancy, in every animal face I saw such gleams of a troubled humanity that at last I could bear it no longer, and betook myself to Primrose Hill.

It was a bright afternoon, wonderfully clear, with a crisp frosty feel in the air. But the sun went down, and one by one, here and there, above and below, the lights came out and the stars appeared, until at length sky and earth were full of flaming spots, and it was time to seek our rendezvous.

I had hardly reached it when the graceful form of Clara glided towards me. She perceived in a moment that I did not mean to shake hands with her. It was not so dark but that I saw her bosom heave and a flush overspread her countenance.

‘You wished to see me, Miss Coningham,’ I said. ‘I am at your service.’

‘What is wrong, Mr Cumbermede? You never used to speak to me in such a tone.’

‘There is nothing wrong if you are not more able than I to tell what it is.’

‘Why did you come if you were going to treat me so?’

‘Because you requested it.’

‘Have I offended you, then, by asking you to meet me? I trusted you. I thought you would never misjudge me.’

‘I should be but too happy to find I had been unjust to you, Miss Coningham. I would gladly go on my knees to you to confess that fault, if I could only be satisfied of its existence. Assure me of it, and I will bless you.’

‘How strangely you talk! Some one has been maligning me.’