Wilfrid Cumbermede, George MacDonald [essential reading .txt] 📗

if Clara would stop! But perhaps Mr Cumbermede-we ought to have asked him first.'

'Yes-to be sure-he's the foreman,' said Charley. 'But he's not a bad fellow, and won't be disobliging. Only you must do as he tells you, or it'll be the worse for us all. I know him.'

'I shall be delighted,' I said. 'I can give both the ladies plenty to do. Indeed I regard Miss Coningham as one of my hands already. Won't Miss Brotherton honour us to-day, Miss Coningham?'

'I will go and ask her,' said Clara.

They all withdrew. In a little while I had four assistants, and we got on famously. The carpenter had been hard at work, and the room next the armoury, the oak-panelling of which had shown considerable signs of decay, had been repaired, and the shelves, which were in tolerable condition, were now ready to receive their burden, and reflect the first rays of a dawning order.

Plenty of talk went on during the dusting and arranging of the books by their size, which was the first step towards a cosmos. There was a certain playful naïveté about Charley's manner and speech, when he was happy, which gave him an instant advantage with women, and even made the impression of wit where there was only grace. Although he was perfectly capable, however, of engaging to any extent in the badinage which has ever been in place between young men and women since dawning humanity was first aware of a lovely difference, there was always a certain indescribable dignity about what he said which I now see could have come only from a believing heart. I use the word advisedly, but would rather my reader should find what I mean than require me to explain it fully. Belief, to my mind, lies chiefly in the practical recognition of the high and pure.

Miss Brotherton looked considerably puzzled sometimes, and indeed out of her element. But her dignity had no chance with so many young people, and was compelled to thaw visibly; and while growing more friendly with the others, she could not avoid unbending towards me also, notwithstanding I was a neighbour and the son of a dairy-farmer.

Mary Osborne took little part in the fun beyond a smile, or in the more solid conversation beyond an assent or an ordinary remark. I did not find her very interesting. An onlooker would probably have said she lacked expression. But the stillness upon her face bore to me the shadow of a reproof. Perhaps it was only a want of sympathy with what was going on around her. Perhaps her soul was either far withdrawn from its present circumstances, or not yet awake to the general interests of life. There was little in the form or hue of her countenance to move admiration, beyond a complexion without spot. It was very fair and delicate, with little more colour in it than in the white rose, which but the faintest warmth redeems from dead whiteness. Her features were good in form, but in no way remarkable; her eyes were of the so-called hazel, which consists of a mingling of brown and green; her figure was good, but seemed unelastic, and she had nothing of her brother's gaiety or grace of movement or expression. I do not mean that either her motions or her speech was clumsy-there was simply nothing to remark in them beyond the absence of anything special. In a word, I did not find her interesting, save as the sister of my delightful Charley, and the sharer of his mother's griefs concerning him.

'If I had as good help in the afternoon,' I said, 'we should have all the books on the shelves to-night, and be able to set about assorting them to-morrow.'

'I am sorry I cannot come this afternoon,' said Miss Brotherton. 'I should have been most happy if I could. It is really very pleasant notwithstanding the dust. But Mrs Osborne and mamma want me to go with them to Minstercombe. You will lunch with us to-day, won't you?' she added, turning to Charley.

'Thank you, Miss Brotherton,' he replied; 'I should have been delighted, but I am not my own master-I am Cumbermede's slave at present, and can eat and drink only when and where he chooses.'

'You must stay with your mother, Charley,' I said. 'You cannot refuse Miss Brotherton.'

She could thereupon scarcely avoid extending the invitation to me, but I declined it on some pretext or other, and I was again, thanks to Lilith, back from my dinner before they had finished luncheon. The carriage was at the door when I rode up, and the moment I heard it drive away, I went to the dining-room to find my coadjutors. The only person there was Miss Pease. A thought struck me.

'Won't you come and help us, Miss Pease?' I said. 'I have lost one of my assistants, and I am very anxious to get the room we are at now so far finished to-night.'

A smile found its way to her cold eyes, and set the blue sparkling for one briefest moment.

'It is very kind of you, Mr Cumbermede, but-'

'Kind!' I exclaimed-'I want your help, Miss Pease.'

'I'm afraid-'

'Lady Brotherton can't want you now. Do oblige me. You will find it fun.'

She smiled outright-evidently at the fancy of any relation between her and fun.

'Do go and put a cap on, and a cotton dress, and come,' I persisted.

Without another word she left the room. I was still alone in the library when she came to me, and having shown her what I wanted, we were already busy when the rest arrived.

'Oh, Peasey! Are you there?' said Clara, as she entered-not unkindly.

'I have got a substitute for Miss Brotherton, you see, Clara-Miss Coningham-I beg your pardon.'

'There's no occasion to beg my pardon. Why shouldn't you call me Clara if you like? It is my name.'

'Charley might be taking the same liberty,' I returned, extemporizing a reason.

'And why shouldn't Charley take the same liberty?' she retorted.

'For no reason that I know,' I answered, a trifle hurt, 'if it be agreeable to the lady.'

'And the gentleman,' she amended.

'And the gentleman,' I added.

'Very well. Then we are all good boys and girls. Now, Peasey, I'm very glad you're come. Only mind you get back to your place before the ogress returns, or you'll have your head snapped off.'

Was I right, or was it the result of the slight offence I had taken? Was the gracious, graceful, naïve, playful, daring woman-or could she be-or had she been just the least little bit vulgar? I am afraid I was then more sensitive to vulgarity in a woman, real or fancied, than even to wickedness-at least I thought I was. At all events, the first
conviction of anything common or unrefined in a woman would at once have placed me beyond the sphere of her attraction. But I had no time to think the suggestion over now; and in a few minutes-whether she saw the cloud on my face I cannot tell-Clara had given me a look and a smile which banished the possibility of my thinking about it for the present.

Miss Pease worked more diligently than any of the party. She seldom spoke, and when she did, it was in a gentle, subdued, almost mournful tone; but the company of the young people, without the restraint of her mistress, was evidently grateful to what of youth yet remained in her oppressed being.

Before it was dark we had got the books all upon the shelves, and leaving Charley with the ladies, I walked home.

I found Styles had got everything out of the lumber-room except a heavy oak chest in the corner, which, our united strength being insufficient to displace it, I concluded was fixed to the floor. I collected all the keys my aunt had left behind her, but sought the key of this chest in vain. For my uncle, I never saw a key in his possession. Even what little money he might have in the house, was only put away at the back of an open drawer. For the present, therefore, we had to leave it undisturbed.

When Charley came home we went to look at it together. It was of oak, and somewhat elaborately carved.

I was very restless in bed that night. The air was close and hot, and as often as I dropped half asleep I woke again with a start. My thoughts kept stupidly running on the old chest. It had mechanically possessed me. I felt no disturbing curiosity concerning its contents; I was not annoyed at the want of the key; it was only that, like a nursery rhyme that keeps repeating itself over and over in the half-sleeping brain, this chest kept rising before me till I was out of patience with its intrusiveness. It brought me wide awake at last; and I thought, as I could not sleep, I would have a search for the key. I got out of bed, put on my dressing-gown and slippers, lighted my chamber-candle, and made an inroad upon the contents of the closet in my room, which had apparently remained undisturbed since the morning when I missed my watch. I believe I had never entered it since. Almost the first thing I came upon was the pendulum, which woke a strange sensation for which I could not account, until by slow degrees the twilight memory of the incidents connected with it half dawned upon me. I searched the whole place, but not a key could I find.

I started violently at the sound of something like a groan, and for the briefest imaginable moment forgot that my grannie was dead, and thought it must come from her room. It may be remembered that such a sound had led me to her in the middle of the night on which she died. Whether I really heard the sound, or only fancied I heard it-by some half-mechanical action of the brain, roused by the association of ideas-I do not even yet know. It may have been changed or expanded into a groan, from one of those innumerable sounds heard in every old house in the stillness of the night; for such, in the absence of the correction given by other sounds, assume place and proportion as it were at their pleasure. What lady has not at midnight mistaken the trail of her own dress on the carpet, in a silent house, for some tumult in a distant room? Curious to say, however, it now led to the same action as the groan I had heard so many years before; for I caught up my candle at once, and took my way down to the kitchen, and up the winding stair behind the chimney to grannie's room. Strange as it may seem, I had not been in it since my return; for my thoughts had been so entirely occupied with other things, that, although I now and then looked forward with considerable expectation to a thorough search of the place, especially of the bureau, I kept it up as a bonne bouche , the anticipation of which was consolation enough for the postponement.

I confess it was with no little quavering of the spirit that I sought this chamber in the middle of the night. For, by its association with one who had from my earliest recollection seemed like something forgotten and left behind in the onward rush of life, it was, far more than