Kitabı oku: «Wilfrid Cumbermede», sayfa 9
In going from roof to roof, I had seen the little gallery along which I had passed with Mrs Wilson on my way to the library. It crossed what might be called an open shaft in the building. I thought I could manage, roofed as it was, to get in by the open side. It was some time before I could find it again; but when I did come upon it at last, I saw that it might be done. By the help of a projecting gargoyle, curiously carved in the days when the wall to which it clung had formed part of the front of the building, I got my feet upon the wooden rail of the gallery, caught hold of one of the small pillars which supported the roof, and slewed myself in. I was almost as glad as when I had crossed the buttress, for below me was a paved bottom, between high walls, without any door, like a dry well in the midst of the building.
My recollection of the way to the armoury, I found, however, almost obliterated. I knew that I must pass through a bedroom at the end of the gallery, and that was all I remembered. I opened the door, and found myself face to face with a young girl with wide eyes. She stood staring and astonished, but not frightened. She was younger than Clara, and not so pretty. Her eyes looked dark, and also the hair she had been brushing. Her face would have been quite pale, but for the rosy tinge of surprise. She made no exclamation, only stared with her brush in her hand, and questions in her eyes. I felt far enough from comfortable; but with a great effort I spoke.
‘I beg your pardon. I had to get off the roof, and this was the only way. Please do not tell Mrs Wilson.’
‘No,’ she said at once, very quietly; ‘but you must go away.’
‘If I could only find the library!’ I said. ‘I am so afraid of going into more rooms where I have no business.’
‘I will show you the way,’ she returned with a smile; and laying down her brush, took up a candle, and led me from the room.
In a few moments I was safe. My conductor vanished at once. The glimmer of my own candle in a further room guided me, and I was soon at the top of the corkscrew staircase. I found the door very slightly fastened: Clara must herself have unwittingly moved the bolt when she shut it. I found her standing, all eagerness, waiting me. We hurried back to the library, and there I told her how I had effected an entrance, and met with a guide.
‘It must have been little Polly Osborne,’ she said. ‘Her mother is going to stay all night, I suppose. She’s a good-natured little goose, and won’t tell.—Now come along. We’ll have a peep from the picture-gallery into the ball-room. That door is sure to be open.’
‘If you don’t mind, Clara, I would rather stay where I am. I oughtn’t to be wandering over the house when Mrs Wilson thinks I am here.’
‘Oh, you little coward!’ said Clara.
I thought I hardly deserved the word, and it did not make me more inclined to accompany her.
‘You can go alone,’ I said. ‘You did not expect to find me when you came.’
‘Of course I can. Of course not. It’s quite as well too. You won’t get me into any more scrapes.’
‘Did I get you into the scrape, Clara?’
‘Yes, you did,’ she answered laughing, and walked away.
I felt a good deal hurt, but comforted myself by saying she could not mean it, and sat down again to the Seven Champions.
CHAPTER XIV. THE GHOST
I saw no more of Clara, but sat and read until I grew cold and tired, and wished very much that Mrs. Wilson would come. I thought she might have forgot me in the hurry, and there I should have to stay all night. After my recent escape, however, from a danger so much worse, I could regard the prospect with some composure. A full hour more must have passed; I was getting sleepy, and my candle had burned low, when at length Mrs Wilson did make her appearance, and I accompanied her gladly.
‘I am sure you want your tea, poor boy!’ she said.
‘Tea! Mrs. Wilson,’ I rejoined. ‘It’s bed I want. But when I think of it, I am rather hungry.’
‘You shall have tea and bed both,’ she answered kindly. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such a dull evening, but I could not help it.’
‘Indeed, I’ve not been dull at all,’ I answered—‘till just the last hour or so.’
I longed to tell her all I had been about, for I felt guilty; but I would not betray Clara.
‘Well, here we are!’ she said, opening the door of her own room. ‘I hope I shall have peace enough to see you make a good meal.’
I did make a good meal. When I had done, Mrs Wilson took a rushlight and led the way. I took my sword and followed her. Into what quarter of the house she conducted me I could not tell. There was a nice fire burning in the room, and my night-apparel was airing before it. She set the light on the floor, and left me with a kind good-night. I was soon undressed and in bed, with my sword beside me on the coverlet of silk patchwork.
But, from whatever cause, sleepy as I had been a little while before, I lay wide awake now, staring about the room. Like many others in the house, it was hung with tapestry, which was a good deal worn and patched—notably in one place, where limbs of warriors and horses came to an untimely end, on all sides of a certain oblong piece quite different from the rest in colour and design. I know now that it was a piece of Gobelins, in the midst of ancient needlework. It looked the brighter of the two, but its colours were about three, with a good deal of white; whereas that which surrounded it had had many and brilliant colours, which, faded and dull and sombre, yet kept their harmony. The guard of the rushlight cast deeper and queerer shadows, as the fire sank lower. Its holes gave eyes of light to some of the figures in the tapestry, and as the light wavered, the eyes wandered about in a ghostly manner, and the shadows changed and flickered and heaved uncomfortably.
How long I had lain thus I do not know; but at last I found myself watching the rectangular patch of newer tapestry. Could it be that it moved? It could be only the effect of the wavering shadows. And yet I could not convince myself that it did not move. It did move. It came forward. One side of it did certainly come forward. A kind of universal cramp seized me—a contraction of every fibre of my body. The patch opened like a door—wider and wider; and from behind came a great helmet peeping. I was all one terror, but my nerves held out so far that I lay like a watching dog—watching for what horror would come next. The door opened wider, a mailed hand and arm appeared, and at length a figure, armed cap-à-pie, stepped slowly down, stood for a moment peering about, and then began to walk through the room, as if searching for something. It came nearer and nearer to the bed. I wonder now, when I think of it, that the cold horror did not reach my heart. I cannot have been so much a coward, surely, after all! But I suspect it was only that general paralysis prevented the extreme of terror, just as a man in the clutch of a wild beast is hardly aware of suffering. At last the figure stooped over my bed, and stretched out a long arm. I remember nothing more.
I woke in the grey of the morning. Could a faint have passed into a sleep? or was it all a dream? I lay for some time before I could recall what made me so miserable. At length my memory awoke, and I gazed fearful about the room. The white ashes of the burnt-out fire were lying in the grate; the stand of the rushlight was on the floor; the wall with its tapestry was just as it had been; the cold grey light had annihilated the fancied visions: I had been dreaming and was now awake. But I could not lie longer in bed. I must go out. The morning air would give me life; I felt worn and weak. Vision or dream, the room was hateful to me. With a great effort I sat up, for I still feared to move, lest I should catch a glimpse of the armed figure. Terrible as it had been in the night, it would be more terrible now. I peered into every corner. Each was vacant. Then first I remembered that I had been reading the Castile of Otranto and the Seven Champions of Christendom the night before. I jumped out of bed and dressed myself, growing braver and braver as the light of the lovely Spring morning swelled in the room. Having dipped my head in cold water, I was myself again. I opened the lattice and looked out. The first breath of air was a denial to the whole thing. I laughed at myself. Earth and sky were alive with Spring. The wind was the breath of the coming Summer: there were flakes of sunshine and shadow in it. Before me lay a green bank with a few trees on its top. It was crowded with primroses growing through the grass. The dew was lying all about, shining and sparkling in the first rays of the level sun, which itself I could not see. The tide of life rose in my heart and rushed through my limbs. I would take my sword and go for a ramble through the park. I went to my bedside, and stretched across to find it by the wall. It must have slipped down at the back of the bed. No. Where could it be? In a word, I searched everywhere, but my loved weapon had vanished. The visions of the night returned, and for a moment I believed them all. The night once again closed around me, darkened yet more with the despair of an irreparable loss. I rushed from the room and through a long passage, with the blind desire to get out. The stare of an unwashed maid, already busy with her pail and brush, brought me to my senses.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said; ‘I want to get out.’
She left her implements, led me down a stair close at hand, opened a door at its foot, and let me out into the high court. I gazed about me. It was as if I had escaped from a prison-cell into the chamber of torture: I stood the centre of a multitude of windows—the eyes of the house all fixed upon me. On one side was the great gate, through which, from the roof, I had seen the carriages drive the night before; but it was closed. I remembered, however, that Sir Giles had brought me in by a wicket in that gate. I hastened to it. There was but a bolt to withdraw, and I was free.
But all was gloomy within, and genial nature could no longer enter. Glittering jewels of sunlight and dew were nothing but drops of water upon blades of grass. Fresh-bursting trees were no more than the deadest of winter-bitten branches. The great eastern window of the universe, gorgeous with gold and roses, was but the weary sun making a fuss about nothing. My sole relief lay in motion. I roamed I knew not whither, nor how long.
At length I found myself on a height eastward of the Hall, overlooking its gardens, which lay in deep terraces beneath. Inside a low wall was the first of them, dark with an avenue of ancient trees, and below was the large oriel window in the end of the ball-room. I climbed over the wall, which was built of cunningly fitted stones, with mortar only in the top row; and drawn by the gloom, strolled up and down the avenue for a long time. At length I became aware of a voice I had heard before. I could see no one; but, hearkening about, I found it must come from the next terrace. Descending by a deep flight of old mossy steps, I came upon a strip of smooth sward, with yew trees, dark and trim, on each side of it. At the end of the walk was an arbour, in which I could see the glimmer of something white. Too miserable to be shy, I advanced and peeped in. The girl who had shown me the way to the library was talking to her mother.
‘Mamma!’ she said, without showing any surprise, ‘here is the boy who came into our room last night.’
‘How do you do?’ said the lady kindly, making room for me on the bench beside her.
I answered as politely as I could, and felt a strange comfort glide from the sweetness of her countenance.
‘What an adventure you had last night!’ she said. ‘It was well you did not fall.’
‘That wouldn’t have been much worse than having to stop where we were,’ I answered.
The conversation thus commenced went on until I had told them all my history, including my last adventure.
‘You must have dreamed it,’ said the lady.
‘So I thought, ma’am,’ I answered, ‘until I found that my sword was gone.’
‘Are you sure you looked everywhere?’ she asked.
‘Indeed, I did.’
‘It does not follow however that the ghost took it. It is more likely Mrs Wilson came in to see you after you were asleep, and carried it off.’
‘Oh yes!’ I cried, rejoiced at the suggestion; ‘that must be it. I shall ask her.’
‘I am sure you will find it so. Are you going home soon?’
‘Yes—as soon as I’ve had my breakfast. It’s a good walk from here to Aldwick.’
‘So it is.—We are going that way too?’ she added thinkingly.
‘Mr. Elder is a great friend of papa’s—isn’t he, mamma?’ said the girl.
‘Yes, my dear. They were friends at college.’
‘I have heard Mr Elder speak of Mr Osborne,’ I said. ‘Do you live near us?’
‘Not very far off—in the next parish, where my husband is rector,’ she answered. ‘If you could wait till the afternoon, we should be happy to take you there. The pony-carriage is coming for us.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I answered; ‘but I ought to go immediately after breakfast. You won’t mention about the roof, will you? I oughtn’t to get Clara into trouble.’
‘She is a wild girl,’ said Mrs Osborne; ‘but I think you are quite right.’
‘How lucky it was I knew the library!’ said Mary, who had become quite friendly, from under her mother’s wing.
‘That it was! But I dare say you know all about the place,’ I answered.
‘No, indeed!’ she returned. ‘I know nothing about it. As we went to our room, mamma opened the door and showed me the library, else I shouldn’t have been able to help you at all.’
‘Then you haven’t been here often?’
‘No; and I never shall be again.—I’m going away to school,’ she added; and her voice trembled.
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Switzerland in a month or two. But then I haven’t a mamma to leave behind me.’ She broke down at that, and hid her head on her mother’s bosom. I had unawares added to her grief, for her brother Charley was going to Switzerland too.
I found afterwards that Mr Elder, having been consulted by Mr Osborne, had arranged with my uncle that Charley Osborne and I should go together.
Mary Osborne—I never called her Polly as Clara did—continued so overcome by her grief, that her mother turned to me and said,
‘I think you had better go, Master Cumbermede.’
I bade her good morning, and made my way to Mrs Wilson’s apartment. I found she had been to my room, and was expecting me with some anxiety, fearing I had set off without my breakfast. Alas! she knew nothing about the sword, looked annoyed, and, I thought, rather mysterious; said she would have a search, make inquiries, do what she could, and such like, but begged I would say nothing about it in the house. I left her with a suspicion that she believed the ghost had carried it away, and that it was of no use to go searching for it.
Two days after, a parcel arrived for me. I concluded it was my sword; but, to my grievous disappointment, found it was only a large hamper of apples and cakes, very acceptable in themselves, but too plainly indicating Mrs Wilson’s desire to console me for what could not be helped. Mr Elder never missed the sword. I rose high in the estimation of my schoolfellows because of the adventure, especially in that of Moberly, who did not believe in the ghost, but ineffectually tasked his poor brains to account for the disappearance of the weapon. The best light was thrown upon it by a merry boy of the name of Fisher, who declared his conviction that the steward had carried it off to add to his collection.
CHAPTER XV. AWAY
Will not linger longer over this part of my history—already, I fear, much too extended for the patience of my readers. My excuse is that, in looking back, the events I have recorded appear large and prominent, and that certainly they have a close relation with my after-history.
The time arrived when I had to leave England for Switzerland. I will say nothing of my leave-taking. It was not a bitter one. Hope was strong, and rooted in present pleasure. I was capable of much happiness—keenly responsive to the smallest agreeable impulse from without or from within. I had good health, and life was happiness in itself. The blowing of the wind, the shining of the sun, or the glitter of water, was sufficient to make me glad; and I had self-consciousness enough to increase the delight by the knowledge that I was glad.
The fact is I was coming in for my share in the spiritual influences of Nature, so largely poured on the heart and mind of my generation. The prophets of the new blessing, Wordsworth and Coleridge, I knew nothing of. Keats was only beginning to write. I had read a little of Cowper, but did not care for him. Yet I was under the same spell as they all. Nature was a power upon me. I was filled with the vague recognition of a present soul in Nature—with a sense of the humanity everywhere diffused through her and operating upon ours. I was but fourteen, and had only feelings, but something lay at the heart of the feelings, which would one day blossom into thoughts.
At the coach-office in the county-town, I first met my future companion, with his father, who was to see us to our destination. My uncle accompanied me no further, and I soon found myself on the top of a coach, with only one thing to do—make the acquaintance of Charles Osborne. His father was on the box-seat, and we two sat behind; but we were both shy, and for some time neither spoke. Charles was about my own age, rather like his sister, only that his eyes were blue, and his hair a lightish brown. A tremulousness about the mouth betrayed a nervous temperament. His skin was very fair and thin, showing the blue veins. As he did not speak, I sat for a little while watching him, without, however, the least speculation concerning him, or any effort to discover his character. I had not even yet reached the point of trying to find people out. I take what time and acquaintance disclose, but never attempt to forestall, which may come partly from trust, partly from want of curiosity, partly from a disinclination to unnecessary mental effort. But as I watched his face, half-unconsciously, I could not help observing that now and then it would light up suddenly and darken again almost instantly. At last his father turned round, and with some severity, said:
‘You do not seem to be making any approaches to mutual acquaintance. Charles, why don’t you address your companion?’
The words were uttered in the slow tone of one used to matters too serious for common speech. The boy cast a hurried glance at me, smiled uncertainly, and moved uneasily on his seat. His father turned away and made a remark to the coachman.
Mr Osborne was a very tall, thin, yet square-shouldered man, with a pale face, and large features of delicate form. He looked severe, pure, and irritable. The tone of his voice, although the words were measured and rather stilted, led me to this last conclusion quite as much as the expression of his face; for it was thin and a little acrid. I soon observed that Charley started slightly, as often as his father addressed him; but this might be because his father always did so with more or less of abruptness. At times there was great kindness in his manner, seeming, however, less the outcome of natural tenderness than a sense of duty. His being was evidently a weight upon his son’s, and kept down the natural movements of his spirit. A number of small circumstances only led me to these conclusions; for nothing remarkable occurred to set in any strong light their mutual relation. For his side Charles was always attentive and ready, although with a promptitude that had more in it of the mechanical impulse of habit than of pleased obedience. Mr Osborne spoke kindly to me—I think the more kindly that I was not his son, and he was therefore not so responsible for me. But he looked as if the care of the whole world lay on his shoulders; as if an awful destruction were the most likely thing to happen to every one, and to him were committed the toilsome chance of saving some. Doubtless he would not have trusted his boy so far from home, but that the clergyman to whom he was about to hand him over was an old friend, of the same religious opinions as himself.
I could well, but must not, linger over the details of our journey, full to me of most varied pleasure. The constant change, not so rapid as to prevent the mind from reposing a little upon the scenes which presented themselves; the passing vision of countries and peoples, manners and modes of life, so different from our own, did much to arouse and develop my nature. Those flashes of pleasure came upon Charles’s pale face more and more frequently; and ere the close of the first day we had begun to talk with some degree of friendliness. But it became clear to me that with his father ever blocking up our horizon, whether he sat with his broad back in front of us on the coach-box, or paced the deck of a vessel, or perched with us under the hood on the top of a diligence, we should never arrive at any freedom of speech. I sometimes wondered, long after, whether Mr Osborne had begun to discover that he was overlaying and smothering the young life of his boy, and had therefore adopted the plan, so little to have been expected from him, of sending his son to foreign parts to continue his education.
I have no distinct recollection of dates, or even of the exact season of the year. I believe it was the early Summer, but in my memory the whole journey is now a mass of confused loveliness and pleasure. Not that we had the best of weather all the way. I well recollect pouring rains, and from the fact that I distinctly remember my first view of an Alpine height, I am certain we must have had days of mist and rain immediately before. That sight, however, to me more like an individual revelation or vision than the impact of an object upon the brain, stands in my mind altogether isolated from preceding and following impressions—alone, a thing to praise God for, if there be a God to praise. If there be not, then was the whole thing a grand and lovely illusion, worthy, for grandeur and loveliness, of a world with a God at the heart of it. But the grandeur and the loveliness spring from the operation of natural laws; the laws themselves are real and true—how could the false result from them? I hope yet, and will hope, that I am not a bubble filled with the mocking breath of a Mephistopheles, but a child whom his infinite Father will not hardly judge because he could not believe in him so much as he would. I will tell how the vision came.
Although comparatively few people visited Switzerland in those days, Mr Osborne had been there before, and for some reason or other had determined on going round by Interlachen. At Thun we found a sail-boat, which we hired to take us and our luggage. At starting, an incident happened which would not be worth mentioning, but for the impression it made upon me. A French lady accompanied by a young girl approached Mr Osborne—doubtless perceiving he was a clergyman, for, being an Evangelical of the most pure, honest, and narrow type, he was in every point and line of his countenance marked a priest and apart from his fellow-men—and asked him to allow her and her daughter to go in the boat with us to Interlachen. A glow of pleasure awoke in me at sight of his courtly behaviour, with lifted hat and bowed head; for I had never been in the company of such a gentleman before. But the wish instantly followed that his son might have shared in his courtesy. We partook freely of his justice and benevolence, but he showed us no such grace as he showed the lady. I have since observed that sons are endlessly grateful for courtesy from their fathers.
The lady and her daughter sat down in the stern of the boat; and therefore Charley and I, not certainly to our discomfiture, had to go before the mast. The men rowed out into the lake, and then hoisted the sail. Away we went careering before a pleasant breeze. As yet it blew fog and mist, but the hope was that it would soon blow it away.
An unspoken friendship by this time bound Charley and me together, silent in its beginnings and slow in its growth—not the worst pledges of endurance. And now for the first time in our journey, Charley was hidden from his father: the sail came between them. He glanced at me with a slight sigh, which even then I took for an involuntary sigh of relief. We lay leaning over the bows, now looking up at the mist blown in never-ending volumed sheets, now at the sail swelling in the wind before which it fled, and again down at the water through which our boat was ploughing its evanescent furrow. We could see very little. Portions of the shore would now and then appear, dim like reflections from a tarnished mirror, and then fade back into the depths of cloudy dissolution. Still it was growing lighter, and the man who was on the outlook became less anxious in his forward gaze, and less frequent in his calls to the helmsman. I was lying half over the gunwale, looking into the strange-coloured water, blue dimmed with undissolved white, when a cry from Charles made me start and look up. It was indeed a God-like vision. The mist yet rolled thick below, but away up, far away and far up, yet as if close at hand, the clouds were broken into a mighty window, through which looked in upon us a huge mountain peak swathed in snow. One great level band of darker cloud crossed its breast, above which rose the peak, triumphant in calmness, and stood unutterably solemn and grand, in clouds as white as its own whiteness. It had been there all the time! I sunk on my knees in the boat and gazed up. With a sudden sweep the clouds curtained the mighty window, and the Jungfrau withdrew into its Holy of Holies. I am painfully conscious of the helplessness of my speech. The vision vanishes from the words as it vanished from the bewildered eyes. But from the mind it glorified it has never vanished. I have been more ever since that sight. To have beheld a truth is an apotheosis. What the truth was I could not tell; but I had seen something which raised me above my former self and made me long to rise higher yet. It awoke worship, and a belief in the incomprehensible divine; but admitted of being analysed no more than, in that transient vision, my intellect could—ere dawning it vanished—analyse it into the deserts of rock, the gulfs of green ice and flowing water, the savage solitudes of snow, the mysterious miles of draperied mist, that went to make up the vision, each and all essential thereto.
I had been too much given to the attempted production in myself of effects to justify the vague theories towards which my inborn prepossessions carried me. I had felt enough to believe there was more to be felt; and such stray scraps of verse of the new order as, floating about, had reached me, had set me questioning and testing my own life and perceptions and sympathies by what these awoke in me at second-hand. I had often doubted, oppressed by the power of these, whether I could myself see, or whether my sympathy with Nature was not merely inspired by the vision of others. Ever after this, if such a doubt returned, with it arose the Jungfrau, looking into my very soul.
‘Oh Charley!’ was all I could say. Our hands met blindly, and clasped each other. I burst into silent tears.
When I looked up, Charley was staring into the mist again. His eyes, too, were full of tears, but some troubling contradiction prevented their flowing: I saw it by the expression of that mobile but now firmly-closed mouth.
Often ere we left Switzerland I saw similar glories: this vision remains alone, for it was the first.
I will not linger over the tempting delight of the village near which we landed, its houses covered with quaintly-notched wooden scales like those of a fish, and its river full to the brim of white-blue water, rushing from the far-off bosom of the glaciers. I had never had such a sense of exuberance and plenty as this river gave me—especially where it filled the planks and piles of wood that hemmed it in like a trough. I might agonize in words for a day and I should not express the delight. And, lest my readers should apprehend a diary of a tour, I shall say nothing more of our journey, remarking only that if Switzerland were to become as common to the mere tourist mind as Cheapside is to a Londoner, the meanest of its glories would be no whit impaired thereby. Sometimes, I confess, in these days of overcrowded cities, when, in periodical floods, the lonely places of the earth are from them inundated, I do look up to the heavens and say to myself that there at least, between the stars, even in thickest of nebulous constellations, there is yet plenty of pure, unadulterated room—not even a vapour to hang a colour upon; but presently I return to my better mind and say that any man who loves his fellow will yet find he has room enough and to spare.
