Wilfrid Cumbermede

I watched her, and following her directions, did better this time, for I got over somehow and recovered my seat.

‘There! You improve,’ said Clara. ‘Now we’re pounded, unless you can jump again, and it is not quite so easy from this side.’

When we alighted, I found my saddle in the proper place.

‘Bravo!’ she cried. ‘I entirely forgive your first misadventure. You do splendidly.’

‘I would rather you forgot it, Clara,’ I cried, ungallantly.

‘Well, I will be generous,’ she returned. ‘Besides, I owe you something for such a charming ride. I will forget it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and drawing closer would have laid my left hand on her right.

Whether she foresaw my intention, I do not know; but in a moment she was yards away, scampering over the grass. My horse could never have overtaken hers.

By the time she drew rein and allowed me to get alongside of her once more, we were in sight: of Moldwarp Hall. It stood with one corner towards us, giving the perspective of two sides at once. She stopped her mare, and said,

‘There, Wilfrid! What would you give to call a place like that your own? What a thing to have a house like that to live in!’

{Illustration: “NOW THERE’S A LITTLE FENCE,” SHE SAID.}

‘I know something I should like better,’ I said.

I assure my reader I was not so silly as to be on the point of making her an offer already. Neither did she so misunderstand me. She was very near the mark of my meaning when she rejoined—

‘Do you? I don’t. I suppose you would prefer being called a fine poet, or something of the sort.’

I was glad she did not give me time to reply, for I had not intended to expose myself to her ridicule. She was off again at a gallop towards the Hall, straight for the less accessible of the two gates, and had scrambled the mare up to the very bell-pull and rung it before I could get near her. When the porter appeared in the wicket—

‘Open the gate, Jansen,’ she said. ‘I want to see Mrs Wilson, and I don’t want to get down.’

‘But horses never come in here, Miss,’ said the man.

‘I mean to make an exception in favour of this mare,’ she answered.

The man hesitated a moment, then retreated—but only to obey, as we understood at once by the creaking of the dry hinges, which were seldom required to move.

‘You won’t mind holding her for me, will you?’ she said, turning to me.

I had been sitting mute with surprise both at the way in which she ordered the man, and at his obedience. But now I found my tongue.

‘Don’t you think, Miss Coningham,’ I said—for the man was within hearing, ‘we had better leave them both with the porter, and then we could go in together? I’m not sure that those flags, not to mention the steps, are good footing for that mare.’

‘Oh! you’re afraid of your animal, are you?’ she rejoined. ‘Very well.’

‘Shall I hold your stirrup for you?’

Before I could dismount, she had slipped off, and begun gathering up her skirt. The man came and took the horses. We entered by the open gate together.

‘How can you be so cruel, Clara?’ I said. ‘You will always misinterpret me! I was quite right about the flags. Don’t you see how hard they are, and how slippery therefore for iron shoes?’

‘You might have seen by this time that I know quite as much about horses as you do,’ she returned, a little cross, I thought.

‘You can ride ever so much better,’ I answered; ‘but it does not follow you know more about horses than I do. I once saw a horse have a frightful fall on just such a pavement. Besides, does one think only of the horse when there’s an angel on his back?’

It was a silly speech, and deserved rebuke.

‘I’m not in the least fond of such compliments,’ she answered.

By this time we had reached the door of Mrs Wilson’s apartment. She received us rather stiffly, even for her. After some commonplace talk, in which, without departing from facts, Clara made it appear that she had set out for the express purpose of paying Mrs Wilson a visit, I asked if the family was at home, and finding they were not, begged leave to walk into the library.

‘We’ll go together,’ she said, apparently not caring about a tête-à-tête with Clara. Evidently the old lady liked her as little as ever.

We left the house, and entering again by a side door, passed on our way through the little gallery, into which I had dropped from the roof.

‘Look, Clara, that is where I came down,’ I said.

She merely nodded. But Mrs Wilson looked very sharply, first at the one, then at the other of us. When we reached the library, I found it in the same miserable condition as before, and could not help exclaiming with some indignation,

‘It is a shame to see such treasures mouldering there! I am confident there are many valuable books among them, getting ruined from pure neglect. I wish I knew Sir Giles. I would ask him to let me come and set them right.’

‘You would be choked with dust and cobwebs in an hour’s time,’ said Clara. ‘Besides, I don’t think Mrs Wilson would like the proceeding.’

‘What do you ground that remark upon, Miss Clara?’ said the housekeeper in a dry tone.

‘I thought you used them for firewood occasionally,’ answered Clara, with an innocent expression both of manner and voice.

The most prudent answer to such an absurd charge would have been a laugh; but Mrs Wilson vouchsafed no reply at all, and I pretended to be too much occupied with its subject to have heard it.

After lingering a little while, during which I paid attention chiefly to Mrs Wilson, drawing her notice to the state of several of the books, I proposed we should have a peep at the armoury. We went in, and, glancing over the walls I knew so well, I scarcely repressed an exclamation: I could not be mistaken in my own sword! There it hung, in the centre of the principal space—in the same old sheath, split half-way up from the point! To the hilt hung an ivory label with a number upon it. I suppose I made some inarticulate sound, for Clara fixed her eyes upon me. I busied myself at once with a gorgeously hiked scimitar, which hung near, for I did not wish to talk about it then, and so escaped further remark. From the armoury we went to the picture-gallery, where I found a good many pictures had been added to the collection. They were all new and mostly brilliant in colour. I was no judge, but I could not help feeling how crude and harsh they looked beside the mellowed tints of the paintings, chiefly portraits, among which they had been introduced.

‘Horrid!—aren’t they?’ said Clara, as if she divined my thoughts; but I made no direct reply, unwilling to offend Mrs Wilson.

When we were once more on horseback, and walking across the grass, my companion was the first to speak.

‘Did you ever see such daubs!’ she said, making a wry face as at something sour enough to untune her nerves. ‘Those new pictures are simply frightful. Any one of them would give me the jaundice in a week, if it were hung in our drawing-room.’

‘I can’t say I admire them,’ I returned. ‘And at all events they ought not to be on the same walls with those stately old ladies and gentlemen.’

‘Parvenus,’ said Clara. ‘Quite in their place. Pure Manchester taste—educated on calico-prints.’

‘If that is your opinion of the family, how do you account for their keeping everything so much in the old style? They don’t seem to change anything.’

‘All for their own honour and glory! The place is a testimony to the antiquity of the family of which they are a shoot run to seed—and very ugly seed too! It’s enough to break one’s heart to think of such a glorious old place in such hands. Did you ever see young Brotherton?’

‘I knew him a little at college. He’s a good-looking fellow!’

‘Would be if it weren’t for the bad blood in him. That comes out unmistakeably. He’s vulgar.’