Wilfrid Cumbermede

‘My dear boy—excuse my freedom,’ he returned—‘I am nearly three times your age—you do not imagine I doubt a hair’s breadth of your statement! But—the giddy goose!—how could you be so silly? Pardon me again. Your unselfishness is positively amusing! To hand over your horse to her, and then ride away all by yourself on that—respectable stager!’

‘Don’t abuse the old horse,’ I returned. ‘He is respectable, and has been more in his day.’

‘Yes, yes. But for the life of me I cannot understand it. Mr Cumbermede, I am sorry for you. I should not advise you to choose the law for a profession. The man who does not regard his own rights will hardly do for an adviser in the affairs of others.

‘You were not going to consult me, Mr Coningham, were you?’ I said, now able at length to laugh without effort.

‘Not quite that,’ he returned, also laughing. ‘But a right, you know, is one of the most serious things in the world.’

It seemed irrelevant to the trifling character of the case. I could not understand why he should regard the affair as of such importance.

‘I have been in the way of thinking,’ I said, ‘that one of the advantages of having rights was that you could part with them when you pleased. You’re not bound to insist on your rights, are you?’

‘Certainly you would not subject yourself to a criminal action by foregoing them, but you might suggest to your friends a commission of lunacy. I see how it is. That is your uncle all over! He was never a man of the world.’

‘You are right there, Mr Coningham. It is the last epithet any one would give my uncle.’

‘And the first any one would give me, you imply, Mr Cumbermede.’

‘I had no such intention,’ I answered. ‘That would have been rude.’

‘Not in the least. I should have taken it as a compliment. The man who does not care about his rights, depend upon it, will be made a tool of by those that do. If he is not a spoon already, he will become one. I shouldn’t have iffed it at all if I hadn’t known you.’

‘And you don’t want to be rude to me.’

‘I don’t. A little experience will set you all right; and that you are in a fair chance of getting if you push your fortune as a literary man. But I must be off. I hope we may have another chat before long.’

He finished his ale, rose, bade me good-bye, and went to the stable. As soon as he was out of sight, I also mounted and rode homewards.

By the time I reached the gate of the park, my depression had nearly vanished. The comforting power of sun and shadow, of sky and field, of wind and motion, had restored me to myself. With a side glance at the windows of the cottage as I passed, and the glimpse of a bright figure seated in the drawing-room window, I made for the stable, and found my Lilith waiting me. Once more I shifted my saddle, and rode home, without even another glance at the window as I passed.

A day or two after, I received from Mr Coningham a ticket for the county ball, accompanied by a kind note. I returned it at once with the excuse that I feared incapacitating myself for work by dissipation.

Henceforward I avoided the park, and did not again see Clara before leaving for London. I had a note from her, thanking me for Lilith, and reproaching me for having left her to the company of Mr Brotherton, which I thought cool enough, seeing they had set out together without the slightest expectation of meeting me. I returned a civil answer, and there was an end of it.

I must again say for myself that it was not mere jealousy of Brotherton that led me to act as I did. I could not and would not get over the contradiction between the way in which she had spoken of him, and the way in which she spoke to him, followed by her accompanying him in the long ride to which the state of my mare bore witness. I concluded that, although she might mean no harm, she was not truthful. To talk of a man with such contempt, and then behave to him with such frankness, appeared to me altogether unjustifiable. At the same time their mutual familiarity pointed to some foregone intimacy, in which, had I been so inclined, I might have found some excuse for her, seeing she might have altered her opinion of him, and might yet find it very difficult to alter the tone of their intercourse.

CHAPTER XXVIII. IN LONDON

My real object being my personal history in relation to certain facts and events, I must, in order to restrain myself from that discursiveness the impulse to which is an urging of the historical as well as the artistic Satan, even run the risk of appearing to have been blind to many things going on around me which must have claimed a large place had I been writing an autobiography instead of a distinct portion of one.

I set out with my manuscript in my portmanteau, and a few pounds in my pocket, determined to cost my uncle as little as I could.

I well remember the dreariness of London, as I entered it on the top of a coach, in the closing darkness of a late Autumn afternoon. The shops were not yet all lighted, and a drizzly rain was falling. But these outer influences hardly got beyond my mental skin, for I had written to Charley, and hoped to find him waiting for me at the coach-office. Nor was I disappointed, and in a moment all discomfort was forgotten. He took me to his chambers in the New Inn.

I found him looking better, and apparently, for him, in good spirits. It was soon arranged, at his entreaty, that for the present I should share his sitting-room, and have a bed put up for me in a closet he did not want. The next day I called upon certain publishers and left with them my manuscript. Its fate is of no consequence here, and I did not then wait to know it, but at once began to fly my feather at lower game, writing short papers and tales for the magazines. I had a little success from the first; and although the surroundings of my new abode were dreary enough, although, now and then, especially when the Winter sun shone bright into the court, I longed for one peep into space across the field that now itself lay far in the distance, I soon settled to my work, and found the life an enjoyable one. To work beside Charley the most of the day, and go with him in the evening to some place of amusement, or to visit some of the men in chambers about us, was for the time a satisfactory mode of existence.

I soon told him the story of my little passage with Clara. During the narrative he looked uncomfortable, and indeed troubled, but as soon as he found I had given up the affair, his countenance brightened.

‘I’m very glad you’ve got over it so well,’ he said.

‘I think I’ve had a good deliverance,’ I returned.

He made no reply. Neither did his face reveal his thoughts, for I could not read the confused expression it bore.

That he should not fall in with my judgment would never have surprised me, for he always hung back from condemnation, partly, I presume, from being even morbidly conscious of his own imperfections, and partly that his prolific suggestion supplied endless possibilities to explain or else perplex everything. I had been often even annoyed by his use of the most refined invention to excuse, as I thought, behaviour the most palpably wrong. I believe now it was rather to account for it than to excuse it.

‘Well, Charley,’ I would say in such a case, ‘I am sure you would never have done such a thing.’

‘I cannot guarantee my own conduct for a moment,’ he would answer; or, taking the other tack, would reply: ‘Just for that reason I cannot believe the man would have done it.’

But the oddity in the present case was that he said nothing. I should, however, have forgotten all about it, but that after some time I began to observe that as often as I alluded to Clara—which was not often—he contrived to turn the remark aside, and always without saying a syllable about her. The conclusion I came to was that, while he shrunk from condemnation, he was at the same time unwilling to disturb the present serenity of my mind by defending her conduct.

Early in the Spring, an unpleasant event occurred, of which I might have foreseen the possibility. One morning I was alone, working busily, when the door opened.

‘Why, Charley—back already!’ I exclaimed, going on to finish my sentence.

Receiving no answer, I looked up from my paper, and started to my feet. Mr Osborne stood before me, scrutinizing me with severe grey eyes. I think he knew me from the first, but I was sufficiently altered to make it doubtful.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said coldly—‘I thought these were Charles Osborne’s chambers.’ And he turned to leave the room.

‘They are his chambers, Mr Osborne,’ I replied, recovering myself with an effort, and looking him in the face.

‘My son had not informed me that he shared them with another.’

‘We are very old friends, Mr Osborne.’

He made no answer, but stood regarding me fixedly.

‘You do not remember me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am Wilfrid Cumbermede.’

‘I have cause to remember you.’

‘Will you not sit down, sir? Charley will be home in less than an hour—I quite expect.’

Again he turned his back as if about to leave me.

‘If my presence is disagreeable to you,’ I said, annoyed at his rudeness, ‘I will go.’

‘As you please,’ he answered.

I left my papers, caught up my hat, and went out of the room and the house. I said good morning, but he made no return.

Not until nearly eight o’clock did I re-enter. I had of course made up my mind that Charley and I must part. When I opened the door, I thought at first there was no one there. There were no lights, and the fire had burned low.

‘Is that you, Wilfrid?’ said Charley.

He was lying on the sofa.