Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 10

'Then do you often lie three in a bed?' asked Mr Elder with some concern.

'Oh no, sir. Only this is an extra good one, you see.'

Mr Elder laughed again, bade us good-night, and left us. The horror, however, was broken. I could not call up one 's.h.i.+ver more, and in a few minutes Moberly, as well as his two companions, had slipped away to roomier quarters.

The material of the tales I told my companions was in part supplied from some of my uncle's old books, for in his little library there were more than the _Arcadia_ of the same sort. But these had not merely afforded me the stuff to remodel and imitate; their spirit had wrought upon my spirit, and armour and war-horses and mighty swords were only the instruments with which faithful knights wrought honourable deeds.

I had a tolerably clear perception that such deeds could not be done in our days; that there were no more dragons lying in the woods: and that ladies did not now fall into the hands of giants. But I had the witness of an eternal impulse in myself that n.o.ble deeds had yet to be done, and therefore might be done, although I knew not how. Hence a feeling of the dignity of ancient descent, as involving a.s.sociation with great men and great actions of old, and therefore rendering such more attainable in the future, took deep root in my mind. Aware of the humbleness of my birth, and unrestrained by pride in my parents--I had lost them so early--I would indulge in many a day-dream of what I would gladly have been. I would ponder over the delights of having a history, and how grand it would be to find I was descended from some far-away knight who had done deeds of high emprise. In such moods the recollection of the old sword that had vanished from the wall would return: indeed the impression it had made upon me may have been at the root of it all. How I longed to know the story of it! But it had gone to the grave with grannie. If my uncle or aunt knew it, I had no hope of getting it from either of them; for I was certain they had no sympathy with any such fancies as mine. My favourite invention, one for which my audience was sure to call when I professed incompetence, and which I enlarged and varied every time I returned to it, was of a youth in humble life who found at length he was of far other origin then he had supposed. I did not know then, that the fancy, not uncommon with boys, has its roots in the deepest instincts of our human nature. I need not add that I had not yet read Jean Paul's _t.i.tan, or Hesperus, or Comet_.

This tendency of thought-received a fresh impulse from my visit to Moldwarp Hall, as I choose to name the great house whither my repentance had led me. It was the first I had ever seen to wake the sense of the mighty antique. My home was, no doubt, older than some parts of the hall; but the house we are born in never looks older than the last generation until we begin to compare it with others. By this time, what I had learned of the history of my country, and the general growth of the allied forces of my intellect, had rendered me capable of feeling the h.o.a.ry eld of the great Hall. Henceforth it had a part in every invention of my boyish imagination.

I was therefore not undesirous of keeping the half-engagement I had made with Mrs Wilson, but it was not she that drew me. With all her kindness, she had not attracted me, for cupboard-love is not the sole, or always the most powerful, operant on the childish mind: it is in general stronger in men than in either children or women. I would rather not see Mrs Wilson again--she had fed my body, she had not warmed my heart. It was the grand old house that attracted me. True, it was a.s.sociated with shame, but rather with the recovery from it than with the fall itself; and what memorials of ancient grandeur and knightly ways must lie within those walls, to harmonize with my many dreams!

On the next holiday, Mr Elder gave me a ready permission to revisit Moldwarp Hall. I had made myself acquainted with the nearest way by crossroads and footpaths, and full of expectation, set out with my companions. They accompanied me the greater part of the distance, and left me at a certain gate, the same by which they had come out of the park on the day of my first visit. I was glad when they were gone, for I could then indulge my excited fancy at will. I heard their voices draw away into the distance. I was alone on a little footpath which led through a wood. All about me were strangely tall and slender oaks; but as I advanced into the wood, the trees grew more various, and in some of the opener s.p.a.ces great old oaks, short and big-headed, stretched out their huge shadow-filled arms in true oak-fas.h.i.+on. The ground was uneven, and the path led up and down over hollow and hillock, now crossing a swampy bottom, now climbing the ridge of a rocky eminence.

It was a lovely forenoon, with grey-blue sky and white clouds. The sun shone plentifully into the wood, for the leaves were thin. They hung like clouds of gold and royal purple above my head, layer over layer, with the blue sky and the snowy clouds s.h.i.+ning through. On the ground it was a world of shadows and sunny streaks, kept ever in interfluent motion by such a wind as John Skelton describes:

'There blew in that gardynge a soft piplyng cold Enbrethyng of Zepherus with his pleasant wynde.'

I went merrily along. The birds were not singing, but my heart did not need them. It was Spring-time there, whatever it might be in the world.

The heaven of my childhood wanted no lark to make it gay. Had the trees been bare, and the frost s.h.i.+ning on the ground, it would have been all the same. The sunlight was enough.

I was standing on the root of a great beech-tree, gazing up into the gulf of its foliage, and watching the broken lights playing about in the leaves and leaping from twig to branch, like birds yet more golden than the leaves, when a voice startled me.

'You're not looking for apples in a beech-tree, hey? it said.

I turned instantly, with my heart in a flutter. To my great relief I saw that the speaker was not Sir Giles, and that probably no allusion was intended. But my first apprehension made way only for another pang, for, although I did not know the man, a strange dismay shot through me at sight of him. His countenance was a.s.sociated with an undefined but painful fact that lay crouching in a dusky hollow of my memory. I had no time now to entice it into the light of recollection. I took heart and spoke.

'No,' I answered; 'I was only watching the sun on the leaves.'

'Very pretty, ain't it? Ah, it's lovely! It's quite beautiful--ain't it now? You like good timber, don't you? Trees, I mean?' he explained, aware, I suppose, of some perplexity on my countenance.

'Yes,' I answered. 'I like big old ones best.'

'Yes, yes,' he returned, with an energy that sounded strange and jarring to my mood; 'big old ones, that have stood for ages--the monarchs of the forest. Saplings ain't bad things either, though. But old ones are best. Just come here, and I'll show you one worth looking at. _It_ wasn't planted yesterday, _I_ can tell you.'

I followed him along the path, until we came out of the wood. Beyond us the ground rose steep and high, and was covered with trees; but here in the hollow it was open. A stream ran along between us and the height.

On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the stem looked stunted between them.

'There!' said my companion; 'there's a tree! there's something like a tree! How a man must feel to call a tree like that his own! That's Queen Elizabeth's oak. It is indeed. England is dotted with would-be Queen Elizabeth's oaks; but there is the very oak which she admired so much that she ordered luncheon to be served under it.... Ah! she knew the value of timber--did good Queen Bess. _That's_ now--now--let me see--the year after the Armada--nine from fifteen--ah well, somewhere about two hundred and thirty years ago.'

'How lumpy and hard it looks!' I remarked.

'That's the breed and the age of it,' he returned. 'The wonder to me is they don't turn to stone and last for ever, those trees. Ah! there's something to live for now!'

He had turned away to resume his walk, but as he finished the sentence, he turned again towards the tree, and shook his finger at it, as if reproaching it for belonging to somebody else than himself.

'Where are you going now?' he asked, wheeling round upon me sharply, with a keen look in his magpie-eyes, as the French would call them, which hardly corresponded with the bluntness of his address.

'I'm going to the Hall,' I answered, turning away.

'You'll never get there that way. How are you to cross the river?'

'I don't know. I've never been this way before.'

'You've been to the Hall before, then? Whom do you know there?'

'Mrs Wilson,' I answered.

'H'm! Ah! You know Mrs Wilson, do you? Nice woman, Mrs Wilson!'

He said this as if he meant the opposite.

'Here,' he went on--'come with me. I'll show you the way.'

I obeyed, and followed him along the bank of the stream.

'What a curious bridge!' I exclaimed, as we came in sight of an ancient structure lifted high in the middle on the point of a Gothic arch.

'Yes, ain't it? he said. 'Curious? I should think so! And well it may be! It's as old as the oak there at least. There's a bridge now for a man like Sir Giles to call his own!'

'He can't keep it though,' I said, moralizing; for, in carrying on the threads of my stories, I had come to see that no climax could last for ever.

'Can't keep it! He could carry off every stone of it if he liked.'

'Then it wouldn't be the bridge any longer.'

'You're a sharp one,' he said.

'I don't know,' I answered, truly enough. I seemed to myself to be talking sense, that was all.

'Well, I do. What do you mean by saying he couldn't keep it?'

'It's been a good many people's already, and it'll be somebody else's some day,' I replied.

He did not seem to relish the suggestion, for he gave a kind of grunt, which gradually broke into a laugh as he answered,

'Likely enough! likely enough!'

We had now come round to the end of the bridge, and I saw that it was far more curious than I had perceived before.

'Why is it so narrow?' I asked, wonderingly, for it was not three feet wide, and had a parapet of stone about three feet high on each side of it.

'Ah!' he replied, 'that's it, you see. As old as the hills. It was built, _this_ bridge was, before ever a carriage was made--yes, before ever a carrier's cart went along a road. They carried everything then upon horses' backs. They call this the pack-horse bridge. You see there's room for the horses' legs, and their loads could stick out over the parapets. That's the way they carried everything to the Hall then.

That was a few years before _you_ were born, young gentleman.'

'But they couldn't get their legs--the horses, I mean--couldn't get their legs through this narrow opening,' I objected; for a flat stone almost blocked up each end.