Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 53

'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, nave, 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 a.s.sociation 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, a.s.sume 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 a.s.sociation 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 anything else in the house, like a piece of the past embedded in the present--a fragment that had been, by some eddy in the stream of time, prevented from gliding away down its course, and left to lie for ever in a cranny of the solid sh.o.r.e of unmoving s.p.a.ce. But although subject to more than the ordinary tremor at the thought of unknown and invisible presences, I must say for myself that I had never yielded so far as to allow such tremor to govern my actions. Even in my dreams I have resisted ghostly terrors, and can recall one in which I so far conquered a lady-ghost who took every means of overcoming me with terror, that at length she fell in love with me, whereupon my fear vanished utterly--a conceited fancy, and as such let it fare.

I opened the door then with some trembling, half expecting to see first the white of my grannie's cap against the tall back of her dark chair.

But my senses were sound, and no such illusion seized me. All was empty, cheerless, and musty. Grannie's bed, with its white curtains, looked as if it were mouldering away after her. The dust lay thick on the counterpane of patchwork silk. The bureau stood silent with all its secrets. In the fire-place was the same brushwood and coals which Nannie laid the morning of grannie's death: interrupted by the discovery of my presence, she had left it, and that fire had never been lighted. Half for the sake of companions.h.i.+p, half because the air felt sepulchral and I was thinly clad, I put my candle to it and it blazed up. My courage revived, and after a little more gazing about the room, I ventured to sit down in my grannie's chair and watch the growing fire. Warned, however, by the shortness of my candle, I soon rose to proceed with my search, and turned towards the bureau.

Here, however, the same difficulty occurred. The top of the bureau was locked as when I had last tried it, and not one of my keys would fit it. At a loss what to do or where to search, I dropped again into the chair by the fire, and my eyes went roving about the room. They fell upon a black dress which hung against the wall. At the same moment I remembered that, when she gave me the watch, she took the keys of the bureau from her pocket. I went to the dress and found a pocket, not indeed in the dress, but hanging under it from the same peg. There her keys were! It would have been a marvel to me how my aunt came to leave them undisturbed all those years, but for the instant suggestion that my uncle must have expressed a wish to that effect. With eager hand I opened the bureau. Besides many trinkets in the drawers, some of them of exceedingly antique form, and, I fancied, of considerable value, I found in the pigeon-holes what I was far more pleased to discover--a good many letters, carefully tied in small bundles, with ribbon which had lost all determinable colour. These I reserved to take an early opportunity of reading, but replaced for the present, and, having come at last upon one hopeful-looking key, I made haste to return before my candle, which was already flickering in the socket, should go out altogether, and leave me darkling. When I reached the kitchen, however, I found the grey dawn already breaking. I retired once more to my chamber, and was soon fast asleep.

In the morning, my first care was to try the key. It fitted. I oiled it well, and then tried the lock. I had to use considerable force, but at last there came a great clang that echoed through the empty room. When I raised the lid, I knew by the weight it was of iron. In fact, the whole chest was iron with a casing of oak. The lock threw eight bolts, which laid hold of a rim that ran all round the lip of the chest. It was full of 'very ancient and fish-like' papers and parchments. I do not know whether my father or grandfather had ever disturbed them, but I am certain my uncle never had, for, as far back as I can remember, the part of the room where it stood was filled with what had been, at one time and another, condemned as lumber.

Charley was intensely interested in the discovery, and would have sat down at once to examine the contents of the chest, had I not persuaded him to leave them till the afternoon, that we might get on with our work at the Hall.

The second room was now ready for the carpenter, but, having had a peep of tapestry behind the shelves, a new thought had struck me. If it was in good preservation, it would be out of the question to hide it behind books.

I fear I am getting tedious. My apology for diffuseness in this part of my narrative is that some threads of the fringe of my own fate show every now and then in the record of these proceedings. I confess also that I hang back from certain things which are pressing nearer with their claim for record.

When we reached the Hall, I took the carpenter with me, and had the bookshelves taken down. To my disappointment we found that an oblong piece of some size was missing from the centre of the tapestry on one of the walls. That which covered the rest of the room was entire. It was all of good Gobelins work--somewhat tame in colour. The damaged portion represented a wooded landscape with water and reedy flowers and aquatic fowl, towards which in the distance came a hunter with a crossbow in his hand, and a queer, lurcher-looking dog bounding uncouthly at his heel; the edge of the vacant s.p.a.ce cut off the dog's tail and the top of the man's crossbow.

I went to find Sir Giles. He was in the dining-room, where they had just finished breakfast.

'Ah, Mr c.u.mbermede!' he said, rising as I entered, and holding out his hand--'here already?'

'We have uncovered some tapestry, Sir Giles, and I want you to come and look at it, if you please.'

'I will,' he answered. 'Would any of you ladies like to go and see it?'

His daughter and Clara rose. Lady Brotherton and Mrs...o...b..rne sat still.

Mary, glancing at her mother, remained seated also.

'Won't you come, Miss Pease?' I said.

She looked almost alarmed at the audacity of the proposal, and murmured, 'No, thank you,' with a glance at Lady Brotherton, which appeared as involuntary as it was timid.

'Is my son with you?' asked Mrs...o...b..rne.

I told her he was.

'I shall look in upon you before the morning is over,' she said quietly.

They were all pleased with the tapestry, and the ladies offered several conjectures as to the cause of the mutilation.

'It would be a shame to cover it up again--would it not, Sir Giles?' I remarked.

'Indeed it would,' he a.s.sented.

'If it weren't for that broken piece,' said Clara. 'That spoils it altogether. _I_ should have the books up again as soon as possible.'

'It does look shabby,' said Charley. 'I can't say I should enjoy having anything so defective always before my eyes.'

'We must have it taken down very carefully, Hobbes,' said Sir Giles, turning to the carpenter.

'_Must_ it come down, Sir Giles?' I interposed. 'I think it would be risky. No one knows how long it has been there, and though it might hang where it is for a century yet, and look nothing the worse, it can't be strong, and at best we could not get it down without some injury, while it is a great chance if it would fit any other place half as well.'

'What do you propose, then?'

'This is the largest room of the six, and the best lighted--with that lovely oriel window: I would venture to propose, Sir Giles, that it should be left clear of books and fitted up as a reading-room.'

'But how would you deal with that frightful _lacuna_ in the tapestry?'

said Charley.

'Yes,' said Sir Giles; 'it won't look handsome, I fear--do what you will.'

'I think I know how to manage it,' I said. 'If I succeed to your satisfaction, will you allow me to carry out the project?'

'But what are we to do with the books, then? We shan't have room for them.'

'Couldn't you let me have the next room beyond?'

'You mean to turn me out, I suppose,' said Clara.

'Is there tapestry on your walls?' I asked.

'Not a thread--all wainscot--painted.'

'Then your room would be the very thing.'