Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 8

'Mrs Wilson! Mrs Wilson! I want you a moment.'

'Yes, Sir Giles,' answered a tall, stiff-looking elderly woman who presently appeared descending, with upright spine, a corkscrew staircase of stone.

'Here is a young gentleman, Mrs Wilson, who seems to have lost his way.

He is one of Mr Elder's pupils at Aldwick. Will you get him something to eat and drink, and then send him home?'

'I will, Sir Giles.'

'Good-bye, my man,' said Sir Giles, again shaking hands with me. Then turning anew to the housekeeper, for such I found she was, he added:

'Couldn't you find a bag for him, and fill it with some of those brown pippins? They're good eating, ain't they?'

'With pleasure, Sir Giles.'

Thereupon Sir Giles withdrew, closing the door behind him, and leaving me with the sense of life from the dead.

'What's your name, young gentleman?' asked Mrs Wilson, with, I thought, some degree of sternness.

'Wilfrid c.u.mbermede,' I answered.

She stared at me a little, with a stare which would have been a start in most women. I was by this time calm enough to take a quiet look at her. She was dressed in black silk, with a white neckerchief crossing in front, and black mittens on her hands. After gazing at me fixedly for a moment or two, she turned away and ascended the stair, which went up straight from the door, saying--

'Come with me, Master c.u.mbermede. You must have some tea before you go.'

I obeyed, and followed her into a long, low-ceiled room, wainscotted all over in panels, with a square moulding at the top, which served for a cornice. The ceiling was ornamented with plaster reliefs. The windows looked out, on one side into the court, on the other upon the park. The floor was black and polished like a mirror, with bits of carpet here and there, and a rug before the curious, old-fas.h.i.+oned grate, where a little fire was burning and a small kettle boiling fiercely on the top of it. The tea-tray was already on the table. She got another cup and saucer, added a pot of jam to the preparations, and said:

'Sit down and have some bread and b.u.t.ter, while I make the tea.'

She cut me a great piece of bread, and then a great piece of b.u.t.ter, and I lost no time in discovering that the quality was worthy of the quant.i.ty. Mrs Wilson kept a grave silence for a good while. At last, as she was pouring out the second cup, she looked at me over the teapot, and said--

'You don't remember your mother, I suppose, Master c.u.mbermede?'

'No, ma'am. I never saw my mother.'

'Within your recollection, you mean. But you must have seen her, for you were two years old when she died.'

'Did you know my mother, then, ma'am?' I asked, but without any great surprise, for the events of the day had been so much out of the ordinary that I had for the time almost lost the faculty of wonder.

She compressed her thin lips, and a perpendicular wrinkle appeared in the middle of her forehead, as she answered--

'Yes; I knew your mother.'

'She was very good, wasn't she, ma'am?' I said, with my mouth full of bread and b.u.t.ter.

'Yes. Who told you that?'

'I was sure of it. n.o.body ever told me.'

'Did they never talk to you about her?'

'No, ma'am.'

'So you are at Mr Elder's, are you?' she said, after another long pause, during which I was not idle, for my trouble being gone I could now be hungry.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How did you come here, then?'

'I walked with the rest of the boys; but they are gone home without me.'

Thanks to the kindness of Sir Giles, my fault had already withdrawn so far into the past, that I wished to turn my back upon it altogether. I saw no need for confessing it to Mrs Wilson; and there was none.

'Did you lose your way?'

'No, ma'am.'

'What brought you here, then? I suppose you wanted to see the place.'

'The woman at the lodge told us the nearest way was through the park.'

I quite expected she would go on cross-questioning me, and then all the truth would have had to come out. But to my great relief, she went no further, only kept eyeing me in a manner so oppressive as to compel me to eat bread and b.u.t.ter and strawberry jam with self-defensive eagerness. I presume she trusted to find out the truth by-and-by. She contented herself in the mean time with asking questions about my uncle and aunt, the farm, the school, and Mr and Mrs Elder, all in a cold, stately, refraining manner, with two spots of red in her face--one on each cheek-bone, and a thin rather peevish nose dividing them. But her forehead was good, and when she smiled, which was not often, her eyes shone. Still, even I, with my small knowledge of womankind, was dimly aware that she was feeling her way with me, and I did not like her much.

'Have you nearly done?' she asked at length.

'Yes, quite, thank you,' I answered.

'Are you going back to school to-night?'

'Yes, ma'am; of course.'

'How are you going?'

'If you will tell me the way--'

'Do you know how far you are from Aldwick?'

'No, ma'am.'

'Eight miles,' she answered; 'and it's getting rather late.'

I was seated opposite the windows to the park, and, looking up, saw with some dismay that the air was getting dusky. I rose at once, saying--

'I must make haste. They will think I am lost.'

'But you can never walk so far, Master c.u.mbermede.'

'Oh, but I must! I can't help it. I must get back as fast as possible.'