THE OLD CHEST.
I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of
the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady
Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of
Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was
brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where
the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the
heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the
fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue
of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of
the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among
them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on
one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water
where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was
bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark,
sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door
of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and
from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the
weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered
settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a
skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved
sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were
the sole furniture.
Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to
enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.
‘We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,’ she
said; ‘and--’
‘That will be some time yet,’ I interrupted, not desiring the
invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; ‘and I fear
there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity
and value of the library--if the other rooms should turn out as rich as
that one.’
‘I believe old books _are_ expensive now-a-days,’ she returned. ‘They
are more sought after, I understand.’
We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara
and Mary were assiduous in their help.
To go back for a little to my own old chest--we found it, as I said,
full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my
uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was
evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not
inclined to expend on them--for I had no pleasure in such details as
involved nothing of the picturesque--I threw the one in my hand upon
the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley,
who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least
a quarter of an hour, exclaimed--
‘Come, Charley; I’m sick of the rubbish. Let’s go and have a walk
before supper.’
‘Rubbish!’ he repeated; ‘I am ashamed of you!’
‘I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she’s got in her
head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and
all that.’
‘Very like it!’ said Charley--‘calling such a chestful as this
rubbish!’
‘I am pleased enough to possess it,’ I said; ‘but if they had been such
books as some of those at the Hall--’
‘Look here, then,’ he said, stooping over the chest, and with some
difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but
had not yet examined--‘just see what you can make of that.’
I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my
eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was
written--‘Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.’ Then followed what I
will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the
hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a
shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty
room hugging the folio. ‘Have you lost your senses?’ said Charley; but
when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as
myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers
again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my
treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient
verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked
up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself--
‘Well, Charley, what are you finding there?’ I asked.
‘Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,’ he
answered; ‘proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp
property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the
same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present
baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can
hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.’
‘You don’t mean I’m of the same blood as--as Geoffrey Brotherton!’ I
said. ‘I would rather not, if it’s the same to you, Charley.’
‘I can’t help it: that’s the way things point,’ he answered, throwing
down the parchment. ‘But I can’t read more now. Let’s go and have a
walk. I’ll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.’
‘I’ll stop with you.’
[Illustration: “Well. Charley. What are you finding there?” I asked.]
‘No, you won’t. You’ll go and get on with your library. I shall do
better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as
well!’
‘But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look
here, though,’ I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal.
‘Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at
the Hall.’
‘That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How
strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the
gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!’
‘Or, like the mole or squint that re-appears in successive generations,
the legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor,’ I said--and several
things unexplained occurred to me as possibly having a common solution.
‘I find, however,’ said Charley, ‘that the name of Cumbermede is not
mentioned in your papers more than about a hundred years back--as far
as I have yet made out.’
‘That is odd,’ I returned, ‘seeing that in the same chest we find that
book with my name, surname and Christian, and the date 1630.’
‘It is strange,’ he acquiesced, ‘and will perhaps require a somewhat
complicated theory to meet it.’
We began to talk of other matters, and, naturally enough, soon came to
Clara.
Charley was never ready to talk of her--indeed, avoided the subject in
a way that continued to perplex me.
‘I confess to you, Charley,’ I said, ‘there is something about her I do
not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were--I will
not say underhand--but as if she had some object in view--some design
upon you--’
‘Upon me!’ exclaimed Charley, looking at me suddenly and with a face
from which all the colour had fled.
‘No, no, Charley, not that,’ I answered, laughing. ‘I used the word
impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been
talking about a witch--or a demon-lady--you are so frightened at the
notion of her having you in her eye.’
He did not seem altogether relieved, and I caught an uneasy glance
seeking my countenance.
‘But isn’t she charming?’ I went on. ‘It is only to you I could talk
about her so. And after all it may be only a fancy.’
He kept his face downwards and aside, as if he were pondering and
coming to no conclusion. The silence grew and grew until expectation
ceased, and when I spoke again it was of something different.
My reader may be certain from all this that I was not in love with
Clara. Her beauty and liveliness, with a gaiety which not seldom
assumed the form of grace, attracted me much, it is true; but nothing
interferes more with the growth of any passion than a spirit of
questioning, and, that once roused, love begins to cease and pass into
pain. Few, perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had
reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing
passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope
of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a
reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not
make myself sure that Clara was upright;--perhaps the more commonplace
word _straightforward_ would express my meaning better.
Anxious to get the books arranged before they all left me, for I knew I
should have but little heart for it after they were gone, I grudged
Charley the forenoon he wanted amongst my papers, and prevailed upon
him to go with me the next day as usual. Another fortnight, which was
almost the limit of their stay, would, I thought, suffice; and giving
up everything else, Charley and I worked from morning till night, with
much though desultory assistance from the ladies. I contrived to keep
the carpenter and housemaid in work, and by the end of the week began
to see the inroads of order ‘scattering the rear of darkness thin.’