MY FOLIO.
When I reached home I found Charley there, as I had expected.
But a change had again come over him. He was nervous, restless,
apparently anxious. I questioned him about his mother and sister. He
had met them as planned, and had, he assured me, done his utmost to
impress them with the truth concerning me. But he had found his mother
incredulous, and had been unable to discover from her how much she had
heard; while Mary maintained an obstinate silence, and, as he said,
looked more stupid than usual. He did not tell me that Clara had
accompanied them so far, and that he had walked with her back to the
entrance of the park. This I heard afterwards. When we had talked a
while over the sword-business--for we could not well keep off it
long--Charley seeming all the time more uncomfortable than ever, he
said, perhaps merely to turn the talk into a more pleasant channel--
By the way, where have you put your folio? I’ve been looking for it
ever since I came in, but I can’t find it. A new reading started up in
my head the other day, and I want to try it both with the print and the
context.’
‘It’s in my room,’ I answered, ‘I will go and fetch it.’
‘We will go together,’ he said.
I looked where I thought I had laid it, but there it was not. A pang of
foreboding terror invaded me. Charley told me afterwards that I turned
as white as a sheet. I looked everywhere, but in vain; ran and searched
my uncle’s room, and then Charley’s, but still in vain; and at last,
all at once, remembered with certainty that two nights before I had
laid it on the window-sill in my uncle’s room. I shouted for Styles,
but he was gone home with the mare, and I had to wait, in little short
of agony, until he returned. The moment he entered I began to question
him.
‘You took those books home, Styles?’ I said, as quietly as I could,
anxious not to startle him, lest it should interfere with the just
action of his memory.
‘Yes, sir. I took them at once, and gave them into Miss Pease’s own
hands;--at least I suppose it was Miss Pease. She wasn’t a young lady,
sir.’
‘All right, I dare say. How many were there of them?’
‘Six, sir.’
‘I told you five,’ I said, trembling with apprehension and wrath.
‘You said four or five, and I never thought but the six were to go.
They were all together on the window-sill.’
I stood speechless. Charley took up the questioning.
‘What sized books were they?’ he asked.
‘Pretty biggish--one of them quite a large one--the same I’ve seen you,
gentlemen, more than once, putting your heads together over. At least
it looked like it.’
‘Charley started up and began pacing about the room. Styles saw he had
committed some dreadful mistake, and began a blundering expression of
regret, but neither of us took any notice of him, and he crept out in
dismay.
It was some time before either of us could utter a word. The loss of
the sword was a trifle to this. Beyond a doubt the precious tome was
now lying in the library of Moldwarp Hall--amongst old friends and
companions, possibly--where years on years might elapse before one
loving hand would open it, or any eyes gaze on it with reverence.
‘Lost, Charley!’ I said at last.--‘Irrecoverably lost!’
‘I will go and fetch it,’ he cried, starting up. ‘I will tell Clara to
bring it out to me. It is beyond endurance this. Why should you not go
and claim what both of us can take our oath to as yours?’
‘You forget, Charley, how the sword-affair cripples us--and how the
claiming of this volume would only render their belief with regard to
the other the more probable. You forget, too, that I _might_ have
placed it in the chest first, and, above all, that the name on the
title-page is the same as the initials on the blade of the sword,--the
same as my own.’
‘Yes--I see it won’t do. And yet if I were to represent the thing to
Sir Giles?--He doesn’t care for old books----’
‘You forget again, Charley, that the volume is of great money-value.
Perhaps my late slip has made me fastidious; but though the book be
mine--and if I had it, the proof of the contrary would lie with them--I
could not take advantage of Sir Giles’s ignorance to recover it.’
‘I might, however, get Clara--she is a favourite with him, you know--’
‘I will not hear of it,’ I said, interrupting him, and he was forced to
yield.
‘No, Charley,’ I said again; ‘I must just bear it. Harder things _have_
been borne, and men have got through the world and out of it
notwithstanding. If there isn’t another world, why should we care much
for the loss of what _must_ go with the rest?--and if there is, why
should we care at all?’
‘Very fine, Wilfrid! but when you come to the practice--why, the less
said the better.’
‘But that is the very point: we don’t come to the practice. If we did,
then the ground of it would be proved unobjectionable.’
‘True;--but if the practice be unattainable--’
‘It would take much proving to prove that to my--dissatisfaction I
should say; and more failure besides, I can tell you, than there will
be time for in this world. If it were proved, however--don’t you see it
would disprove both suppositions equally? If such a philosophical
spirit be unattainable, it discredits both sides of the alternative on
either of which it would have been reasonable.’
‘There is a sophism there of course, but I am not in the mood for
pulling your logic to pieces,’ returned Charley, still pacing up and
down the room.
In sum, nothing would come of all our talk but the assurance that the
volume was equally irrecoverable with the sword, and indeed with my
poor character--at least, in the eyes of my immediate neighbours.
[Illustration: I SAT DOWN AGAIN BY THE FIRE TO READ, IN MY
GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CHAIR.]