Wilfrid Cumbermede

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MARY OSBORNE.

All this time the acquaintance between Mary Osborne and myself had not improved. Save as the sister of my friend I had not, I repeat, found her interesting. She did not seem at all to fulfil the promise of her childhood. Hardly once did she address me; and, when I spoke to her, would reply with a simple, dull directness which indicated nothing beyond the fact of the passing occasion. Rightly or wrongly, I concluded that the more indulgence she cherished for Charley, the less she felt for his friend--that to him she attributed the endlessly sad declension of her darling brother. Once on her face I surprised a look of unutterable sorrow resting on Charley's; but the moment she saw that I observed her, the look died out, and her face stiffened into its usual dulness and negation. On me she turned only the unenlightened disc of her soul. Mrs Osborne, whom I seldom saw, behaved with much more kindness, though hardly more cordiality. It was only that she allowed her bright indulgence for Charley to cast the shadow of his image over the faults of his friend; and except by the sadness that dwelt in every line of her sweet face, she did not attract me. I was ever aware of an inward judgment which I did not believe I deserved, and I would turn from her look with a sense of injury which greater love would have changed into keen pain.

Once, however, I did meet a look of sympathy from Mary. On the second Monday of the fortnight I was more anxious than ever to reach the end of my labours, and was in the court, accompanied by Charley, as early as eight o'clock. From the hall a dark passage led past the door of the dining-room to the garden. Through the dark tube of the passage we saw the bright green of a lovely bit of sward, and upon it Mary and Clara, radiant in white morning dresses. We joined them.

'Here come the slave-drivers!' remarked Clara.

'Already!' said Mary, in a low voice, which I thought had a tinge of dismay in its tone.

'Never mind, Polly,' said her companion--'we're not going to bow to their will and pleasure. We'll have our walk in spite of them.'

As she spoke she threw a glance at us which seemed to say--'You may come if you like;' then turned to Mary with another which said--'We shall see whether they prefer old books or young ladies.'

Charley looked at me--interrogatively.

'Do as you like, Charley,' I said.

'I will do as you do,' he answered.

'Well,' I said, 'I have no right--'

'Oh! bother!' said Clara. 'You're so magnificent always with your rights and wrongs! Are you coming, or are you not?'

'Yes, I'm coming,' I replied, convicted by Clara's directness, for I was quite ready to go.

We crossed the court, and strolled through the park, which was of great extent, in the direction of a thick wood, covering a rise towards the east. The morning air was perfectly still; there was a little dew on the grass, which shone rather than sparkled; the sun was burning through a light fog, which grew deeper as we approached the wood; the decaying leaves filled the air with their sweet, mournful scent. Through the wood went a wide opening or glade, stretching straight and far towards the east, and along this we walked, with that exhilaration which the fading Autumn so strangely bestows. For some distance the ground ascended softly, but the view was finally closed in by a more abrupt swell, over the brow of which the mist hung in dazzling brightness.

Notwithstanding the gaiety of animal spirits produced by the season, I felt unusually depressed that morning. Already, I believe, I was beginning to feel the home-born sadness of the soul whose wings are weary and whose foot can find no firm soil on which to rest. Sometimes I think the wonder is that so many men are never sad. I doubt if Charley would have suffered so but for the wrongs his father's selfish religion had done him; which perhaps were therefore so far well, inasmuch as otherwise he might not have cared enough about religion even to doubt concerning it. But in my case now, it may have been only the unsatisfying presence of Clara, haunted by a dim regret that I could not love her more than I did. For with regard to her my soul was like one who in a dream of delight sees outspread before him a wide river, wherein he makes haste to plunge that he may disport himself in the fine element; but, wading eagerly, alas! finds not a single pool deeper than his knees.

'What's the matter with you, Wilfrid?' said Charley, who, in the midst of some gay talk, suddenly perceived my silence. 'You seem to lose all your spirits away from your precious library. I do believe you grudge every moment not spent upon those ragged old books.'

'I wasn't thinking of that, Charley; I was wondering what lies beyond that mist.'

'I see!--A chapter of the Pilgrim's Progress! Here we are--Mary, you're Christiana, and, Clara, you're Mercy. Wilfrid, you're--what?--I should have said Hopeful any other day, but this morning you look like--let me see--like Mr Ready-to-Halt. The celestial city lies behind that fog--doesn't it, Christiana?'

'I don't like to hear you talk so, Charley,' said his sister, smiling in his face.

'They ain't in the Bible,' he returned.

'No--and I shouldn't mind if you were only merry, but you know you are scoffing at the story, and I love it--so I can't be pleased to hear you.'

'I beg your pardon, Mary--but your celestial city lies behind such a fog that not one crystal turret, one pearly gate of it was ever seen. At least we have never caught a glimmer of it, and must go tramp, tramp--we don't know whither, any more than the blind puppy that has crawled too far from his mother's side.'

'I do see the light of it, Charley dear,' said Mary, sadly--not as if the light were any great comfort to her at the moment.

'If you do see something--how can you tell what it's the light of? It may come from the city of Dis, for anything you know.'

'I don't know what that is.'

'Oh! the red-hot city--down below. You will find all about it in Dante.'

'It doesn't look like that--the light I see,' said Mary, quietly.

'How very ill-bred you are--to say such wicked things, Charley!' said Clara.

'Am I? They are better unmentioned. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! Only don't allude to the unpleasant subject.'

He burst out singing: the verses were poor, but I will give them.

'Let the sun shimmer!

Let the wind blow!
All is a notion--What
do we know?
Let the moon glimmer!
Let the stream flow!
All is but motion
To and fro!

'Let the rose wither!

Let the stars glow!
Let the rain batter--
Drift sleet and snow!
Bring the tears hither!
Let the smiles go!
What does it matter?
To and fro!

'To and fro ever,

Motion and show!
Nothing goes onward--
Hurry or no!
All is one river--
Seaward and so
Up again sunward--
To and fro!

'Pendulum sweeping

High, and now low!
That star--tic, blot it!
Tac, let it go!
Time he is reaping
Hay for his mow;
That flower--he's got it!
To and fro!

'Such a scythe swinging,

Mighty and slow!
Ripping and slaying--
Hey nonny no!
Black Ribs is singing--
Chorus--Hey, ho!
What is he saying--
To and fro?

'Singing and saying

"Grass is hay--ho!
Love is a longing;
Water is snow."
Swinging and swaying,
Toll the bells go!
Dinging and donging
To and fro!'

'Oh, Charley!' said his sister, with suppressed agony, 'what a wicked song!'

'It is a wicked song,' I said. 'But I meant----it only represents an unbelieving, hopeless mood.'

'_You_ wrote it, then!' she said, giving me--as it seemed, involuntarily--a look of reproach.

'Yes, I did; but--'

'Then I think you are very horrid,' said Clara, interrupting.

'Charley!' I said, 'you must not leave your sister to think so badly of me! You know why I wrote it--and what I meant.'

'I wish I had written it myself,' he returned. 'I think it splendid. Anybody might envy you that song.'

'But you know I didn't mean it for a true one.'

'Who knows whether it is true or false?'

'_I_ know,' said Mary: 'I know it is false.'

'And I hope it,' I adjoined.

'Whatever put such horrid things into your head, Wilfrid?' asked Clara.

'Probably the fear lest they should be true. The verses came as I sat in a country church once, not long ago.'

'In a church!' exclaimed Mary.

'Oh! he does go to church sometimes,' said Charley, with a laugh.

'How could you think of it in church?' persisted Mary.

'It's more like the churchyard,' said Clara.

'It was in an old church in a certain desolate sea-forsaken town,' I said. 'The pendulum of the clock--a huge, long, heavy, slow thing--hangs far down into the church, and goes swing, swang over your head, three or four seconds to every swing. When you have heard the tic, your heart grows faint every time between--waiting for the tac, which seems as if it would never come.'

We were ascending the acclivity, and no one spoke again before we reached the top. There a wide landscape lay stretched before us. The mist was rapidly melting away before the gathering strength of the sun: as we stood and gazed we could see it vanishing. By slow degrees the colours of the Autumn woods dawned out of it. Close under us lay a great wave of gorgeous red--beeches, I think--in the midst of which, here and there, stood up, tall and straight and dark, the unchanging green of a fir-tree. The glow of a hectic death was over the landscape, melting away into the misty fringe of the far horizon. Overhead the sky was blue, with a clear thin blue that told of withdrawing suns and coming frosts.

'For my part,' I said, 'I cannot believe that beyond this loveliness there lies no greater. Who knows, Charley, but death may be the first recognizable step of the progress of which you despair?'

It was then I caught the look from Mary's eye, for the sake of which I have recorded the little incidents of the morning. But the same moment the look faded, and the veil or the mask fell over her face.

'I am afraid,' she said, 'if there has been no progress before, there will be little indeed after.'

Now of all things, I hated the dogmatic theology of the party in which she had been brought up, and I turned from her with silent dislike.

'Really,' said Clara, 'you gentlemen have been very entertaining this morning. One would think Polly and I had come out for a stroll with a couple of undertaker's-men. There's surely time enough to think of such things yet! None of us are at death's door exactly.'

'"Sweet remembrancer!"--Who knows?' said Charley.

'"Now I, to comfort him,"' I followed, quoting Mrs Quickly concerning Sir John Falstaff, '"bid him, 'a should not think of God: I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet."'

'I beg your pardon,' said Mary--'there was no word of Him in the matter.'

'I see,' said Clara: 'you meant that at me, Wilfrid. But I assure you I am no heathen. I go to church regularly--once a Sunday when I can, and twice when I can't help it. That's more than you do, Mr Cumbermede, I suspect.'

'What makes you think so?' I asked.

'I can't imagine you enjoying anything but the burial service.'

'It is to my mind the most consoling of them all,' I answered.

'Well, I haven't reached the point of wanting that consolation yet, thank heaven.'

'Perhaps some of us would rather have the consolation than give thanks that we didn't need it,' I said.

'I can't say I understand you, but I know you mean something disagreeable. Polly, I think we had better go home to breakfast.'

Mary turned, and we all followed. Little was said on the way home. We divided in the hall--the ladies to breakfast, and we to our work.

We had not spoken for an hour, when Charley broke the silence.

'What a brute I am, Wilfrid!' he said. 'Why shouldn't I be as good as Jesus Christ? It seems always as if a man might. But just look at me! Because I was miserable myself, I went and made my poor little sister twice as miserable as she was before. She'll never get over what I said this morning.'

'It was foolish of you, Charley.'

'It was brutal. I am the most selfish creature in the world--always taken up with myself. I do believe there is a devil, after all. I am a devil. And the universal self is the devil. If there were such a thing as a self always giving itself away--that self would be God.'

'Something very like the God of Christianity, I think.'

'If it were so, there would be a chance for us. We might then one day give the finishing blow to the devil in us. But no: he does all for his own glory.'

'It depends on what his glory is. If what the self-seeking self would call glory, then I agree with you--that is not the God we need. But if his glory should be just the opposite--the perfect giving of himself away--then--Of course I know nothing about it. My uncle used to say things like that.'

He did not reply, and we went on with our work. Neither of the ladies came near us again that day.

Before the end of the week the library was in tolerable order to the eye, though it could not be perfectly arranged until the commencement of a catalogue should be as the dawn of a consciousness in the half-restored mass.

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