Wilfrid Cumbermede

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MY WHITE MARE.

I passed my final examinations with credit, if not with honour. It was not yet clearly determined what I should do next. My goal was London, but I was unwilling to go thither empty-handed. I had been thinking as well as reading a good deal; a late experience had stimulated my imagination; and at spare moments I had been writing a tale. It had grown to be a considerable mass of manuscript, and I was anxious, before going, to finish it. Hence, therefore, I returned home with the intention of remaining there quietly for a few months before setting-out to seek my fortune.

Whether my uncle in his heart quite favoured the plan, I have my doubts, but it would have been quite inconsistent with his usual grand treatment of me to oppose anything not wrong on which I had set my heart. Finding now that I took less exercise than he thought desirable, and kept myself too much to my room, he gave me a fresh proof of his unvarying kindness, He bought me a small grey mare of strength and speed. Her lineage was unknown; but her small head, broad fine chest, and clean limbs indicated Arab blood at no great remove. Upon her I used to gallop over the fields, or saunter along the lanes, dreaming and inventing.

And now certain feelings, too deeply rooted in my nature for my memory to recognize their beginnings, began to assume colour and condensed form, as if about to burst into some kind of blossom. Thanks to my education and love of study, also to a self-respect undefined yet restraining, nothing had occurred to wrong them. In my heart of hearts I worshipped the idea of womanhood. I thank Heaven, if ever I do thank for anything, that I still worship thus. Alas! how many have put on the acolyte's robe in the same temple, who have ere long cast dirt upon the statue of their divinity, then dragged her as defiled from her lofty pedestal, and left her lying dishonoured at its foot! Instead of feeding with holy oil the lamp of the higher instinct, which would glorify and purify the lower, they feed the fire of the lower with vile fuel, which sends up its stinging smoke to becloud and blot the higher.

One lovely Spring morning, the buds half out, and the wind blowing fresh and strong, the white clouds scudding across a blue gulf of sky, and the tall trees far away swinging as of old, when they churned the wind for my childish fancy, I looked up from my book and saw it all. The gladness of nature entered into me, and my heart swelled so in my bosom that I turned with distaste from all further labour. I pushed my papers from me, and went to the window. The short grass all about was leaning away from the wind, shivering and showing its enamel. Still, as in childhood, the wind had a special power over me. In another moment I was out of the house and hastening to the farm for my mare. She neighed at the sound of my step. I saddled and bridled her, sprung on her back, and galloped across the grass in the direction of the trees.

In a few moments I was within the lodge gates, walking my mare along the gravelled drive, and with the reins on the white curved neck before me, looking up at those lofty pines, whose lonely heads were swinging in the air like floating but fettered islands. My head had begun to feel dizzy with the ever-iterated, slow, half-circular sweep, when, just opposite the lawn stretching from a low wire fence up to the door of the steward's house, my mare shied, darted to the other side of the road, and flew across the grass. Caught thus lounging on my saddle, I was almost unseated. As soon as I had pulled her up, I turned to see what had startled her, for the impression of a white flash remained upon my mental sensorium. There, leaning on the little gate, looking much diverted, stood the loveliest creature, in a morning dress of white, which the wind was blowing about her like a cloud. She had no hat on, and her hair, as if eager to join in the merriment of the day, was flying like the ribbons of a tattered sail. A humanized Dryad!--one that had been caught young, but in whom the forest-sap still asserted itself in wild affinities with the wind and the swaying branches, and the white clouds careering across! Could it be Clara? How could it be any other than Clara? I rode back.

I was a little short-sighted, and had to get pretty near before I could be certain; but she knew me, and waited my approach. When I came near enough to see them, I could not mistake those violet eyes.

I was now in my twentieth year, and had never been in love. Whether I now fell in love or not, I leave to my reader.

Clara was even more beautiful than her girlish loveliness had promised. 'An exceeding fair forehead,' to quote Sir Philip Sidney; eyes of which I have said enough; a nose more delicate than symmetrical; a mouth rather thin-lipped, but well curved; a chin rather small, I confess;--but did any one ever from the most elaborated description acquire even an approximate idea of the face intended? Her person was lithe and graceful; she had good hands and feet; and the fairness of her skin gave her brown hair a duskier look than belonged to itself.

Before I was yet near enough to be certain of her, I lifted my hat, and she returned the salutation with an almost familiar nod and smile.

'I am very sorry,' she said, speaking first--in her old half-mocking way, 'that I so nearly cost you your seat.'

'It was my own carelessness,' I returned. 'Surely I am right in taking you for the lady who allowed me, in old times, to call her Clara? How I could ever have had the presumption I cannot imagine.'

'Of course that is a familiarity not to be thought of between full-grown people like us, Mr Cumbermede,' she rejoined, and her smile became a laugh.

'Ah, you do recognize me, then?' I said, thinking her cool, but forgetting the thought the next moment.

'I guess at you. If you had been dressed as on one occasion, I should not have got so far as that.'

Pleased at this merry reference to our meeting on the Wengern Alp, I was yet embarrassed to find that nothing more suggested itself to be said. But while I was quieting my mare, which happily afforded me some pretext at the moment, another voice fell on my ear--hoarse, but breezy and pleasant.

'So, Clara, you are no sooner back to old quarters than you give a rendezvous at the garden-gate--eh, girl?'

'Rather an ill-chosen spot for the purpose, papa,' she returned, laughing, 'especially as the gentleman has too much to do with his horse to get off and talk to me.'

'Ah! our old friend Mr Cumbermede, I declare! Only rather more of him!' he added, laughing, as he opened the little gate in the wire fence, and coming up to me, shook hands heartily. 'Delighted to see you, Mr Cumbermede. Have you left Oxford for good?'

'Yes,' I answered--'some time ago.'

'And may I ask what you're turning your attention to now?'

'Well, I hardly like to confess it, but I mean to have a try at--something in the literary way.'

'Plucky enough! The paths of literature are not certainly the paths of pleasantness or of peace even--so far as ever I heard. Somebody said you were going in for the law.'

'I thought there were too many lawyers already. One so often hears of barristers with nothing to do, and glad to take to the pen, that I thought it might be better to begin with what I should most probably come to at last.'

'Ah! but, Mr Cumbermede, there are other departments of the law which bring quicker returns than the bar. If you would put yourself in my hands now, you should be earning your bread at least within a couple of years or so.'

'You are very kind,' I returned, heartily, for he spoke as if he meant what he said; 'but you see I have a leaning to the one and not to the other. I should like to have a try first, at all events.'

'Well, perhaps it's better to begin by following your bent. You may find the road take a turn, though.'

'Perhaps. I will go on till it does, though.'

While we talked, Clara had followed her father, and was now patting my mare's neck with a nice, plump, fair-fingered hand. The creature stood with her arched neck and small head turned lovingly towards her.

'What a nice white thing you have got to ride!' she said. 'I hope it is your own.'

'Why do you hope that?' I asked.

'Because it's best to ride your own horse, isn't it?' she answered, looking up naïvely.

'Would you like to ride her? I believe she has carried a lady, though not since she came into my possession.'

Instead of answering me, she looked round at her father, who stood by smiling benignantly. Her look said--

'If papa would let me.'

He did not reply, but seemed waiting. I resumed.

'Are you a good horsewoman, Miss--Clara?' I said, with a feel after the recovery of old privileges.

'I must not sing my own praises, Mr--Wilfrid,' she rejoined, 'but I have ridden in Rotten Row, and I believe without any signal disgrace.'

'Have you got a side-saddle?' I asked, dismounting.

Mr Coningham spoke now.

'Don't you think Mr Cumbermede's horse a little too frisky for you, Clara? I know so little about you, I can't tell what you're fit for.--She used to ride pretty well as a girl,' he added, turning to me.

'I've not forgotten that,' I said. 'I shall walk by her side, you know.'

'Shall you?' she said, with a sly look.

'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'your grandfather would let me have his horse, and then we might have a gallop across the park.'

'The best way,' said Mr Coningham, 'will be to let the gardener take your horse, while you come in and have some luncheon. We'll see about the mount after that. My horse has to carry me back in the evening, else I should be happy to join you. She's a fine creature, that of yours.'

'She's the handiest creature!' I said--'a little skittish, but very affectionate, and has a fine mouth. Perhaps she ought to have a curb-bit for you, though, Miss Clara.'

'We'll manage with a snaffle,' she answered, with, I thought, another sly glance at me, out of eyes sparkling with suppressed merriment and expectation! Her father had gone to find the gardener, and as we stood waiting for him she still stroked the mare's neck.

'Are you not afraid of taking cold,' I said, 'without your bonnet?'

'I never had a cold in my life,' she returned.

'That is saying much. You would have me believe you are not made of the same clay as other people.'

'Believe anything you like,' she answered carelessly.

'Then I do believe it,' I rejoined.

She looked me in the face, took her hand from the mare's neck, stepped back half-a-foot and looked round, saying--

'I wonder where that man can have got to. Oh, here he comes, and papa with him!'

We went across the trim little lawn, which lay waiting for the warmer weather to burst into a profusion of roses, and through a trellised porch entered a shadowy little hall, with heads of stags and foxes, an old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase, and hunting and riding whips, whence we passed into a low-pitched drawing-room, redolent of dried rose-leaves and fresh hyacinths. A little pug-dog, which seemed to have failed in swallowing some big dog's tongue, jumped up barking from the sheep-skin mat, where he lay before the fire.

'Stupid pug!' said Clara. 'You never know friends from foes! I wonder where my aunt is.'

She left the room. Her father had not followed us. I sat down on the sofa, and began turning over a pretty book bound in red silk, one of the first of the annual tribe, which lay on the table. I was deep in one of its eastern stories when, hearing a slight movement, I looked up, and there sat Clara in a low chair by the window, working at a delicate bit of lace with a needle. She looked somehow as if she had been there an hour at least. I laid down the book with some exclamation.

'What is the matter, Mr Cumbermede?' she asked, with the slightest possible glance up from the fine meshes of her work.

'I had not the slightest idea you were in the room.'

'Of course not. How could a literary man, with a Forget-me-not in his hand, be expected to know that a girl had come into the room?'

'Have you been at school all this time?' I asked, for the sake of avoiding a silence.

'All what time?'

'Say, since we parted in Switzerland.'

'Not quite. I have been staying with an aunt for nearly a year. Have you been at college all this time?'

'At school and college. When did you come home?'

'This is not my home, but I came here yesterday.'

'Don't you find the country dull after London?'

'I haven't had time yet.'

'Did they give you riding lessons at school?'

'No. But my aunt took care of my morals in that respect. A girl might as well not be able to dance as ride now-a-days.'

'Who rode with you in the park? Not the riding-master?'

With a slight flush on her face she retorted,

'How many more questions are you going to ask me? I should like to know, that I may make up my mind how many of them to answer.'

'Suppose we say six.'

'Very well,' she replied. 'Now I shall answer your last question and count that the first. About nine o'clock, one--day--'

'Morning or evening?' I asked.

'Morning of course--I walked out of--the house--'

'Your aunt's house?'

'Yes, of course, my aunt's house. Do let me go on with my story. It was getting a little dark--'

'Getting dark at nine in the morning?'

'In the evening, I said.'

'I beg your pardon, I thought you said the morning.'

'No, no, the evening; and of course I was a little frightened, for I was not accustomed--'

'But you were never out alone at that hour,--in London?'

'Yes, I was quite alone. I had promised to meet--a friend at the corner of----You know that part, do you?'

'I beg your pardon. What part?'

'Oh--Mayfair. You know Mayfair, don't you?'

'You were going to meet a gentleman at the corner of Mayfair--were you?' I said, getting quite bewildered.

She jumped up, clapping her hands as gracefully as merrily, and crying--

'I wasn't going to meet any gentleman. There! Your six questions are answered. I won't answer a single other you choose to ask, unless I please, which is not in the least likely.'

She made me a low half merry, half mocking courtesy and left the room.

The same moment her father came in, following old Mr Coningham, who gave me a kindly welcome, and said his horse was at my service, but he hoped I would lunch with him first. I gratefully consented, and soon luncheon was announced. Miss Coningham, Clara's aunt, was in the dining-room before us. A dry, antiquated woman, she greeted me with unexpected frankness. Lunch was half over before Clara entered--in a perfectly fitting habit, her hat on, and her skirt thrown over her arm.

'Soho, Clara!' cried her father; 'you want to take us by surprise--coming out all at once a town-bred lady, eh?'

'Why, where ever did you get that riding-habit, Clara?' said her aunt.

'In my box, aunt,' said Clara.

'My word, child, but your father has kept you in pocket-money!' returned Miss Coningham.

'I've got a town aunt as well as a country one,' rejoined Clara, with an expression I could not quite understand, but out of which her laugh took only half the sting.

Miss Coningham reddened a little. I judged afterwards that Clara had been diplomatically allowing her just to feel what sharp claws she had for use if required.

But the effect of the change from loose white muslin to tight dark cloth was marvellous, and I was bewitched by it. So slight, yet so round, so trim, yet so pliant--she was grace itself. It seemed as if the former object of my admiration had vanished, and I had found another with such surpassing charms that the loss could not be regretted. I may just mention that the change appeared also to bring out a certain look of determination which I now recalled as having belonged to her when a child.

'Clara!' said her father, in a very marked tone; whereupon it was Clara's turn to blush and be silent.

I started some new subject, in the airiest manner I could command. Clara recovered her composure, and I flattered myself she looked a little grateful when our eyes met. But I caught her father's eyes twinkling now and then as if from some secret source of merriment, and could not help fancying he was more amused than displeased with his daughter.

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