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UMBERDEN CHURCH.
My companion chatted away, lauded my mare, asked if I had seen Clara
lately, and how the library was getting on. I answered him carelessly,
without even a hint at my troubles.
'You seem out of spirits, Mr Cumbermede?' he said. 'You've been taking
too little exercise. Let's have a canter. It will do you good. Here's a
nice bit of sward.'
I was only too ready to embrace the excuse for dropping a conversation
towards which I was unable to contribute my share.
Having reached a small roadside inn, we gave our horses a little
refreshment; after which, crossing a field or two by jumping the
stiles, we entered the loveliest lane I had ever seen. It was so narrow
that there was just room for horses to pass each other, and covered
with the greenest sward rarely trodden. It ran through the midst of a
wilderness of tall hazels. They stood up on both sides of it, straight
and trim as walls, high above our heads as we sat on our horses; and
the lane was so serpentine that we could never see further than a few
yards ahead; while, towards the end, it kept turning so much in one
direction that we seemed to be following the circumference of a little
circle. It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to
which we tied our horses before entering the churchyard. But instead of
a neat burial-place, which the whole approach would have given us to
expect, we found a desert. The grass was of extraordinary coarseness,
and mingled with quantities of vile-looking weeds. Several of the
graves had not even a spot of green upon them, but were mere heaps of
yellow earth in huge lumps, mixed with large stones. There was not
above a score of graves in the whole place, two or three of which only
had gravestones on them. One lay open, with the rough yellow lumps all
about it, and completed the desolation. The church was nearly
square--small, but shapeless, with but four latticed windows, two on
one side, one in the other, and the fourth in the east end. It was
built partly of bricks and partly of flint stones, the walls bowed and
bent, and the roof waved and broken. Its old age had gathered none of
the graces of age to soften its natural ugliness, or elevate its
insignificance. Except a few lichens, there was not a mark of
vegetation about it. Not a single ivy leaf grew on its spotted and
wasted walls. It gave a hopeless, pagan expression to the whole
landscape--for it stood on a rising ground, from which we had an
extensive prospect of height and hollow, cornfield and pasture and
wood, away to the dim blue horizon.
'You don't find it enlivening, do you--eh?' said my companion.
'I never saw such a frightfully desolate spot,' I said, 'to have yet
the appearance of a place of Christian worship. It looks as if there
were a curse upon it. Are all those the graves of suicides and
murderers? It cannot surely be consecrated ground?'
'It's not nice,' he said. 'I didn't expect you to like it. I only said
it was odd.'
'Is there any service held in it?' I asked.
'Yes--once a fortnight or so. The rector has another living a few miles
off.'
'Where can the congregation come from?'
'Hardly from anywhere. There ain't generally more than five or six, I
believe. Let's have a look at the inside of it.'
'The windows are much too high, and no foothold.'
'We'll go in.'
'Where can you get the key? It must be a mile off at least, by your own
account. There's no house nearer than that, you say.'
He made me no reply, but going to the only flat gravestone, which stood
on short thick pillars, he put his hand beneath it, and drew out a
great rusty key.
'Country lawyers know a secret or two,' he said.
'Not always much worth knowing,' I rejoined,--'if the inside be no
better than the outside.'
'We'll have a look, anyhow,' he said, as he turned the key in the dry
lock.
The door snarled on its hinges, and disclosed a space drearier
certainly, and if possible uglier, than its promise.
'Really, Mr Coningham,' I said, 'I don't see why you should have
brought me to look at this place.'
'It answered for a bait, at all events. You've had a good long ride,
which was the best thing for you. Look what a wretched little vestry
that is!'
It was but a corner of the east end, divided off by a faded red
curtain.
'I suppose they keep a parish register here,' he said. 'Let us have a
look.'
Behind the curtain hung a dirty surplice and a gown. In the corner
stood a desk like the schoolmaster's in a village school. There was a
shelf with a few vellum-bound books on it, and nothing else, not even a
chair in the place.
'Yes; there they are!' he said, as he took down one of the volumes from
the shelf. 'This one comes to a close in the middle of the last
century. I dare say there is something in this, now, that would be
interesting enough to somebody. Who knows how many properties it might
make change hands?'
'Not many, I should think. Those matters are pretty well seen to now.'
[Illustration: "COUNTRY LAWYERS KNOW A SECRET OR TWO," HE SAID.]
'By some one or other--not always the rightful heirs. Life is full of
the strangest facts, Mr Cumbermede. If I were a novelist, now, like
you, my experience would make me dare a good deal more in the way of
invention than any novelist I happen to have read. Look there, for
instance.'
He pointed to the top of the last page, or rather the last half of the
cover. I read as follows:
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