Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 2

How long I sat thus gazing at the now self-impelled instrument, I cannot say. The next point in the progress of the legend, is a gust of wind rattling the window in whose recess I was seated. I jumped from my chair in terror. While I had been absorbed in the pendulum, the evening had closed in; clouds had gathered over the sky, and all was gloomy about the house. It was much too dark to see the distant trees, but there could be no doubt they were at work. The pendulum had roused them. Another, a third, and a fourth gust rattled and shook the rickety frame. I had done it at last! The trees were busy away there in the darkness. I and my pendulum could make the wind.

The gusts came faster and faster, and grew into blasts which settled into a steady gale. The pendulum went on swinging to and fro, and the gale went on increasing in violence. I sat half in terror, half in delight, at the awful success of my experiment. I would have opened the window to let in the coveted air, but that was beyond my knowledge and strength. I could make the wind blow, but, like other magicians, I could not share in its benefits. I would go out and meet it on the open plain. I crept down the stair like a thief--not that I feared detention, but that I felt such a sense of the important, even the dread, about myself and my instrument, that I was not in harmony with souls reflecting only the common affairs of life. In a moment I was in the middle of a storm--for storm it very nearly was and soon became. I rushed to and fro in the midst of it, lay down and rolled in it, and laughed and shouted as I looked up to the window where the pendulum was swinging, and thought of the trees at work away in the dark. The wind grew stronger and stronger. What if the pendulum should not stop at all, and the wind went on and on, growing louder and fiercer, till it grew mad and blew away the house? Ah, then, poor grannie would have a chance of being buried at last! Seriously, the affair might grow serious.

Such thoughts were pa.s.sing in my mind, when all at once the wind gave a roar which made me spring to my feet and rush for the house. I must stop the pendulum. There was a strange sound in that blast. The trees themselves had had enough of it, and were protesting against the creature's tyranny. Their master was working them too hard. I ran up the stair on all fours: it was my way when I was in a hurry. Swinging went the pendulum in the window, and the wind roared in the chimney. I seized hold of the oscillating thing, and stopped it; but to my amaze and consternation, the moment I released it, on it went again. I must sit and hold it. But the voice of my aunt called me from below, and as I dared not explain why I would rather not appear, I was forced to obey. I lingered on the stair, half minded to return.

'What a rough night it is!' I heard my aunt say, with rare remark.

'It gets worse and worse,' responded my uncle. 'I hope it won't disturb grannie; but the wind must roar fearfully in her chimney.'

I stood like a culprit. What if they should find out that I was at the root of the mischief, at the heart of the storm!

'If I could believe all that I have been reading to-night about the Prince of the Power of the Air, I should not like this storm at all,'

continued my uncle, with a smile. 'But books are not always to be trusted because they are old,' he added with another smile. 'From the gla.s.s, I expected rain and not wind.'

'Whatever wind there is, we get it all,' said my aunt. 'I wonder what Willie is about. I thought I heard him coming down. Isn't it time, David, we did something about his schooling? It won't do to have him idling about this way all day long.'

'He's a mere child,' returned my uncle. 'I'm not forgetting him. But I can't send him away yet.'

'You know best,' returned my aunt.

_Send me away!_ What could it mean? Why should I--where should I go?

Was not the old place a part of me, just like my own clothes on my own body? This was the kind of feeling that woke in me at the words. But hearing my aunt push back her chair, evidently with the purpose of finding me, I descended into the room.

'Come along, Willie,' said my uncle. 'Hear the wind how it roars!'

'Yes, uncle; it does roar,' I said, feeling a hypocrite for the first time in my life. Knowing far more about the roaring than he did, I yet spoke like an innocent!

'Do you know who makes the wind, Willie?'

'Yes. The trees,' I answered.

My uncle opened his blue eyes very wide, and looked at my aunt. He had had no idea what a little heathen I was. The more a man has wrought out his own mental condition, the readier he is to suppose that children must be able to work out theirs, and to forget that he did not work out his information, but only his conclusions. My uncle began to think it was time to take me in hand.

'No, Willie,' he said. 'I must teach you better than that.'

I expected him to begin by telling me that G.o.d made the wind; but, whether it was that what the old book said about the Prince of the Power of the Air returned upon him, or that he thought it an unfitting occasion for such a lesson when the wind was roaring so as might render its divine origin questionable, he said no more. Bewildered, I fancy, with my ignorance, he turned, after a pause, to my aunt.

'Don't you think it's time for him to go to bed, Jane?' he suggested.

My aunt replied by getting from the cupboard my usual supper--a basin of milk and a slice of bread; which I ate with less circ.u.mspection than usual, for I was eager to return to my room. As soon as I had finished, Nannie was called, and I bade them good-night.

'Make haste, Nannie,' I said. 'Don't you hear how the wind is roaring?'

It was roaring louder than ever, and there was the pendulum swinging away in the window. Nannie took no notice of it, and, I presume, only thought I wanted to get my head under the bed-clothes, and so escape the sound of it. Anyhow, she did make haste, and in a very few minutes I was, as she supposed, snugly settled for the night. But the moment she shut the door I was out of bed, and at the window. The instant I reached it, a great dash of rain swept against the panes, and the wind howled more fiercely than ever. Believing I had the key of the position, inasmuch as, if I pleased, I could take the pendulum to bed with me, and stifle its motions with the bed-clothes--for this happy idea had dawned upon me while Nannie was undressing me--I was composed enough now to press my face to a pane, and look out. There was a small s.p.a.ce amidst the storm dimly illuminated from the windows below, and the moment I looked--out of the darkness into this dim s.p.a.ce, as if blown thither by the wind, rushed a figure on horseback, his large cloak flying out before him, and the mane of the animal he rode streaming out over his ears in the fierceness of the blast. He pulled up right under my window, and I thought he looked up, and made threatening gestures at me; but I believe now that horse and man pulled up in sudden danger of dashing against the wall of the house. I shrank back, and when I peeped out again he was gone. The same moment the pendulum gave a click and stopped; one more rattle of rain against the windows, and then the wind stopped also. I crept back to my bed in a new terror, for might not this be the Prince of the Power of the Air, come to see who was meddling with his affairs? Had he not come right out of the storm, and straight from the trees? He must have something to do with it all! Before I had settled the probabilities of the question, however, I was fast asleep.

I awoke--how long after, I cannot tell--with the sound of voices in my ears. It was still dark. The voices came from below. I had been dreaming of the strange horseman, who had turned out to be the awful being concerning whom Nannie had enlightened me as going about at night to buy little children from their nurses, and make bagpipes of their skins. Awaked from such a dream, it was impossible to lie still without knowing what those voices down below were talking about. The strange one must belong to the being, whatever he was, whom I had seen come out of the storm; and of whom could they be talking but me? I was right in both conclusions.

With a fearful resolution I slipped out of bed, opened the door as noiselessly as I might, and crept on my bare, silent feet down the creaking stair, which led, with open bal.u.s.trade, right into the kitchen, at the end furthest from the chimney. The one candle at the other end could not illuminate its darkness, and I sat unseen, a few steps from the bottom of the stair, listening with all my ears, and staring with all my eyes. The stranger's huge cloak hung drying before the fire, and he was drinking something out of a tumbler. The light fell full upon his face. It was a curious, and certainly not to me an attractive face. The forehead was very projecting, and the eyes were very small, deep set, and sparkling. The mouth--I had almost said muzzle--was very projecting likewise, and the lower jaw shot in front of the upper. When the man smiled the light was reflected from what seemed to my eyes an inordinate mult.i.tude of white teeth. His ears were narrow and long, and set very high upon his head. The hand which he every now and then displayed in the exigencies of his persuasion, was white, but very large, and the thumb was exceedingly long. I had weighty reasons for both suspecting and fearing the man; and, leaving my prejudices out of the question, there was in the conversation itself enough besides to make me take note of dangerous points in his appearance. I never could lay much claim to physical courage, and I attribute my behaviour on this occasion rather to the fascination of terror than to any impulse of self-preservation: I sat there in utter silence, listening like an ear-trumpet. The first words I could distinguish were to this effect:--

'You do not mean,' said the enemy, 'to tell me, Mr c.u.mbermede, that you intend to bring up the young fellow in absolute ignorance of the decrees of fate?'

'I pledge myself to nothing in the matter,' returned my uncle, calmly, but with something in his tone which was new to me.

'Good heavens!' exclaimed the other. 'Excuse me, sir, but what right can you have to interfere after such a serious fashion with the young gentleman's future?'

'It seems to me,' said my uncle, 'that you wish to interfere with it after a much more serious fashion. There are things in which ignorance may be preferable to knowledge.'

'But what harm could the knowledge of such a fact do him?'

'Upset all his notions, render him incapable of thinking about anything of importance, occasion an utter--'

But _can_ anything be more important?' interrupted the visitor.

My uncle went on without heeding him.

'Plunge him over head and ears in--'

'Hot water, I grant you,' again interrupted the enemy, to my horror; 'but it wouldn't be for long. Only give me your sanction, and I promise you to have the case as tight as a drum before I ask you to move a step in it.'

'But why should you take so much interest in what is purely our affair?' asked my uncle.

'Why, of course you would have to pay the piper,' said the man.

This was too much! _Pay_ the man that played upon me after I was made into bagpipes! The idea was too frightful.

'I must look out for business, you know; and, by Jove! I shall never have such a chance, if I live to the age of Methuselah.'

'Well, you shall not have it from me.'

'Then,' said the man, rising, 'you are more of a fool than I took you for.'

'Sir!' said my uncle.

'No offence; no offence, I a.s.sure you. But it is provoking to find people so blind--so wilfully blind--to their own interest. You may say I have nothing to lose. Give me the boy, and I'll bring him up like my own son; send him to school and college, too--all on the chance of being repaid twice over by--'

I knew this was all a trick to get hold of my skin. The man said it on his way to the door, his ape-face shining dim as he turned it a little back in the direction of my uncle, who followed with the candle. I lost the last part of the sentence in the terror which sent me bounding up the stair in my usual four-footed fashion. I leaped into my bed, shaking with cold and agony combined. But I had the satisfaction presently of hearing the _thud_ of the horse's hoofs upon the sward, dying away in the direction whence they had come. After that I soon fell asleep.

I need hardly say that I never set the pendulum swinging again. Many years after, I came upon it when searching for a key, and the thrill which vibrated through my whole frame announced a strange and unwelcome presence long before my memory could recall its origin.

It must not be supposed that I pretend to remember all the conversation I have just set down. The words are but the forms in which, enlightened by facts which have since come to my knowledge, I clothe certain vague memories and impressions of such an interview as certainly took place.

In the morning, at breakfast, my aunt asked my uncle who it was that paid such an untimely visit the preceding night.

'A fellow from Minstercombe' (the county town), 'an attorney--what did he say his name was? Yes, I remember. It was the same as the steward's over the way. Coningham, it was.'

'Mr Coningham has a son there--an attorney too, I think,' said my aunt.

My uncle seemed struck by the reminder, and became meditative.