Wilfrid Cumbermede Part 68

'Were they so very ponderous, do you think? But in truth I have little ambition of that sort. All I will readily confess to is a strong desire not to shirk what work falls to my share in the world.'

'Yes,' he said, in a thoughtful manner--'if one only knew what his share of the work was.'

The remark was unexpected, and I began to feel a little more interest in him.

'Hadn't you better take a copy of that entry?' he said.

'Yes--perhaps I had. But I have no materials.'

It did not strike me that attorneys do not usually, like excise-men, carry about an ink-bottle, when he drew one from the breast-pocket of his coat, along with a folded sheet of writing-paper, which he opened and spread out on the desk. I took the pen he offered me, and copied the entry.

When I had finished, he said--

'Leave room under it for the attestation of the parson. We can get that another time, if necessary. Then write, "Copied by me"--and then your name and the date. It may be useful some time. Take it home and lay it with your grandmother's papers.'

'There can be no harm in that,' I said, as I folded it up, and put it in my pocket. 'I am greatly obliged to you for bringing me here, Mr Coningham. Though I am not ambitious of restoring the family to a grandeur of which every record has departed, I am quite sufficiently interested in its history, and shall consequently take care of this doc.u.ment.'

'Mind you read your grandmother's papers, though,' he said.

'I will,' I answered.

He replaced the volume on the shelf, and we left the church; he locked the door and replaced the key under the gravestone; we mounted our horses, and after riding with me about half the way to the Moat, he took his leave at a point where our roads, diverged. I resolved to devote that very evening, partly in the hope of distracting my thoughts, to the reading of my grandmother's letters.

CHAPTER XLVI.

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 a.s.sured 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 t.i.tle-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 un.o.bjectionable.'

'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 a.s.surance that the volume was equally irrecoverable with the sword, and indeed with my poor character--at least, in the eyes of my immediate neighbours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I SAT DOWN AGAIN BY THE FIRE TO READ, IN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER'S CHAIR.]