Wilfrid Cumbermede. George MacDonald
brought me to myself. If he had shown me sympathy, I should have gone on crying.
‘I would rather not. Please box my ears.’
‘I don’t want to box your ears. You’re welcome to the apple. Only don’t take what’s not your own another time.’ ‘But, please, sir, I’m so miserable!’
‘Home with you! and eat your apple as you go,’ was his unconsoling response.
‘I can’t eat it; I’m so ashamed of myself.’
‘When people do wrong, I suppose they must be ashamed of themselves. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Why won’t you box my ears, then?’ I persisted.
It was my sole but unavailing prayer. He turned away towards the house. My trouble rose to agony. I made some wild motion of despair, and threw myself on the grass. He turned, looked at me for a moment in silence, and then said in a changed tone—
‘My boy, I am sorry for you. I beg you will not trouble yourself any more. The affair is not worth it. Such a trifle! What can I do for you?’
I got up. A new thought of possible relief had crossed my mind.
‘Please, sir, if you won’t box my ears, will you shake hands with me?’
‘To be sure I will,’ he answered, holding out his hand, and giving mine a very kindly shake. ‘Where do you live?’
‘I am at school at Aldwick, at Mr Elder’s.’
‘You’re a long way from home!’
‘Am I, sir? Will you tell me how to go? But it’s of no consequence. I don’t mind anything now you’ve forgiven me. I shall soon run home.’
‘Come with me first. You must have something to eat.’
I wanted nothing to eat, but how could I oppose anything he said? I followed him at once, drying my eyes as I went. He led me to a great gate which I had passed before, and opening a wicket, took me across a court, and through another building where I saw many servants going about; then across a second court, which was paved with large flags, and so to a door which he opened, calling—
‘Mrs Wilson! Mrs Wilson! I want you a moment.’
‘Yes, Sir Giles,’ answered a tall, stiff-looking elderly woman who presently appeared descending, with upright spine, a corkscrew staircase of stone.
‘Here is a young gentleman, Mrs Wilson, who seems to have lost his way. He is one of Mr Elder’s pupils at Aldwick. Will you get him something to eat and drink, and then send him home?’
‘I will, Sir Giles.’
‘Good-bye, my man,’ said Sir Giles, again shaking hands with me. Then turning anew to the housekeeper, for such I found she was, he added:
‘Couldn’t you find a bag for him, and fill it with some of those brown pippins? They’re good eating, ain’t they?’
‘With pleasure, Sir Giles.’
Thereupon Sir Giles withdrew, closing the door behind him, and leaving me with the sense of life from the dead.
‘What’s your name, young gentleman?’ asked Mrs Wilson, with, I thought, some degree of sternness.
‘Wilfrid Cumbermede,’ I answered.
She stared at me a little, with a stare which would have been a start in most women. I was by this time calm enough to take a quiet look at her. She was dressed in black silk, with a white neckerchief crossing in front, and black mittens on her hands. After gazing at me fixedly for a moment or two, she turned away and ascended the stair, which went up straight from the door, saying—
‘Come with me, Master Cumbermede. You must have some tea before you go.’
I obeyed, and followed her into a long, low-ceiled room, wainscotted all over in panels, with a square moulding at the top, which served for a cornice. The ceiling was ornamented with plaster reliefs. The windows looked out, on one side into the court, on the other upon the park. The floor was black and polished like a mirror, with bits of carpet here and there, and a rug before the curious, old-fashioned grate, where a little fire was burning and a small kettle boiling fiercely on the top of it. The tea-tray was already on the table. She got another cup and saucer, added a pot of jam to the preparations, and said:
‘Sit down and have some bread and butter, while I make the tea.’
She cut me a great piece of bread, and then a great piece of butter, and I lost no time in discovering that the quality was worthy of the quantity. Mrs Wilson kept a grave silence for a good while. At last, as she was pouring out the second cup, she looked at me over the teapot, and said—
‘You don’t remember your mother, I suppose, Master Cumbermede?’
‘No, ma’am. I never saw my mother.’
‘Within your recollection, you mean. But you must have seen her, for you were two years old when she died.’
‘Did you know my mother, then, ma’am?’ I asked, but without any great surprise, for the events of the day had been so much out of the ordinary that I had for the time almost lost the faculty of wonder.
She compressed her thin lips, and a perpendicular wrinkle appeared in the middle of her forehead, as she answered—
‘Yes; I knew your mother.’
‘She was very good, wasn’t she, ma’am?’ I said, with my mouth full of bread and butter.
‘Yes. Who told you that?’
‘I was sure of it. Nobody ever told me.’
‘Did they never talk to you about her?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘So you are at Mr Elder’s, are you?’ she said, after another long pause, during which I was not idle, for my trouble being gone I could now be hungry.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘How did you come here, then?’
‘I walked with the rest of the boys; but they are gone home without me.’
Thanks to the kindness of Sir Giles, my fault had already withdrawn so far into the past, that I wished to turn my back upon it altogether. I saw no need for confessing it to Mrs Wilson; and there was none.
‘Did you lose your way?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘What brought you here, then? I suppose you wanted to see the place.’
‘The woman at the lodge told us the nearest way was through the park.’
I quite expected she would go on cross-questioning me, and then all the truth would have had to come out. But to my great relief, she went no further, only kept eyeing me in a manner so oppressive as to compel me to eat bread and butter and strawberry jam with self-defensive eagerness. I presume she trusted to find out the truth by-and-by. She contented herself in the mean time with asking questions about my uncle and aunt, the farm, the school, and Mr and Mrs Elder, all in a cold, stately, refraining manner, with two spots of red in her face—one on each cheek-bone, and a thin rather peevish nose dividing them. But her forehead was good, and when she smiled, which was not often, her eyes shone. Still, even I, with my small knowledge of womankind, was dimly aware that she was feeling her way with me, and I did not like her much.
‘Have you nearly done?’ she asked at length.
‘Yes, quite, thank you,’ I answered.
‘Are you going back to school to-night?’
‘Yes, ma’am; of course.’
‘How are you going?’
‘If you will tell me the way—’
‘Do you know how far you are from Aldwick?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Eight miles,’ she answered; ‘and it’s getting rather late.’
I