CHAPTER XLV.
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:
'MARRIAGES, 1748.
'Mr Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll, of the Parish of [----] second son of
Sir Richard Daryll of Moldwarp Hall in the County of [----] and
Mistress Elizabeth Woodruffe were married by a license Jan. 15.'
'I don't know the name of Daryll,' I said.
'It was your own great-grandfather's name,' he returned. 'I happen to
know that much.'
'You knew this was here, Mr Coningham,' I said. 'That is why you
brought me here.'
'You are right. I did know it. Was I wrong in thinking it would
interest you?'
'Certainly not. I am obliged to you. But why this mystery? Why not have
told me what you wanted me to go for?'
'I will why you in turn. Why should I have wanted to show you now more
than any other time what I have known for as many years almost as you
have lived? You spoke of a ride--why shouldn't I give a direction to it
that might pay you for your trouble? And why shouldn't I have a little
amusement out of it if I pleased? Why shouldn't I enjoy your surprise
at finding in a place you had hardly heard of, and would certainly
count most uninteresting, the record of a fact that concerned your own
existence so nearly? There!'
'I confess it interests me more than you will easily think--inasmuch as
it seems to offer to account for things that have greatly puzzled me
for some time. I have of late met with several hints of a connection at
one time or other between the Moat and the Hall, but these hints were
so isolated that I could weave no theory to connect them. Now I dare
say they will clear themselves up.'
'Not a doubt of-that, if you set about it in earnest.'
'How did he come to drop his surname?'
'That has to be accounted for.'
'It follows--does it not?--that I am of the same blood as the present
possessors of Moldwarp Hall?'
'You are--but the relation is not a close one,' said Mr Coningham.
'Sir Giles was but distantly related to the stock of which you come.'
'Then--but I must turn it over in my mind. I am rather in a maze.'
'You have got some papers at the Moat?' he said--interrogatively.
'Yes; my friend Osborne has been looking over them. He found out this
much--that there was once some connection between the Moat and the
Hall, but at a far earlier date than this points to, or any of the
hints to which I just now referred. The other day, when I dined at Sir
Giles's, Mr Alderforge said that Cumbermede was a name belonging to Sir
Giles's ancestry--or something to that effect; but that again could
have had nothing to do with those papers, or with the Moat at all.'
Here I stopped, for I could not bring myself to refer to the sword. It
was not merely that the subject was too painful: of all things I did
not want to be cross-questioned by my lawyer-companion.
'It is not amongst those you will find anything of importance, I
suspect. Did your great-grandmother--the same, no doubt, whose marriage
is here registered--leave no letters or papers behind her?'
'I've come upon a few letters. I don't know if there is anything more.'
'You haven't read them, apparently.'
'I have not. I've been always going to read them, but I haven't opened
one of them yet.'
'Then I recommend you--that is, if you care for an interesting piece of
family history--to read those letters carefully, that is
constructively.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean--putting two and two together, and seeing what comes of it;
trying to make everything fit into one, you know.'
'Yes. I understand you. But how do you happen to know that those
letters contain a history, or that it will prove interesting when I
have found it?'
'All family history ought to be interesting--at least to the last of
his race,' he returned, replying only to the latter half of my
question.' It must, for one thing, make him feel his duty to his
ancestors more strongly.'
'His duty to marry, I suppose you mean?' I said with some inward
bitterness. 'But to tell the truth, I don't think the inheritance worth
it in my case.'
'It might be better,' he said, with an expression which seemed odd
beside the simplicity of the words.
'Ah! you think then to urge me to make money; and for the sake of my
dead ancestors increase the inheritance of those that may come after
me? But I believe I am already as diligent as is good for me--that is,
in the main, for I have been losing time of late.'
'I meant no such thing, Mr Cumbermede. I should be very doubtful
whether any amount of success in literature would enable you to restore
the fortunes of your family.'
'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
document.'
'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.
