Chapter 37. The Old Chest

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_ CHAPTER XXXVII. THE OLD CHEST

I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the scene, although it is not of the slightest consequence to my story, when Sir Giles and Lady Brotherton entered the reading-room of the resuscitated library of Moldwarp Hall. It was a bright day of Autumn. Outside all was brilliant. The latticed oriel looked over the lawn and the park, where the trees had begun to gather those rich hues which could hardly be the heralds of death if it were the ugly thing it appears. Beyond the fading woods rose a line of blue heights meeting the more ethereal blue of the sky, now faded to a colder and paler tint. The dappled skins of the fallow deer glimmered through the trees, and the whiter ones among them cast a light round them in the shadows. Through the trees that on one side descended to the meadow below, came the shine of the water where the little brook had spread into still pools. All without was bright with sunshine and clear air. But when you turned, all was dark, sombre, and rich, like an Autumn ten times faded. Through the open door of the next room on one side, you saw the shelves full of books, and from beyond, through the narrow uplifted door, came the glimmer of the weapons on the wall of the little armoury. Two ancient tapestry-covered settees, in which the ravages of moth and worm had been met by a skilful repair of chisel and needle, a heavy table of oak, with carved sides as black as ebony, and a few old, straight-backed chairs, were the sole furniture.

Sir Giles expressed much pleasure, and Lady Brotherton, beginning to enter a little into my plans, was more gracious than hitherto.

'We must give a party as soon as you have finished, Mr Cumbermede,' she said; 'and--'

'That will be some time yet,' I interrupted, not desiring the invitation she seemed about to force herself to utter; 'and I fear there are not many in this neighbourhood who will appreciate the rarity and value of the library--if the other rooms should turn out as rich as that one.'

'I believe old books _are_ expensive now-a-days,' she returned. 'They are more sought after, I understand.'

We resumed our work with fresh vigour, and got on faster. Both Clara and Mary were assiduous in their help.

To go back for a little to my own old chest--we found it, as I said, full of musty papers. After turning over a few, seeming, to my uneducated eye, deeds and wills and such like, out of which it was evident I could gather no barest meaning without a labour I was not inclined to expend on them--for I had no pleasure in such details as involved nothing of the picturesque--I threw the one in my hand upon the heap already taken from the box, and to the indignation of Charley, who was absorbed in one of them, and had not spoken a word for at least a quarter of an hour, exclaimed--

'Come, Charley; I'm sick of the rubbish. Let's go and have a walk before supper.'

'Rubbish!' he repeated; 'I am ashamed of you!'

'I see Clara has been setting you on. I wonder what she's got in her head. I am sure I have quite a sufficient regard for family history and all that.'

'Very like it!' said Charley--'calling such a chestful as this rubbish!'

'I am pleased enough to possess it,' I said; 'but if they had been such books as some of those at the Hall--'

'Look here, then,' he said, stooping over the chest, and with some difficulty hauling out a great folio which he had discovered below, but had not yet examined--'just see what you can make of that.'

I opened the title-page rather eagerly. I stared. Could I believe my eyes? First of all on the top of it, in the neatest old hand, was written--'Guilfrid Combremead His Boke. 1630.' Then followed what I will not write, lest this MS. should by any accident fall into the hands of book-hunters before my death. I jumped to my feet, gave a shout that brought Charley to his feet also, and danced about the empty room hugging the folio. 'Have you lost your senses?' said Charley; but when he had a peep at the title-page, he became as much excited as myself, and it was some time before he could settle down to the papers again. Like a bee over a flower-bed, I went dipping and sipping at my treasure. Every word of the well-known lines bore a flavour of ancient verity such as I had never before perceived in them. At length I looked up, and finding him as much absorbed as I had been myself--

'Well, Charley, what are you finding there?' I asked.

'Proof perhaps that you come of an older family than you think,' he answered; 'proof certainly that some part at least of the Moldwarp property was at one time joined to the Moat, and that you are of the same stock, a branch of which was afterwards raised to the present baronetage. At least I have little doubt such is the case, though I can hardly say I am yet prepared to prove it.'

'You don't mean I'm of the same blood as--as Geoffrey Brotherton!' I said. 'I would rather not, if it's the same to you, Charley.'

'I can't help it: that's the way things point,' he answered, throwing down the parchment. 'But I can't read more now. Let's go and have a walk. I'll stop at home to-morrow and take a look over the whole set.'

'I'll stop with you.'

[Illustration: "Well. Charley. What are you finding there?" I asked.]

'No, you won't. You'll go and get on with your library. I shall do better alone. If I could only get a peep at the Moldwarp chest as well!'

'But the place may have been bought and sold many times. Just look here, though,' I said, as I showed him the crest on my watch and seal. 'Mind you look at the top of your spoon the next time you eat soup at the Hall.'

'That is unnecessary, quite. I recognise the crest at once. How strangely these cryptographs come drifting along the tide, like the gilded ornaments of a wreck after the hull has gone down!'

'Or, like the mole or squint that re-appears in successive generations, the legacy of some long-forgotten ancestor,' I said--and several things unexplained occurred to me as possibly having a common solution.

'I find, however,' said Charley, 'that the name of Cumbermede is not mentioned in your papers more than about a hundred years back--as far as I have yet made out.'

'That is odd,' I returned, 'seeing that in the same chest we find that book with my name, surname and Christian, and the date 1630.'

'It is strange,' he acquiesced, 'and will perhaps require a somewhat complicated theory to meet it.'

We began to talk of other matters, and, naturally enough, soon came to Clara.

Charley was never ready to talk of her--indeed, avoided the subject in a way that continued to perplex me.

'I confess to you, Charley,' I said, 'there is something about her I do not and cannot understand. It seems to me always as if she were--I will not say underhand--but as if she had some object in view--some design upon you--'

'Upon me!' exclaimed Charley, looking at me suddenly and with a face from which all the colour had fled.

'No, no, Charley, not that,' I answered, laughing. 'I used the word impersonally. I will be more cautious. One would think we had been talking about a witch--or a demon-lady--you are so frightened at the notion of her having you in her eye.'

He did not seem altogether relieved, and I caught an uneasy glance seeking my countenance.

'But isn't she charming?' I went on. 'It is only to you I could talk about her so. And after all it may be only a fancy.'

He kept his face downwards and aside, as if he were pondering and coming to no conclusion. The silence grew and grew until expectation ceased, and when I spoke again it was of something different.

My reader may be certain from all this that I was not in love with Clara. Her beauty and liveliness, with a gaiety which not seldom assumed the form of grace, attracted me much, it is true; but nothing interferes more with the growth of any passion than a spirit of questioning, and, that once roused, love begins to cease and pass into pain. Few, perhaps, could have arrived at the point of admiration I had reached without falling instantly therefrom into an abyss of absorbing passion; but with me, inasmuch as I searched every feeling in the hope of finding in it the everlasting, there was in the present case a reiterated check, if not indeed recoil; for I was not and could not make myself sure that Clara was upright;--perhaps the more commonplace word _straightforward_ would express my meaning better.

Anxious to get the books arranged before they all left me, for I knew I should have but little heart for it after they were gone, I grudged Charley the forenoon he wanted amongst my papers, and prevailed upon him to go with me the next day as usual. Another fortnight, which was almost the limit of their stay, would, I thought, suffice; and giving up everything else, Charley and I worked from morning till night, with much though desultory assistance from the ladies. I contrived to keep the carpenter and housemaid in work, and by the end of the week began to see the inroads of order 'scattering the rear of darkness thin.' _

Read next: Chapter 38. Mary Osborne

Read previous: Chapter 36. Tapestry

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