I feel as if I could. But I'm not, you see--and never shall be. I'm selfish, and ill-tempered, and--'

'Charley! Charley! There never was a less selfish or better-tempered fellow in the world.'

'Don't make me believe that, Wilfrid, or I shall hate the world as well as myself. It's all my hypocrisy makes you think so. Because I am ashamed of what I am, and manage to hide it pretty well, you think me a saint. That is heaping d.a.m.nation on me.'

'Take a pipe, Charley, and shut up. That's rubbish!' I said. I doubt much if it was what I ought to have said, but I was alarmed for the consequences of such brooding. 'I wonder what the world would be like if every one considered himself acting up to his own ideal!'

'If he was acting so, then it would do the world no harm that he knew it.'

'But his ideal must then be a low one, and that would do himself and everybody the worst kind of harm. The greatest men have always thought the least of themselves.'

'Yes, but that was because they _were_ the greatest. A man may think little of himself just for the reason that he _is_ little, and can't help knowing it.'

'Then it's a mercy he does know it! for most small people think much of themselves.'

'But to know it--and to feel all the time you ought to be and could be something very different, and yet never get a step nearer it! That is to be miserable. Still it is a mercy to know it. There is always a last help.'

I mistook what he meant, and thought it well to say no more. After smoking a pipe or two, he was quieter, and left me with a merry remark.

One lovely evening in Spring, I looked from my bed-room window, and saw the red sunset burning in the thin branches of the solitary poplar that graced the few feet of garden behind the house. It drew me out to the park, where the trees were all in young leaf, each with its shadow stretching away from its foot, like its longing to reach its kind across dividing s.p.a.ce. The gra.s.s was like my own gra.s.s at home, and I went wandering over it in all the joy of the new Spring, which comes every year to our hearts as well as to their picture outside. The workmen were at that time busy about the unfinished botanical gardens, and I wandered thitherward, lingering about, and pondering and inventing, until the sun was long withdrawn, and the shades of night had grown very brown.

I was at length sauntering slowly home to put a few finishing touches to a paper I had been at work upon all day, when something about a young couple in front of me attracted my attention. They were walking arm in arm, talking eagerly, but so low that I heard only a murmur. I did not quicken my pace, yet was gradually gaining upon them, when suddenly the conviction started up in my mind that the gentleman was Charley. I could not mistake his back, or the stoop of his shoulders as he bent towards his companion. I was so certain of him that I turned at once from the road, and wandered away across the gra.s.s: if he did not choose to tell me about the lady, I had no right to know. But I confess to a strange trouble that he had left me out. I comforted myself, however, with the thought that perhaps when we next met he would explain, or at least break, the silence.

After about an hour, he entered, in an excited mood, merry but uncomfortable. I tried to behave as if I knew nothing, but could not help feeling much disappointed when he left me without a word of his having had a second reason for being in the neighbourhood.

What effect the occurrence might have had, whether the cobweb veil of which I was now aware between us would have thickened to opacity or not, I cannot tell. I dare not imagine that it might. I rather hope that by degrees my love would have got the victory, and melted it away.

But now came a cloud which swallowed every other in my firmament. The next morning brought a letter from my aunt, telling me that my uncle had had a stroke, as she called it, and at that moment was lying insensible. I put my affairs in order at once, and Charley saw me away by the afternoon coach.

It was a dreary journey. I loved my uncle with perfect confidence and profound veneration, a result of the faithful and open simplicity with which he had always behaved towards me. If he were taken away, and already he might be gone, I should be lonely indeed, for on whom besides could I depend with anything like the trust which I reposed in him? For, conceitedly or not, I had always felt that Charley rather depended on me--that I had rather to take care of him than to look for counsel from him.

The weary miles rolled away. Early in the morning we reached Minstercombe. There I got a carriage, and at once continued my journey.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHANGES.

I met no one at the house-door, or in the kitchen, and walked straight up the stair to my uncle's room. The blinds were down, and the curtains were drawn, and I could but just see the figure of my aunt seated beside the bed. She rose, and, without a word of greeting, made way for me to approach the form which lay upon it stretched out straight and motionless. The conviction that I was in the presence of death seized me; but instead of the wretchedness of heart and soul which I had expected to follow the loss of my uncle, a something deeper than any will of my own a.s.serted itself, and as it were took the matter from me.

It was as if my soul avoided the sorrow of separation by breaking with the world of material things, a.s.serting the shadowy nature of all the visible, and choosing its part with the something which had pa.s.sed away. It was as if my deeper self said to my outer consciousness: 'I too am of the dead--one with them, whether they live or are no more.

For a little while I am shut out from them, and surrounded with things that seem: let me gaze on the picture while it lasts; dream or no dream, let me live in it according to its laws, and await what will come next; if an awaking, it is well: if only a perfect because dreamless sleep, I shall not be able to lament the endless separation--but while I know myself, I will hope for something better.'

Like this, at least, was the blossom into which, under my after-brooding, the bud of that feeling broke.

I laid my hand upon my uncle's forehead. It was icy cold, just like my grannie's when my aunt had made me touch it. And I knew that my uncle was gone, that the slow tide of the eternal ocean had risen while he lay motionless within the wash of its waves, and had floated him away from the sh.o.r.e of our world. I took the hand of my aunt, who stood like a statue behind me, and led her from the room.

'He is gone, aunt,' I said, as calmly as I could.

She made no reply, but gently withdrew her hand from mine, and returned into the chamber. I stood a few moments irresolute, but reverence for her sorrow prevailed, and I went down the stair and seated myself by the fire. There the servant told me that my uncle had never moved since they laid him in his bed. Soon after the doctor arrived, and went up-stairs; but returned in a few minutes, only to affirm the fact. I went again to the room, and found my aunt lying with her face on the bosom of the dead man. She allowed me to draw her away, but when I would have led her down, she turned aside and sought her own chamber, where she remained for the rest of the day.

I will not linger over that miserable time. Greatly as I revered my uncle, I was not prepared to find how much he had been respected, and was astonished at the number of faces I had never seen which followed to the churchyard. Amongst them were the Coninghams, father and son; but except by a friendly grasp of the hand, and a few words of condolence, neither interrupted the calm depression rather than grief in which I found myself. When I returned home, there was with my aunt a married sister, whom I had never seen before. Up to this time she had shown an arid despair, and been regardless of everything about her; but now she was in tears. I left them together, and wandered for hours up and down the lonely playground of my childhood, thinking of many things--most of all, how strange it was that, if there were a _hereafter_ for us, we should know positively nothing concerning it; that not a whisper should cross the invisible line; that the something which had looked from its windows so lovingly should have in a moment withdrawn, by some back-way unknown either to itself or us, into a region of which all we can tell is that thence no prayers and no tears will entice it to lift for an instant again the fallen curtain, and look out once more. Why should not G.o.d, I thought, if a G.o.d there be, permit one single return to each, that so the friends left behind in the dark might be sure that death was not the end, and so live in the world as not of the world?

[Ill.u.s.tration: I went again to the room, and found my aunt lying with her face on the bosom of the dead man]

When I re-entered, I found my aunt looking a little cheerful. She was even having something to eat with her sister--an elderly country-looking woman, the wife of a farmer in a distant shire. Their talk had led them back to old times, to their parents and the friends of their childhood; and the memory of the long dead had comforted her a little over the recent loss; for all true hearts death is a uniting, not a dividing power.

'I suppose you will be going back to London, Wilfrid?' said my aunt, who had already been persuaded to pay her sister a visit.

'I think I had better,' I answered. 'When I have a chance of publishing a book, I should like to come and write it, or at least finish it, here, if you will let me.'

'The place is your own, Wilfrid. Of course I shall be very glad to have you here.'

'The place is yours as much as mine, aunt,' I replied. 'I can't bear to think that my uncle has no right over it still. I believe he has, and therefore it is yours just the same--not to mention my own wishes in the matter.'

She made no reply, and I saw that both she and her sister were shocked either at my mentioning the dead man, or at my supposing he had any earthly rights left. The next day they set out together, leaving in the house the wife of the head man at the farm, to attend to me until I should return to town. I had purposed to set out the following morning, but I found myself enjoying so much the undisturbed possession of the place, that I remained there for ten days; and when I went, it was with the intention of making it my home as soon as I might: I had grown enamoured of the solitude so congenial to labour. Before I left I arranged my uncle's papers, and in doing so found several early sketches which satisfied me that he might have distinguished himself in literature if his fate had led him thitherward.

Having given the house in charge to my aunt's deputy, Mrs Herbert, I at length returned to my lodging in Camden Town. There I found two letters waiting me, the one announcing the serious illness of my aunt, and the other her death. The latter was two days old. I wrote to express my sorrow, and excuse my apparent neglect, and having made a long journey to see her also laid in the earth, I returned to my old home, in order to make fresh arrangements.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

PROPOSALS.

Mrs Herbert attended me during the forenoon, but left me after my early dinner. I made my tea for myself, and a tankard filled from a barrel of ale of my uncle's brewing, with a piece of bread and cheese, was my unvarying supper. The first night I felt very lonely, almost indeed what the Scotch call _eerie_. The place, although inseparably interwoven with my earliest recollections, drew back and stood apart from me--a thing to be thought about; and, in the ancient house, amidst the lonely field, I felt like a ghost condemned to return and live the vanished time over again. I had had a fire lighted in my own room; for, although the air was warm outside, the thick stone walls seemed to retain the chilly breath of the last Winter. The silent rooms that filled the house forced the sense of their presence upon me. I seemed to see the forsaken things in them staring at each other, hopeless and useless, across the dividing s.p.a.ce, as if saying to themselves, 'We belong to the dead, are mouldering to the dust after them, and in the dust alone we meet.' From the vacant rooms my soul seemed to float out beyond, searching still--to find nothing but loneliness and emptiness betwixt me and the stars; and beyond the stars more loneliness and more emptiness still--no rest for the sole of the foot of the wandering Psyche--save--one mighty saving--an exception which, if true, must be the one all-absorbing rule. 'But,' I was saying to myself, 'love unknown is not even equal to love lost,' when my reverie was broken by the dull noise of a horse's hoofs upon the sward. I rose and went to the window. As I crossed the room, my brain rather than myself suddenly recalled the night when my pendulum drew from the churning trees the unwelcome genius of the storm. The moment I reached the window--there through the dim Summer twilight, once more from the trees, now as still as sleep, came the same figure.

Mr Coningham saw me at the fire-lighted window, and halted.

'May I be admitted?' he asked ceremoniously.

I made a sign to him to ride round to the door, for I could not speak aloud: it would have been rude to the memories that haunted the silent house.

'May I come in for a few minutes, Mr c.u.mbermede?' he asked again, already at the door by the time I had opened it.

'By all means, Mr Coningham,' I replied. 'Only you must tie your horse to this ring, for we--I--have no stable here.'

'I've done this before,' he answered, as he made the animal fast. 'I know the ways of the place well enough. But surely you're not here in absolute solitude?'

'Yes, I am. I prefer being alone at present.'

'Very unhealthy, I must say! You will grow hypochondriacal if you mope in this fashion,' he returned, following me up-stairs to my room.

'A day or two of solitude now and then would, I suspect, do most people more good than harm,' I answered. 'But you must not think I intend leading a hermit's life. Have you heard that my aunt--?'

'Yes, yes.--You are left alone in the world. But relations are not a man's only friends--and certainly not always his best friends.'