Wilfrid Cumbermede by George MacDonald (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

only put it in my power to serve you. Come, trust me, Charley, and tell me all about it. I shall not betray you.'

'I'm not afraid of that,' he answered, and sunk into silence once more.

I look to myself presumptuous and priggish in the memory. But I did mean truly by him. I began to question him, and by slow degrees, in broken hints, and in jets of reply, drew from him the facts. When at length he saw that I understood, he burst into tears, hid his face in his hands, and rocked himself to and fro.

'Charley! Charley! don't give in like that,' I cried. 'Be as sorry as you like; but don't go on as if there was no help. Who has not failed and been forgiven-in one way if not in another?'

'Who is there to forgive me? My father would not. And if he would, what difference would it make? I have done it all the same.'

'But God, Charley-' I suggested, hesitating.

'What of him? If he should choose to pass a thing by and say nothing about it, that doesn't undo it. It's all nonsense. God himself can't make it that I didn't do what I did do.'

But with what truthful yet reticent words can I convey the facts of Charley's case? I am perfectly aware it would be to expose both myself and him to the laughter of men of low development who behave as if no more self-possession were demanded of a man than of one of the lower animals. Such might perhaps feel a certain involuntary movement of pitifulness at the fate of a woman first awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine natures it asserts itself with the awful majesty with which it makes its presence known in the heart of a woman, the man in whom it speaks with most authority is to be found amongst the worthiest; and to a youth like Charley the result of actual offence against it might be utter ruin. In his case, however, it was not merely a consciousness of personal defilement which followed; for, whether his companions had so schemed it or not, he supposed himself more than ordinarily guilty.

'I suppose I must marry the girl,' said poor Charley with a groan.

Happily I saw at once that there might be two sides to the question, and that it was desirable to know more ere I ventured a definite reply.

I had grown up, thanks to many things, with a most real although vague adoration of women; but I was not so ignorant as to be unable to fancy it possible that Charley had been the victim. Therefore, after having managed to comfort him a little, and taken him home to his rooms, I set about endeavouring to get further information.

I will not linger over the affair-as unpleasant to myself as it can be to any of my readers. It had to be mentioned, however, not merely as explaining how I got hold of Charley again, but as affording a clue to his character, and so to his history. Not even yet can I think without a gush of anger and shame of my visit to Brotherton. With what stammering confusion I succeeded at last in making him understand the nature of the information I wanted, I will not attempt to describe; nor the roar of laughter which at length burst bellowing-not from himself only, but from three or four companions as well to whom he turned and communicated the joke. The fire of jests, and proposals, and interpretations of motive which I had then to endure, seems yet to scorch my very brain at the mere recollection. From their manner and speech, I was almost convinced that they had laid a trap for Charley, whom they regarded as a simpleton, to enjoy his consequent confusion. With what I managed to find out elsewhere, I was at length satisfied, and happily succeeded in convincing Charley, that he had been the butt of his companions, and that he was far the more injured person in any possible aspect of the affair.

I shall never forget the look or the sigh of relief which proved that at last his mind had opened to the facts of the case.

'Wilfrid,' he said, 'you have saved me. We shall never be parted more. See if I am ever false to you again!'

And yet it never was as it had been. I am sure of that now. Henceforth, however, he entirely avoided his former companions. Our old friendship was renewed. Our old talks arose again, And now that he was not alone in them, the perplexities under which he had broken down when left to encounter them by himself were not so overwhelming as to render him helpless. We read a good deal together, and Charley helped me much in the finer affairs of the classics, for his perceptions were as delicate as his feelings. He would brood over an Horatian phrase as Keats would brood over a sweet pea or a violet; the very tone in which he would repeat it would waft me from it an aroma unperceived before. When it was his turn to come to my rooms, I would watch for his arrival almost as a lover for his mistress.

For two years more our friendship grew; in which time Charley had recovered habits of diligence. I presume he said nothing at home of the renewal of his intimacy with me: I shrunk from questioning him. As if he had been an angel who who had hurt his wing and was compelled to sojourn with me for a time, I feared to bring the least shadow over his face, and indeed fell into a restless observance of his moods. I remember we read Comus together. How his face would glow at the impassioned praises of virtue! and how the glow would die into a grey sadness at the recollection of the near past! I could read his face like a book.

At length the time arrived when we had to part, he to study for the Bar, I to remain at Oxford another year, still looking forward to a literary life.

When I commenced writing my story, I fancied myself so far removed from it that I could regard it as the story of another, capable of being viewed on all sides, and conjectured and speculated upon. And so I found it as long as the regions of childhood and youth detained me. But as I approach the middle scenes, I begin to fear the revival of the old torture; that, from the dispassionate reviewer, I may become once again the suffering actor. Long ago I read a strange story of a man condemned at periods unforeseen to act again, and yet again, in absolute verisimilitude each of the scenes of his former life: I have a feeling as if I too might glide from the present into the past without a sign to warn me of the coming transition.

One word more ere I pass to the middle events, those for the sake of which the beginning is and the end shall be recorded. It is this-that I am under endless obligations to Charley for opening my eyes at this time to my overweening estimate of myself. Not that he spoke-Charley could never have reproved even a child. But I could tell almost any sudden feeling that passed through him. His face betrayed it. What he felt about me I saw at once. From the signs of his mind, I often recognized the character of what was in my own; and thus seeing myself through him, I gathered reason to be ashamed; while the refinement of his criticism, the quickness of his perception, and the novelty and force of his remarks, convinced me that I could not for a moment compare with him in mental gifts. The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed the truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself; and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such. When I could not agree with him, he would say with one of his fine smiles, 'We'll drop it, then, Willie. I don't believe you have caught my meaning. If I am right, you will see it some day, and there's no hurry.' How could it be but Charlie and I should be different, seeing we had fared so differently! But, alas! my knowledge of his character is chiefly the result of after-thought.

I do not mean this manuscript to be read until after my death; and even then-although partly from habit, partly that I dare not trust myself to any other form of utterance, I write as if for publication-even then, I say, only by one. I am about to write what I should not die in peace if I thought she would never know; but which I dare not seek to tell her now for the risk of being misunderstood. I thank God for that blessed invention, Death, which of itself must set many things right, and gives a man a chance of justifying himself where he would not have been heard while alive. Lest my manuscript should fall into other hands, I have taken care that not a single name in it should contain even a side-look or hint at the true one; but she will be able to understand the real person in every case.


CHAPTER XXV.


MY WHITE MARE.

I passed my final examinations with credit, if not with honour. It was not yet clearly determined what I should do next. My goal was London, but I was unwilling to go thither empty-handed. I had been thinking as well as reading a good deal; a late experience had stimulated my imagination; and at spare moments I had been writing a tale. It had grown to be a considerable mass of manuscript, and I was anxious, before going, to finish it. Hence, therefore, I returned home with the intention of remaining there quietly for a few months before setting-out to seek my fortune.

Whether my uncle in his heart quite favoured the plan, I have my doubts, but it would have been quite inconsistent with his usual grand treatment of me to oppose anything not wrong on which I had set my heart. Finding now that I took less exercise than he thought desirable, and kept myself too much to my room, he gave me a fresh proof of his unvarying kindness, He bought me a small grey mare of strength and speed. Her lineage was unknown; but her small head, broad fine chest, and clean limbs indicated Arab blood at no great remove. Upon her I used to gallop over the fields, or saunter along the lanes, dreaming and inventing.

And now certain feelings, too deeply rooted in my nature for my memory to recognize their beginnings, began to assume colour and condensed form, as if about to burst into some kind of blossom. Thanks to my education and love of study, also to