Wilfrid Cumbermede | Page 5

into mine. Night after night I would dream of danger drawing
nigh--crowds of men of evil purpose--enemies to me or to my country;
and ever in the beginning of my dream, I stood ready, foreknowing and
waiting; for I had climbed and had taken the ancient power from the
wall, and had girded it about my waist--always with a straw rope, the
sole band within my reach; but as it went on, the power departed from
the dream: I stood waiting for foes who would not come; or they drew
near in fury, and when I would have drawn my weapon, old blood and
rust held it fast in its sheath, and I tugged at it in helpless agony; and
fear invaded my heart, and I turned and fled, pursued by my foes until I
left the dream itself behind, whence the terror still pursued me.
There were many things more on those walls. A pair of spurs, of make
modern enough, hung between two pewter dish-covers. Hanging
book-shelves came next; for although most of my uncle's books were in
his bed-room, some of the commoner were here on the wall, next to an
old fowling-piece, of which both lock and barrel were devoured with
rust. Then came a great pair of shears, though how they should have
been there I cannot yet think, for there was no garden to the house, no
hedges or trees to clip. I need not linger over these things. Their proper
place is in the picture with which I would save words and help
understanding if I could.
Of course there was a great chimney in the place; chiefly to be
mentioned from the singular fact that just round its corner was a little

door opening on a rude winding stair of stone. This appeared to be
constructed within the chimney; but on the outside of the wall, was a
half-rounded projection, revealing that the stair was not indebted to it
for the whole of its accommodation. Whither the stair led, I shall have
to disclose in my next chapter. From the opposite end of the kitchen, an
ordinary wooden staircase, with clumsy balustrade, led up to the two
bed-rooms occupied by my uncle and my aunt; to a large lumber-room,
whose desertion and almost emptiness was a source of uneasiness in
certain moods; and to a spare bed-room, which was better furnished
than any of ours, and indeed to my mind a very grand and spacious
apartment. This last was never occupied during my childhood;
consequently it smelt musty notwithstanding my aunt's exemplary
housekeeping. Its bedsteads must have been hundreds of years old.
Above these rooms again were those to which the dormer windows
belonged, and in one of them I slept. It had a deep closet in which I
kept my few treasures, and into which I used to retire when out of
temper or troubled, conditions not occurring frequently, for nobody
quarrelled with me, and I had nobody with whom I might have
quarrelled.
When I climbed upon a chair, I could seat myself on the broad sill of
the dormer window. This was the watch-tower whence I viewed the
world. Thence I could see trees in the distance--too far off for me to tell
whether they were churning wind or not. On that side those trees alone
were between me and the sky.
One day when my aunt took me with her into the lumber-room, I found
there, in a corner, a piece of strange mechanism. It had a kind of
pendulum; but I cannot describe it because I had lost sight of it long
before I was capable of discovering its use, and my recollection of it is
therefore very vague--far too vague to admit of even a conjecture now
as to what it could have been intended for. But I remember well enough
my fancy concerning it, though when or how that fancy awoke I cannot
tell either. It seems to me as old as the finding of the instrument. The
fancy was that if I could keep that pendulum wagging long enough, it
would set all those trees going too; and if I still kept it swinging, we
should have such a storm of wind as no living man had ever felt or

heard of. That I more than half believed it, will be evident from the fact
that, although I frequently carried the pendulum, as I shall call it, to the
window sill, and set it in motion by way of experiment, I had not, up to
the time of a certain incident which I shall very soon have to relate, had
the courage to keep up the oscillation beyond ten or a dozen strokes;
partly from fear of the trees, partly from a dim dread of exercising