Wilfrid Cumbermede | Page 7

will. I did not much
mind my aunt. Perhaps her deference to my uncle made me feel as if
she and I were more on a level. She must have been really kind, for she
never resented any petulance or carelessness. Possibly she sacrificed
her own feeling to the love my uncle bore me; but I think it was rather
that, because he cared for me, she cared for me too.
Twice during every meal she would rise from the table with some dish
in her hand, open the door behind the chimney, and ascend the winding
stair.
CHAPTER III.
AT THE TOP OF THE CHIMNEY-STAIR.
I fear my reader may have thought me too long occupied with the
explanatory foundations of my structure: I shall at once proceed to raise
its walls of narrative. Whatever further explanations may be necessary,
can be applied as buttresses in lieu of a broader base.
One Sunday--it was his custom of a Sunday--I fancy I was then
somewhere about six years of age--my uncle rose from the table after
our homely dinner, took me by the hand, and led me to the dark door
with the long arrow-headed hinges, and up the winding stone stair
which I never ascended except with him or my aunt. At the top was
another rugged door, and within that, one covered with green baize.
The last opened on what had always seemed to me a very paradise of a
room. It was old-fashioned enough; but childhood is of any and every
age, and it was not old-fashioned to me--only intensely cosy and
comfortable. The first thing my eyes generally rested upon was an old

bureau, with a book-case on the top of it, the glass-doors of which were
lined with faded red silk. The next thing I would see was a small
tent-bed, with the whitest of curtains, and enchanting fringes of white
ball-tassels. The bed was covered with an equally charming
counterpane of silk patchwork. The next object was the genius of the
place, in a high, close, easy-chair, covered with some dark stuff, against
which her face, surrounded with its widow's cap, of ancient form, but
dazzling whiteness, was strongly relieved. How shall I describe the
shrunken, yet delicate, the gracious, if not graceful form, and the face
from which extreme old age had not wasted half the loveliness? Yet I
always beheld it with an indescribable sensation, one of whose
elements I can isolate and identify as a faint fear. Perhaps this arose
partly from the fact that, in going up the stair, more than once my uncle
had said to me, 'You must not mind what grannie says, Willie, for old
people will often speak strange things that young people cannot
understand. But you must love grannie, for she is a very good old lady.'
'Well, grannie, how are you to-day?' said my uncle, as we entered, this
particular Sunday.
I may as well mention at once that my uncle called her grannie in his
own right and not in mine, for she was in truth my great-grandmother.
'Pretty well, David, I thank you; but much too long out of my grave,'
answered grannie; in no sepulchral tones, however, for her voice,
although weak and uneven, had a sound in it like that of one of the
upper strings of a violin. The plaintiveness of it touched me, and I crept
near her--nearer than, I believe, I had ever yet gone of my own
will--and laid my hand upon hers. I withdrew it instantly, for there was
something in the touch that made me--not shudder, exactly--but creep.
Her hand was smooth and soft, and warm too, only somehow the skin
of it seemed dead. With a quicker movement than belonged to her years,
she caught hold of mine, which she kept in one of her hands, while she
stroked it with the other. My slight repugnance vanished for the time,
and I looked up in her face, grateful for a tenderness which was
altogether new to me.
'What makes you so long out of your grave, grannie?' I asked.

'They won't let me into it, my dear.'
'Who won't let you, grannie?'
'My own grandson there, and the woman down the stair.'
'But you don't really want to go--do you, grannie?'
'I do want to go, Willie. I ought to have been there long ago. I am very
old; so old that I've forgotten how old I am. How old am I?' she asked,
looking up at my uncle.
'Nearly ninety-five, grannie; and the older you get before you go the
better we shall be pleased, as you know very well.'
'There! I told you,' she said with a smile, not all of pleasure, as she
turned her head towards me. 'They won't let me