Wallingford, Oxfordshire

“ The Abbot was astonished; as well he might be.
"Go, my Osric, to the hospitium; let me speak to my lord Abbot alone."
And Brian told his story, not without strong emotion.
"What wilt thou do now, my Lord of Wallingford?"
"He shall fulfil his vow, for himself and for me. But, my lord, my sins have come home to me. What shall I do? Would I could go with him! but my duties, my plighted faith to my Queen, restrain me. Even to-morrow the leaders of our cause meet at Wallingford Castle."
"Into politics we enter not here. But thy sin, if thou hast sinned, God hath left the means of forgiveness. ”

“ Bensington Lock is below the village, and oarsmen pulling up to Oxford have learned to beware of the dangerous cross-current at the weir. Near the lock the tow-path crosses again to the Berkshire shore. Hence away to Wallingford the country becomes much more picturesque. The Oxford bank is most profusely wooded; groves of willows and alders edge the stream; while farther ashore glades of elm and chestnut perfume the air. ”

“ He looked very different in these grandeurs to what he did in his everyday attire, but whether in the Mayoral robes or in his carelessly worn clothes any close observer would have seen that Wallingford was a sharp, shrewd man with all his wits about him—a close-seeing, concentrated man, likely to go through, no matter what obstacles rose in his path, with anything that he took in hand. ”

“ Lamb, Jasper, Lewis, Nolting, Ella; what were all these people to them? What were any living creatures except a part of the always moving panorama which composed the background of their lives? Nomads always since their marriage, when Mrs. Wallingford as a girl had run away from home that was no home to join this cheerful knave of fortune, they had known no resting place, no spot on earth that called to them ”

“ There were clubs to which Wallingford had already secured the entrée by his personality and his free handling of money, and now he put them to full and extravagant use.
Dawn was breaking when the roisterers finally rolled back to Wallingford's apartments. Wallingford was holding himself right by a grim effort, but Maylie had passed to a pitiable condition of imbecility. His hair was stringing down over his forehead, and his face was of a ghastly pallor. In the parlor, however, he drew himself together for a moment and thought that he was capable of great shrewdness. ”

“ Sir Justin Wallingford sat in the drawing-room at Belgrave Square with one of these ladies on either side of him. He was a tall, gaunt man with a grizzled black beard, a long nose, and such a formidably solemn expression that ambitious parents were in the habit of wishing that their offspring might some day be as wise as Sir Justin Wallingford looked. ”

“ He went on to the rooms in which Wallingford had lived ever since his first coming to the town. They were good, roomy, old-fashioned apartments in a big house, cosy and comfortable, but the sight of Wallingford's study, of his desk, his books and papers, of his favourite chair and his slippers at the fire, of the supper-table already spread for him and Brent in an inner parlour, turned Brent sick at heart. He turned hastily to Wallingford's landlady, who had let him in and followed him into the dead man's room.
"It's no use, Mrs. Appleyard," he said. "I can't stop here to-night, anyway. ”

“ I saw Wallingford give a slight start as if a tensely strung chord of feeling had been jarred. A moment more and the spell was broken! Every lineament of his countenance showed this. The stern aspect gave way—light trembled over the softening features—the body stood more erect as if a great pressure had been removed.
I noticed that he did not hold back in the excitement of congratulation that followed the ceremony. I was near him when he took the hand of Delia, and heard him say—not—“I congratulate you”—but “May your life be a happy one.” ”

“ And Alain appeared.
"My gallant squire, how hast thou fared? I feared for thee."
"They keep bad watch. A rope lowered me to the stream: I crossed, and seeking covered ways, gat me to Iffley, and in like fashion returned. I bear good news, lady! Thy gallant brother of Gloucester, and the Prince, thy son, have landed in England, and will meet thee at Wallingford."
"Thank God!" said Maude. "My Henry, my royal boy, I shall see thee again. With such hope to cheer a mother's heart, I can dare anything. ”

“ The festivities were not prolonged to a very late hour; nature must have its way, and the previous night had been a most trying one, as our readers are well aware. That night was a night of deep repose.
On the following day came the news that Oxford Castle had surrendered, and that Robert d'Oyley, lord thereof, was prisoner to Stephen; it was at first supposed that the king would follow his rival to Wallingford, but he preferred keeping his Christmas in the castle he had taken. Wallingford was a hard nut to crack. ”

“ Well hast thou earned our thanks, my Alain, my gallant squire."
"The Lord of Wallingford will send a troop of horse to scout on the road between Abingdon and Oxford to-morrow night, the Eve of St. Thomas."
"We will meet them if it be possible—if it be in human power."
"The river is free—all other roads are blocked."
"But hast thou considered the difficulties of descent?"
"They are great, lady: it was easy for me to descend by the rope, but for thee, alas, that my queen should need such expedients!"
"It is better than starvation. We are reduced to the bones, as thou seest ”

“ In another category, possessing a different type of communal life, already thinking of themselves as towns, we should have Cricklade, Lechlade, Abingdon, and Kingston among the smaller, though probably possessing a population not much larger than that of the larger villages; while of considerable centres there were but three: Reading the smallest, almost a town, but one upon which we have no true or sufficient data; Wallingford the largest, with the population of a flourishing county town in our own days, and Oxford, a place which, though in worse repair, ran Wallingford close. ”

“ He walked to and fro in the woods, and thought sometimes of all he was leaving. Sometimes of the terrible fate of her who had borne him. At another moment he felt half inclined to conceal all, and go back to Wallingford, as if nothing had happened; the next he felt he could never again grasp the hand of the destroyer of his kindred.
The hour came for the funeral. The corpse was brought forth on the bier from the hut which had so long sheltered it in life. They used no coffins in those days—it was simply wrapped in the "winding-sheet." ”

“ Wallingford, however, strode quite confidently up the walk, and by the time he reached the porch Miss Fannie was in the door, removing her apron.
“What a pretty turnout!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a beauty,” agreed Wallingford. “I just bought it from Abner Follis.”
She smiled.
“I bet he beat you in the bargain.”
“So long as I’m satisfied,” retorted Wallingford, smiling back at her, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t all be happy. Come on and take the first ride in it.” ”

“ Wallingford went on, "propped up on his couch, reading the fifty-first Psalm, large tears coursing down his cheeks.
"He looked up as I entered and holding out the blessed book, exclaimed:
"See, what I have found! Why have I never seen it before? It was written for me. No other man ever needed such words so much as I. Every syllable; every letter expresses my wants. ”

“ Well, well, each man to his taste, but I would sooner be the wolf who eats, than the sheep which is eaten; of the two sensations I prefer the former. Now dost thou see that proud tower soaring into the skies down the brook? it is the keep of Wallingford Castle. Stronger hold is not in the Midlands. ”

“ Mr. Clover was highly amused. The only reason on earth that he would admit another man to a partnership with him was that he must have ready cash. His shoe soles were wearing out.
"I'm afraid our business wouldn't suit you, anyhow, Mr. Wallingford," he said with bantering sarcasm. "Our office is very plain, for one thing, and we have no rug on the floor."
"We'll put rugs down right away, and if the offices are not as swell as they make 'em we'll move," Wallingford promptly announced. "I might give you two thousand for a half interest."
Mr. Clover drank a glass of champagne and considered. ”

“ I’ll make moccasins out of their hides, all right.”
“Go right ahead, old man, and see if I care,” [Pg 187] consented Blackie. “Slam the harpoon into them and twist it.”
“I will,” asserted Wallingford confidently. “I don’t like them because they’re grouches; I don’t like them because they’re cheap; I don’t like their names, nor their faces, nor the town they live in. Making money in New York’s too much like sixteen hungry bulldogs to one bone. The best dog gets it, but he finishes too weak for an appetite. What kind of a horse is this Whipsaw you’re sending out to-day?” ”

“ I must go."
"To Wallingford."
"But that I can never do. I have broken with them and their den of darkness for ever."
"Nay, nay; it may be all thine own one day, and thou mayst let light into it."
"What can you mean? You distract me."
"I cannot say. Ah!—a good thought. You may look—I didn't say I wouldn't show. See, Osric, I will show thee what things were on thy baby-person when thou wast brought home. Here—look."
She rummaged in her old chest and brought forth—a ring with a seal, a few articles of baby attire, a little red shoe, a small frock, and a lock of maiden's hair. ”

“ We stopped at Wallingford for our mid-day meal; of course, all signs of squalor and poverty had disappeared from the streets of the ancient town, and many ugly houses had been taken down and many pretty new ones built, but I thought it curious, that the town still looked like the old place I remembered so well; for indeed it looked like that ought to have looked.
At dinner we fell in with an old, but very bright and intelligent man, who seemed in a country way to be another edition of old Hammond. ”

“ There is no record, and but very little basis for conjecture, as to the origin of the fortifications at Wallingford. Not much is left of them, and though there is some Roman work in the place it is work which has evidently been handled over and over again. It is certainly somewhat late in English history that this "Walled Ford" is heard of—with the tenth century. Its first castle is, of course, Norman, and contemporary with that of Oxford—or rather a year later than that at Oxford, and from the Conquest onward it remains royal. ”

“ Bradfort, and which was also old family property.
"Do not think of it, Miles," she said. "Keep Riversedge in good order, and no more. Rupert," who was then living, and in possession, "will see that nothing goes to waste; but Clawbonny, dear Clawbonny, is the true home of a Wallingford--and I am now a Wallingford, you will remember. Should this precious boy of ours live to become a man, and marry, the old West-Chester property can be used by him, until we are ready to give him up possession, here." ”

“ Was it so with our Osric? Could the grandson of Sexwulf, the heir of a line of true Englishmen, so forget the lessons of his boyhood? Alas, my reader, such possibilities lurk in our fallen nature!
"Ah, when shall come the time
When war shall be no more?
When lust, oppression, crime,
Shall flee Thy Face before?"
We must wait until the advent of the Prince of Peace.
They got back to Wallingford at last. The gates were opened, there was a scene of howling excitement, and then they feasted and drank until the small hours of the night ”

“ These possibilities might have remained vague and formless—mere food for idle musing—had it not been for one important circumstance: while the waiter was making change he picked some folded papers from the floor and laid them at Wallingford’s hand. Opened, this packet of loose leaves proved to be a list of several hundred names and addresses. There could be no riddle whatever about this document; it was quite obviously a membership roster of the defunct building-loan association.
“The judge ought to have a duplicate of this list; a single copy’s so easy to lose,” mused Wallingford with a grin ”

“ It was intensely foolish and unmanly, the more foolish and unmanly inasmuch as the great lady of Gillingham never allowed the comparatively lowly born rector to forget his place. If kindly-natured, charitable George Wallingford did in his heart believe the well-sounding axiom that “’tis only noble to be good,” the flattering unction was not laid so soothingly to his soul as to enable him to act, as regarded pretty Rhoda Vavasour, on the cheering conviction. ”

“ Mr. Daw, known as "Blackie" to a small but select circle of gentlemen who make it their business to rescue and put carefully hoarded money back into rapid circulation, dropped moodily into a chair and sat considering his well-manicured finger-nails in glum silence, while his masterful host disposed of the bellboy and the valet.
"Had your dinner?" inquired Mr. Wallingford [Pg 13] as he donned the last few garments of a fresh suit.
"Not yet," growled the other. "I've got such a grouch against myself I won't even feed right, for fear I'd enjoy it. On the cheaps for the last day, too." ”

“ Doc Gunther's best "rig," his rubber-tired one, came rolling down Main Street, turned, and drew up near the car. The porter, now wearing his official cap, jumped down with his stepping box. Ah-h-h! Here they came! First emerged huge, sleek Mr. Wallingford, looking more like a million cleverly won dollars than [Pg 275] the money itself. Mr. Daw stepped down upon the gravel, tall and slender, clad in glove-fitting "Prince Albert," his black mustache curled tightly, his black eyes glittering. Descended the beautiful, brown-haired Mrs. Wallingford, brave in dark-green broadcloth. ”