CHAPTER XIII.
Henry Wimbush brought down with him to dinner a budget of printed
sheets loosely bound together in a cardboard portfolio.
"To-day," he said, exhibiting it with a certain solemnity, "to-
day I have finished the printing of my 'History of Crome'. I
helped to set up the type of the last page this evening."
"The famous History?" cried Anne. The writing and the printing
of this Magnum Opus had been going on as long as she could
remember. All her childhood long Uncle Henry's History had been
a vague and fabulous thing, often heard of and never seen.
"It has taken me nearly thirty years," said Mr. Wimbush. "Twenty-five years of writing and nearly four of printing. And now it's finished--the whole chronicle, from Sir Ferdinando Lapith's birth to the death of my father William Wimbush--more than three centuries and a half: a history of Crome, written at Crome, and printed at Crome by my own press."
"Shall we be allowed to read it now it's finished?" asked Denis.
Mr. Wimbush nodded. "Certainly," he said. "And I hope you will
not find it uninteresting," he added modestly. "Our muniment
room is particularly rich in ancient records, and I have some
genuinely new light to throw on the introduction of the three-
pronged fork."
"And the people?" asked Gombauld. "Sir Ferdinando and the rest
of them--were they amusing? Were there any crimes or tragedies
in the family?"
"Let me see," Henry Wimbush rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I can
only think of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps
five broken hearts, and half a dozen little blots on the
scutcheon in the way of misalliances, seductions, natural
children, and the like. No, on the whole, it's a placid and
uneventful record."
"The Wimbushes and the Lapiths were always an unadventurous, respectable crew," said Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice. "If I were to write my family history now! Why, it would be one long continuous blot from beginning to end." She laughed jovially, and helped herself to another glass of wine.
"If I were to write mine," Mr. Scogan remarked, "it wouldn't
exist. After the second generation we Scogans are lost in the
mists of antiquity."
"After dinner," said Henry Wimbush, a little piqued by his wife's
disparaging comment on the masters of Crome, "I'll read you an
episode from my History that will make you admit that even the
Lapiths, in their own respectable way, had their tragedies and
strange adventures."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Priscilla.
"Glad to hear what?" asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her
private interior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received
an explanation, smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last "I see," and
popped back, clapping shut the door behind her.
Dinner was eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room.
"Now," said Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He
put on his round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began
cautiously to turn over the pages of his loose and still
fragmentary book. He found his place at last. "Shall I begin?" he asked, looking up.
"Do," said Priscilla, yawning.
In the midst of an attentive silence Mr. Wimbush gave a little
preliminary cough and started to read.
"The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the
name of Lapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small
baby, weighing not more than three pounds at birth, but from the
first he was sturdy and healthy. In honour of his maternal
grandfather, Sir Hercules Occam of Bishop's Occam, he was
christened Hercules. His mother, like many other mothers, kept a
notebook, in which his progress from month to month was recorded. He walked at ten months, and before his second year was out he had learnt to speak a number of words. At three years he weighed but twenty-four pounds, and at six, though he could read and write perfectly and showed a remarkable aptitude for music, he was no larger and heavier than a well-grown child of two. Meanwhile, his mother had borne two other children, a boy and a girl, one of whom died of croup during infancy, while the other was carried off by smallpox before it reached the age of five. Hercules remained the only surviving child.