J. S. Le Fanu, Uncle Silas (1864) - Chaps. XXXI-XXXV

Chapter XXXI: Bartram-Haugh
In a moment a tall, lithe girl, black-haired, black-eyed, and, as I thought, inexpressibly handsome, was smiling, with such beautiful rings of pearly teeth, at the window; and in her peculiar accent, with a suspicion of something foreign in it, proposing with many courtesies to tell the lady her fortune.
 I had never seen this wild tribe of the human race before - children of mystery and liberty. Such vagabondism and beauty in the figure before me! I looked at their hovels and thought of the night, and wondered at their independence, and felt my inferiority. I could not resist. She held up her slim oriental hand.
 ‘Yes, I’ll hear my fortune,’ I said, returning the sibyl’s smile instinctively.
 ‘Give me some money, Mary Quince. No, not that,’ I said, rejecting the thrifty sixpence she tendered, for I had heard that the revelations of this weird sisterhood were bright in proportion to the kindness of their clients, and was resolved to approach Bartram with cheerful auguries. ‘That five-shilling piece,’ I insisted; and honest Mary reluctantly surrendered the coin.
 So the feline beauty took it, with courtesies and ‘thankees,’ smiling still, and hid it away as if she stole it, and looked on my open palm still smiling; and told me, to my surprise, that there was somebody I liked very much, and I was almost afraid she would name Captain Oakley; that he would grow very rich, and that I should marry him; that I should move about from place to place a great deal for a good while to come. That I had some enemies, who should be sometimes so near as to be in the same room with me, and yet they should not be able to hurt me. That I should see blood spilt and yet not my own, and finally be very happy and splendid, like the heroine of a fairy tale.
 Did this strange, girlish charlatan see in my face some signs of shrinking when she spoke of enemies, and set me down for a coward whose weakness might be profitable? Very likely. At all events she plucked a long brass pin, with a round bead for a head, from some part of her dress, and holding the point in her fingers, and exhibiting the treasure before my eyes, she told me that I must get a charmed pin like that, which her grandmother had given to her, and she ran glibly through a story of all the magic expended on it, and told me she could not part with it; but its virtue was that you were to stick it through the blanket, and while it was there neither rat, nor cat, nor snake - and then came two more terms in the catalogue, which I suppose belonged to the gipsy dialect, and which she explained to mean, as well as I could understand, the first a malevolent spirit, and the second ‘a cove to cut your throat,’ could approach or hurt you.
 A charm like that, she gave me to understand, I must by hook or by crook obtain. She had not a second. None of her people in the camp over there possessed one. I am ashamed to confess that I actually paid her a pound for this brass pin! The purchase was partly an indication of my temperament, which could never let an opportunity pass away irrevocably without a struggle, and always apprehended ‘Some day or other I’ll reproach myself for having neglected it!’ and partly a record of the trepidations of that period of my life. At all events I had her pin, and she my pound, and I venture to say I was the gladder of the two.
 She stood on the road-side bank courtseying and smiling, the first enchantress I had encountered, and I watched the receding picture, with its patches of firelight, its dusky groups and donkey carts, white as skeletons in the moonlight, as we drove rapidly away.
 They, I suppose, had a wild sneer and a merry laugh over my purchase, as they sat and ate their supper of stolen poultry, about their fire, and were duly proud of belonging to the superior race.
 Mary Quince, shocked at my prodigality, hinted a remonstrance.
 ‘It went to my heart, Miss, it did. They’re such a lot, young and old, all alike thieves and vagabonds, and many a poor body wanting.’
 ‘Tut, Mary, never mind. Everyone has her fortune told some time in her life, and you can’t have a good one without paying. I think, Mary, we must be near Bartram now.’
 The road now traversed the side of a steep hill, parallel to which, along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully upon the stream beneath.
 ‘It seems to be a beautiful country,’ I said to Mary Quince, who was munching a sandwich in the corner, and thus appealed to, adjusted her bonnet, and made an inspection from her window, which, however, commanded nothing but the heathy slope of the hill whose side we were traversing.
 ‘Well, Miss, I suppose it is; but there’s a deal o’ mountains - is not there?’
 And so saying, honest Mary leaned back again, and went on with her sandwich.
 We were now descending at a great pace. I knew we were coming near. I stood up as well as I could in the carriage, to see over the postilions’ heads. I was eager, but frightened too; agitated as the crisis of the arrival and meeting approached. At last, a long stretch of comparatively level country below us, with masses of wood as well as I could see irregularly overspreading it, became visible as the narrow valley through which we were speeding made a sudden bend.
 Down we drove, and now I did perceive a change. A great grass-grown park-wall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on and on we came at a canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey park-wall flanking us at one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash-trees, irregularly on the other.
 At last the postilions began to draw bridle, and at a slight angle, the moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semicircle formed by the receding park-walls, and halted before a great fantastic iron gate, and a pair of tall fluted piers, of white stone, all grass-grown and ivy-bound, with great cornices, surmounted with shields and supporters, the Ruthyn bearings washed by the rains of Derbyshire for many a generation of Ruthyns, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal, like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrade’s, to bar our passage to the enchanted castle - the florid tracery of the iron gate showing like the draperies of white robes hanging from their extended arms to the earth.
 Our courier got down and shoved the great gate open, and we entered, between sombre files of magnificent forest trees, one of those very broad straight avenues whose width measures the front of the house. This was all built of white stone, resembling that of Caen, which parts of Derbyshire produce in such abundance.
 So this was Bartram, and here was Uncle Silas. I was almost breathless as I approached. The bright moon shining full on the white front of the old house revealed not only its highly decorated style, its fluted pillars and doorway, rich and florid carving, and balustraded summit, but also its stained and moss-grown front. Two giant trees, overthrown at last by the recent storm, lay with their upturned roots, and their yellow foliage still flickering on the sprays that were to bloom no more, where they had fallen, at the right side of the court-yard, which, like the avenue, was studded with tufted weeds and grass.
 All this gave to the aspect of Bartram a forlorn character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture.
 There was a ruddy glow from a broad window in the second row, and I thought I saw some one peep from it and disappear; at the same moment there was a furious barking of dogs, some of whom ran scampering into the court-yard from a half-closed side door; and amid their uproar, the bawling of the man in the back seat, who jumped down to drive them off, and the crack of the postilions’ whips, who struck at them, we drew up before the lordly door-steps of this melancholy mansion.
 Just as our attendant had his hand on the knocker the door opened, and we saw, by a not very brilliant candle-light, three figures - a shabby little old man, thin, and very much stooped, with a white cravat, and looking as if his black clothes were too large, and made for some one else, stood with his hand upon the door; a young, plump, but very pretty female figure, in unusually short petticoats, with fattish legs, and nice ankles, in boots, stood in the centre; and a dowdy maid, like an old charwoman, behind her.
 The household paraded for welcome was not certainly very brilliant. Amid the riot the trunks were deliberately put down by our attendant, who kept shouting to the old man at the door, and to the dogs in turn; and the old man was talking and pointing stiffly and tremulously, but I could not hear what he said.
 ‘Was it possible - could that mean-looking old man be Uncle Silas?’
 The idea stunned me; but I almost instantly perceived that he was much too small, and I was relieved, and even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however: being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before me, myself unseen.
 ‘Will you tell - yes or no - is my cousin in the coach?’ screamed the plump young lady, stamping her stout black boot, in a momentary lull.
 Yes, I was there, sure.
 ‘And why the puck don’t you let her out, you stupe, you?’
 ‘Run down, Giblets, you never do nout without driving, and let Cousin Maud out. You’re very welcome to Bartram.’ This greeting was screamed at an amazing pitch, and repeated before I had time to drop the window, and say ‘thank you.’ ‘I’d a let you out myself - there’s a good dog, you would na’ bite Cousin’ (the parenthesis was to a huge mastiff, who thrust himself beside her, by this time quite pacified) - ‘only I daren’t go down the steps, for the governor said I shouldn’t.’
 The venerable person who went by the name of Giblets had by this time opened the carriage door, and our courier, or ‘boots’ - he looked more like the latter functionary - had lowered the steps, and in greater trepidation than I experienced when in after-days I was presented to my sovereign, I glided down, to offer myself to the greeting and inspection of the plain-spoken young lady who stood at the top of the steps to receive me.
 She welcomed me with a hug and a hearty buss, as she called that salutation, on each cheek, and pulled me into the hall, and was evidently glad to see me.
 ‘And you’re tired a bit, I warrant; and who’s the old ‘un, who?’ she asked eagerly, in a stage whisper, which made my ear numb for five minutes after. ‘Oh, oh, the maid! and a precious old ‘un - ha, ha, ha! But lawk! how grand she is, with her black silk, cloak and crape, and I only in twilled cotton, and rotten old Coburg for Sundays. Odds! it’s a shame; but you’ll be tired, you will. It’s a smartish pull, they do say, from Knowl. I know a spell of it, only so far as the Cat and Fiddle, near the Lunnon-road. Come up, will you? Would you like to come in first and talk a bit wi’ the governor? Father, you know, he’s a bit silly, he is, this while.’ I found that the phrase meant only bodily infirmity. ‘He took a pain o’ Friday, newralgie - something or other he calls it - rheumatics it is when it takes old Giblets there; and he’s sitting in his own room; or maybe you’d like better to come to your bedroom first, for it is dirty work travelling, they do say.’
 Yes; I preferred the preliminary adjustment. Mary Quince was standing behind me; and as my voluble kinswoman talked on, we had each ample time and opportunity to observe the personnel of the other; and she made no scruple of letting me perceive that she was improving it, for she stared me full in the face, taking in evidently feature after feature; and she felt the material of my mantle pretty carefully between her finger and thumb, and manually examined my chain and trinkets, and picked up my hand as she might a glove, to con over my rings.
 I can’t say, of course, exactly what impression I may have produced on her. But in my cousin Milly I saw a girl who looked younger than her years, plump, but with a slender waist, with light hair, lighter than mine, and very blue eyes, rather round; on the whole very good-looking. She had an odd swaggering walk, a toss of her head, and a saucy and imperious, but rather good-natured and honest countenance. She talked rather loud, with a good ringing voice, and a boisterous laugh when it came.
 If I was behind the fashion, what would Cousin Monica have thought of her? She was arrayed, as she had stated, in black twilled cotton expressive of her affliction; but it was made almost as short in the skirt as that of the prints of the Bavarian broom girls. She had white cotton stockings, and a pair of black leather boots, with leather buttons, and, for a lady, prodigiously thick soles, which reminded me of the navvy boots I had so often admired in Punch. I must add that the hands with which she assisted her scrutiny of my dress, though pretty, were very much sunburnt indeed.
 ‘And what’s her name?’ she demanded, nodding to Mary Quince, who was gazing on her awfully, with round eyes, as an inland spinster might upon a whale beheld for the first time.
 Mary courtesied, and I answered.
 ‘Mary Quince,’ she repeated. ‘You’re welcome, Quince. What shall I call her? I’ve a name for all o’ them. Old Giles there, is Giblets. He did not like it first, but he answers quick enough now; and Old Lucy Wyat there,’ nodding toward the old woman, ‘is Lucia de l’Amour.’ A slightly erroneous reading of Lammermoor, for my cousin sometimes made mistakes, and was not much versed in the Italian opera. ‘You know it’s a play, and I call her L’Amour for shortness;’ and she laughed hilariously, and I could not forbear joining; and, winking at me, she called aloud, ‘L’Amour.’
 To which the crone, with a high-cauled cap, resembling Mother Hubbard, responded with a courtesy and ‘Yes,’m.’
 ‘Are all the trunks and boxes took up?’
 They were.
 ‘Well, we’ll come now; and what shall I call you, Quince? Let me see.’
 ‘According to your pleasure, Miss,’ answered Mary, with dignity, and a dry courtesy.
 ‘Why, you’re as hoarse as a frog, Quince. We’ll call you Quinzy for the present. That’ll do. Come along, Quinzy.’
 So my Cousin Milly took me under the arm, and pulled me forward; but as we ascended, she let me go, leaning back to make inspection of my attire from a new point of view.
 ‘Hallo, cousin,’ she cried, giving my dress a smack with her open hand. ‘What a plague do you want of all that bustle; you’ll leave it behind, lass, the first bush you jump over.’
 I was a good deal astounded. I was also very near laughing, for there was a sort of importance in her plump countenance, and an indescribable grotesqueness in the fashion of her garments, which heightened the outlandishness of her talk, in a way which I cannot at all describe.
 What palatial wide stairs those were which we ascended, with their prodigious carved banisters of oak, and each huge pillar on the landing-place crowned with a shield and carved heraldic supporters; florid oak panelling covered the walls. But of the house I could form no estimate, for Uncle Silas’s housekeeping did not provide light for hall and passages, and we were dependent on the glimmer of a single candle; but there would be quite enough of this kind of exploration in the daylight.
 So along dark oak flooring we advanced to my room, and I had now an opportunity of admiring, at my leisure, the lordly proportions of the building. Two great windows, with dark and tarnished curtains, rose half as high again as the windows of Knowl; and yet Knowl, in its own style, is a fine house. The door-frames, like the window-frames, were richly carved; the fireplace was in the same massive style, and the mantelpiece projected with a mass of very rich carving. On the whole I was surprised. I had never slept in so noble a room before.
 The furniture, I must confess, was by no means on a par with the architectural pretensions of the apartment. A French bed, a piece of carpet about three yards square, a small table, two chairs, a toilet table - no wardrobe - no chest of drawers. The furniture painted white, and of the light and diminutive kind, was particularly ill adapted to the scale and style of the apartment, one end only of which it occupied, and that but sparsely, leaving the rest of the chamber in the nakedness of a stately desolation. My cousin Milly ran away to report progress to ‘the Governor,’ as she termed Uncle Silas.
 ‘Well, Miss Maud, I never did expect to see the like o’ that!’ exclaimed honest Mary Quince, ‘Did you ever see such a young lady? She’s no more like one o’ the family than I am. Law bless us! and what’s she dressed like? Well, well, well!’ And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while I could not forbear laughing.
 ‘And such a scrap o’ furniture! Well, well, well!’ and the same ticking of the tongue followed.
 But, in a few minutes, back came Cousin Milly, and, with a barbarous sort of curiosity, assisted in unpacking my trunks, and stowing away the treasures, on which she ventured a variety of admiring criticisms, in the presses which, like cupboards, filled recesses in the walls, with great oak doors, the keys of which were in them.
 As I was making my hurried toilet, she entertained me now and then with more strictly personal criticisms.
 ‘Your hair’s a shade darker than mine - it’s none the better o’ that though - is it? Mine’s said to be the right shade. I don’t know - what do you say?’
 I conceded the point with a good grace.
 ‘I wish my hands was as white though - you do lick me there; but it’s all gloves, and I never could abide ‘em. I think I’ll try though - they are very white, sure.’
 ‘I wonder which is the prettiest, you or me? I don’t know, I’m sure - which do you think?’
 I laughed outright at this challenge, and she blushed a little, and for the first time seemed for a moment a little shy.
 ‘Well, you are a half an inch longer than me, I think - don’t you?’
 I was fully an inch taller, so I had no difficulty in making the proposed admission.
 ‘Well, you do look handsome! doesn’t she, Quinzy, lass? but your frock comes down almost to your heels - it does.’
 And she glanced from mine to hers, and made a little kick up with the heel of the navvy boot to assist her in measuring the comparative distance.
 ‘Maybe mine’s a thought too short?’ she suggested. ‘Who’s there? Oh! it’s you, is it?’ she cried as Mother Hubbard appeared at the door. ‘Come in, L’Amour - don’t you know, lass, you’re always welcome?’
 She had come to let us know that Uncle Silas would be happy to see me whenever I was ready; and that my cousin Millicent would conduct me to the room where he awaited me.
 In an instant all the comic sensations awakened by my singular cousin’s eccentricities vanished, and I was thrilled with awe. I was about to see in the flesh - faded, broken, aged, but still identical - that being who had been the vision and the problem of so many years of my short life.

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Chapter XXXII: Uncle Silas
 I thought my odd cousin was also impressed with a kind of awe, though different in degree from mine, for a shade overcast her face, and she was silent as we walked side by side along the gallery, accompanied by the crone who carried the candle which lighted us to the door of that apartment which I may call Uncle Silas’s presence chamber.
 Milly whispered to me as we approached -
 ‘Mind how you make a noise; the governor’s as sharp as a weasel, and nothing vexes him like that.’
 She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and L’Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles.
 A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned us to enter. The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle Silas.
 At the far end of a handsome wainscoted room, near the hearth in which a low fire was burning, beside a small table on which stood four waxlights, in tall silver candlesticks, sat a singular-looking old man.
 The dark wainscoting behind him, and the vastness of the room, in the remoter parts of which the light which fell strongly upon his face and figure expended itself with hardly any effect, exhibited him with the forcible and strange relief of a finely painted Dutch portrait. For some time I saw nothing but him.
 A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and, for an old man, singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his shoulders.
 He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ample black velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat, with loose sleeves, showing his snowy shirt some way up the arm, and a pair of wrist buttons, then quite out of fashion, which glimmered aristocratically with diamonds.
 I know I can’t convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its singular look of power, and an expression so bewildering - was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?
 The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed upon me as he rose; an habitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character of a scowl, did not relax as he advanced toward me with his thin-lipped smile. He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, the import of which I was too much agitated to catch, and he took both my hands in his, welcomed me with a courtly grace which belonged to another age, and led me affectionately, with many inquiries which I only half comprehended, to a chair near his own.
 ‘I need not introduce my daughter; she has saved me that mortification. You’ll find her, I believe, good-natured and affectionate; au reste, I fear a very rustic Miranda, and fitted rather for the society of Caliban than of a sick old Prospero. Is it not so, Millicent?’
 The old man paused sarcastically for an answer, with his eyes fixed severely on my odd cousin, who blushed and looked uneasily to me for a hint.
 ‘I don’t know who they be - neither one nor t’other.’
 ‘Very good, my dear,’ he replied, with a little mocking bow. ‘You see, my dear Maud, what a Shakespearean you have got for a cousin. It’s plain, however, she has made acquaintance with some of our dramatists: she has studied the rôle of Miss Hoyden so perfectly.’
 It was not a reasonable peculiarity of my uncle that he resented, with a good deal of playful acrimony, my poor cousin’s want of education, for which, if he were not to blame, certainly neither was she.
 ‘You see her, poor thing, a result of all the combined disadvantages of want of refined education, refined companionship, and, I fear, naturally, of refined tastes; but a sojourn at a good French conventual school will do wonders, and I hope to manage by-and-by. In the meantime we jest at our misfortunes, and love one another, I hope, cordially.’
 He extended his thin, white hand with a chilly smile towards Milly, who bounced up, and took it with a frightened look; and he repeated, holding her hand rather slightly I thought, ‘Yes, I hope, very cordially,’ and then turning again to me, he put it over the arm of his chair, and let it go, as a man might drop something he did not want from a carriage window.
 Having made this apology for poor Milly, who was plainly bewildered, he passed on, to her and my relief, to other topics, every now and then expressing his fears that I was fatigued, and his anxiety that I should partake of some supper or tea; but these solicitudes somehow seemed to escape his remembrance almost as soon as uttered; and he maintained the conversation, which soon degenerated into a close, and to me a painful examination, respecting my dear father’s illness and its symptoms, upon which I could give no information, and his habits, upon which I could.
 Perhaps he fancied that there might be some family predisposition to the organic disease of which his brother died, and that his questions were directed rather to the prolonging of his own life than to the better understanding of my dear father’s death.
 How little was there left to this old man to make life desirable, and yet how keenly, I afterwards found, he clung to it. Have we not all of us seen those to whom life was not only undesirable, but positively painful - a mere series of bodily torments, yet hold to it with a desperate and pitiable tenacity - old children or young, it is all the same.
 See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The little creature’s eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. Just so reluctantly we part with consciousness, the picture is, even to the last, so interesting; the bird in the hand, though sick and moulting, so inestimably better than all the brilliant tenants of the bush. We sit up, yawning, and blinking, and stupid, the whole scene swimming before us, and the stories and music humming off into the sound of distant winds and waters. It is not time yet; we are not fatigued; we are good for another hour still, and so protesting against bed, we falter and drop into the dreamless sleep which nature assigns to fatigue and satiety.
 He then spoke a little eulogy of his brother, very polished, and, indeed, in a kind of way, eloquent. He possessed in a high degree that accomplishment, too little cultivated, I think, by the present generation, of expressing himself with perfect precision and fluency. There was, too, a good deal of slight illustrative quotation, and a sprinkling of French flowers, over his conversation, which gave to it a character at once elegant and artificial. It was all easy, light, and pointed, and being quite new to me, had a wonderful fascination.
 He then told me that Bartram was the temple of liberty, that the health of a whole life was founded in a few years of youth, air, and exercise, and that accomplishments, at least, if not education, should wait upon health. Therefore, while at Bartram, I should dispose of my time quite as I pleased, and the more I plundered the garden and gipsied in the woodlands, the better.
 Then he told me what a miserable invalid he was, and how the doctors interfered with his frugal tastes. A glass of beer and a mutton chop - his ideal of a dinner - he dared not touch. They made him drink light wines, which he detested, and live upon those artificial abominations all liking for which vanishes with youth.
 There stood on a side-table, in its silver coaster, a long-necked Rhenish bottle, and beside it a thin pink glass, and he quivered his fingers in a peevish way toward them.
 But unless he found himself better very soon, he would take his case into his own hands, and try the dietary to which nature pointed.
 He waved his fingers toward his bookcases, and told me his books were altogether at my service during my stay; but this promise ended, I must confess, disappointingly. At last, remarking that I must be fatigued, he rose, and kissed me with a solemn tenderness, placed his hand upon what I now perceived to be a large Bible, with two broad silk markers, red and gold, folded in it - the one, I might conjecture, indicating the place in the Old, the other in the New Testament. It stood on the small table that supported the waxlights, with a handsome cut bottle of eau-de-cologne, his gold and jewelled pencil-case, and his chased repeater, chain, and seals, beside it. There certainly were no indications of poverty in Uncle Silas’s room; and he said impressively -
 ‘Remember that book; in it your father placed his trust, in it he found his reward, in it lives my only hope; consult it, my beloved niece, day and night, as the oracle of life.’
 Then he laid his thin hand on my head, and blessed me, and then kissed my forehead.
 ‘No - a!’ exclaimed Cousin Milly’s lusty voice. I had quite forgotten her presence, and looked at her with a little start. She was seated on a very high old-fashioned chair; she had palpably been asleep; her round eyes were blinking and staring glassily at us; and her white legs and navvy boots were dangling in the air.
 ‘Have you anything to remark about Noah?’ enquired her father, with a polite inclination and an ironical interest.
 ‘No - a,’ she repeated in the same blunt accents; ‘I didn’t snore; did I? No - a.’
 The old man smiled and shrugged a little at me - it was the smile of disgust.
 ‘Good night, my dear Maud;’ and turning to her, he said, with a peculiar gentle sharpness, ‘Had not you better wake, my dear, and try whether your cousin would like some supper?’
 So he accompanied us to the door, outside which we found L’Amour’s candle awaiting us.
 ‘I’m awful afraid of the Governor, I am. Did I snore that time?’
 ‘No, dear; at least, I did not hear it,’ I said, unable to repress a smile.
 ‘Well, if I didn’t, I was awful near it,’ she said, reflectively.
 We found poor Mary Quince dozing over the fire; but we soon had tea and other good things, of which Milly partook with a wonderful appetite.
 ‘I was in a qualm about it,’ said Milly, who by this time was quite herself again. ‘When he spies me a-napping, maybe he don’t fetch me a prod with his pencil-case over the head. Odd! girl, it is sore.’
 When I contrasted the refined and fluent old gentleman whom I had just left, with this amazing specimen of young ladyhood, I grew sceptical almost as to the possibility of her being his child.
 I was to learn, however, how little she had, I won’t say of his society, but even of his presence - that she had no domestic companion of the least pretensions to education - that she ran wild about the place - never, except in church, so much as saw a person of that rank to which she was born - and that the little she knew of reading and writing had been picked up, in desultory half-hours, from a person who did not care a pin about her manners or decorum, and perhaps rather enjoyed her grotesqueness - and that no one who was willing to take the least trouble about her was competent to make her a particle more refined than I saw her - the wonder ceased. We don’t know how little is heritable, and how much simply training, until we encounter some-such spectacle as that of my poor cousin Milly.
 When I lay down in my bed and reviewed the day, it seemed like a month of wonders. Uncle Silas was always before me; the voice so silvery for an old man - so preternaturally soft; the manners so sweet, so gentle; the aspect, smiling, suffering, spectral. It was no longer a shadow; I had now seen him in the flesh. But, after all, was he more than a shadow to me? When I closed my eyes I saw him before me still, in necromantic black, ashy with a pallor on which I looked with fear and pain, a face so dazzlingly pale, and those hollow, fiery, awful eyes! It sometimes seemed as if the curtain opened, and I had seen a ghost.
 I had seen him; but he was still an enigma and a marvel. The living face did not expound the past, any more than the portrait portended the future. He was still a mystery and a vision; and thinking of these things I fell asleep.
 Mary Quince, who slept in the dressing-room, the door of which was close to my bed, and lay open to secure me against ghosts, called me up; and the moment I knew where I was I jumped up, and peeped eagerly from the window. It commanded the avenue and court-yard; but we were many windows removed from that over the hall-door, and immediately beneath ours lay the two giant lime trees, prostrate and uprooted, which I had observed as we drove up the night before.
 I saw more clearly in the bright light of morning the signs of neglect and almost of dilapidation which had struck me as I approached. The court-yard was tufted over with grass, seldom from year to year crushed by the carriage-wheels, or trodden by the feet of visitors. This melancholy verdure thickened where the area was more remote from the centre; and under the windows, and skirting the walls to the left, was reinforced by a thick grove of nettles. The avenue was all grass-grown, except in the very centre, where a narrow track still showed the roadway The handsome carved balustrade of the court-yard was discoloured with lichens, and in two places gapped and broken; and the air of decay was heightened by the fallen trees, among whose sprays and yellow leaves the small birds were hopping.
 Before my toilet was completed, in marched my cousin Milly. We were to breakfast alone that morning, ‘and so much the better,’ she told me. Sometimes the Governor ordered her to breakfast with him, and ‘never left off chaffing her’ till his newspaper came, and ‘sometimes he said such things he made her cry,’ and then he only ‘boshed her more,’ and packed her away to her room; but she was by chalks nicer than him, talk as he might. ‘Was not she nicer? was not she? was not she?’ Upon this point she was so strong and urgent that I was obliged to reply by a protest against awarding the palm of elegance between parent and child, and declaring I liked her very much, which I attested by a kiss.
 ‘I know right well which of us you do think’s the nicest, and no mistake, only you’re afraid of him; and he had no business boshing me last night before you. I knew he was at it, though I couldn’t twig him altogether; but wasn’t he a sneak, now, wasn’t he?’
 This was a still more awkward question; so I kissed her again, and said she must never ask me to say of my uncle in his absence anything I could not say to his face.
 At which speech she stared at me for a while, and then treated me to one of her hearty laughs, after which she seemed happier, and gradually grew into better humour with her father.
 ‘Sometimes, when the curate calls, he has me up - for he’s as religious as six, he is - and they read Bible and prays, ho - don’t they? You’ll have that, lass, like me, to go through; and maybe I don’t hate it; oh, no!’
 We breakfasted in a small room, almost a closet, off the great parlour, which was evidently quite disused. Nothing could be homelier than our equipage, or more shabby than the furniture of the little apartment. Still, somehow, I liked it. It was a total change; but one likes ‘roughing it’ a little at first.

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Chapter XXXIII: The Windmill Wood
 I had not time to explore this noble old house as my curiosity prompted; for Milly was in such a fuss to set out for the ‘blackberry dell’ that I saw little more than just so much as I necessarily traversed in making my way to and from my room.
 The actual decay of the house had been prevented by my dear father; and the roof, windows, masonry, and carpentry had all been kept in repair. But short of indications of actual ruin, there are many manifestations of poverty and neglect which impress with a feeling of desolation. It was plain that not nearly a tithe of this great house was inhabited; long corridors and galleries stretched away in dust and silence, and were crossed by others, whose dark arches inspired me in the distance with an awful sort of sadness. It was plainly one of those great structures in which you might easily lose yourself, and with a pleasing terror it reminded me of that delightful old abbey in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romance, among whose silent staircases, dim passages, and long suites of lordly, but forsaken chambers, begirt without by the sombre forest, the family of La Mote secured a gloomy asylum.
 My cousin Milly and I, however, were bent upon an open-air ramble, and traversing several passages, she conducted me to a door which led us out upon a terrace overgrown with weeds, and by a broad flight of steps we descended to the level of the grounds beneath. Then on, over the short grass, under the noble trees, we walked; Milly in high good-humour, and talking away volubly, in her short garment, navvy boots, and a weather-beaten hat. She carried a stick in her gloveless hand. Her conversation was quite new to me, and resembled very much what I would have fancied the holiday recollections of a schoolboy; and the language in which it was sustained was sometimes so outlandish, that I was forced to laugh outright - a demonstration which she plainly did not like.
 Her talk was about the great jumps she had made - how she snow-balled the chaps’ in winter - how she could slide twice the length of her stick beyond ‘Briddles, the cow-boy.’
 With this and similar conversation she entertained me.
 The grounds were delightfully wild and neglected. But we had now passed into a vast park beautifully varied with hollows and uplands, and such glorious old timber massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among these, we got at last into a picturesque dingle; the grey rocks peeped from among the ferns and wild flowers, and the steps of soft sward along its sides were dark in the shadows of silver-stemmed birch, and russet thorn, and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Erl-king and his daughter might glide on their aërial horses.
 In the lap of this pleasant dell were the finest blackberry bushes, I think, I ever saw, bearing fruit quite fabulous; and plucking these, and chatting, we rambled on very pleasantly.
 I had first thought of Milly’s absurdities, to which, in description, I cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance of time, escaped my recollection. But her ways and her talk were so indescribably grotesque that she made me again and again quiver with suppressed laughter.
 But there was a pitiable and even a melancholy meaning underlying the burlesque.
 This creature, with no more education than a dairy-maid, I gradually discovered had fine natural aptitudes for accomplishment - a very sweet voice, and wonderfully delicate ear, and a talent for drawing which quite threw mine into the shade. It was really astonishing.
 Poor Milly, in all her life, had never read three books, and hated to think of them. One, over which she was wont to yawn and sigh, and stare fatiguedly for an hour every Sunday, by command of the Governor, was a stout volume of sermons of the earlier school of George III., and a drier collection you can’t fancy. I don’t think she read anything else. But she had, notwithstanding, ten times the cleverness of half the circulating library misses one meets with. Besides all this, I had a long sojourn before me at Bartram-Haugh, and I had learned from Milly, as I had heard before, what a perennial solitude it was, with a ludicrous fear of learning Milly’s preposterous dialect, and turning at last into something like her. So I resolved to do all I could for her - teach her whatever I knew, if she would allow me - and gradually, if possible, effect some civilising changes in her language, and, as they term it in boarding-schools, her demeanour.
 But I must pursue at present our first day’s ramble in what was called Bartram Chase. People can’t go on eating blackberries always; so after a while we resumed our walk along this pretty dell, which gradually expanded into a wooded valley - level beneath and enclosed by irregular uplands, receding, as it were, in mimic bays and harbours at some points, and running out at others into broken promontories, ending in clumps of forest trees.
 Just where the glen which we had been traversing expanded into this broad, but wooded valley, it was traversed by a high and close paling, which, although it looked decayed, was still very strong.
 In this there was a wooden gate, rudely but strongly constructed, and at the side we were approaching stood a girl, who was leaning against the post, with one arm resting on the top of the gate.
 This girl was neither tall nor short - taller than she looked at a distance; she had not a slight waist; sooty black was her hair, with a broad forehead, perpendicular but low; she had a pair of very fine, dark, lustrous eyes, and no other good feature - unless I may so call her teeth, which were very white and even. Her face was rather short, and swarthy as a gipsy’s; observant and sullen too; and she did not move, only eyed us negligently from under her dark lashes as we drew near. Altogether a not unpicturesque figure, with a dusky, red petticoat of drugget, and tattered jacket of bottle-green stuff, with short sleeves, which showed her brown arms from the elbow.
 ‘That’s Pegtop’s daughter,’ said Milly.
 ‘Who is Pegtop?’ I asked.
 ‘He’s the miller - see, yonder it is,’ and she pointed to a very pretty feature in the landscape, a windmill, crowning the summit of a hillock which rose suddenly above the level of the treetops, like an island in the centre of the valley.
 ‘The mill not going to-day, Beauty?’ bawled Milly.
 ‘No - a, Beauty; it baint,’ replied the girl, loweringly, and without stirring.
 ‘And what’s gone with the stile?’ demanded Milly, aghast. ‘It’s tore away from the paling!’
 ‘Well, so it be,’ replied the wood nymph in the red petticoat, showing her fine teeth with a lazy grin.
 ‘Who’s a bin and done all that?’ demanded Milly.
 ‘Not you nor me, lass,’ said the girl.
 ‘’Twas old Pegtop, your father, did it,’ cried Milly, in rising wrath.
 ‘’Appen it wor,’ she replied.
 ‘And the gate locked.’
 ‘That’s it - the gate locked,’ she repeated, sulkily, with a defiant side-glance at Milly.
 ‘And where’s Pegtop?’
 ‘At t’other side, somewhere; how should I know where he be?’ she replied.
 ‘Who’s got the key?’
 ‘Here it be, lass,’ she answered, striking her hand on her pocket. ‘And how durst you stay us here? Unlock it, huzzy, this minute!’ cried Milly, with a stamp.
 Her answer was a sullen smile.
 ‘Open the gate this instant!’ bawled Milly.
 ‘Well, I won’t.’
 I expected that Milly would have flown into a frenzy at this direct defiance, but she looked instead puzzled and curious - the girl’s unexpected audacity bewildered her.
 ‘Why, you fool, I could get over the paling as soon as look at you, but I won’t. What’s come over you? Open the gate, I say, or I’ll make you.’
 ‘Do let her alone, dear,’ I entreated, fearing a mutual assault. ‘She has been ordered, may be, not to open it. Is it so, my good girl?’
 ‘Well, thou’rt not the biggest fool o’ the two,’ she observed, commendatively, ‘thou’st hit it, lass.’
 ‘And who ordered you?’ exclaimed Milly.
 ‘Fayther.’
 ‘Old Pegtop. Well, that’s summat to laugh at, it is - our servant a-shutting us out of our own grounds.’
 ‘No servant o’ yourn!’
 ‘Come, lass, what do you mean?’
 ‘He be old Silas’s miller, and what’s that to thee?’
 With these words the girl made a spring on the hasp of the padlock, and then got easily over the gate.
 ‘Can’t you do that, cousin?’ whispered Milly to me, with an impatient nudge. ‘I wish you’d try.’
 ‘No, dear - come away, Milly,’ and I began to withdraw.
 ‘Lookee, lass, ‘Twill be an ill day’s work for thee when I tell the Governor,’ said Milly, addressing the girl, who stood on a log of timber at the other side, regarding us with a sullen composure.
 ‘We’ll be over in spite o’ you,’ cried Milly.
 ‘You lie!’ answered she.
 ‘And why not, huzzy?’ demanded my cousin, who was less incensed at the affront than I expected. All this time I was urging Milly in vain to come away.
 ‘Yon lass is no wild cat, like thee - that’s why,’ said the sturdy portress.
 ‘If I cross, I’ll give you a knock,’ said Milly.
 ‘And I’ll gi’ thee another,’ she answered, with a vicious wag of the head.
 ‘Come, Milly, I’ll go if you don’t,’ I said.
 ‘But we must not be beat,’ whispered she, vehemently, catching my arm; ‘and ye shall get over, and see what I will gi’ her!’
 ‘I’ll not get over.’
 ‘Then I’ll break the door, for ye shall come through,’ exclaimed Milly, kicking the stout paling with her ponderous boot.
 ‘Purr it, purr it, purr it!’ cried the lass in the red petticoat with a grin.
 ‘Do you know who this lady is?’ cried Milly, suddenly.
 ‘She is a prettier lass than thou,’ answered Beauty.
 ‘She’s my cousin Maud - Miss Ruthyn of Knowl - and she’s a deal richer than the Queen; and the Governor’s taking care of her; and he’ll make old Pegtop bring you to reason.’
 The girl eyed me with a sulky listlessness, a little inquisitively, I thought.
 ‘See if he don’t,’ threatened Milly.
 ‘You positively must come,’ I said, drawing her away with me.
 ‘Well, shall we come in?’ cried Milly, trying a last summons.
 ‘You’ll not come in that much,’ she answered, surlily, measuring an infinitesimal distance on her finger with her thumb, which she pinched against it, the gesture ending with a snap of defiance, and a smile that showed her fine teeth.
 ‘I’ve a mind to shy a stone at you,’ shouted Milly.
 ‘Faire away; I’ll shy wi’ ye as long as ye like, lass; take heed o’ yerself;’ and Beauty picked up a round stone as large as a cricket ball.
 With difficulty I got Milly away without an exchange of missiles, and much disgusted at my want of zeal and agility.
 ‘Well, come along, cousin, I know an easy way by the river, when it’s low,’ answered Milly. ‘She’s a brute - is not she?’
 As we receded, we saw the girl slowly wending her way towards the old thatched cottage, which showed its gable from the side of a little rugged eminence embowered in spreading trees, and dangling and twirling from its string on the end of her finger the key for which a battle had so nearly been fought.
 The stream was low enough to make our flank movement round the end of the paling next it quite easy, and so we pursued our way, and Milly’s equanimity returned, and our ramble grew very pleasant again.
 Our path lay by the river bank, and as we proceeded, the dwarf timber was succeeded by grander trees, which crowded closer and taller, and, at last, the scenery deepened into solemn forest, and a sudden sweep in the river revealed the beautiful ruin of a steep old bridge, with the fragments of a gate-house on the farther side.
 ‘Oh, Milly darling!’ I exclaimed, ‘what a beautiful drawing this would make! I should so like to make a sketch of it.’
 ‘So it would. Make a picture - do! - here’s a stone that’s pure and flat to sit upon, and you look very tired. Do make it, and I’ll sit by you.’
 ‘Yes, Milly, I am tired, a little, and I will sit down; but we must wait for another day to make the picture, for we have neither pencil nor paper. But it is much too pretty to be lost; so let us come again to-morrow.’
 ‘To-morrow be hanged! you’ll do it to-day, bury-me-wick, but you shall; I’m wearying to see you make a picture, and I’ll fetch your conundrums out o’ your drawer, for do’t you shall.’
  
Chapter XXXIV: Zamiel
 It was all vain my remonstrating. She vowed that by crossing the stepping-stones close by she could, by a short cut, reach the house, and return with my pencils and block-book in a quarter of an hour. Away then, with many a jump and fling, scampered Milly’s queer white stockings and navvy boots across the irregular and precarious stepping-stones, over which I dared not follow her; so I was fain to return to the stone so ‘pure and flat,’ on which I sat, enjoying the grand sylvan solitude, the dark background and the grey bridge mid-way, so tall and slim, across whose ruins a sunbeam glimmered, and the gigantic forest trees that slumbered round, opening here and there in dusky vistas, and breaking in front into detached and solemn groups. It was the setting of a dream of romance.
 It would have been the very spot in which to read a volume of German folk-lore, and the darkening colonnades and silent nooks of the forest seemed already haunted with the voices and shadows of those charming elves and goblins.
 As I sat here enjoying the solitude and my fancies among the low branches of the wood, at my right I heard a crashing, and saw a squat broad figure in a stained and tattered military coat, and loose short trousers, one limb of which flapped about a wooden leg. He was forcing himself through. His face was rugged and wrinkled, and tanned to the tint of old oak; his eyes black, beadlike, and fierce, and a shock of sooty hair escaped from under his battered wide-awake nearly to his shoulders. This forbidding-looking person came stumping and jerking along toward me, whisking his stick now and then viciously in the air, and giving his fell of hair a short shake, like a wild bull preparing to attack.
 I stood up involuntarily with a sense of fear and surprise, almost fancying I saw in that wooden-legged old soldier, the forest demon who haunted Der Freischütz.
 So he approached shouting -
 ‘Hollo! you - how came you here? Dost ‘eer?’
 And he drew near panting, and sometimes tugging angrily in his haste at his wooden leg, which sunk now and then deeper than was convenient in the sod. This exertion helped to anger him, and when he halted before me, his dark face smirched with smoke and dust, and the nostrils of his flat drooping nose expanded and quivered as he panted, like the gills of a fish; an angrier or uglier face it would not be easy to fancy.
 ‘Ye’ll all come when ye like, will ye? and do nout but what pleases yourselves, won’t you? And who’rt thou? Dost ‘eer - who are ye, I say; and what the deil seek ye in the woods here? Come, bestir thee!’
 If his wide mouth and great tobacco-stained teeth, his scowl, and loud discordant tones were intimidating, they were also extremely irritating. The moment my spirit was roused, my courage came.
 ‘I am Miss Ruthyn of Knowl, and Mr. Silas Ruthyn, your master, is my uncle.’
 ‘Hoo!’ he exclaimed more gently, ‘an’ if Silas be thy uncle thou’lt be come to live wi’ him, and thou’rt she as come overnight - eh?’
 I made no answer, but I believe I looked both angrily and disdainfully.
 ‘And what make ye alone here? and how was I to know’t, an’ Milly not wi’ ye, nor no one? But Maud or no Maud, I wouldn’t let the Dooke hisself set foot inside the palin’ without Silas said let him. And you may tell Silas them’s the words o’ Dickon Hawkes, and I’ll stick to’m - and what’s more I’ll tell him myself - I will; I’ll tell him there be no use o’ my striving and straining hee, day an’ night and night and day, watchin’ again poachers, and thieves, and gipsies, and they robbing lads, if rules won’t be kep, and folk do jist as they pleases. Dang it, lass, thou’rt in luck I didn’t heave a brick at thee when I saw thee first.’
 ‘I’ll complain of you to my uncle,’ I replied.
 ‘So do, and and ‘appen thou’lt find thyself in the wrong box, lass; thou canst na’ say I set the dogs arter thee, nor cau’d thee so much as a wry name, nor heave a stone at thee - did I? Well? and where’s the complaint then?’
 I simply answered, rather fiercely,
 ‘Be good enough to leave me.’
 ‘Well, I make no objections, mind. I’m takin’ thy word - thou’rt Maud Ruthyn - ‘appen thou be’st and ‘appen thou baint. I’m not aweer on’t, but I takes thy word, and all I want to know’s just this, did Meg open the gate to thee?’
 I made him no answer, and to my great relief I saw Milly striding and skipping across the unequal stepping-stones.
 ‘Hallo, Pegtop! what are you after now?’ she cried, as she drew near.
 ‘This man has been extremely impertinent. You know him, Milly?’ I said.
 ‘Why that’s Pegtop Dickon. Dirty old Hawkes that never was washed. I tell you, lad, ye’ll see what the Governor thinks o’t - a-ha! He’ll talk to you.’
 ‘I done or said nout - not but I should, and there’s the fack - she can’t deny’t; she hadn’t a hard word from I; and I don’t care the top o’ that thistle what no one says - not I. But I tell thee, Milly, I stopped some o’ thy pranks, and I’ll stop more. Ye’ll be shying no more stones at the cattle.’
 ‘Tell your tales, and welcome, cried Milly. ‘I wish I was here when you jawed cousin. If Winny was here she’d catch you by the timber toe and put you on your back.’
 ‘Ay, she’ll be a good un yet if she takes arter thee,’ retorted the old man with a fierce sneer.
 ‘Drop it, and get away wi’ ye,’ cried she, ‘or maybe I’d call Winny to smash your timber leg for you.’
 ‘A-ha! there’s more on’t. She’s a sweet un. Isn’t she?’ he replied sardonically.
 ‘You did not like it last Easter, when Winny broke it with a kick.’
 ‘’Twas a kick o’ a horse,’ he growled with a glance at me.
 ‘’Twas no such thing - ‘Twas Winny did it - and he laid on his back for a week while carpenter made him a new one.’ And Milly laughed hilariously.
 ‘I’ll fool no more wi’ ye, losing my time; I won’t; but mind ye, I’ll speak wi’ Silas.’ And going away he put his hand to his crumpled wide-awake, and said to me with a surly difference -
 ‘Good evening, Miss Ruthyn - good evening, ma’am - and ye’ll please remember, I did not mean nout to vex thee.’
 And so he swaggered away, jerking and waddling over the sward, and was soon lost in the wood.
 ‘It’s well he’s a little bit frightened - I never saw him so angry, I think; he is awful mad.’
 ‘Perhaps he really is not aware how very rude he is,’ I suggested.
 ‘I hate him. We were twice as pleasant with poor Tom Driver - he never meddled with any one, and was always in liquor; Old Gin was the name he went by. But this brute - I do hate him - he comes from Wigan, I think, and he’s always spoiling sport - and he whops Meg - that’s Beauty, you know, and I don’t think she’d be half as bad only for him. Listen to him whistlin’.’
 ‘I did hear whistling at some distance among the trees.’
 ‘I declare if he isn’t callin’ the dogs! Climb up here, I tell ye,’ and we climbed up the slanting trunk of a great walnut tree, and strained our eyes in the direction from which we expected the onset of Pegtop’s vicious pack.
 But it was a false alarm.
 ‘Well, I don’t think he would do that, after all - hardly; but he is a brute, sure!’
 ‘And that dark girl who would not let us through, is his daughter, is she?’
 ‘Yes, that’s Meg - Beauty, I christened her, when I called him Beast; but I call him Pegtop now, and she’s Beauty still, and that’s the way o’t.’
 ‘Come, sit down now, an’ make your picture,’ she resumed so soon as we had dismounted from our position of security.
 ‘I’m afraid I’m hardly in the vein. I don’t think I could draw a straight line. My hand trembles.’
 ‘I wish you could, Maud,’ said Milly, with a look so wistful and entreating, that considering the excursion she had made for the pencils, I could not bear to disappoint her.
 ‘Well, Milly, we must only try; and if we fail we can’t help it. Sit you down beside me and I’ll tell you why I begin with one part and not another, and you’ll see how I make trees and the river, and - yes, that pencil, it is hard and answers for the fine light lines; but we must begin at the beginning, and learn to copy drawings before we attempt real views like this. And if you wish it, Milly, I’m resolved to teach you everything I know, which, after all, is not a great deal, and we shall have such fun making sketches of the same landscapes, and then comparing.’
 And so on, Milly, quite delighted, and longing to begin her course of instruction, sat down beside me in a rapture, and hugged and kissed me so heartily that we were very near rolling together off the stone on which we were seated. Her boisterous delight and good-nature helped to restore me, and both laughing heartily together, I commenced my task.
 ‘Dear me! who’s that?’ I exclaimed suddenly, as looking up from my block-book I saw the figure of a slight man in the careless morning-dress of a gentleman, crossing the ruinous bridge in our direction, with considerable caution, upon the precarious footing of the battlement, which alone offered an unbroken passage.
 This was a day of apparitions! Milly recognised him instantly. The gentleman was Mr. Carysbroke. He had taken The Grange only for a year. He lived quite to himself, and was very good to the poor, and was the only gentleman, for ever so long, who had visited at Bartram, and oddly enough nowhere else. But he wanted leave to cross through the grounds, and having obtained it, had repeated his visit, partly induced, no doubt, by the fact that Bartram boasted no hospitalities, and that there was no risk of meeting the county folk there.
 With a stout walking-stick in his hand, and a short shooting-coat, and a wide-awake hat in much better trim than Zamiel’s, he emerged from the copse that covered the bridge, walking at a quick but easy pace.
 ‘He’ll be goin’ to see old Snoddles, I guess,’ said Milly, looking a little frightened and curious; for Milly, I need not say, was a bumpkin, and stood in awe of this gentleman’s good-breeding, though she was as brave as a lion, and would have fought the Philistines at any odds, with the jawbone of an ass.
 ‘’appen he won’t see us,’ whispered Milly, hopefully.
 But he did, and raising his hat, with a cheerful smile, that showed very white teeth, he paused.
 ‘Charming day, Miss Ruthyn.’
 I raised my head suddenly as he spoke, from habit appropriating the address; it was so marked that he raised his hat respectfully to me, and then continued to Milly -
 ‘Mr. Ruthyn, I hope, quite well? but I need hardly ask, you seem so happy. Will you kindly tell him, that I expect the book I mentioned in a day or two, and when it comes I’ll either send or bring it to him immediately?’
 Milly and I were standing, by this time, but she only stared at him, tongue-tied, her cheeks rather flushed, and her eyes very round, and to facilitate the dialogue, as I suppose, he said again -
 ‘He’s quite well, I hope?’
 Still no response from Milly, and I, provoked, though myself a little shy, made answer -
 ‘My uncle, Mr. Ruthyn, is very well, thank you,’ and I felt that I blushed as I spoke.
 ‘Ah, pray excuse me, may I take a great liberty? you are Miss Ruthyn, of Knowl? Will you think me very impertinent - I’m afraid you will - if I venture to introduce myself? My name is Carysbroke, and I had the honour of knowing poor Mr. Ruthyn when I was quite a little boy, and he has shown a kindness for me since, and I hope you will pardon the liberty I fear I’ve taken. I think my friend, Lady Knollys, too, is a relation of yours; what a charming person she is!’
 ‘Oh, is not she? such a darling!’ I said, and then blushed at my outspoken affection.
 But he smiled kindly, as if he liked me for it; and he said -
 ‘You know whatever I think, I dare not quite say that; but frankly I can quite understand it. She preserves her youth so wonderfully, and her fun and her good-nature are so entirely girlish. What a sweet view you have selected,’ he continued, changing all at once. ‘I’ve stood just at this point so often to look back at that exquisite old bridge. Do you observe - you’re an artist, I see - something very peculiar in that tint of the grey, with those odd cross stains of faded red and yellow?’
 ‘I do, indeed; I was just remarking the peculiar beauty of the colouring - was not I, Milly?’
 Milly stared at me, and uttered an alarmed ‘Yes,’ and looked as if she had been caught in a robbery.
 ‘Yes, and you have so very peculiar a background,’ he resumed. ‘It was better before the storm though; but it is very good still.’
 Then a little pause, and ‘Do you know this country at all?’ rather suddenly.
 ‘No, not in the least - that is, I’ve only had the drive to this place; but what I did see interested me very much.’
 ‘You will be charmed with it when you know it better - the very place for an artist. I’m a wretched scribbler myself, and I carry this little book in my pocket,’ and he laughed deprecatingly while he drew forth a thin fishing-book, as it looked. ‘They are mere memoranda, you see. I walk so much and come unexpectedly on such pretty nooks and studies, I just try to make a note of them, but it is really more writing than sketching; my sister says it is a cipher which nobody but myself understands. However, I’ll try and explain just two - because you really ought to go and see the places. Oh, no; not that,’ he laughed, as accidentally the page blew over, ‘that’s the Cat and Fiddle, a curious little pot-house, where they gave me some very good ale one day.’
 Milly at this exhibited some uneasy tokens of being about to speak, but not knowing what might be coming, I hastened to observe on the spirited little sketches to which he meant to draw my attention.
 ‘I want to show you only the places within easy reach - a short ride or drive.’
 So he proceeded to turn over two or three, in addition to the two he had at first proposed, and then another; then a little sketch just tinted, and really quite a charming little gem, of Cousin Monica’s pretty gabled old house; and every subject had its little criticism, or its narrative, or adventure.
 As he was about returning this little sketch-book to his pocket, still chatting to me, he suddenly recollected poor Milly, who was looking rather lowering; but she brightened a good deal as he presented it to her, with a little speech which she palpably misunderstood, for she made one of her odd courtesies, and was about, I thought, to put it into her large pocket, and accept it as a present.
 ‘Look at the drawings, Milly, and then return it,’ I whispered.
 At his request I allowed him to look at my unfinished sketch of the bridge, and while he was measuring distances and proportions with his eye, Milly whispered rather angrily to me.
 ‘And why should I?’
 ‘Because he wants it back, and only meant to lend it to you,’ whispered I.
 ‘Lend it to me - and after you! Bury-me-wick if I look at a leaf of it,’ she retorted in high dudgeon. ‘Take it, lass; give it him yourself - I’ll not,’ and she popped it into my hand, and made a sulky step back.
 ‘My cousin is very much obliged,’ I said, returning the book, and smiling for her, and he took it smiling also and said -
 ‘I think if I had known how very well you draw, Miss Ruthyn, I should have hesitated about showing you my poor scrawls. But these are not my best, you know; Lady Knollys will tell you that I can really do better - a great deal better, I think.’
 And then with more apologies for what he called his impertinence, he took his leave, and I felt altogether very much pleased and flattered.
 He could not be more than twenty-nine or thirty, I thought, and he was decidedly handsome - that is, his eyes and teeth, and clear brown complexion were - and there was something distinguished and graceful in his figure and gesture; and altogether there was the indescribable attraction of intelligence; and I fancied - though this, of course, was a secret - that from the moment he spoke to us he felt an interest in me. I am not going to be vain. It was a grave interest, but still an interest, for I could see him studying my features while I was turning over his sketches, and he thought I saw nothing else. It was flattering, too, his anxiety that I should think well of his drawing, and referring me to Lady Knollys. Carysbroke - had I ever heard my dear father mention that name? I could not recollect it. But then he was habitually so silent, that his not doing so argued nothing.

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Chapter XXXV: We Visit a Room in the Second Story
 Mr. Carysbroke amused my fancy sufficiently to prevent my observing Milly’s silence, till we had begun our return homeward.
 ‘The Grange must be a pretty house, if that little sketch be true; is it far from this?’
 ‘’Twill be two mile.’
 ‘Are you vexed, Milly?’ I asked, for both her tone and looks were angry.
 ‘Yes, I am vexed; and why not lass?’
 ‘What has happened?’
 ‘Well, now, that is rich! Why, look at that fellow, Carysbroke: he took no more notice to me than a dog, and kep’ talking to you all the time of his pictures, and his walks, and his people. Why, a pig’s better manners than that.’
 ‘But, Milly dear, you forget, he tried to talk to you, and you would not answer him,’ I expostulated.
 ‘And is not that just what I say - I can’t talk like other folk - ladies, I mean. Every one laughs at me; an’ I’m dressed like a show, I am. It’s a shame! I saw Polly Shives - what a lady she is, my eyes! - laughing at me in church last Sunday. I was minded to give her a bit of my mind. An’ I know I’m queer. It’s a shame, it is. Why should I be so rum? it is a shame! I don’t want to be so, nor it isn’t my fault.’
 And poor Milly broke into a flood of tears, and stamped on the ground, and buried her face in her short frock, which she whisked up to her eyes; and an odder figure of grief I never beheld.
 ‘And I could not make head or tail of what he was saying,’ cried poor Milly through her buff cotton, with a stamp; ‘and you twigged every word o’t. An’ why am I so? It’s a shame - a shame! Oh, ho, ho! it’s a shame!’
 ‘But, my dear Milly, we were talking of drawing, and you have not learned yet, but you shall - I’ll teach you; and then you’ll understand all about it.’
 ‘An’ every one laughs at me - even you; though you try, Maud, you can scarce keep from laughing sometimes. I don’t blame you, for I know I’m queer; but I can’t help it; and it’s a shame.’
 ‘Well, my dear Milly, listen to me: if you allow me, I assure you, I’ll teach you all the music and drawing I know. You have lived very much alone; and, as you say, ladies have a way of speaking of their own that is different from the talk of other people.’
 ‘Yes, that they have, an’ gentlemen too - like the Governor, and that Carysbroke; and a precious lingo it is - dang it - why, the devil himself could not understand it; an’ I’m like a fool among you. I could ‘most drown myself. It’s a shame! It is - you know it is. - It’s a shame!’
 ‘But I’ll teach you that lingo too, if you wish it, Milly; and you shall know everything that I know; and I’ll manage to have your dresses better made.’
 By this time she was looking very ruefully, but attentively, in my face, her round eyes and nose swelled, and her cheeks all wet.
 ‘I think if they were a little longer - yours is longer, you know;’ and the sentence was interrupted by a sob.
 ‘Now, Milly, you must not be crying; if you choose you may be just as the same as any other lady - and you shall; and you will be very much admired, I can tell you, if only you will take the trouble to quite unlearn all your odd words and ways, and dress yourself like other people; and I will take care of that if you let me; and I think you are very clever, Milly; and I know you are very pretty.’
 Poor Milly’s blubbered face expanded into a smile in spite of herself; but she shook her head, looking down.
 ‘Noa, noa, Maud, I fear ‘Twon’t be.’ And indeed it seemed I had proposed to myself a labour of Hercules.
 But Milly was really a clever creature, could see quickly, and when her ungainly dialect was mastered, describe very pleasantly; and if only she would endure the restraint and possessed the industry requisite, I did not despair, and was resolved at least to do my part.
 Poor Milly! she was really very grateful, and entered into the project of her education with great zeal, and with a strange mixture of humility and insubordination.
 Milly was in favour of again attacking ‘Beauty’s’ position on her return, and forcing a passage from this side; but I insisted on following the route by which we had arrived, and so we got round the paling by the river, and were treated to a provoking grin of defiance by ‘Beauty,’ who was talking across the gate to a slim young man, arrayed in fustian, and with an odd-looking cap of rabbit-skin on his head, which, on seeing us, he pulled sheepishly to the side of his face next to us, as he lounged, with his arm under his chin, on the top bar of the gate.
 After our encounter of to-day, indeed, it was Miss ‘Beauty’s’ wont to exhibit a kind of jeering disdain in her countenance whenever we passed.
 I think Milly would have engaged her again, had I not reminded her of her undertaking, and exerted my new authority.
 ‘Look at that sneak, Pegtop, there, going up the path to the mill. He makes belief now he does not see us; but he does, though, only he’s afraid we’ll tell the Governor, and he thinks Governor won’t give him his way with you. I hate that Pegtop: he stopped me o’ riding the cows a year ago, he did.’
 I thought Pegtop might have done worse. Indeed it was plain that a total reformation was needed here; and I was glad to find that poor Milly seemed herself conscious of it; and that her resolution to become more like other people of her station was not a mere spasm of mortification and jealousy, but a genuine and very zealous resolve.
 I had not half seen this old house of Bartram-Haugh yet. At first, indeed, I had but an imperfect idea of its extent. There was a range of rooms along one side of the great gallery, with closed window-shutters, and the doors generally locked. Old L’Amour grew cross when we went into them, although we could see nothing; and Milly was afraid to open the windows - not that any Bluebeard revelations were apprehended, but simply because she knew that Uncle Silas’s order was that things should be left undisturbed; and this boisterous spirit stood in awe of him to a degree which his gentle manners and apparent quietude rendered quite surprising.
 There were in this house, what certainly did not exist at Knowl, and what I have never observed, thought they may possibly be found in other old houses - I mean, here and there, very high hatches, which we could only peep over by jumping in the air. They crossed the long corridors and great galleries; and several of them were turned across and locked, so as to intercept the passage, and interrupt our explorations.
 Milly, however, knew a queer little, very steep and dark back stair, which reached the upper floor; so she and I mounted, and made a long ramble through rooms much lower and ruder in finish than the lordly chambers we had left below. These commanded various views of the beautiful though neglected grounds; but on crossing a gallery we entered suddenly a chamber, which looked into a small and dismal quadrangle, formed by the inner walls of this great house, and of course designed only by the architect to afford the needful light and air to portions of the structure.
 I rubbed the window-pane with my handkerchief and looked out. The surrounding roof was steep and high. The walls looked soiled and dark. The windows lined with dust and dirt, and the window-stones were in places tufted with moss, and grass, and groundsel. An arched doorway had opened from the house into this darkened square, but it was soiled and dusty; and the damp weeds that overgrew the quadrangle drooped undisturbed against it. It was plain that human footsteps tracked it little, and I gazed into that blind and sinister area with a strange thrill and sinking.
 ‘This is the second floor - there is the enclosed court-yard’ - I, as it were, soliloquised.
 ‘What are you afraid of, Maud? you look as ye’d seen a ghost,’ exclaimed Milly, who came to the window and peeped over my shoulder.
 ‘It reminded me suddenly, Milly, of that frightful business.’
 ‘What business, Maud? - what a plague are ye thinking on?’ demanded Milly, rather amused.
 ‘It was in one of these rooms - maybe this - yes, it certainly was this - for see, the panelling has been pulled off the wall - that Mr. Charke killed himself.’
 I was staring ruefully round the dim chamber, in whose corners the shadows of night were already gathering.
 ‘Charke! - what about him? - who’s Charke?’ asked Milly.
 ‘Why, you must have heard of him,’ said I.
 ‘Not as I’m aware on,’ answered she. ‘And he killed himself, did he, hanged himself, eh, or blowed his brains out?’
 ‘He cut his throat in one of these rooms - this one, I’m sure - for your papa had the wainscoting stripped from the wall to ascertain whether there was any second door through which a murderer could have come; and you see these walls are stripped, and bear the marks of the woodwork that has been removed,’ I answered.
 ‘Well, that was awful! I don’t know how they have pluck to cut their throats; if I was doing it, I’d like best to put a pistol to my head and fire, like the young gentleman did, they say, in Deadman’s Hollow. But the fellows that cut their throats, they must be awful game lads, I’m thinkin’, for it’s a long slice, you know.’
 ‘Don’t, don’t, Milly dear. Suppose we come away,’ I said, for the evening was deepening rapidly into night.
 ‘Hey and bury-me-wick, but here’s the blood; don’t you see a big black cloud all spread over the floor hereabout, don’t ye see?’ Milly was stooping over the spot, and tracing the outline of this, perhaps, imaginary mapping, in the air with her finger.
 ‘No, Milly, you could not see it: the floor is too dark, and it’s all in shadow. It must be fancy; and perhaps, after all, this is not the room.’
 ‘Well - I think, I’m sure it is. Stand - just look.’
 ‘We’ll come in the morning, and if you are right we can see it better then. Come away,’ I said, growing frightened.
 And just as we stood up to depart, the white high-cauled cap and large sallow features of old L’Amour peeped in at the door.
 ‘Lawk! what brings you here?’ cried Milly, nearly as much startled as I at the intrusion.
 ‘What brings you here, miss?’ whistled L’Amour through her gums.
 ‘We’re looking where Charke cut his throat,’ replied Milly.
 ‘Charke the devil!’ said the old woman, with an odd mixture of scorn and fury. ‘’Tisn’t his room; and come ye out of it, please. Master won’t like when he hears how you keep pulling Miss Maud from one room to another, all through the house, up and down.’
 She was gabbling sternly enough, but dropped a low courtesy as I passed her, and with a peaked and nodding stare round the room, the old woman clapped the door sharply, and locked it.
 ‘And who has been a talking about Charke - a pack o lies, I warrant. I s’pose you want to frighten Miss Maud here’ (another crippled courtesy) ‘wi’ ghosts and like nonsense.’
 ‘You’re out there: ‘Twas she told me; and much about it. Ghosts, indeed! I don’t vally them, not I; if I did, I know who’d frighten me,’ and Milly laughed.
 The old woman stuffed the key in her pocket, and her wrinkled mouth pouted and receded with a grim uneasiness.
 ‘A harmless brat, and kind she is; but wild - wild - she will be wild.’
 So whispered L’Amour in my ear, during the silence that followed, nodding shakily toward Milly over the banister, and she courtesied again as we departed, and shuffled off toward Uncle Silas’s room.
 The Governor is queerish this evening,’ said Milly, when we were seated at our tea. ‘You never saw him queerish, did you?’
 ‘You must say what you mean, more plainly, Milly. You don’t mean ill, I hope?’
 ‘Well! I don’t know what it is; but he does grow very queer sometimes - you’d think he was dead a’most, maybe two or three days and nights together. He sits all the time like an old woman in a swound. Well, well, it is awful!’
 ‘Is he insensible when in that state?’ I asked, a good deal alarmed.
 ‘I don’t know; but it never signifies anything. It won’t kill him, I do believe; but old L’Amour knows all about it. I hardly ever go into the room when he’s so, only when I’m sent for; and he sometimes wakes up and takes a fancy to call for this one or that. One day he sent for Pegtop all the way to the mill; and when he came, he only stared at him for a minute or two, and ordered him out o’ the room. He’s like a child a’most, when he’s in one o’ them dazes.’
 I always knew when Uncle Silas was ‘queerish,’ by the injunctions of old L’Amour, whistled and spluttered over the banister as we came up-stairs, to mind how we made a noise passing master’s door; and by the sound of mysterious to-ings and fro-ings about his room.
 I saw very little of him. He sometimes took a whim to have us breakfast with him, which lasted perhaps for a week; and then the order of our living would relapse into its old routine.
 I must not forget two kind letters from Lady Knollys, who was detained away, and delighted to hear that I enjoyed my quiet life; and promised to apply, in person, to Uncle Silas, for permission to visit me.
 She was to be for the Christmas at Elverston, and that was only six miles away from Bartram-Haugh, so I had the excitement of a pleasant look forward.
 She also said that she would include poor Milly in her invitation; and a vision of Captain Oakley rose before me, with his handsome gaze turned in wonder on poor Milly, for whom I had begun to feel myself responsible.