J. S. Le Fanu, Uncle Silas (1864) - Chaps. LI-LV

Chapter LI: Sarah Matilda Comes to Light
Some time after this interview, one day as I sat, sad enough, in my room, looking listlessly from the window, with good Mary Quince, whom, whether in the house or in my melancholy rambles, I always had by my side, I was startled by the sound of a loud and shrill female voice, in violent hysterical action, gabbling with great rapidity, sobbing, and very nearly screaming in a sort of fury.
 I started up, staring at the door.
 ‘Lord bless us!’ cried honest Mary Quince, with round eyes and mouth agape, staring in the same direction.
 ‘Mary - Mary, what can it be?’
 ‘Are they beating some one down yonder? I don’t know where it comes from,’ gasped Quince.
 ‘I will - I will - I’ll see her. It’s her I want. Oo - hoo - hoo - hoo - oo - o - Miss Maud Ruthyn of Knowl. Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Hoo - hoo - hoo - hoo - oo!’
 ‘What on earth can it be?’ I exclaimed, in great bewilderment and terror.
 It was now plainly very near indeed, and I heard the voice of our mild and shaky butler evidently remonstrating with the distressed damsel.
 ‘I’ll see her,’ she continued, pouring a torrent of vile abuse upon me, which stung me with a sudden sense of anger. What had I done to be afraid of anyone? How dared anyone in my uncle’s house - in my house - mix my name up with her detestable scurrilities?
 ‘For Heaven’s sake, Miss, don’t ye go out,’ cried poor Quince; ‘it’s some drunken creature.’
 But I was very angry, and, like a fool as I was, I threw open the door, exclaiming in a loud and haughty key -
 ‘Here is Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Who wants to see her?’
 A pink and white young lady, with black tresses, violent, weeping, shrill, voluble, was flouncing up the last stair, and shook her dress out on the lobby; and poor old Giblets, as Milly used to call him, was following in her wake, with many small remonstrances and entreaties, perfectly unheeded.
 The moment I looked at this person, it struck me that she was the identical lady whom I had seen in the carriage at Knowl Warren. The next moment I was in doubt; the next, still more so. She was decidedly thinner, and dressed by no means in such lady-like taste. Perhaps she was hardly like her at all. I began to distrust all these resemblances, and to fancy, with a shudder, that they originated, perhaps, only in my own sick brain.
 On seeing me, this young lady - as it seemed to me, a good deal of the barmaid or lady’s-maid species - dried her eyes fiercely, and, with a flaming countenance, called upon me peremptorily to produce her ‘lawful husband.’ Her loud, insolent, outrageous attack had the effect of enhancing my indignation, and I quite forget what I said to her, but I well remember that her manner became a good deal more decent. She was plainly under the impression that I wanted to appropriate her husband, or, at least, that he wanted to marry me; and she ran on at such a pace, and her harangue was so passionate, incoherent, and unintelligible, that I thought her out of her mind: she was far from it, however. I think if she had allowed me even a second for reflection, I should have hit upon her meaning. As it was, nothing could exceed my perplexity, until, plucking a soiled newspaper from her pocket, she indicated a particular paragraph, already sufficiently emphasised by double lines of red ink at its sides. It was a Lancashire paper, of about six weeks since, and very much worn and soiled for its age. I remember in particular a circular stain from the bottom of a vessel, either of coffee or brown stout. The paragraph was as follows, recording an event a year or more anterior to the date of the paper: -
 ‘MARRIAGE. - On Tuesday, August 7, 18 - , at Leatherwig Church, by the Rev. Arthur Hughes, Dudley R. Ruthyn, Esq., only son and heir of Silas Ruthyn, Esq., of Bartram-Haugh, Derbyshire, to Sarah Matilda, second daughter of John Mangles, Esq., of Wiggan, in this county.’
 At first I read nothing but amazement in this announcement, but in another moment I felt how completely I was relieved; and showing, I believe, my intense satisfaction in my countenance - for the young lady eyed me with considerable surprise and curiosity - I said -
 ‘This is extremely important. You must see Mr. Silas Ruthyn this moment. I am certain he knows nothing of it. I will conduct you to him.’
 ‘No more he does - I know that myself,’ she replied, following me with a self-asserting swagger, and a great rustling of cheap silk.
 As we entered, Uncle Silas looked up from his sofa, and closed his Revue des Deux Mondes.
 ‘What is all this?’ he enquired, drily.
 ‘This lady has brought with her a newspaper containing an extraordinary statement which affects our family,’ I answered.
 Uncle Silas raised himself, and looked with a hard, narrow scrutiny at the unknown young lady.
 ‘A libel, I suppose, in the paper?’ he said, extending his hand for it.
 ‘No, uncle - no; only a marriage,’ I answered.
 ‘Not Monica?’ he said, as he took it. ‘Pah, it smells all over of tobacco and beer,’ he added, throwing a little eau de Cologne over it.
 He raised it with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, saying again ‘pah,’ as he did so.
 He read the paragraph, and as he did his face changed from white, all over, to lead colour. He raised his eyes, and looked steadily for some seconds at the young lady, who seemed a little awed by his strange presence.
 ‘And you are, I suppose, the young lady, Sarah Matilda née Mangles, mentioned in this little paragraph?’ he said, in a tone you would have called a sneer, were it not that it trembled.
 Sarah Matilda assented.
 ‘My son is, I dare say, within reach. It so happens that I wrote to arrest his journey, and summon him here, some days since - some days since - some days since,’ he repeated slowly, like a person whose mind has wandered far away from the theme on which he is speaking.
 He had rung his bell, and old Wyat, always hovering about his rooms, entered.
 ‘I want my son, immediately. If not in the house, send Harry to the stables; if not there, let him be followed, instantly. Brice is an active fellow, and will know where to find him. If he is in Feltram, or at a distance, let Brice take a horse, and Master Dudley can ride it back. He must be here without the loss of one moment.’
 There intervened nearly a quarter of an hour, during which whenever he recollected her, Uncle Silas treated the young lady with a hyper-refined and ceremonious politeness, which appeared to make her uneasy, and even a little shy, and certainly prevented a renewal of those lamentations and invectives which he had heard faintly from the stair-head.
 But for the most part Uncle Silas seemed to forget us and his book, and all that surrounded him, lying back in the corner of his sofa, his chin upon his breast, and such a fearful shade and carving on his features as made me prefer looking in any direction but his.
 At length we heard the tread of Dudley’s thick boots on the oak boards, and faint and muffled the sound of his voice as he cross-examined old Wyat before entering the chamber of audience.
 I think he suspected quite another visitor, and had no expectation of seeing the particular young lady, who rose from her chair as he entered, in an opportune flood of tears, crying -
 ‘Oh, Dudley, Dudley! - oh, Dudley, could you? Oh, Dudley, your own poor Sal! You could not - you would not - your lawful wife!’
 This and a good deal more, with cheeks that streamed like a window-pane in a thunder-shower, spoke Sarah Matilda with all her oratory, working his arm, which she clung to, up and down all the time, like the handle of a pump. But Dudley was, manifestly, confounded and dumbfoundered. He stood for a long time gaping at his father, and stole just one sheepish glance at me; and, with red face and forehead, looked down at his boots, and then again at his father, who remained just in the attitude I have described, and with the same forbidding and dreary intensity in his strange face.
 Like a quarrelsome man worried in his sleep by a noise, Dudley suddenly woke up, as it were, with a start, in a half-suppressed exasperation, and shook her off with a jerk and a muttered curse, as she whisked involuntarily into a chair, with more violence than could have been pleasant.
 ‘Judging by your looks and demeanour, sir, I can almost anticipate your answers,’ said my uncle, addressing him suddenly. ‘Will you be good enough - pray, madame (parenthetically to our visitor), command yourself for a few moments. Is this young person the daughter of a Mr. Mangles, and is her name Sarah Matilda?’
 ‘I dessay,’ answered Dudley, hurriedly.
 ‘Is she your wife?’
 ‘Is she my wife?’ repeated Dudley, ill at ease.
 ‘Yes, sir; it is a plain question.’
 All this time Sarah Matilda was perpetually breaking into talk, and with difficulty silenced by my uncle.
 ‘Well, ‘appen she says I am - does she?’ replied Dudley.
 ‘Is she your wife, sir?’
 ‘Mayhap she so considers it, after a fashion,’ he replied, with an impudent swagger, seating himself as he did so.
 ‘What do you think, sir?’ persisted Uncle Silas.
 ‘I don’t think nout about it,’ replied Dudley, surlily.
 ‘Is that account true?’ said my uncle, handing him the paper.
 ‘They wishes us to believe so, at any rate.’
 ‘Answer directly, sir. We have our thoughts upon it. If it be true, it is capable of every proof. For expedition’s sake I ask you. There is no use in prevaricating.’
 ‘Who wants to deny it? It is true - there!’
 ‘There! I knew he would,’ screamed the young woman, hysterically, with a laugh of strange joy.
 ‘Shut up, will ye?’ growled Dudley, savagely.
 ‘Oh, Dudley, Dudley, darling! what have I done?’
 ‘Bin and ruined me, jest - that’s all.’
 ‘Oh! no, no, no, Dudley. Ye know I wouldn’t. I could not - could not hurt ye, Dudley. No, no, no!’
 He grinned at her, and, with a sharp side-nod, said -
 ‘Wait a bit.’
 ‘Oh, Dudley, don’t be vexed, dear. I did not mean it. I would not hurt ye for all the world. Never.’
 ‘Well, never mind. You and yours tricked me finely; and now you’ve got me - that’s all.’
 My uncle laughed a very odd laugh.
 ‘I knew it, of course; and upon my word, madame, you and he make a very pretty couple,’ sneered Uncle Silas.
 Dudley made no answer, looking, however, very savage.
 And with this poor young wife, so recently wedded, the low villain had actually solicited me to marry him!
 I am quite certain that my uncle was as entirely ignorant as I of Dudley’s connection, and had, therefore, no participation in this appalling wickedness.
 ‘And I have to congratulate you, my good fellow, on having secured the affections of a very suitable and vulgar young woman.’
 ‘I baint the first o’ the family as a’ done the same,’ retorted Dudley.
 At this taunt the old man’s fury for a moment overpowered him. In an instant he was on his feet, quivering from head to foot. I never saw such a countenance - like one of those demon-grotesques we see in the Gothic side-aisles and groinings - a dreadful grimace, monkey-like and insane - and his thin hand caught up his ebony stick, and shook it paralytically in the air.
 ‘If ye touch me wi’ that, I’ll smash ye, by - - !’ shouted Dudley, furious, raising his hands and hitching his shoulder, just as I had seen him when he fought Captain Oakley.
 For a moment this picture was suspended before me, and I screamed, I know not what, in my terror. But the old man, the veteran of many a scene of excitement, where men disguise their ferocity in calm tones, and varnish their fury with smiles, had not quite lost his self-command. He turned toward me and said -
 ‘Does he know what he’s saying?’
 And with an icy laugh of contempt, his high, thin forehead still flushed, he sat down trembling.
 ‘If you want to say aught, I’ll hear ye. Ye may jaw me all ye like, and I’ll stan’ it.’
 ‘Oh, I may speak? Thank you,’ sneered Uncle Silas, glancing slowly round at me, and breaking into a cold laugh.
 ‘Ay, I don’t mind cheek, not I; but you must not go for to do that, ye know. Gammon. I won’t stand a blow - I won’t fro no one.
 ‘Well, sir, availing myself of your permission to speak, I may remark, without offence to the young lady, that I don’t happen to recollect the name Mangles among the old families of England. I presume you have chosen her chiefly for her virtues and her graces.’
 Mrs. Sarah Matilda, not apprehending this compliment quite as Uncle Silas meant it, dropped a courtesy, notwithstanding her agitation, and, wiping her eyes, said, with a blubbered smile -
 ‘You’re very kind, sure.’
 ‘I hope, for both your sakes, she has got a little money. I don’t see how you are to live else. You’re too lazy for a game-keeper; and I don’t think you could keep a pot-house, you are so addicted to drinking and quarrelling. The only thing I am quite clear upon is, that you and your wife must find some other abode than this. You shall depart this evening: and now, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Ruthyn, you may quit this room, if you please.’
 Uncle Silas had risen, and made them one of his old courtly bows, smiling a death-like sneer, and pointing to the door with his trembling fingers.
 ‘Come, will ye?’ said Dudley, grinding his teeth. ‘You’re pretty well done here.’
 Not half understanding the situation, but looking woefully bewildered, she dropped a farewell courtesy at the door.
 ‘Will ye cut?’ barked Dudley, in a tone that made her jump; and suddenly, without looking about, he strode after her from the room.
 ‘Maud, how shall I recover this? The vulgar villain - the fool! What an abyss were we approaching! and for me the last hope gone - and for me utter, utter, irretrievable ruin.’
 He was passing his fingers tremulously back and forward along the top of the mantelpiece, like a man in search of something, and continued so, looking along it, feebly and vacantly, although there was nothing there.
 ‘I wish, uncle - you do not know how much I wish - I could be of any use to you. Maybe I can?’
 He turned, and looked at me sharply.
 ‘Maybe you can,’ he echoed slowly. ‘Yes, maybe you can,’ he repeated more briskly.’ Let us - let us see - let us think - that d - - fellow! - my head!’
 ‘You’re not well, uncle?’
 ‘Oh! yes, very well. We’ll talk in the evening - I’ll send for you.’
 I found Wyat in the next room, and told her to hasten, as I thought he was ill. I hope it was not very selfish, but such had grown to be my horror of seeing him in one of his strange seizures, that I hastened from the room precipitately - partly to escape the risk of being asked to remain.
 The walls of Bartram House are thick, and the recess at the doorway deep. As I closed my uncle’s door, I heard Dudley’s voice on the stairs. I did not wish to be seen by him or by his ‘lady’, as his poor wife called herself, who was engaged in vehement dialogue with him as I emerged, and not caring either to re-enter my uncle’s room, I remained quietly ensconced within the heavy door-case, in which position I overheard Dudley say with a savage snarl -
 ‘You’ll jest go back the way ye came. I’m not goin’ wi’ ye, if that’s what ye be drivin’ at - dang your impitins!’
 ‘Oh! Dudley, dear, what have I done - what have I done - ye hate me so?’
 ‘What a’ ye done? Ye vicious little beast, ye! You’ve got us turned out an’ disinherited wi’ yer d - - d bosh, that’s all; don’t ye think it’s enough?’
 I could only hear her sobs and shrill tones in reply, for they were descending the stairs; and Mary Quince reported to me, in a horrified sort of way, that she saw him bundle her into the fly at the door, like a truss of hay into a hay-loft. And he stood with his head in at the window, scolding her, till it drove away.
 ‘I knew he wor jawing her, poor thing! By the way he kep’ waggin’ his head - an’ he had his fist inside, a shakin’ in her face I’m sure he looked wicked enough for anything; an’ she a crying like a babby, an’ lookin’ back, an’ wavin’ her wet hankicher to him - poor thing! - and she so young! ’tis a pity. Dear me! I often think, Miss, ’tis well for me I never was married. And see how we all would like to get husbands for all that, though so few is happy together. ’tis a queer world, and them that’s single is maybe the best off after all.’

[ top ]

Chapter LII: The Picture of a Wolf
 I went down that evening to the sitting-room which had been assigned to Milly and me, in search of a book - my good Mary Quince always attending me. The door was a little open, and I was startled by the light of a candle proceeding from the fireside, together with a considerable aroma of tobacco and brandy.
 On my little work-table, which he had drawn beside the hearth, lay Dudley’s pipe, his brandy-flask, and an empty tumbler; and he was sitting with one foot on the fender, his elbow on his knee, and his head resting in his hand, weeping. His back being a little toward the door, he did not perceive us; and we saw him rub his knuckles in his eyes, and heard the sounds of his selfish lamentation.
 Mary and I stole away quietly, leaving him in possession, wondering when he was to leave the house, according to the sentence which I had heard pronounced upon him.
 I was delighted to see old ‘Giblets’ quietly strapping his luggage in the hall, and heard from him in a whisper that he was to leave that evening by rail - he did not know whither.
 About half an hour afterwards, Mary Quince, going out to reconnoitre, heard from old Wyat in the lobby that he had just started to meet the train.
 Blessed be heaven for that deliverance! An evil spirit had been cast out, and the house looked lighter and happier. It was not until I sat down in the quiet of my room that the scenes and images of that agitating day began to move before my memory in orderly procession, and for the first time I appreciated, with a stunning sense of horror and a perfect rapture of thanksgiving, the value of my escape and the immensity of the danger which had threatened me. It may have been miserable weakness - I think it was. But I was young, nervous, and afflicted with a troublesome sort of conscience, which occasionally went mad, and insisted, in small things as well as great, upon sacrifices which my reason now assures me were absurd. Of Dudley I had a perfect horror; and yet had that system of solicitation, that dreadful and direct appeal to my compassion, that placing of my feeble girlhood in the seat of the arbiter of my aged uncle’s hope or despair, been long persisted in, my resistance might have been worn out - who can tell? - and I self-sacrificed! Just as criminals in Germany are teased, and watched, and cross-examined, year after year, incessantly, into a sort of madness; and worn out with the suspense, the iteration, the self-restraint, and insupportable fatigue, they at last cut all short, accuse themselves, and go infinitely relieved to the scaffold - you may guess, then, for me, nervous, self-diffident, and alone, how intense was the comfort of knowing that Dudley was actually married, and the harrowing importunity which had just commenced for ever silenced.
 That night I saw my uncle. I pitied him, though I feared him. I was longing to tell him how anxious I was to help him, if only he could point out the way. It was in substance what I had already said, but now strongly urged. He brightened; he sat up perpendicularly in his chair with a countenance, not weak or fatuous now, but resolute and searching, and which contracted into dark thought or calculation as I talked.
 I dare say I spoke confusedly enough. I was always nervous in his presence; there was, I fancy, something mesmeric in the odd sort of influence which, without effort, he exercised over my imagination.
 Sometimes this grew into a dismal panic, and Uncle Silas - polished, mild - seemed unaccountably horrible to me. Then it was no longer an accidental fascination of electro-biology. It was something more. His nature was incomprehensible by me. He was without the nobleness, without the freshness, without the softness, without the frivolities of such human nature as I had experienced, either within myself or in other persons. I instinctively felt that appeals to sympathies or feelings could no more affect him than a marble monument. He seemed to accommodate his conversation to the moral structure of others, just as spirits are said to assume the shape of mortals. There were the sensualities of the gourmet for his body, and there ended his human nature, as it seemed to me. Through that semi-transparent structure I thought I could now and then discern the light or the glare of his inner life. But I understood it not.
 He never scoffed at what was good or noble - his hardest critic could not nail him to one such sentence; and yet, it seemed somehow to me that his unknown nature was a systematic blasphemy against it all. If fiend he was, he was yet something higher than the garrulous, and withal feeble, demon of Goethe. He assumed the limbs and features of our mortal nature. He shrouded his own, and was a profoundly reticent Mephistopheles. Gentle he had been to me - kindly he had nearly always spoken; but it seemed like the mild talk of one of those goblins of the desert, whom Asiatic superstition tells of, who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, beckon to them from afar, call them by their names, and lead them where they are found no more. Was, then, all his kindness but a phosphoric radiance covering something colder and more awful than the grave?
 ‘It is very noble of you, Maud - it is angelic; your sympathy with a ruined and despairing old man. But I fear you will recoil. I tell you frankly that less than twenty thousand pounds will not extricate me from the quag of ruin in which I am entangled - lost!’
 ‘Recoil! Far from it. I’ll do it. There must be some way.’
 ‘Enough, my fair young protectress - celestial enthusiast, enough. Though you do not, yet I recoil. I could not bring myself to accept this sacrifice. What signifies, even to me, my extrication? I lie a mangled wretch, with fifty mortal wounds on my crown; what avails the healing of one wound, when there are so many beyond all cure? Better to let me perish where I fall; and reserve your money for the worthier objects whom, perhaps, hereafter may avail to save.’
 ‘But I will do this. I must. I cannot see you suffer with the power in my hands unemployed to help you,’ I exclaimed.
 ‘Enough, dear Maud; the will is here - enough: there is balm in your compassion and good-will. Leave me, ministering angel; for the present I cannot. If you will, we can talk of it again. Good-night.’
 And so we parted.
 The attorney from Feltram, I afterwards heard, was with him nearly all that night, trying in vain to devise by their joint ingenuity any means by which I might tie myself up. But there were none. I could not bind myself.
 I was myself full of the hope of helping him. What was this sum to me, great as it seemed? Truly nothing. I could have spared it, and never felt the loss.
 I took up a large quarto with coloured prints, one of the few books I had brought with me from dear old Knowl. Too much excited to hope for sleep in bed, I opened it, and turned over the leaves, my mind still full of Uncle Silas and the sum I hoped to help him with.
 Unaccountably one of those coloured engravings arrested my attention. It represented the solemn solitude of a lofty forest; a girl, in Swiss costume, was flying in terror, and as she fled flinging a piece of meat behind her which she had taken from a little market-basket hanging upon her arm. Through the glade a pack of wolves were pursuing her.
 The narrative told, that on her return homeward with her marketing, she had been chased by wolves, and barely escaped by flying at her utmost speed, from time to time retarding, as she did so, the pursuit, by throwing, piece by piece, the contents of her basket, in her wake, to be devoured and fought for by the famished beasts of prey.
 This print had seized my imagination. I looked with a curious interest on the print: something in the disposition of the trees, their great height, and rude boughs, interlacing, and the awful shadow beneath, reminded me of a portion of the Windmill Wood where Milly and I had often rambled. Then I looked at the figure of the poor girl, flying for her life, and glancing terrified over her shoulder. Then I gazed on the gaping, murderous pack, and the hoary brute that led the van; and then I leaned back in my chair, and I thought - perhaps some latent association suggested what seemed a thing so unlikely - of a fine print in my portfolio from Vandyke’s noble picture of Belisarius. Idly I traced with my pencil, as I leaned back, on an envelope that lay upon the table, this little inscription. It was mere fiddling; and, absurd as it looked, there was nothing but an honest meaning in it: - £20,000. Date Obolum Belisario!’ My dear father had translated the little Latin inscription for me, and I had written it down as a sort of exercise of memory; and also, perhaps, as expressive of that sort of compassion which my uncle’s fall and miserable fate excited invariably in me. So I threw this queer little memorandum upon the open leaf of the book, and again the flight, the pursuit, and the bait to stay it, engaged my eye. And I heard a voice near the hearthstone, as I thought, say, in a stern whisper, ‘Fly the fangs of Belisarius!’
 ‘What’s that?’ said I, turning sharply to Mary Quince.
 Mary rose from her work at the fireside, staring at me with that odd sort of frown that accompanies fear and curiosity.
 ‘You spoke? Did you speak?’ I said, catching her by the arm, very much frightened myself.
 ‘No, Miss; no, dear!’ answered she, plainly thinking that I was a little wrong in my head.
 There could be no doubt it was a trick of the imagination, and yet to this hour I could recognise that clear stern voice among a thousand, were it to speak again.
 Jaded after a night of broken sleep and much agitation, I was summoned next morning to my uncle’s room.
 He received me oddly, I thought. His manner had changed, and made an uncomfortable impression upon me. He was gentle, kind, smiling, submissive, as usual; but it seemed to me that he experienced henceforth toward me the same half-superstitous repulsion which I had always felt from him. Dream, or voice, or vision - which had done it? There seemed to be an unconscious antipathy and fear. When he thought I was not looking, his eyes were sometimes grimly fixed for a moment upon me. When I looked at him, his eyes were upon the book before him; and when he spoke, a person not heeding what he uttered would have fancied that he was reading aloud from it.
 There was nothing tangible but this shrinking from the encounter of our eyes. I said he was kind as usual. He was even more so. But there was this new sign of our silently repellant natures. Dislike it could not be. He knew I longed to serve him. Was it shame? Was there not a shade of horror in it?
 ‘I have not slept,’ said he. ‘For me the night has passed in thought, and the fruit of it is this - I cannot, Maud, accept your noble offer.’
 ‘I am very sorry,’ exclaimed I, in all honesty.
 ‘I know it, my dear niece, and appreciate your goodness; but there are many reasons - none of them, I trust, ignoble - and which together render it impossible. No. It would be misunderstood - my honour shall not be impugned.’
 ‘But, sir, that could not be; you have never proposed it. It would be all, from first to last, my doing.’
 ‘True, dear Maud, but I know, alas! more of this evil and slanderous world than your happy inexperience can do. Who will receive our testimony? None - no, not one. The difficulty - the insuperable moral difficulty is this - that I should expose myself to the plausible imputation of having worked upon you, unduly, for this end; and more, that I could not hold myself quite free from blame. It is your voluntary goodness, Maud. But you are young, inexperienced; and it is, I hold it, my duty to stand between you and any dealing with your property at so unripe an age. Some people may call this Quixotic. In my mind it is an imperious mandate of conscience; and I peremptorily refuse to disobey it, although within three weeks an execution will be in this house!’
 I did not quite know what an execution meant; but from two harrowing novels, with whose distresses I was familiar, I knew that it indicated some direful process of legal torture and spoliation.
 ‘Oh, uncle I - oh, sir! - you cannot allow this to happen. What will people say of me? And - and there is poor Milly - and everything! Think what it will be.’
 ‘It cannot be helped - you cannot help it, Maud. Listen to me. There will be an execution here, I cannot say exactly how soon, but, I think, in a little more than a fortnight. I must provide for your comfort. You must leave. I have arranged that you shall join Milly, for the present, in France, till I have time to look about me. You had better, I think, write to your cousin, Lady Knollys. She, with all her oddities, has a heart. Can you say, Maud, that I have been kind?’
 ‘You have never been anything but kind,’ I exclaimed.
 ‘That I’ve been self-denying when you made me a generous offer?’ he continued. ‘That I now act to spare you pain? You may tell her, not as a message from me, but as a fact, that I am seriously thinking of vacating my guardianship - that I feel I have done her an injustice, and that, so soon as my mind is a little less tortured, I shall endeavour to effect a reconciliation with her, and would wish ultimately to transfer the care of your person and education to her. You may say I have no longer an interest even in vindicating my name. My son has wrecked himself by a marriage. I forgot to tell you he stopped at Feltram, and this morning wrote to pray a parting interview. If I grant it, it shall be the last. I shall never see him or correspond with him more.’
 The old man seemed much overcome, and held his hankerchief to his eyes.
 ‘He and his wife are, I understand, about to emigrate; the sooner the better,’ he resumed, bitterly. ‘Deeply, Maud, I regret having tolerated his suit to you, even for a moment. Had I thought it over, as I did the whole case last night, nothing could have induced me to permit it. But I have lived for so long like a monk in his cell, my wants and observation limited to the narrow compass of this chamber, that my knowledge of the world has died out with my youth and my hopes: and I did not, as I ought to have done, consider many objections. Therefore, dear Maud, on this one subject, I entreat, be silent; its discussion can effect nothing now. I was wrong, and frankly ask you to forget my mistake.’
 I had been on the point of writing to Lady Knollys on this odious subject, when, happily, it was set at rest by the disclosure of yesterday; and being so, I could have no difficulty in acceding to my uncle’s request. He was conceding so much that I could not withhold so trifling a concession in return.
 ‘I hope Monica will continue to be kind to poor Milly after I am gone.’
 Here there were a few seconds of meditation.
 ‘Maud, you will not, I think, refuse to convey the substance of what I have just said in a letter to Lady Knollys, and perhaps you would have no objection to let me see it when it is written. It will prevent the possibility of its containing any misconception of what I have just spoken: and, Maud, you won’t forget to say whether I have been kind. It would be a satisfaction to me to know that Monica was assured that I never either teased or bullied my young ward.’
 With these words he dismissed me; and forthwith I completed such a letter as would quite embody what he had said; and in my own glowing terms, being in high good-humour with Uncle Silas, recorded my estimate of his gentleness and good-nature; and when I submitted it to him, he expressed his admiration of what he was pleased to call my cleverness in so exactly conveying what he wished, and his gratitude for the handsome terms in which I had spoken of my old guardian.

[ top ]

Chapter LIII: An Odd Proposal
 As I and Mary Quince returned from our walk that day, and had entered the hall, I was surprised most disagreeably by Dudley’s emerging from the vestibule at the foot of the great staircase. He was, I suppose, in his travelling costume - a rather soiled white surtout, a great coloured muffler in folds about his throat, his ‘chimney-pot’ on, and his fur cap sticking out from his pocket. He had just descended, I suppose, from my uncle’s room. On seeing me he stepped back, and stood with his shoulders to the wall, like a mummy in a museum.
 I pretended to have a few words to say to Mary before leaving the hall, in the hope that, as he seemed to wish to escape me, he would take the opportunity of getting quickly off the scene.
 But he had changed his mind, it would seem, in the interval; for when I glanced in that direction again he had moved toward us, and stood in the hall with his hat in his hand. I must do him the justice to say he looked horribly dismal, sulky, and frightened.
 ‘Ye’ll gi’e me a word, Miss - only a thing I ought to say - for your good; by - - , mind, it’s for your good, Miss.’
 Dudley stood a little way off, viewing me, with his hat in both hands and a ‘glooming’ countenance.
 I detested the idea of either hearing or speaking to him; but I had no resolution to refuse, and only saying ‘I can’t imagine what you can wish to speak to me about,’ I approached him. ‘Wait there at the banister, Quince.’
 There was a fragrance of alcohol about the flushed face and gaudy muffler of this odious cousin, which heightened the effect of his horribly dismal features. He was speaking, besides, a little thickly; but his manner was dejected, and he was treating me with an elaborate and discomfited respect which reassured me.
 ‘I’m a bit up a tree, Miss,’ he said shuffling his feet on the oak floor. ‘I behaved a d - - fool; but I baint one o’ they sort. I’m a fellah as ‘ill fight his man, an’ stan’ up to ‘m fair, don’t ye see? An’ baint one o’ they sort - no, dang it, I baint.’
 Dudley delivered his puzzling harangue with a good deal of undertoned vehemence, and was strangely agitated. He, too, had got an unpleasant way of avoiding my eye, and glancing along the floor from corner to corner as he spoke, which gave him a very hang-dog air.
 He was twisting his fingers in his great sandy whisker, and pulling it roughly enough to drag his cheek about by that savage purchase; and with his other hand he was crushing and rubbing his hat against his knee.
 ‘The old boy above there be half crazed, I think; he don’t mean half as he says thof, not he. But I’m in a bad fix anyhow - a regular sell it’s been, and I can’t get a tizzy out of him. So, ye see, I’m up a tree, Miss; and he sich a one, he’ll make it a wuss mull if I let him. He’s as sharp wi’ me as one o’ them lawyer chaps, dang ‘em, and he’s a lot of I O’s and rubbitch o’ mine; and Bryerly writes to me he can’t gi’e me my legacy, ‘cause he’s got a notice from Archer and Sleigh a warnin’ him not to gi’e me as much as a bob; for I signed it away to governor, he says - which I believe’s a lie. I may a’ signed some writing - ‘appen I did - when I was a bit cut one night. But that’s no way to catch a gentleman, and ’twon’t stand. There’s justice to be had, and ‘Twon’t stand, I say; and I’m not in ‘is hands that way. Thof I may be a bit up the spout, too, I don’t deny; only I baint agoin’ the whole hog all at once. I’m none o’ they sort. He’ll find I baint.’
 Here Mary Quince coughed demurely from the foot of the stair, to remind me that the conversation was protracted.
 ‘I don’t very well understand,’ I said gravely; ‘and I am now going upstairs.’
 ‘Don’t jest a minute, Miss; it’s only a word, ye see. We’ll be goin’ t’ Australia, Sary Mangles, an’ me, aboard the Seamew, on the 5th. I’m for Liverpool to-night, and she’ll meet me there, an’ - an’, please God Almighty, ye’ll never see me more; an I’d rather gi’e ye a lift, Maud, before I go: an’ I tell ye what, if ye’ll just gi’e me your written promise ye’ll gi’e me that twenty thousand ye were offering to gi’e the Governor, I’ll take ye cleverly out o’ Bartram, and put ye wi’ your cousin Knollys, or anywhere ye like best.’
 ‘Take me from Bartram - for twenty thousand pounds! Take me away from my guardian! You seem to forget, sir,’ my indignation rising as I spoke, ‘that I can visit my cousin, Lady Knollys, whenever I please.’
 ‘Well, that is as it may be,’ he said, with a sulky deliberation, scraping about a little bit of paper that lay on the floor with the toe of his boot.
 ‘It is as it may be, and that is as I say, sir; and considering how you have treated me - your mean, treacherous, and infamous suit, and your cruel treason to your poor wife, I am amazed at your effrontery.’
 I turned to leave him, being, in truth, in one of my passions.
 ‘Don’t ye be a flying’ out,’ he said peremptorily, and catching me roughly by the wrist,’ I baint a-going to vex ye. What a mouth you be, as can’t see your way! Can’t ye speak wi’ common sense, like a woman - dang it - for once, and not keep brawling like a brat - can’t ye see what I’m saying? I’ll take ye out o’ all this, and put ye wi’ your cousin, or wheresoever you list, if ye’ll gi’e me what I say.’
 He was, for the first time, looking me in the face, but with contracted eyes, and a countenance very much agitated.
 ‘Money?’ said I, with a prompt disdain.
 ‘Ay, money - twenty thousand pounds - there. On or off?’ he replied, with an unpleasant sort of effort.
 ‘You ask my promise for twenty thousand pounds, and you shan’t have it.’
 My cheeks were flaming, and I stamped on the ground as I spoke.
 If he had known how to appeal to my better feelings, I am sure I should have done, perhaps not quite that, all at once at least, but something handsome, to assist him. But this application was so shabby and insolent! What could he take me for? That I should suppose his placing me with Cousin Monica constituted her my guardian? Why, he must fancy me the merest baby. There was a kind of stupid cunning in this that disgusted my good-nature and outraged my self-importance.
 ‘You won’t gi’e me that, then?’ he said, looking down again, with a frown, and working his mouth and cheeks about as I could fancy a man rolling a piece of tobacco in his jaw.
 ‘Certainly not, sir,’ I replied.
 ‘Take it, then,’ he replied, still looking down, very black and discontented.
 I joined Mary Quince, extremely angry. As I passed under the carved oak arch of the vestibule, I saw his figure in the deepening twilight. The picture remains in its murky halo fixed in memory. Standing where he last spoke in the centre of the hall, not looking after me, but downward, and, as well as I could see, with the countenance of a man who has lost a game, and a ruinous wager too - that is black and desperate. I did not utter a syllable on the way up. When I reached my room, I began to reconsider the interview more at my leisure. I was, such were my ruminations, to have agreed at once to his preposterous offer, and to have been driven, while he smirked and grimaced behind my back at his acquaintances, through Feltram in his dog-cart to Elverston; and then, to the just indignation of my uncle, to have been delivered up to Lady Knolly’s guardianship, and to have handed my driver, as I alighted, the handsome fare of £20,000. It required the impudence of Tony Lumpkin, without either his fun or his shrewdness, to have conceived such a prodigious practical joke.
 ‘Maybe you’d like a little tea, Miss?’ insinuated Mary Quince.
 ‘What impertinence!’ I exclaimed, with one of my angry stamps on the floor. ‘Not you, dear old Quince,’ I added. ‘No - no tea just now.’
 And I resumed my ruminations, which soon led me to this train of thought - ‘Stupid and insulting as Dudley’s proposition was, it yet involved a great treason against my uncle. Should I be weak enough to be silent, may he not, wishing to forestall me, misrepresent all that has passed, so as to throw the blame altogether upon me?’
 This idea seized upon me with a force which I could not withstand; and on the impulse of the moment I obtained admission to my uncle, and related exactly what had passed. When I had finished my narrative, which he listened to without once raising his eyes, my uncle cleared his throat once or twice, as if to speak. He was smiling - I thought with an effort, and with elevated brows. When I concluded, he hummed one of those sliding notes, which a less refined man might have expressed by a whistle of surprise and contempt, and again he essayed to speak, but continued silent. The fact is, he seemed to me very much disconcerted. He rose from his seat, and shuffled about the room in his slippers, I believe affecting only to be in search of something, opening and shutting two or three drawers, and turning over some books and papers; and at length, taking up some loose sheets of manuscript, he appeared to have found what he was looking for, and began to read them carelessly, with his back towards me, and with another effort to clear his voice, he said at last -
 ‘And pray, what could the fool mean by all that?’
 ‘I think he must have taken me for an idiot, sir,’ I answered.
 ‘Not unlikely. He has lived in a stable, among horses and ostlers; he has always seemed to me something like a centaur - that is a centaur composed not of man and horse, but of an ape and an ass.’
 And upon this jibe he laughed, not coldly and sarcastically, as was his wont, but, I thought, flurriedly. And, continuing to look into his papers, he said, his back still toward me as he read -
 ‘And he did not favour you with an exposition of his meaning, which, except in so far as it estimated his deserts at the modest sum you have named, appears to me too oracular to be interpreted without a kindred inspiration?’
 And again he laughed. He was growing more like himself.
 ‘As to your visiting your cousin, Lady Knollys, the stupid rogue had only five minutes before heard me express my wish that you should do so before leaving this. I am quite resolved you shall - that is, unless, dear Maud, you should yourself object; but, of course, we must wait for an invitation, which, I conjecture, will not be long in coming. In fact, your letter will naturally bring it about, and, I trust, open the way to a permanent residence with her. The more I think it over, the more am I convinced, dear niece, that as things are likely to turn out, my roof would be no desirable shelter for you; and that, under all circumstances, hers would. Such were my motives, Maud, in opening, through your letter, a door of reconciliation between us.’
 I felt that I ought to have kissed his hand - that he had indicated precisely the future that I most desired; and yet there was within me a vague feeling, akin to suspicion - akin to dismay which chilled and overcast my soul.
 ‘But, Maud,’ he said, ‘I am disquieted to think of that stupid jackanapes presuming to make you such an offer! A creditable situation truly - arriving in the dark at Elverston, under the solitary escort of that wild young man, with whom you would have fled from my guardianship; and, Maud, I tremble as I ask myself the question, would he have conducted you to Elverston at all? When you have lived as long in the world as I, you will appreciate its wickedness more justly.’ Here there was a little pause.
 ‘I know, my dear, that were he convinced of his legal marriage with that young woman,’ he resumed, perceiving how startled I looked, ‘such an idea, of course, would not have entered his head; but he does not believe any such thing. Contrary to fact and logic, he does honestly think that his hand is still at his disposal; and I certainly do suspect that he would have employed that excursion in endeavouring to persuade you to think as he does. Be that how it may, however, it is satisfactory to me to know that you shall never more be troubled by one word from that ill-regulated young man. I made him my adieux, such as they were, this evening; and never more shall he enter the walls of Bartram-Haugh while we two live.’
 Uncle Silas replaced the papers which had ostensibly interested him so much, and returned. There was a vein which was visible near the angle of his lofty temple, and in moments of agitation stood out against the surrounding pallor in a knotted blue cord; and as he came back smiling askance, I saw this sign of inward tumult.
 ‘We can, however, afford to despise the follies and knaveries of the world, Maud, as long as we act, as we have hitherto done, with perfect confidence in each other. Heaven bless you, dear Maud! Your report troubled me, I believe, more than it need - troubled me a good deal; but reflection assures me it is nothing. He is gone. In a few days’ time he will be on the sea. I will issue my orders to-morrow morning, and he will never more, during his brief stay in England, gain admission to Bartram-Haugh. Good-night, my good niece; I thank you.’
 And so I returned to Mary Quince, on the whole happier than I had left her, but still with the confused and jarring vision I could not interpret perpetually rising before me; and as, from time to time, shapeless anxieties agitated me, relieving them by appeals to Him who alone is wise and strong.
 Next day brought me a goodnatured gossiping letter from dear Milly, written in compulsory French, which was, in some places, very difficult to interpret. She gave me a very pleasant account of the place, and her opinion of the girls who were inmates, and mentioned some of the nuns with high commendation. The language plainly cramped poor Milly’s genius; but although there was by no means so much fun as an honest English letter would have brought me, there could be no mistake about her liking the place, and she expressed her honest longing to see me in the most affectionate terms.
 This letter came enclosed in one to my uncle, from the proper authority in the convent; and as there was neither address within, nor post-mark without, I was as much in the dark as ever as to poor Milly’s whereabouts.
 Pencilled across the envelope of this letter, in my uncle’s hand, were the words, ‘Let me have your answer when sealed, and I will transmit it. - S.R.’
 When, accordingly, some days later, I did place my letter to Milly in my uncle’s hands, he told me the reason of his reserves on the subject.
 ‘I thought it best, dear Maud, not to plague you with a secret, and Milly’s present address is one. It will in a few weeks become the rallying-point of our diverse routes, when you shall meet her, and I join you both. Nobody, until the storm shall have blown over, must know where I am to be found, except my lawyer; and I think you would prefer ignorance to the trouble of keeping a secret on which so much may depend.’
 This being reasonable, and even considerate, I acquiesced.
 In that interval there reached me such a charming, gay, and affectionate letter - a very long letter, too - though the writer was scarcely seven miles away, from dear Cousin Monica, full of pleasant gossip, and rose-coloured and golden castles in the air, and the kindest interest in poor Milly, and the warmest affection for me.
 One other incident varied that interval, if possible more pleasantly than those. It was the announcement, in a Liverpool paper, of the departure of the Seamew, bound for Melbourne; and among the passengers were reported ‘Dudley Ruthyn, Esquire, of Bartram-H., and Mrs. D. Ruthyn.’
 And now I began to breathe freely, I plainly saw the end of my probation approaching: a short excursion to France, a happy meeting with Milly, and then a delightful residence with Cousin Monica for the remainder of my nonage.
 You will say then that my spirits and my serenity were quite restored. Not quite. How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long - the care of cares - the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven - and straight you find a new stratum there. As physical science tells us no fluid is without its skin, so does it seem with this fine medium of the soul, and these successive films of care that form upon its surface on mere contact with the upper air and light.
 What was my new trouble? A very fantastic one, you will say - the illusion of a self-tormentor. It was the face of Uncle Silas which haunted me. Notwithstanding the old pale smile, there was a shrinking grimness, and the always-averted look.
 Sometimes I fancied his mind was disordered. I could not account for the eerie lights and shadows that flickered on his face, except so. There was a look of shame and fear of me, amazing as that seems, in the sheen of his peaked smile.
 I thought, ‘Perhaps he blames himself for having tolerated Dudley’s suit - for having urged it on grounds of personal distress - for having altogether lowered, though under sore temptation, both himself and his office; and he thinks that he has forfeited my respect.’
 Such was my analysis; but in the coup-d’oeil of that white face that dazzled me in darkness, and haunted my daily reveries with a faded light, there was an intangible character of the insidious and the terrible.

[ top ]

Chapter LIV: In Search of Mr. Charke’s Skeleton
 On the whole, however, I was unspeakably relieved. Dudley Ruthyn, Esq., and Mrs. D. Ruthyn, were now skimming the blue waves on the wings of the Seamew, and every morning widened the distance between us, which was to go on increasing until it measured a point on the antipodes. The Liverpool paper containing this golden line was carefully preserved in my room; and like the gentleman who, when much tried by the shrewish heiress whom he had married, used to retire to his closet and read over his marriage settlement, I used, when blue devils haunted me, to unfold my newspaper and read the paragraph concerning the Seamew.
 The day I now speak of was a dismal one of sleety snow. My own room seemed to me cheerier than the lonely parlour, where I could not have had good Mary Quince so decorously.
 A good fire, that kind and trusty face, the peep I had just indulged in at my favourite paragraph, and the certainty of soon seeing my dear cousin Monica, and afterwards affectionate Milly, raised my spirits.
 ‘So,’ said I, ‘as old Wyat, you say, is laid up with rheumatism, and can’t turn up to scold me, I think I’ll run up stairs and make an exploration, and find poor Mr. Charke’s skeleton in a closet.’
 ‘Oh, law, Miss Maud, how can you say such things!’ exclaimed good old Quince, lifting up her honest grey head and round eyes from her knitting.
 I had grown so familiar with the frightful tradition of Mr. Charke and his suicide, that I could now afford to frighten old Quince with him.
 ‘I am quite serious. I am going to have a ramble up-stairs and down-stairs, like goosey-goosey-gander; and if I do light upon his chamber, it is all the more interesting. I feel so like Adelaide, in the Romance of the Forest, the book I was reading to you last night, when she commenced her delightful rambles through the interminable ruined abbey in the forest.’
 ‘Shall I go with you, Miss?’
 ‘No, Quince; stay there; keep a good fire, and make some tea. I suspect I shall lose heart and return very soon;’ and with a shawl about me, cowl fashion, over my head, I stole up-stairs.
 I shall not recount with the particularity of the conscientious heroine of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, all the suites of apartments, corridors, and lobbies, which I threaded in my ramble. It will be enough to mention that I lighted upon a door at the end of a long gallery, which, I think, ran parallel with the front of the house; it interested me because it had the air of having been very long undisturbed. There were two rusty bolts, which did not evidently belong to its original securities, and had been, though very long ago, somewhat clumsily superadded. Dusty and rusty they were, but I had no difficulty in drawing them back. There was a rusty key, I remember it well, with a crooked handle in the lock; I tried to turn it, but could not. My curiosity was piqued. I was thinking of going back and getting Mary Quince’s assistance. It struck me, however, that possibly it was not locked, so I pulled the door and it opened quite easily. I did not find myself in a strangely-furnished suite of apartments, but at the entrance of a gallery, which diverged at right angles from that through which I had just passed; it was very imperfectly lighted, and ended in total darkness.
 I began to think how far I had already come, and to consider whether I could retrace my steps with accuracy in case of a panic, and I had serious thoughts of returning.
 The idea of Mr. Charke was growing unpleasantly sharp and menacing; and as I looked down the long space before me, losing itself among ambiguous shadows, lulled in a sinister silence, and as it were inviting my entrance like a trap, I was very near yielding to the cowardly impulse.
 But I took heart of grace and determined to see a little more. I opened a side-door, and entered a large room, where were, in a corner, some rusty and cobwebbed bird-cages, but nothing more. It was a wainscoted room, but a white mildew stained the panels. I looked from the window: it commanded that dismal, weed-choked quadrangle into which I had once looked from another window. I opened a door at its farther end, and entered another chamber, not quite so large, but equally dismal, with the same prison-like look-out, not very easily discerned through the grimy panes and the sleet that was falling thickly outside. The door through which I had entered made a little accidental creak, and, with my heart at my lips, I gazed at it, expecting to see Charke, or the skeleton of which I had talked so lightly, stalk in at the half-open aperture. But I had an odd sort of courage which was always fighting against my cowardly nerves, and I walked to the door, and looking up and down the dismal passage, was reassured.
 Well, one room more - just that whose deep-set door fronted me, with a melancholy frown, at the opposite end of the chamber. So to it I glided, shoved it open, advancing one step, and the great bony figure of Madame de la Rougierre was before me.
 I could see nothing else.
 The drowsy traveller who opens his sheets to slip into bed, and sees a scorpion coiled between them, may have experienced a shock the same in kind, but immeasurably less in degree.
 She sat in a clumsy old arm-chair, with an ancient shawl about her, and her bare feet in a delft tub. She looked a thought more withered. Her wig shoved back disclosed her bald wrinkled forehead, and enhanced the ugly effect of her exaggerated features and the gaunt hollows of her face. With a sense of incredulity and terror I gazed, freezing, at this evil phantom, who returned my stare for a few seconds with a shrinking scowl, dismal and grim, as of an evil spirit detected.
 The meeting, at least then and there, was as complete a surprise for her as for me. She could not tell how I might take it; but she quickly rallied, burst into a loud screeching laugh, and, with her old Walpurgis gaiety, danced some fantastic steps in her bare wet feet, tracking the floor with water, and holding out with finger and thumb, in dainty caricature, her slammakin old skirt, while she sang some of her nasal patois with an abominable hilarity and emphasis.
 With a gasp, I too recovered from the fascination of the surprise. I could not speak though for some seconds, and Madame was first.
 ‘Ah, dear Maud, what surprise! Are we not overjoy, dearest, and cannot speak? I am full of joy - quite charmed - ravie - of seeing you. So are you of me, your face betray. Ah! yes, thou dear little baboon! here is poor Madame once more! Who could have imagine?’
 ‘I thought you were in France, Madame,’ I said, with a dismal effort.
 ‘And so I was, dear Maud; I ‘av just arrive. Your uncle Silas he wrote to the superioress for gouvernante to accompany a young lady - that is you, Maud - on her journey, and she send me; and so, ma chère, here is poor Madame arrive to charge herself of that affair.’
 ‘How soon do we leave for France, Madame?’ I asked.
 ‘I do not know, but the old women - wat is her name?’
 ‘Wyat,’ I suggested.
 ‘Oh! oui, Waiatt; - she says two, three week. And who conduct you to poor Madame’s apartment, my dear Maud?’ She inquired insinuatingly.
 ‘No one, I answered promptly: ‘I reached it quite accidentally, and I can’t imagine why you should conceal yourself.’ Something like indignation kindled in my mind as I began to wonder at the sly strategy which had been practised upon me.
 ‘I ‘av not conceal myself, Mademoiselle,’ retorted the governness. ‘I ‘av act precisally as I ‘av been ordered. Your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, he is afraid, Waiatt says, to be interrupted by his creditors, and everything must be done very quaitly. I have been commanded to avoid me faire voir, you know, and I must obey my employer - voilà tout!’
 ‘And for how long have you been residing here?’ I persisted, in the same resentful vein.
 ‘’Bout a week. It is soche triste place! I am so glad to see you, Maud! I’ve been so isolée, you dear leetle fool!’
 ‘You are not glad, Madame; you don’t love me - you never did,’ I exclaimed with sudden vehemence.
 ‘Yes, I am very glad; you know not, chère petite niaise, how I ‘av desire to educate you a leetle more. Let us understand one another. You think I do not love you, Mademoiselle, because you have mentioned to your poor papa that little dérèglement in his library. I have repent very often that so great indiscretion of my life. I thought to find some letters of Dr. Braierly. I think that man was trying to get your property, my dear Maud, and if I had found something I would tell you all about. But it was very great sottise, and you were very right to denounce me to Monsieur. Je n’ai point de rancune contre vous. No, no, none at all. On the contrary, I shall be your gardienne tutelaire - wat you call? - guardian angel - ah, yes, that is it. You think I speak par dérision; not at all. No, my dear cheaile, I do not speak par moquerie, unless perhaps the very least degree in the world.’
 And with these words Madame laughed unpleasantly, showing the black caverns at the side of her mouth, and with a cold, steady malignity in her gaze.
 ‘Yes,’ I said; ‘I know what you mean, Madame - you hate me.’
 ‘Oh! wat great ogly word! I am shock! vous me faites honte. Poor Madame, she never hate any one; she loves all her friends, and her enemies she leaves to Heaven; while I am, as you see, more gay, more joyeuse than ever, they have not been ‘appy - no, they have not been fortunate these others. Wen I return, I find always some of my enemy they ‘av die, and some they have put themselves into embarrassment, or there has arrived to them some misfortune;’ and Madame shrugged and laughed a little scornfully.
 A kind of horror chilled my rising anger, and I was silent.
 ‘You see, my dear Maud, it is very natural you should think I hate you. When I was with Mr. Austin Ruthyn, at Knowl, you know you did not like a me - never. But in consequence of our intimacy I confide you that which I ‘av of most dear in the world, my reputation. It is always so. The pupil can calomniate, without been discover, the gouvernante. ‘av I not been always kind to you, Maud? Which ‘av I use of violence or of sweetness the most? I am, like other persons, jalouse de ma réputation; and it was difficult to suffer with patience the banishment which was invoked by you, because chiefly for your good, and for an indiscretion to which I was excited by motives the most pure and laudable. It was you who spied so cleverly - eh! and denounce me to Monsieur Ruthyn? Helas! wat bad world it is!’
 ‘I do not mean to speak at all about that occurrence, Madame; I will not discuss it. I dare say what you tell me of the cause of your engagement here is true, and I suppose we must travel, as you say, in company; but you must know that the less we see of each other while in this house the better.’
 ‘I am not so sure of that, my sweet little béte; your education has been neglected, or rather entirely abandoned, since you ‘av arrive at this place, I am told. You must not be a bestiole. We must do, you and I, as we are ordered. Mr. Silas Ruthyn he will tell us.’
 All this time Madame was pulling on her stockings, getting her boots on, and otherwise proceeding with her dowdy toilet. I do not know why I stood there talking to her. We often act very differently from what we would have done upon reflection. I had involved myself in a dialogue, as wiser generals than I have entangled themselves in a general action when they meant only an affair of outposts. I had grown a little angry, and would not betray the least symptom of fear, although I felt that sensation profoundly.
 ‘My beloved father thought you so unfit a companion for me that he dismissed you at an hour’s notice, and I am very sure that my uncle will think as he did; you are not a fit companion for me, and had my uncle known what had passed he would never have admitted you to this house - never!’
 ‘Helas! Quelle disgrace! And you really think so, my dear Maud,’ exclaimed Madame, adjusting her wig before her glass, in the corner of which I could see half of her sly, grinning face, as she ogled herself in it.
 ‘I do, and so do you, Madame,’ I replied, growing more frightened.
 ‘It may be - we shall see; but everyone is not so cruel as you, ma chère petite calomniatrice.’
 ‘You shan’t call me those names,’ I said, in an angry tremor.
 ‘What name, dearest cheaile?’
 ‘Calomniatrice - that is an insult.’
 ‘Why, my most foolish little Maud, we may say rogue, and a thousand other little words in play which we do not say seriously.
 ‘You are not playing - you never play - you are angry, and you hate me,’ I exclaimed, vehemently.
 ‘Oh, fie! - wat shame! Do you not perceive, dearest cheaile, how much education you still need? You are proud, little demoiselle; you must become, on the contrary, quaite humble. Je ferai baiser le babouin à vous - ha, ha, ha! I weel make a you to kees the monkey. You are too proud, my dear cheaile.’
 ‘I am not such a fool as I was at Knowl,’ I said; ‘you shall not terrify me here. I will tell my uncle the whole truth,’ I said.
 ‘Well, it may be that is the best,’ she replied, with provoking coolness.
 ‘You think I don’t mean it?’
 ‘Of course you do,’ she replied.
 ‘And we shall see what my uncle thinks of it.’
 ‘We shall see, my dear,’ she replied, with an air of mock contrition.
 ‘Adieu, Madame!’
 ‘You are going to Monsieur Ruthyn? - very good!’
 I made her no answer, but more agitated than I cared to show her, I left the room. I hurried along the twilight passage, and turned into the long gallery that opened from it at right angles. I had not gone half-a-dozen steps on my return when I heard a heavy tread and a rustling behind me.
 ‘I am ready, my dear; I weel accompany you,’ said the smirking phantom, hurrying after me.
 ‘Very well,’ was my reply; and threading our way, with a few hesitations and mistakes, we reached and descended the stairs, and in a minute more stood at my uncle’s door.
 My uncle looked hard and strangely at us as we entered. He looked, indeed, as if his temper was violently excited, and glared and muttered to himself for a few seconds; and treating Madame to a stare of disgust, he asked peevishly -
 ‘Why am I disturbed, pray?’
 ‘Miss Maud a Ruthyn, she weel explain,’ replied Madame, with a great courtesy, like a boat going down in a ground swell.
 ‘Will you explain, my dear?’ he asked, in his coldest and most sarcastic tone.
 I was agitated, and I am sure my statement was confused. I succeeded, however, in saying what I wanted.
 ‘Why, Madame, this is a grave charge! Do you admit it, pray?’
 Madame, with the coolest possible effrontery, denied it all; with the most solemn asseverations, and with streaming eyes and clasped hands, conjured me melodramatically to withdraw that intolerable story, and to do her justice. I stared at her for a while astounded, and turning suddenly to my uncle, as vehemently asserted the truth of every syllable I had related.
 ‘You hear, my dear child, you hear her deny everything; what am I to think? You must excuse the bewilderment of my old head. Madame de la - that lady has arrived excellently recommended by the superioress of the place where dear Milly awaits you, and such persons are particular. It strikes me, my dear niece, that you must have made a mistake.’
 I protested here. But he went on without seeming to hear the parenthesis -
 ‘I know, my dear Maud, that you are quite incapable of wilfully deceiving anyone; but you are liable to be deceived like other young people. You were, no doubt, very nervous, and but half awake when you fancied you saw the occurrence you describe; and Madame de - de - ‘
 ‘De la Rougierre,’ I supplied.
 ‘Yes, thank you - Madame de la Rougierre, who has arrived with excellent testimonials, strenuously denies the whole thing. Here is a conflict, my dear - in my mind a presumption of mistake. I confess I should prefer that theory to a peremptory assumption of guilt.’
 I felt incredulous and amazed; it seemed as if a dream were being enacted before me. A transaction of the most serious import, which I had witnessed with my own eyes, and described with unexceptionable minuteness and consistency, is discredited by that strange and suspicious old man with an imbecile coolness. It was quite in vain my reiterating my statement, backing it with the most earnest asseverations. I was beating the air. It did not seem to reach his mind. It was all received with a simper of feeble incredulity.
 He patted and smoothed my head - he laughed gently, and shook his while I insisted; and Madame protested her purity in now tranquil floods of innocent tears, and murmured mild and melancholy prayers for my enlightenment and reformation. I felt as if I should lose my reason.
 ‘There now, dear Maud, we have heard enough; it is, I do believe, a delusion. Madame de la Rougierre will be your companion, at the utmost, for three or four weeks. Do exercise a little of your self-command and good sense - you know how I am tortured. Do not, I entreat, add to my perplexities. You may make yourself very happy with Madame if you will, I have no doubt.’
 ‘I propose to Mademoiselle,’ said Madame, drying her eyes with a gentle alacrity, ‘to profit of my visit for her education. But she does not seem to weesh wat I think is so useful.’
 ‘She threatened me with some horrid French vulgarism - de faire baiser le babouin à moi, whatever that means; and I know she hates me,’ I replied, impetuously.
 ‘Doucement - doucement!’ said my uncle, with a smile at once amused and compassionate. ‘Doucement! ma chère.’
 With great hands and cunning eyes uplifted, Madame tearfully - for her tears came on short notice - again protested her absolute innocence. She had never in all her life so much as heard one so villain phrase.
 ‘You see, my dear, you have misheard; young people never attend. You will do well to take advantage of Madame’s short residence to get up your French a little, and the more you are with her the better.’
 ‘I understand then, Mr. Ruthyn, you weesh I should resume my instructions?’ asked Madame.
 ‘Certainly; and converse all you can in French with Mademoiselle Maud. You will be glad, my dear, that I’ve insisted on it,’ he said, turning to me, ‘when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else. And now, dear Maud - no, not a word more - you must leave me. Farewell, Madame!’
 And he waved us out a little impatiently; and I, without one look toward Madame de la Rougierre, stunned and incensed, walked into my room and shut the door.

[ top ]

Chapter LV: The Foot of Hercules
 I stood at the window - still the same leaden sky and feathery sleet before me - trying to estimate the magnitude of the discovery I had just made. Gradually a kind of despair seized me, and I threw myself passionately on my bed, weeping aloud.
 Good Mary Quince was, of course, beside me in a moment, with her pale, concerned face.
 ‘Oh, Mary, Mary, she’s come - that dreadful woman, Madame de la Rougierre, has come to be my governess again; and Uncle Silas won’t hear or believe anything about her. It is vain talking; he is prepossessed. Was ever so unfortunate a creature as I? Who could have fancied or feared such a thing? Oh, Mary, Mary, what am I to do? what is to become of me? Am I never to shake off that vindictive, terrible woman?’
 Mary said all she could to console me. I was making too much of her. What was she, after all, more than a governess? - she could not hurt me. I was not a child no longer - she could not bully me now; and my uncle, though he might be deceived for a while, would not be long finding her out.
 Thus and soforth did good Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much of Madame’s visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a terrible moving background of shadows.
 In a few minutes there was a knock at my door, and Madame herself entered. She was in walking costume. There had been a brief clearing of the weather, and she proposed our making a promenade together.
 On seeing Mary Quince she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting, and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and pressed it with wonderful tenderness.
 Honest Mary suffered all this somewhat reluctantly, never smiling, and, on the contrary, looking rather ruefully at her feet.
 ‘Weel you make a some tea? When I come back, dear Mary Quince, I ‘av so much to tell you and dear Miss Maud of all my adventures while I ‘av been away; it will make a you laugh ever so much. I was - what you theenk? - near, ever so near to be married!’ And upon this she broke into a screeching laugh, and shook Mary Quince merrily by the shoulder.
 I sullenly declined going out, or rising; and when she had gone away, I told Mary that I should confine myself to my room while Madame stayed.
 But self-denying ordinances self-imposed are not always long observed by youth. Madame de la Rougierre laid herself out to be agreeable; she had no end of stories - more than half, no doubt, pure fictions - to tell, but all, in that triste place, amusing. Mary Quince began to entertain a better opinion of her. She actually helped to make beds, and tried to be in every way of use, and seemed to have quite turned over a new leaf; and so gradually she moved me, first to listen, and at last to talk.
 On the whole, these terms were better than a perpetual skirmish; but, notwithstanding all her gossip and friendliness, I continued to have a profound distrust and even terror of her.
 She seemed curious about the Bartram-Haugh family, and all their ways, and listened darkly when I spoke. I told her, bit by bit, the whole story of Dudley, and she used, whenever there was news of the Seamew, to read the paragraph for my benefit; and in poor Milly’s battered little Atlas she used to trace the ship’s course with a pencil, writing in, from point to point, the date at which the vessel was ‘spoken’ at sea. She seemed amused at the irrepressible satisfaction with which I received these minutes of his progress; and she used to calculate the distance; - on such a day he was two hundred and sixty miles, on such another five hundred; the last point was more than eight hundred - good, better, best - best of all would be those ‘deleecious antipode, w’ere he would so soon promener on his head twelve thousand mile away;’ and at the conceit she would fall into screams of laughter.
 Laugh as she might, however, there was substantial comfort in thinking of the boundless stretch of blue wave that rolled between me and that villainous cousin.
 I was now on very odd terms with Madame. She had not relapsed into her favourite vein of oracular sarcasm and menace; she had, on the contrary, affected her good-humoured and genial vein. But I was not to be deceived by this. I carried in my heart that deep-seated fear of her which her unpleasant good-humour and gaiety never disturbed for a moment. I was very glad, therefore, when she went to Todcaster by rail, to make some purchases for the journey which we were daily expecting to commence; and happy in the opportunity of a walk, good old Mary Quince and I set forth for a little ramble.
 As I wished to make some purchases in Feltram, I set out, with Mary Quince for my companion. On reaching the great gate we found it locked. The key, however, was in it, and as it required more than the strength of my hand to turn, Mary tried it. At the same moment old Crowle came out of the sombre lodge by its side, swallowing down a mouthful of his dinner in haste. No one, I believe, liked the long suspicious face of the old man, seldom shorn or washed, and furrowed with great, grimy perpendicular wrinkles. Leering fiercely at Mary, not pretending to see me, he wiped his mouth hurriedly with the back of his hand, and growled -
 ‘Drop it.’
 ‘Open it, please, Mr. Crowle,’ said Mary, renouncing the task.
 Crowle wiped his mouth as before, looking inauspicious; shuffling to the spot, and muttering to himself, he first satisfied himself that the lock was fast, and then lodged the key in his coat-pocket, and still muttering, retraced his steps.
 ‘We want the gate open, please,’ said Mary.
 No answer.
 ‘Miss Maud wants to go into the town,’ she insisted.
 ‘We wants many a thing we can’t get,’ he growled, stepping into his habitation.
 ‘Please open the gate,’ I said, advancing.
 He half turned on his threshold, and made a dumb show of touching his hat, although he had none on.
 ‘Can’t, ma’am; without an order from master, no one goes out here.’
 ‘You won’t allow me and my maid to pass the gate?’ I said.
 ‘’Tisn’t me, ma’am,’ said he; ‘but I can’t break orders, and no one goes out without the master allows.’
 And without awaiting further parley, he entered, shutting his hatch behind him.
 So Mary and I stood, looking very foolish at one another. This was the first restraint I had experienced since Milly and I had been refused a passage through the Windmill paling. The rule, however, on which Crowle insisted I felt confident could not have been intended to apply to me. A word to Uncle Silas would set all right; and in the meantime I proposed to Mary that we should take a walk - my favourite ramble - into the Windmill Wood.
 I looked toward Dickon’s farmstead as we passed, thinking that Beauty might have been there. I did see the girl, who was plainly watching us. She stood in the doorway of the cottage, withdrawn into the shade, and, I fancied, anxious to escape observation. When we had passed on a little, I was confirmed in that belief by seeing her run down the footpath which led from the rear of the farm-yard in the direction contrary to that in which we were moving.
 ‘So,’ I thought, ‘poor Meg falls from me!’
 Mary Quince and I rambled on through the wood, till we reached the windmill itself, and seeing its low arched door open, we entered the chiaro-oscuro of its circular basement. As we did so I heard a rush and the creak of a plank, and looking up, I saw just a foot - no more - disappearing through the trap-door.
 In the case of one we love or fear intensely, what feats of comparative anatomy will not the mind unconsciously perform? Constructing the whole living animal from the turn of an elbow, the curl of a whisker, a segment of a hand. How instantaneous and unerring is the instinct!
 ‘Oh, Mary, what have I seen!’ I whispered, recovering from the fascination that held my gaze fast to the topmost rounds of the ladder, that disappeared in the darkness above the open door in the loft. ‘Come, Mary - come away.’
 At the same instant appeared the swarthy, sullen face of Dickon Hawkes in the shadow of the aperture. Having but one serviceable leg, his descent was slow and awkward, and having got his head to the level of the loft he stopped to touch his hat to me, and to hasp and lock the trap-door.
 When this was done, the man again touched his hat, and looked steadily and searchingly at me for a second or so, while he got the key into his pocket.
 ‘These fellahs stores their flour too long ‘ere, ma’am. There’s a deal o’ trouble a-looking arter it. I’ll talk wi’ Silas, and settle that.’
 By this time he had got upon the worn-tiled floor, and touching his hat again, he said -
 ‘I’m a-goin’ to lock the door, ma’am!’
 So with a start, and again whispering -
 ‘Come, Mary - come away’ -
 With my arm fast in hers, we made a swift departure.
 ‘I feel very faint, Mary,’ said I. ‘Come quickly. There’s nobody following us?’
 ‘No, Miss, dear. That man with the wooden leg is putting a padlock on the door.’
 ‘Come very fast,’ I said; and when we had got a little farther, I said, ‘Look again, and see whether anyone is following.’
 ‘No one, Miss,’ answered Mary, plainly surprised. ‘He’s putting the key in his pocket, and standin’ there a-lookin’ after us.’
 ‘Oh, Mary, did not you see it?’
 ‘What, Miss?’ asked Mary, almost stopping.
 ‘Come on, Mary. Don’t pause. They will observe us,’ I whispered, hurrying her forward.
 ‘What did you see, Miss?’ repeated Mary.
 ‘Mr. Dudley,’ I whispered, with a terrified emphasis, not daring to turn my head as I spoke.
 ‘Lawk, Miss!’ remonstrated honest Quince, with a protracted intonation of wonder and incredulity, which plainly implied a suspicion that I was dreaming.
 ‘Yes, Mary. When we went into that dreadful room - that dark, round place - I saw his foot on the ladder. His foot, Mary I can’t be mistaken. I won’t be questioned. You’ll find I’m right. He’s here. He never went in that ship at all. A fraud has been practised on me - it is infamous - it is terrible. I’m frightened out of my life. For heaven’s sake, look back again, and tell me what you see.’
 ‘Nothing, Miss,’ answered Mary, in contagious whispers, ‘but that wooden-legged chap, standin’ hard by the door.’
 ‘And no one with him?’
 ‘No one, Miss.’
 We got without pursuit through the gate in the paling. I drew breath so soon as we had reached the cover of the thicket near the chestnut hollow, and I began to reflect that whoever the owner of the foot might be - and I was still instinctively certain that it was no other than Dudley - concealment was plainly his object. I need not, then, be at all uneasy lest he should pursue us.
 As we walked slowly and in silence along the grassy footpath, I heard a voice calling my name from behind. Mary Quince had not heard it at all, but I was quite certain.
 It was repeated twice or thrice, and, looking in considerable doubt and trepidation under the hanging boughs, I saw Beauty, not ten yards away, standing among the underwood.
 I remember how white the eyes and teeth of the swarthy girl looked, as with hand uplifted toward her ear, she watched us while, as it seemed, listening for more distant sounds.
 Beauty beckoned eagerly to me, advancing, with looks of great fear and anxiety, two or three short steps toward me.
 ‘She ‘baint to come,’ said Beauty, under her breath, so soon as I had nearly reached her, pointing without raising her hand at Mary Quince.
 ‘Tell her to sit on the ash-tree stump down yonder, and call ye as loud as she can if she sees any fellah a-comin’ this way, an’ rin ye back to me;’ and she impatiently beckoned me away on her errand.
 When I returned, having made this dispositions, I perceived how pale the girl was.
 ‘Are you ill, Meg?’ I asked.
 ‘Never ye mind. Well enough. Listen, Miss; I must tell it all in a crack, an’ if she calls, rin awa’ to her, and le’ me to myself, for if fayther or t’other un wor to kotch me here, I think they’d kill me a’most. Hish!’
 She paused a second, looking askance, in the direction where she fancied Mary Quince was. Then she resumed in a whisper -
 ‘Now, lass, mind ye, ye’ll keep what I say to yourself. You’re not to tell that un nor any other for your life, mind, a word o’ what I’m goin’ to tell ye.’
 ‘I’ll not say a word. Go on.’
 ‘Did ye see Dudley?’
 ‘I think I saw him getting up the ladder.’
 ‘In the mill? Ha! that’s him. He never went beyond Todcaster. He staid in Feltram after.’
 It was my turn to look pale now. My worst conjecture was established.