Uncle Silas

It was winter⁠—that is, about the second week in November⁠—and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys⁠—a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawing-room. It was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped.

A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.

The only other person in the room⁠—the only person in the house related to me⁠—was my father.

In front of this he stopped.

He had odd, absent ways, and talked more to himself, I believe, than to all the rest of the world put together.

“She won’t understand,” he whispered, looking at me enquiringly. “No, she won’t. Will she?”

Then there was a pause, during which he brought forth from his breast pocket a small bunch of some half-dozen keys, on one of which he looked frowningly, every now and then balancing it a little before his eyes, between his finger and thumb, as he deliberated.

I knew him too well, of course, to interpose a word.

“They are easily frightened⁠—ay, they are. I’d better do it another way.”

And pausing, he looked in my face as he might upon a picture.

“They are⁠—yes⁠—I had better do it another way⁠—another way; yes⁠—and she’ll not suspect⁠—she’ll not suppose.”

Then he looked steadfastly upon the key, and from it to me, suddenly lifting it up, and said abruptly, “See, child,” and, after a second or two, “Remember this key.”

It was oddly shaped, and unlike others.

“Yes, sir.” I always called him “sir.”

“It opens that,” and he tapped it sharply on the door of the cabinet. “In the daytime it is always here,” at which word he dropped it into his pocket again. “You see?⁠—and at night under my pillow⁠—you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You won’t forget this cabinet⁠—oak⁠—next the door⁠—on your left⁠—you won’t forget?”

“No, sir.”

“Pity she’s a girl, and so young⁠—ay, a girl, and so young⁠—no sense⁠—giddy. You say, you’ll remember?”

On a sudden, on the grass before me, stood an odd figure⁠—a very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon, courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically.

I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrilly⁠—I could not distinctly hear what through the window⁠—and gesticulating oddly with her long hands and arms.

As she drew near the window, I flew to the fireplace, and rang the bell frantically, and seeing her still there, and fearing that she might break into the room, I flew out of the door, very much frightened, and met Branston the butler in the lobby.

“There’s a woman at the window!” I gasped; “turn her away, please.”

If I had said a man, I suppose fat Branston would have summoned and sent forward a detachment of footmen. As it was, he bowed gravely, with a⁠—

“Yes ’m⁠—shall, ’m.”

And with an air of authority approached the window.

I don’t think that he was pleasantly impressed himself by the first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short some steps of the window, and demanded rather sternly⁠—

“What ye doin’ there, woman?”

To this summons, her answer, which occupied a little time, was inaudible to me. But Branston replied⁠—

I told her, and silence returned.

Church Scarsdale is a very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheepwalk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows’ nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very cattle had forsaken the place. It was solitude itself.

Madame drew a long breath and smiled.

“Come down, come down, cheaile⁠—come down to the churchyard.”

As we descended the slope which shut out the surrounding world, and the scene grew more sad and lonely. Madame’s spirits seemed to rise.

“See ’ow many gravestones⁠—one, two hundred. Don’t you love the dead, cheaile? I will teach you to love them. You shall see me die here today, for half an hour, and be among them. That is what I love.”

We were by this time at the little brook’s side, and the low churchyard wall with a stile, reached by a couple of stepping-stones, across the stream, immediately at the other side.

“Come, now!” cried Madame, raising her face, as if to sniff the air; “we are close to them. You will like them soon as I. You shall see five of them. Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira! Come cross quickily! I am Madame la Morgue⁠—Mrs. Deadhouse! I will present you my friends, Monsieur Cadavre and Monsieur Squelette. Come, come, leetle mortal, let us play.

Over the mantelpiece was a looking-glass. At another time this might have helped to entertain my solitary moments, but now I did not like to venture a peep. A small thick Bible lay on the chimneypiece, and leaning its back against the mirror, I began to read in it with a mind as attentively directed as I could. While so engaged in turning over the leaves, I lighted upon two or three odd-looking papers, which had been folded into it. One was a broad printed thing, with names and dates written into blank spaces, and was about the size of a quarter of a yard of very broad ribbon. The others were mere scraps, with “Dudley Ruthyn” penned in my cousin’s vulgar round-hand at the foot. While I folded and replaced these, I really don’t know what caused me to fancy that something was moving behind me, as I stood with my back toward the bed. I do not recollect any sound whatever; but instinctively I glanced into the mirror, and my eyes were instantly fixed by what I saw.

The figure of Uncle Silas rose up, and dressed in a long white morning gown, slid over the end of the bed, and with two or three swift noiseless steps, stood behind me, with a deathlike scowl and a simper.