Uncle Silas quotes

This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect.

I have known my father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very much, I was also much in awe of him.

While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering and conjecturing in that serene household.

Dusky it was with but one candle; and he paused near the door, at the left-hand side of which stood, in those days, an old-fashioned press or cabinet of carved oak. 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?”

You have said nothing wrong,” he said gently, observing my alarm. “You said I was always sad, I think, about Uncle Silas. Well, I don’t know how you gather that; but if I were, I will now tell you, it would not be unnatural.

Your uncle is a man of great talents, great faults, and great wrongs.

His talents have not availed him; his faults are long ago repented of; and his wrongs I believe he feels less than I do, but they are deep. Did she say any more, madam?” he demanded abruptly of Mrs. Rusk.

Thus curiosity was piqued; and round the slender portrait in the leather pantaloons and top-boots gathered many-coloured circles of mystery, and the handsome features seemed to smile down upon my baffled curiosity with a provoking significance.

Why is it that this form of ambition⁠—curiosity⁠—which entered into the temptation of our first parent, is so specially hard to resist?

Knowledge is power—and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.

Why is it that this form of ambition—curiosity—which entered into the temptation of our first parent, is so specially hard to resist?

Knowledge is power⁠—and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.

The air was still. The silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly.

Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance.

As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious woods, which formed the background of the picture, my thoughts recurred to my father’s mysterious intimations and the image of the approaching visitor; and the thought of the unknown journey saddened me.

“Home, I mean, dear. We cannot walk to the place I have described.

We can only reach it through the gate of death, to which we are all tending, young and old, with sure steps.

”

“

When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagar’s eyes were opened in the wilderness, and she beheld the fountain of water, so shall each of us see the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed.

”

There is not an old house in England of which the servants and young people who live in it do not cherish some traditions of the ghostly.

Knowl has its shadows, noises, and marvellous records. Rachel Ruthyn, the beauty of Queen Anne’s time, who died of grief for the handsome Colonel Norbrooke, who was killed in the Low Countries, walks the house by night, in crisp and sounding silks.

There was no answer, but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it.

When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the ignorant intensely. But the special effect, I have found, soon wears out, and the tale simply takes its place with the rest.

It was with Madame’s narrative.

I felt all this was done to torture me.

But a day is a long time to a child, and they forgive quickly.

It was always with a sense of danger that I heard Madame say she must go and see Monsieur Ruthyn in the library, and I think a jealousy of her growing influence was an ingredient in the detestation in which honest Mrs. Rusk held her.

Doctor Somebody presented his compliments to Madame de la Rougierre, and ordered her a tablespoonful of brandy and some drops of laudanum whenever the pain of stomach returned. The flask would last a whole year, perhaps two. She claimed her medicine.

Man’s estimate of woman is higher than woman’s own.

Perhaps in their relations to men they are generally more trustworthy—perhaps woman’s is the juster, and the other an appointed illusion. I don’t know; but so it is ordained.

Of course Madame had tampered with him.

But truth, like murder, will out some day.

Tom Williams, the groom, had seen her, when alone with him, and pretending to look at his stock, with her face almost buried in his silks and Welsh linseys, talking as fast as she could all the time, and slipping money, he did suppose, under …

It came out incidentally that his leave of absence was to expire the day after tomorrow. A Lilliputian pang of disappointment followed this announcement. Already I was sorry to lose him.

So soon we begin to make a property of what pleases us.

I was shy, but not awkward. I was flattered by the attention of this amusing, perhaps rather fascinating, young man of the world; and he plainly addressed himself with diligence to amuse and please me.

“Well, that’s a mercy; Swedenborgian is such an ugly name, and besides, they are all likely to be damned, my dear, and that’s a serious consideration. I really wish poor Austin had hit on something else;

I’d much rather have no religion, and enjoy life while I’m in it, than choose one to worry me here and bedevil me hereafter.

But some people, my dear, have a taste for being miserable, and provide, like poor Austin, for its gratification in the next world as well as here. Ha, ha, ha! how grave the little woman looks! Don’t you think me very wicked?

“I should so like to see her, my dear. It is not mere curiosity, I assure you. In fact, curiosity has nothing on earth to do with it.

A governess may be a very useful or a very useless person; but she may also be about the most pernicious inmate imaginable.

She may teach you a bad accent, and worse manners, and heaven knows what beside. Send the housekeeper, my dear, to tell her that I am going to see her.”

“Mi ladi has diverted my attention for a moment, but that does not prevent that I suffer frightfully. I am, of course, only poor governess, and such people perhaps ought not to have pain—at least to show when they suffer.

It is permitted us to die, but not to be sick.

”

He is a sort of idol, you know, of your father’s, and yet I don’t think he helps him much. His abilities were singular; so has been his misfortune; for the rest, my dear, he is neither a hero nor a wonder.

So far as I know, there are very few sublime men going about the world.

”

“That is just the reason I wish it.

If it were at all pleasant, it would be quite commonplace. I like to hear of adventures, dangers, and misfortunes; and above all, I love a mystery.

You know, papa will never tell me, and I dare not ask him; not that he is ever unkind, but, somehow, I am afraid; and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Mary Quince will tell me anything, although I suspect they know a good deal.”

Next morning early I visited my favourite full-length portrait in the chocolate coat and top-boots. Scanty as had been my cousin Monica’s notes upon this dark and eccentric biography, they were everything to me. A soul had entered that enchanted form.

Truth had passed by with her torch, and a sad light shone for a moment on that enigmatic face.

There stood the roué—the duellist—and, with all his faults, the hero too! In that dark large eye lurked the profound and fiery enthusiasm of his ill-starred passion.

Some day it might come to pass that I, girl as I was, might contribute by word or deed towards the vindication of that long-suffering, gallant, and romantic prodigal. It was a flicker of the Joan of Arc inspiration, common, I fancy, to many girls.

I little then imagined how profoundly and strangely involved my uncle’s fate would one day become with mine.

I was interrupted by Captain Oakley’s voice at the window. He was leaning on the windowsill, and looking in with a smile—the window being open, the morning sunny, and his cap lifted in his hand.

“

Yes; sharks sailing round you, with keen eyes and large throats; and you have come to the age precisely when men are swallowed up alive like Jonah.

”

Here Madame wept a little. I had already discovered that she could shed tears whenever she pleased. I have heard of such persons, but I never met another before or since.

Madame was unusually frank⁠—no one ever knew better when to be candid.

At present I suppose she concluded that Lady Knollys would certainly relate whatever she knew concerning her before she left Knowl; and so Madame’s reserves, whatever they might be, were dissolving, and she growing childlike and confiding.

“

People grow to be friends by liking, Madame, and liking comes of itself, not by bargain; I like everyone who is kind to me.

”

“You are, Monica; your own unnatural prejudice—unnatural prejudice, blinds you. What is it all?—nothing. Were I to act as you say, I should be a coward and a traitor. I see, I do see, all that’s real.

I’m no Quixote, to draw my sword on illusions.

”

“There should be no halting here. How can you—do you ever think? I wonder if you can breathe.

I feel as if the evil one were in the house.

”

“You must bridle your tongue, mind, and govern your conduct, and command even your features.

It is hard to practise reserve; but you must⁠—you must be secret and vigilant.

Try and be in appearance just as usual; don’t quarrel; tell her nothing, if you do happen to know anything, of your father’s business; be always on your guard when with her, and keep your eye upon her everywhere. Observe everything, disclose nothing—do you see?”

“

And⁠—and, Maud, don’t let her meddle with your food.

”

Its intensity I cannot now even myself recall. But it overshadowed me perpetually—a care, an alarm.

It lay down with me at night and got up with me in the morning, tinting and disturbing my dreams, and making my daily life terrible.

I wonder now that I lived through the ordeal. The torment was secret and incessant, and kept my mind in unintermitting activity.

She looked steadily in my face and very wickedly.

I gazed at her as with dazzled eyes⁠—I suppose as the feathered prey do at the owl that glares on them by night.

I neither moved back nor forward, but stared at her quite helplessly.

there is no particular day—wat folly! Wy I like Church Scarsdale? Well, it is such pretty place. There is all! Wat leetle fool! I suppose you think I want to keel a you and bury you in the churchyard?”

And she laughed, and it would not have been a bad laugh for a ghoul.

“Come, my dearest Maud, you are not a such fool to say, if you tell me go thees a way, I weel go that;

“

But, Maud, beware of prejudice; women are unjust and violent in their judgments.

Your family has suffered in some of its members by such injustice. It behoves us to be careful not to practise it.”

“Run on to the gate and lock it—I’ll be wi’ ye in a minute,” cried he to the other gamekeeper; who started instantly on this mission, for the three ruffians were already in full retreat for the carriage.

Giddy⁠—wild⁠—fainting⁠—still terror carried me on.

“Now, Madame Rogers—s’pose you take young Misses on—I must run and len’ Bill a hand.”

Mary Quince threw in an observation, and I believe Mrs. Rusk rejoined, but I heard neither. For whether the housekeeper spoke with reflection or not, what she said affected me strangely.

Through the smallest aperture, for a moment, I had had a peep into Pandemonium.

Were not peculiarities of Madame’s demeanour and advice during the adventure partly accounted for by the suggestion? Could the proposed excursion to Church Scarsdale have had any purpose of the same sort? What was proposed? How was Madame interested in it?

If, instead of being a very nervous girl, preoccupied with an undefinable terror of that wicked woman, I had possessed courage and presence of mind, I dare say I might have given an alarm, and escaped from the room without the slightest risk.

But so it was; I could no more stir than the bird who, cowering under its ivy, sees the white owl sailing back and forward under its predatory cruise.

Not only during her presence, but for more than an hour after, I remained cowering in my hiding-place, and afraid to stir, lest she might either be lurking in the neighborhood, or return and surprise me.

But things are oddly timed. Just at this moment I heard Madame’s voice close at my ear, and her large bony hand was laid on my shoulder. We were instantly face to face—I recoiling, and for a moment speechless with fright.

In very early youth we do not appreciate the restraints which act upon malignity, or know how effectually fear protects us where conscience is wanting.

Quite alone, in this solitary spot, detected and overtaken with an awful instinct by my enemy, what might not be about to happen to me at that moment?

Events of this kind made no difference with my father; but every other face in Knowl was gladdened by the removal. My energies had returned, my spirits were come again.

The sunlight was happy, the flowers innocent, the songs and flutter of the birds once more gay, and all nature delightful and rejoicing.

After the first elation of relief, now and then a filmy shadow of Madame de la Rougierre would glide across the sunlight, and the remembrance of her menace return with an unexpected pang of fear.

I have said more than once that my father was an odd man; and the reader will, by this time, have seen that there was much about him not easily understood.

I often wonder whether, if he had been franker, I should have found him less odd than I supposed, or more odd still.

Things that moved me profoundly did not apparently affect him at all. The departure of Madame, under the circumstances which attended it, appeared to my childish mind an event of the vastest importance.

“Whose character, sir?” I ventured to enquire during the pause that followed.

One trick which my father had acquired from his habits of solitude and silence was this of assuming that the context of his thoughts was legible to others, forgetting that they had not been spoken.

“Whose?—your uncle Silas’s. In the course of nature he must survive me. He will then represent the family name. Would you make some sacrifice to clear that name, Maud?”

I have had a letter from London this morning that assures me of that. I must then leave you for a time; in my absence be faithful to the duties that will arise.

To whom much is committed, of him will much be required.

You shall promise me not to mention this conversation to Monica Knollys. If you are a talking girl, and cannot trust yourself, say so, and we will not ask her to come. Also, don’t invite her to talk about your uncle Silas—I have reasons.

He cares less about his children than I about you, Maud; he is selfishly sunk in futurity—a feeble visionary. I am not so. I believe it to be a duty to take care of others beside myself.

The character and influence of an ancient family is a peculiar heritage⁠—sacred but destructible; and woe to him who either destroys or suffers it to perish!

”

“

I have talked too long, I believe; we are children to the last.

Leave me, Maud. I think I know you better than I did, and I am pleased with you. Go, child—I’ll sit here.”

No wonder I distrusted myself; no wonder also my will stood out against my timidity. It was a struggle, then; a proud, wild resolve against constitutional cowardice.

Those who have ever had cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bear⁠—the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve⁠—will understand the kind of agony which I sometimes endured.

But, again, consolation would come, and it seemed to me that I must be exaggerating my risk in the coming crisis; and certain at least, if my father believed it attended with real peril, he would never have wished to see me involved in it.

He fell across the door, which caused the difficulty in opening it. Mrs. Rusk found she had not strength to force it open. No wonder she had given way to terror. I think I should have almost lost my reason.

Everyone knows the reserved aspect and the taciturn mood of the house, one of whose rooms is tenanted by that mysterious guest.

I do not know how those awful days, and more awful nights, passed over. The remembrance is repulsive. I hate to think of them. I was soon draped in the conventional black, with its heavy folds of crape. Lady Knollys came, and was very kind.

She was odd, but her eccentricity was leavened with strong common sense; and I have often thought since with admiration and gratitude of the tact with which she managed my grief.

There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.

Cousin Monica talked a great deal of my father. This was easy to her, for her early recollections were full of him.

It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it. Cousin Monica talked a great deal of my father. This was easy to her, for her early recollections were full of him.

One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we thrown exclusively upon retrospect.

From the long look forward they are removed, and every plan, imagination, and hope henceforth a silent and empty perspective. But in the past they are all they ever were.

So down we went—I assenting—and we opened the desk.

How dreadful the desecration seems⁠—all privacy abrogated⁠—the shocking compensation for the silence of death!

Henceforward all is circumstantial evidence—all conjectural—except the litera scripta, and to this evidence every notebook, and every scrap of paper and private letter, must contribute—ransacked, bare in the light of day—what it can.

“Do I?” said she; “I was not thinking—it was quite an accident. The fact is, Maud, your poor papa quite mistook me. I had no prejudice respecting him—no theory. I never knew what to think about him.

I do not think Silas a product of nature, but a child of the Sphinx, and I never could understand him⁠—that’s all.

”

“

Well, you know I’m a peevish old Tabby, and of course I scratch now and then, and see in the dark.

I dare say Silas is sorry, but I don’t think he is in sackcloth and ashes. He has reason to be sorry and anxious, and I say I think he is both;

Now, was not this prejudice? I dare say in part it was. So, too, was my vehement predisposition in his favour.

I am afraid we women are factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates rather than judges; and I think the function, if less dignified, is more amiable.

I sat alone at the drawing-room window, at nightfall, awaiting my cousin Monica’s entrance.

I do not think one of us believed at the moment that what we had seen was a Doctor Bryerly of flesh and blood, and yet the first thing we spoke of in the morning was Doctor Bryerly’s arrival.

The mind is a different organ by night and by day.

“

Remember, then, that when you fancy yourself alone and wrapt in darkness, you stand, in fact, in the centre of a theatre, as wide as the starry floor of heaven, with an audience, whom no man can number, beholding you under a flood of light.

Therefore, though your body be in solitude and your mortal sense in darkness, remember to walk as being in the light, surrounded with a cloud of witnesses. Thus walk;

“I’ve a doctor’s degree, I have—Doctor of Medicine, Miss. Like St. Luke, preacher and doctor. I was in business once, but this is better. As one footing fails, the Lord provides another.

The stream of life is black and angry; how so many of us get across without drowning, I often wonder.

The best way is not to look too far before—just from one stepping-stone to another; and though you may wet your feet, He won’t let you drown—He has not allowed me.”

in its way a great blessing, though a great trial, Miss, and a great trust; but don’t suppose you are destined to exemption from trouble on that account, any more than poor Emmanuel Bryerly. As the sparks fly upwards, Miss Ruthyn!

Your cushioned carriage may overturn on the high road, as I may stumble and fall upon the footpath.

There are other troubles than debt and privation. Who can tell how long health may last, or when an accident may happen the brain; what mortifications may await you in your own high sphere; what unknown enemies may rise up in your path;

I could not forbear placing on record this testimony to the high mental and the kindly qualities of my beloved father, who might have passed for a misanthrope or a fool.

He was a man of generous nature and powerful intellect, but given up to the oddities of a shyness which grew with years and indulgence, and became inflexible with his disappointments and affliction.

There was something even in the Rector’s kind and ceremonious greeting which oddly enough reflected the mixed feelings in which awe was not without a place, with which his neighbours had regarded my dear father.

What years of horror in one such night! Would not this explain my poor father’s hesitation, and my cousin Monica’s apparently disproportioned opposition?

When an idea of terror presents itself to a young person’s mind, it transfixes and fills the vision, without respect of probabilities or reason.

My uncle was now a terrible old martinet, with long Bible lessons, lectures, pages of catechism, sermons to be conned by rote, and an awful catalogue of punishments for idleness, and what would seem to him impiety.

It is not easy to recall in calm and happy hours the sensations of an acute sorrow that is past.

Nothing, by the merciful ordinance of God, is more difficult to remember than pain.

One or two great agonies of that time I do remember, and they remain to testify of the rest, and convince me, though I can see it no more, how terrible all that period was.

henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light or warmth, without a voice near.

Oh, Death, king of terrors! The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee.

It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded. We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith.

henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light or warmth, without a voice near. Oh, Death, king of terrors! The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee.

It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded.

We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith. And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem.

And so the repulsive ceremonial of that dreadful day was over. The grief remained, but there was rest from the fatigue of agitation, and a comparative calm supervened.

It was now the stormy equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of autumn, and marches the winter in.

I love, and always did, that grand undefinable music, threatening and bewailing, with its strange soul of liberty and desolation.

“

We think too much of the poor remains, and too little of the spirit which lives forever.

I am sure they are happy.” And she sighed again. “I wish I dare hope as confidently for myself. Yes, Maud, it is sad. We are such materialists, we can’t help feeling so.

Austin was very good to him. Mr. Danvers says it is quite unaccountable how Silas can have made away with the immense sums he got from his brother from time to time without benefiting himself in the least.

But, my dear, he played; and trying to help a man who plays, and is unlucky⁠—and some men are, I believe, habitually unlucky⁠—is like trying to fill a vessel that has no bottom.

I think, by the by, my hopeful nephew, Charles Oakley, plays. Then Silas went most unjustifiably into all manner of speculations, and your poor father had to pay everything.

but he objected his religious scruples. Your poor papa thought self-assertion possible, where an injured man has right to rely upon, but he had been very long out of the world, and the theory won’t do.

Nothing is harder than to get a person who has once been effectually slurred, received again.

Silas, I think, was right. I don’t think it was practicable.

“I don’t understand metaphysics, my dear, nor witchcraft. I sometimes believe in the supernatural, and sometimes I don’t.

Silas Ruthyn is himself alone, and I can’t define him, because I don’t understand him.

Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in flesh. It is not only about that dreadful occurrence, but nearly always throughout his life; early and late he has puzzled me. I have tried in vain to understand him.

“I don’t understand metaphysics, my dear, nor witchcraft. I sometimes believe in the supernatural, and sometimes I don’t. Silas Ruthyn is himself alone, and I can’t define him, because I don’t understand him.

Perhaps other souls than human are sometimes born into the world, and clothed in flesh.

It is not only about that dreadful occurrence, but nearly always throughout his life; early and late he has puzzled me. I have tried in vain to understand him.

At one time I think he could have made poor Austin do almost anything; but his influence vanished with his marriage, never to return again. No; I don’t understand him.

He always bewildered me, like a shifting face, sometimes smiling, but always sinister, in an unpleasant dream.

”

“

Hope? fiddle! stuff! the thing’s as plain as a pikestaff.

”

I wondered what old grudge could make my cousin judge Uncle Silas always so hardly—I could not suppose it was justice.

I had seen my hero indeed lately so disrespectfully handled before my eyes, that he had, as idols will, lost something of his sacredness.

But as an article of faith, I still cultivated my trust in his divinity, and dismissed every intruding doubt with an exorcism, as a suggestion of the evil one.

Was I not sure of the society of my Cousin Millicent, who was about my own age? Was it not quite possible that my sojourn in Derbyshire might turn out a happy though very quiet remembrance through all my afterlife? Why should it not?

What time or place would be happy if we gave ourselves over to dismal imaginations?

So the summons reached me from Uncle Silas. The hours at Knowl were numbered.

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 roadside 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.

“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.”

… 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.

… 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.

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;

… 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.

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.

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.”

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;

I am sure I felt more penitent than she. I know I was crying and smiling, and longing to kiss her.

I suppose we were very absurd; but it is well that small matters can stir the affections so profoundly at a time of life when great troubles seldom approach us.

When at length the opportunity did come, never was such a hug out of the wrestling ring as poor Milly bestowed on me, swaying me this way and that, and burying her face in my dress, and blubbering—

“

A-dying is he? Well, he be like Saint Paul⁠—he’s bin a-dying daily this many a day.

”

“Pooh! I haven’t a notion; but, probably, one way or another, he has been all his days working on his nerves and his brain.

These men of pleasure, who have no other pursuit, use themselves up mostly, and pay a smart price for their sins.

And so he’s kind and affectionate, but hands you over to your cousin and the servants. Are his people civil and obliging?”

I looked after it with a sigh; the uneasy sensations which I had experienced respecting my sojourn at Bartram-Haugh were reawakened.

My ugly, vulgar, true friend was disappearing beyond those gigantic lime trees which hid Bartram from the eyes of the outer world.

The fly, with the doctor’s valise on top, vanished, and I sighed an anxious sigh. The shadow of the overarching trees contracted, and I felt helpless and forsaken; and glancing down the torn leaf, Doctor Bryerly’s address met my eye, between my fingers.

So listening and working, I, with my scissors’ point, scratched the address where Doctor Bryerly had advised. Then, in positive terror, lest someone should even knock during the operation, I, with a match, consumed to ashes the telltale bit of paper.

Now, for the first time, I experienced the unpleasant sensations of having a secret to keep.

I fancy the pain of this solitary liability was disproportionately acute in my case, for I was naturally very open and very nervous. I was always on the point of betraying it apropos des bottes—always reproaching myself for my duplicity;

“You think?

Now, take my advice, and never wait to think my dear; talk first, and think afterwards, that is my way; though, indeed, I can’t say I ever think at all. It is a very cowardly habit.

Our cold-blooded cousin Maud, there, thinks sometimes; but it is always such a failure that I forgive her. I wonder when your little pre-Adamite butler will return.

“

What a sweet, gentle, insufferable voice he has!

Somebody once told me about the tone of a glass flute that made some people hysterical to listen to, and I was thinking of it all the time. There was always a peculiar quality in his voice.

“ ‘Not your fault, my dear—your instinct. We are all imitative creatures: the great people ostracised me, and the small ones followed.

We are very like turkeys, we have so much good sense and so much generosity.

Fortune, in a freak, wounded my head, and the whole brood were upon me, pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them, dear Monica. It wasn’t your fault, only your instinct, so I quite forgive you;

“ ‘Not your fault, my dear—your instinct.

We are all imitative creatures: the great people ostracised me, and the small ones followed.

We are very like turkeys, we have so much good sense and so much generosity. Fortune, in a freak, wounded my head, and the whole brood were upon me, pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them, dear Monica.

“ ‘Well, Monica,’ he said, ‘I have weighed you in the balance, and you are not found wanting. For a moment the old man possessed me: the thought of my children, of past unkindness, and present affliction and disgrace, exasperated me, and I was mad.

It was but for a moment⁠—the galvanic spasm of a corpse.

Never was breast more dead than mine to the passions and ambitions of the world. They are not for white locks like these, nor for a man who, for a week in every month, lies in the gate of death. Will you shake hands?

For a moment the old man possessed me: the thought of my children, of past unkindness, and present affliction and disgrace, exasperated me, and I was mad. It was but for a moment—the galvanic spasm of a corpse.

Never was breast more dead than mine to the passions and ambitions of the world.

They are not for white locks like these, nor for a man who, for a week in every month, lies in the gate of death. Will you shake hands? Here—I do strike a truce; and I do forget and forgive everything.’

“You’ll see them sadly neglected, Monnie.

A poor man’s pleasure grounds must rely on Nature, and trust to her for effects.

Where there is fine timber, however, and abundance of slope, and rock, and hollow, we sometimes gain in picturesqueness what we lose by neglect in luxury.”

Milly was certainly right as to the gist of Uncle Silas’s injunction, for we saw more of Dudley henceforward.

He was shy; he was impudent; he was awkward; he was conceited;⁠—altogether a most intolerable bumpkin.

Though he sometimes flushed and stammered, and never for a moment was at his ease in my presence, yet, to my inexpressible disgust, there was a self-complacency in his manner, and a kind of triumph in his leer, which very plainly told me how satisfied …

I try to recall my then impressions of my uncle’s character.

Grizzly and chaotic the image rises⁠—silver head, feet of clay.

I as yet knew little of him.

He drank claret and hock for his health, and ate woodcock and other light and salutary dainties for the same reason; and was petulant and vicious about the cooking of these, and the flavour and clearness of his coffee.

His conversation was easy, polished, and, with a sentimental glazing, cold; but across this artificial talk, with its French rhymes, racy phrases, and fluent eloquence, like a streak of angry light, would, at intervals, suddenly gleam some dismal thought of religion.

I never could quite satisfy myself whether they were affectations or genuine, like intermittent thrills of pain.

I never could quite satisfy myself whether they were affectations or genuine, like intermittent thrills of pain.

The light of his large eyes was very peculiar. I can liken it to nothing but the sheen of intense moonlight on burnished metal.

But that cannot express it. It glared white and suddenly—almost fatuous. I thought of Moore’s lines whenever I looked on it:—

I never saw in any other eye the least glimmer of the same baleful effulgence.

His fits, too⁠—his hoverings between life and death⁠—between intellect and insanity⁠—a dubious, marsh-fire existence, horrible to look on!

I was puzzled even to comprehend his feelings toward his children. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was ready to lay down his soul for them; at others, he looked and spoke almost as if he hated them.

I was puzzled even to comprehend his feelings toward his children. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was ready to lay down his soul for them; at others, he looked and spoke almost as if he hated them.

He talked as if the image of death was always before him, yet he took a terrible interest in life, while seemingly dozing away the dregs of his days in sight of his coffin.

Oh! Uncle Silas, tremendous figure in the past, burning always in memory in the same awful lights; the fixed white face of scorn and anguish! It seems as if the Woman of Endor had led me to that chamber and showed me a spectre.

He talked as if the image of death was always before him, yet he took a terrible interest in life, while seemingly dozing away the dregs of his days in sight of his coffin.

Oh! Uncle Silas, tremendous figure in the past, burning always in memory in the same awful lights; the fixed white face of scorn and anguish!

It seems as if the Woman of Endor had led me to that chamber and showed me a spectre.

Oh! Uncle Silas, tremendous figure in the past, burning always in memory in the same awful lights; the fixed white face of scorn and anguish!

It seems as if the Woman of Endor had led me to that chamber and showed me a spectre.

Dudley had not left Bartram-Haugh when a little note reached me from Lady Knollys. It said—

The scenery through which we passed was very pretty. The road brought us through a narrow and wooded glen. Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable.

I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity.

But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my raptures, and requite them.

I bid you welcome. For two hundred years, or more, have I been the home of this beloved old family, whose generations I have seen in the cradle and in the coffin, and whose mirth and sorrows and hospitalities I remember.

All their friends, like you, were welcome; and you, like them, will here enjoy the warm illusions that cheat the sad conditions of mortality; and like them you will go your way, and others succeed you, till at last I, too, shall yield to the general law of decay, and disappear.

”

“And if it be so, am I not all the more in need of help?

Truth is simply the most dangerous kind of defamation, and I really think I’m most cruelly persecuted.

”

“Quite true. He may have the right to cut down trees at Bartram-Haugh. At all events, I am sure he thinks he has,” I echoed.

The fact was, that I would not avow to myself a suspicion of Uncle Silas. Any falsehood there opened an abyss beneath my feet into which I dared not look.

“And now, dear girls, good night. You must be tired. We breakfast at a quarter past nine—not too early for you, I know.”

“And so, girls, you have Chaulieu and the evangelists; the French rhymester in his alley, and Silas in the valley of the shadow of death; perfect liberty, and a peremptory order to return in a week;—all illustrating one another.

Poor Silas! old as he is, I don’t think his religion fits him.

”

and he says that the cutting down of the trees will turn out to have been a mere slip.

But these slips don’t occur with clever men in other things; and some persons have a way of always making them in their own favour.

And, to talk of other things, I suspect that you and Milly will probably see Ilbury at Bartram; for I think he likes you very much.”

then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason. He bowed me back again into my uncle’s study, and the light of old Wyat’s dreadful candle.

Doctor Jolks was suave and pompous. I longed for a fussy practitioner who would have got over the ground in half the time.

“Coma, madam; coma. Miss Ruthyn, your uncle, I may tell you, has been in a very critical state; highly so. Coma of the most obstinate type.

“He’ll ha’ the candles,” said Dame Wyat, doggedly; and she tottered from the chamber, muttering to herself; and I heard her take her candle from the next room and depart, shutting the outer door after her.

Here was I then alone, but for this unearthly companion, whom I feared inexpressibly, at two o’clock, in the vast old house of Bartram.

I stirred the fire. It was low, and would not blaze. I stood up, and, with my hand on the mantelpiece, endeavoured to think of cheerful things. But it was a struggle against wind and tide—vain; and so I drifted away into haunted regions.

I stirred the fire. It was low, and would not blaze. I stood up, and, with my hand on the mantelpiece, endeavoured to think of cheerful things.

But it was a struggle against wind and tide⁠—vain; and so I drifted away into haunted regions.

Uncle Silas was perfectly still. I would not suffer myself to think of the number of dark rooms and passages which now separated me from the other living tenants of the house. I awaited with a false composure the return of old Wyat.

With the same inflexible scowl and smile, he continued to look out for several minutes, and then with a great sigh, he sat down on the side of his bed, his face immovably turned towards me, with the same painful look.

It seemed to me an hour before old Wyat came back; and never was lover made happier at sight of his mistress than I to behold that withered crone.

You may be sure I did not prolong my watch. There was now plainly no risk of my uncle’s relapsing into lethargy. I had a long hysterical fit of weeping when I got into my room, with honest Mary Quince by my side.

Whenever I closed my eyes, the face of Uncle Silas was before me, as I had seen it reflected in the glass.

The sorceries of Bartram were enveloping me once more.

Next morning the doctor said he was quite out of danger, but very weak. Milly and I saw him; and again in our afternoon walk we saw the doctor marching under the trees in the direction of the Windmill Wood.

“A twenty-girl power! That’s an immense compliment.

I’ve the greatest respect for nonsense, I owe it so much; and I really think if nonsense were banished, the earth would grow insupportable.

”

And I forgot to mention—you know you complained that you were ill supplied with books, so Mary thought you would allow her to share her supply—they are the new books, you know—and when you have read yours, you and she can exchange.”

What girl was ever quite frank about her likings? I don’t think I was more of a cheat than others; but I never could tell of myself.

It is quite true that this duplicity and reserve seldom deceives. Our hypocrisies are forced upon some of our sex by the acuteness and vigilance of all in this field of enquiry;

at all events, he has no right to place me in an embarrassing situation, and I am certain Cousin Knollys would say so; and I think his note both shabby and impertinent.”

Decision was not with me an intellectual process. When quite cool I was the most undecided of mortals, but once my feelings were excited I was prompt and bold.

“I’ll give the note to Uncle Silas,” I said, quickening my pace toward home; “he’ll know what to do.”

Can you not in as many minutes call to mind at least six similar inconsistencies of your own practising?

For my part, I really can’t see the advantage of being the weaker sex if we are always to be as strong as our masculine neighbours.

There was, indeed, no revival of the little sentiment which I had once experienced. When these things once expire, I do believe they are as hard to revive as our dead lapdogs, guinea-pigs, and parrots.

There was, indeed, no revival of the little sentiment which I had once experienced.

When these things once expire, I do believe they are as hard to revive as our dead lapdogs, guinea-pigs, and parrots.

It was my perfect coolness which enabled me to chat, I flatter myself, so agreeably with the refined Captain, who plainly thought me his captive, and was probably now and then thinking what was to be done to utilise that little bit of Bartram, or …

It affected ever after my involuntary estimate of the principal actors in it.

An exhibition of such thorough inferiority, accompanied by such a shock to the feminine sense of elegance, is not forgotten by any woman.

Captain Oakley had been severely beaten by a smaller man. It was pitiable, but also undignified; and Milly’s anxieties about his teeth and nose, though in a certain sense horrible, had also a painful suspicion of the absurd.

After this I lived in constant apprehension of being summoned to my uncle’s room, and being called on for an explanation of my meeting with Captain Oakley, which, notwithstanding my perfect innocence, looked suspicious, but no such inquisition resulted.

Perhaps he did not suspect me; or, perhaps, he thought, not in his haste, all women are liars, and did not care to hear what I might say.

I rather lean to the latter interpretation.

I saw Uncle Silas’s lip, eyelid, and thin cheek quiver and shrink, as if with a thrill of tic-douloureux, as Doctor Bryerly spoke this unconsciously insulting answer.

My uncle had, however, the self-command which is learned at the gaming-table.

He shrugged, with a chilly, sarcastic, little laugh, and a glance at me.

From before that sad gaze my uncle averted his strange eyes quickly, and looked, oddly, to the window.

In a moment more Doctor Bryerly let my hand go with a sigh, and with an abrupt little nod to me, he left the room; and I heard that dismallest of sounds, the retreating footsteps of a true friend, lost.

“Lead us not into temptation; if we pray so, we must not mock the eternal Majesty of Heaven by walking into temptation of our own accord.”

“

Lead us not into temptation; if we pray so, we must not mock the eternal Majesty of Heaven by walking into temptation of our own accord.

”

What I was I will describe in blacker terms, and with more heartfelt detestation, than my traducers—a reckless prodigal, a godless profligate. Such I was; what I am, I am.

If I had no hope beyond this world, of all men most miserable; but with that hope, a sinner saved.

”

That is not doing so badly for a visionary Swedenborgian. Such a man must prosper. But if he expected to make money of me, he is disappointed. Money, however, he will make of his trusteeship, as you will see. It is a dangerous resolution.

But if he will seek the life of Dives, the worst I wish him is to find the death of Lazarus.

But whether, like Lazarus, he be borne of angels into Abraham’s bosom, or, like the rich man, only dies and is buried, and the rest, neither living nor dying do I desire his company.”

“Blessed if you baint a blushin’, Maud,” he drawled, with an odious grin.

His stupidity was proof against everything.

“It is too bad!” I muttered, with an indignant little pat of my foot and mimic stamp.

You may be sure that we discussed, Milly and I, that occurrence pretty constantly in all sorts of moods. Limited as had been her experience of human society, she very clearly saw now how far below its presentable level was her hopeful brother.

The fortnight sped swiftly, as time always does when something we dislike and shrink from awaits us at its close.

I never saw Uncle Silas during that period.

But so it is.

Perhaps the very consciousness of external danger enhances the enjoyment of the well-lighted interior, just as the storm does that roars and hurtles over the roof.

While Milly and I were talking, very cosily, a knock came to the room-door, and, without waiting for an invitation to enter, old Wyat came in, and glowering at us, with her brown claw upon the door-handle, she said to Milly—

Judging by the sour glance she threw on me as she said this, I concluded that I represented those “late changes” to which all the sorrows of the house were referred.

I felt unhappy under the ill-will even of this odious old woman, being one of those unhappily constructed mortals who cannot be indifferent when they reasonably ought, and always yearn after kindness, even that of the worthless.

“I must go. I wish you’d come wi’ me, Maud, I’m so afraid all alone,” said Milly, imploringly.

When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my heart died within me.

It was late⁠—just that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties most⁠—when the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night sets in.

When I entered my uncle’s sitting-room—though his window-shutters were open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes in the chasms of the dark western clouds—a pair of candles were burning;

“

In my misery and my solitude, Maud, I have invoked you like a spirit, and you appear.

”

and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had passed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, Maud—I say it was no fault of mine;

I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire.

As people passed by Bartram, and looked upon its neglected grounds and smokeless chimneys, they thought my plight, I dare say, about the worst a proud man could be reduced to. They could not imagine one half its misery.

“I’m very miserable—very nearly desperate. What remains for me—what remains?

Fortune has done her worst⁠—thrown in the dust, her wheels rolled over me; and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch.

All this had passed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, Maud—I say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire.

But this old hectic—this old epileptic—this old spectre of wrongs, calamities, and follies, had still one hope—my manly though untutored son—the last male scion of the Ruthyns. Maud, have I lost him? His fate—my fate—I may say Milly’s fate;—we all await your sentence.

He loves you, as none but the very young can love, and that once only in a life.

He loves you desperately—a most affectionate nature—a Ruthyn, the best blood in England—the last man of the race; and I—if I lose him I lose all; and you will see me in my coffin, Maud, before many months.

I thought of the possibility of my hearing of his having made away with himself, and was every morning relieved when I heard that he was still as usual. I have often wondered since at my own firmness.

In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling.

’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.

”

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;

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.

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 semitransparent structure I thought I could now and then discern the light or the glare of his inner life.

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;

… 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.

“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.”

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.”

“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, 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.

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.

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.

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 armchair, with an ancient shawl about her, and her bare feet in a delft tub. She looked a thought more withered.

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.

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.

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.

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 trapdoor.

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!

I can’t at all account for the state in which I was.

There are resources both of energy and endurance in human nature which we never suspect until the tremendous voice of necessity summons them into play.

Petrified with a totally new horror, but with something of the coldness and impassiveness of the transformation, I stood, spoke, and acted—a wonder, almost a terror, to myself.

I continued walking up and down the room, with my hands clasped, looking at the inexorable floor, the walls, the ceiling, with a sort of imploring despair. I was afraid to tell my dear old Mary.

The least indiscretion would be failure, and failure destruction.

I answered her perplexed solicitudes by telling her that I was not very well—that I was uneasy;

Sometimes to these dreadful evidences I abandoned my soul.

Sometimes, reading Cousin Monica’s sunny letter, the sky would clear, and my terrors melt away like nightmares in the morning.

I never repented, however, that I had sent my letter by Tom Brice. Escape from Bartram-Haugh was my hourly longing.

but they do. Is it the spirit of feminine triumph overcoming feminine shame, and making them vaunt their fall as an evidence of bygone fascination and existing power? Need we wonder?

Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance?

Thus, as they enjoyed the fear inspired among simple neighbours by their imagined traffic with the father of ill, did Madame, I think, relish with a cynical vainglory the suspicion of her satanic superiority.

I was sitting now on the bedside, crying in mere despair. I did not care to dispute or to resist.

Oh! why had rescue come so near, only to prove that it could not reach me?

So I went on crying, with a clasping of my hands and turning up of my eyes, in incoherent prayer.

What could that ruffian, Hawkes, be doing in the house? Why was Dudley there? Could a more ominous combination be imagined? I puzzled my distracted head over all Mary Quince’s details, but could make nothing of their occupation.

I know of nothing so terrifying as this kind of perpetual puzzling over ominous problems.

You may imagine how the long hours of that night passed, and how my heart beat at every fancied sound outside my door.

Under happier circumstances I should have been, at my then early age, quite wild with pleasurable excitement on entering London for the first time.

But black Care sat by me, with her pale hand in mine: a voice of fear and warning, whose words I could not catch, was always in my ear.

We drove through London, amid the glare of lamps, toward the West-end, and for a little while the sense of novelty and curiosity overcame my despondency, and I peeped eagerly from the window;

Two or three times that day Madame appeared to me on the point of saying something of grave import, as she scanned me with her bleak wicked stare.

It was a peculiarity of hers, that whenever she was pressed upon by an anxiety that really troubled her, her countenance did not look sad or solicitous, as other people’s would, but simply wicked.

Her great gaunt mouth was compressed and drawn down firmly at the corners, and her eyes glared with a dismal scowl.

“

And so, you clever cheaile, we two sit here, playing at a game of chess, over this little table, to decide which shall destroy the other⁠—is it not so?

”

She busied herself in unpacking and displaying over the back of the chair a whole series of London purchases—silk dresses, a shawl, a sort of lace demi-coiffure then in vogue, and a variety of other articles.

The vainest and most slammakin of women⁠—the merest slut at home, a milliner’s lay figure out of doors⁠—she had one square foot of looking-glass upon the chimneypiece, and therein tried effects, and conjured up grotesque simpers upon her sinister and weary face.

I knew that the sure way to prolong this worry was to express my uneasiness under it, so I bore it as quietly as I could;

While I was making these observations, I heard the key stealthily stirred. I suspect that Madame wished to surprise me.

Her approaching step, indeed, was seldom audible; she had the soft tread of the feline tribe.

I was standing in the centre of the room confronting her when she entered.

“Deed I leave the key in the door?” ejaculated Madame, with both hands raised, and such a genuine look of consternation as for a moment shook me.

It was the nature of this woman’s deceptions that they often puzzled though they seldom convinced me.

“I really think, Maud, all those so frequent changes and excitements they weel overturn my poor head.”

And Madame mounted on a chair, and made her scrutiny with much curiosity, but could not agree with me as to the very recent date of the carpentry.

There is nothing, I think, so exasperating as that sort of falsehood which affects not to see what is quite palpable.

“Do you mean to say, Madame, that you really think those chisellings and screws are forty years old?”

I think she fancied that I would perhaps attempt to break away and escape; but I had no such thought at that moment. She hastily set down the tray on the floor at the threshold, locking the door as before.

My share of breakfast was a little tea; but Madame’s digestion was seldom disturbed by her sympathies, and she ate voraciously.

During this process there was a silence unusual in her company; but when her meal was ended she proposed a reconnaissance, professing much uncertainty as to whether my Uncle had been arrested or not.