Uncle Silas - J. Sheridan Le Fanu (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📗

“Well, he’s a roundabout fellah, anyhow. Couldn’t he come up and see you if he wanted to? They poeters, they do love writing long yarns⁠—don’t they?” And with this reflection, Milly took the note and read it through again.

“It’s jolly polite anyhow, isn’t it Maud?” said Milly, who had conned it over, and accepted it as a model composition.

I must have been, I think, naturally a rather shrewd girl; and considering how very little I had seen of the world⁠—nothing in fact⁠—I often wonder now at the sage conclusions at which I arrived.

Were I to answer this handsome and cunning fool according to his folly, in what position should I find myself? No doubt my reply would induce a rejoinder, and that compel another note from me, and that invite yet another from him; and however his might improve in warmth, they were sure not to abate. Was it his impertinent plan, with this show of respect and ceremony, to drag me into a clandestine correspondence? Inexperienced girl as I was, I fired at the idea of becoming his dupe, and fancying, perhaps, that there was more in merely answering his note than it would have amounted to, I said⁠—

“That kind of thing may answer very well with button-makers, but ladies don’t like it. What would your papa think of it if he found that I had been writing to him, and seeing him without his permission? If he wanted to see me he could have”⁠—(I really did not know exactly what he could have done)⁠—“he could have timed his visit to Lady Knollys differently; 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.”

But Milly, who, I fancy, had no objection to the little romance which the young officer proposed, told me that she could not see her father, that he was ill, and not speaking to anyone.

“And arn’t ye making a plaguy row about nothin’? I lay a guinea if ye had never set eyes on Lord Ilbury you’d a told him to come, and see ye, an’ welcome.”

“Don’t talk like a fool, Milly. You never knew me do anything deceitful. Lord Ilbury has no more to do with it, you know very well, than the man in the moon.”

I was altogether very indignant. I did not speak another word to Milly. The proportions of the house are so great, that it is a much longer walk than you would suppose from the hall-door to Uncle Silas’s room. But I did not cool all that way; and it was not till I had just reached the lobby, and saw the sour, jealous face, and high caul of old Wyat, and felt the influence of that neighbourhood, that I paused to reconsider. I fancied there was a cool consciousness of success behind all the deferential phraseology of Captain Oakley, which nettled me extremely. No; there could be no doubt. I tapped softly at the door.

“What is it now, Miss?” snarled the querulous old woman, with her shrivelled fingers on the door-handle.

“Can I see my uncle for a moment?”

“He’s tired, and not a word from him all day long.”

“Not ill, though?”

“Awful bad in the night,” said the old crone, with a sudden savage glare in my face, as if I had brought it about.

“Oh! I’m very sorry. I had not heard a word of it.”

“No one does but old Wyat. There’s Milly there never asks neither⁠—his own child!”

“Weakness, or what?”

“One o’ them fits. He’ll slide awa’ in one o’ them some day, and no one but old Wyat to know nor ask word about it; that’s how ’twill be.”

“Will you please hand him this note, if he is well enough to look at it, and say I am at the door?”

She took it with a peevish nod and a grunt, closing the door in my face, and in a few minutes returned⁠—

“Come in wi’ ye,” said Dame Wyat, and I appeared.

Uncle Silas, who, after his nightly horror or vision, lay extended on a sofa, with his faded yellow silk dressing-gown about him, his long white hair hanging toward the ground, and that wild and feeble smile lighting his face⁠—a glimmer I feared to look upon⁠—his long thin arms lay by his sides, with hands and fingers that stirred not, except when now and then, with a feeble motion, he wet his temples and forehead with eau de cologne from a glass saucer placed beside him.

“Excellent girl! dutiful ward and niece!” murmured the oracle; “heaven reward you⁠—your frank dealing is your own safety and my peace. Sit you down, and say who is this Captain Oakley, when you made his acquaintance, what his age, fortune, and expectations, and who the aunt he mentions.”

Upon all these points I satisfied him as fully as I was able.

“Wyat⁠—the white drops,” he called, in a thin, stern tone. “I’ll write a line presently. I can’t see visitors, and, of course, you can’t receive young captains before you’ve come out. Farewell! God bless you, dear.”

Wyat was dropping the “white” restorative into a wineglass and the room was redolent of ether. I was glad to escape. The figures and whole mise-en-scène were unearthly.

“Well, Milly,” I said, as I met her in the hall, “your papa is going to write to him.”

I sometimes wonder whether Milly was right, and how I should have acted a few months earlier.

Next day whom should we meet in the Windmill Wood but Captain Oakley. The spot where this interesting rencontre occurred was near that ruinous bridge on my sketch of which I had received so many compliments. It