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

I had to clear my voice twice or thrice. There was a kind of spasm in my throat.

“I am trying to recollect,” I said at last.

“Do recollect,” he replied imperiously.

There was a little interval of silence. I would have given the world to be, on any conditions, anywhere else in the world.

“Surely, Maud, you don’t wish to deceive your guardian? Come, the question is a plain one, and I know the truth already. I ask you again⁠—have you ever heard me spoken ill of by Lady Knollys?”

“Lady Knollys,” I said, half articulately, “speaks very freely, and often half in jest; but,” I continued, observing something menacing in his face, “I have heard her express disapprobation of some things you have done.”

“Come, Maud,” he continued, in a stern, though still a low key, “did she not insinuate that charge⁠—then, I suppose, in a state of incubation, the other day presented here full-fledged, with beak and claws, by that scheming apothecary⁠—the statement that I was defrauding you by cutting down timber upon the grounds?”

“She certainly did mention the circumstance; but she also argued that it might have been through ignorance of the extent of your rights.”

“Come, come, Maud, you must not prevaricate, girl. I will have it. Does she not habitually speak disparagingly of me, in your presence, and to you? Answer.”

I hung my head.

“Yes or no?”

“Well, perhaps so⁠—yes,” I faltered, and burst into tears.

“There, don’t cry; it may well shock you. Did she not, to your knowledge, say the same things in presence of my child Millicent? I know it, I repeat⁠—there is no use in hesitating; and I command you to answer.”

Sobbing, I told the truth.

“Now sit still, while I write my reply.”

He wrote, with the scowl and smile so painful to witness, as he looked down upon the paper, and then he placed the note before me⁠—

“Read that, my dear.”

It began⁠—

“My Dear Lady Knollys,

“You have favoured me with a note, adding your request to that of Lord Ilbury, that I should permit my ward and my daughter to avail themselves of Lady Mary’s invitation. Being perfectly cognisant of the ill-feeling you have always and unaccountably cherished toward me, and also of the terms in which you have had the delicacy and the conscience to speak of me before and to my child and my ward, I can only express my amazement at the modesty of your request, while peremptorily refusing it. And I shall conscientiously adopt effectual measures to prevent your ever again having an opportunity of endeavouring to destroy my influence and authority over my ward and my child, by direct or insinuated slander.

“Your defamed and injured kinsman,
“Silas Ruthyn.”

I was stunned; yet what could I plead against the blow that was to isolate me? I wept aloud, with my hands clasped, looking on the marble face of the old man.

Without seeming to hear, he folded and sealed his note, and then proceeded to answer Lord Ilbury.

When that note was written, he placed it likewise before me, and I read it also through. It simply referred him to Lady Knollys “for an explanation of the unhappy circumstances which compelled him to decline an invitation which it would have made his niece and his daughter so happy to accept.”

“You see, my dear Maud, how frank I am with you,” he said, waving the open note, which I had just read, slightly before he folded it. “I think I may ask you to reciprocate my candour.”

Dismissed from this interview, I ran to Milly, who burst into tears from sheer disappointment, so we wept and wailed together. But in my grief I think there was more reason.

I sat down to the dismal task of writing to my dear Lady Knollys. I implored her to make her peace with my uncle. I told her how frank he had been with me, and how he had shown me his sad reply to her letter. I told her of the interview to which he had himself invited me with Dr. Bryerly; how little disturbed he was by the accusation⁠—no sign of guilt; quite the contrary, perfect confidence. I implored of her to think the best, and remembering my isolation, to accomplish a reconciliation with Uncle Silas. “Only think,” I wrote, “I only nineteen, and two years of solitude before me. What a separation!” No broken merchant ever signed the schedule of his bankruptcy with a heavier heart than did I this letter.

The griefs of youth are like the wounds of the gods⁠—there is an ichor which heals the scars from which it flows: and thus Milly and I consoled ourselves, and next day enjoyed our ramble, our talk and readings, with a wonderful resignation to the inevitable.

Milly and I stood in the relation of Lord Duberly to Doctor Pangloss. I was to mend her “cackleology,” and the occupation amused us both. I think at the bottom of our submission to destiny lurked a hope that Uncle Silas, the inexorable, would relent, or that Cousin Monica, that siren, would win and melt him to her purpose.

Whatever comfort, however, I derived from the absence of Dudley was not to be of very long duration; for one morning, as I was amusing myself alone, with a piece of worsted work, thinking, and just at that moment not unpleasantly, of many things, my cousin Dudley entered the room.

“Back again, like a bad halfpenny, ye see. And how a’ ye bin ever since, lass? Purely, I warrant, be your looks. I’m jolly glad to see ye, I am; no cattle going like ye, Maud.”

“I think I must ask you to let go my hand, as I can’t continue my work,” I said, very stiffly, hoping to chill his enthusiasm a little.

“Anything to pleasure ye, Maud, ’tain’t in my heart to refuse ye nout. I a’bin to Wolverhampton, lass⁠—jolly row there⁠—and run over to Leamington; a’most broke my neck, faith, wi’ a borrowed horse arter the dogs; ye would na care, Maud, if I broke