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

and I saw him at a little distance in our walks. He never attempted to join us. Once only he passed so near that some recognition was inevitable, and he stopped and in silence lifted his hat with an awkward respect. But although he did not approach us, he was ostentatious with a kind of telegraphic civility in the distance. He opened gates, he whistled his dogs to “heel,” he drove away cattle, and then himself withdrew. I really think he watched us occasionally to render these services, for in this distant way we encountered him decidedly oftener than we used to do before his flattering proposal of marriage.

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. It may seem odd to those who merely read the report of our last interview, in which his manner had been more playful and his talk more trifling than in any other, that from it I had carried away a profounder sense of fear and insecurity than from any other. It was with a foreboding of evil and an awful dejection that on a very dark day, in Milly’s room, I awaited the summons which I was sure would reach me from my punctual guardian.

As I looked from the window upon the slanting rain and leaden sky, and thought of the hated interview that awaited me, I pressed my hand to my troubled heart, and murmured, “O that I had wings like a dove! then would I flee away, and be at rest.”

Just then the prattle of the parrot struck my ear. I looked round on the wire cage, and remembered the words, “The bird’s name is Maud.”

“Poor bird!” I said. “I dare say, Milly, it longs to get out. If it were a native of this country, would not you like to open the window, and then the door of that cruel cage, and let the poor thing fly away?”

“Master wants Miss Maud,” said Wyat’s disagreeable tones, at the half-open door.

I followed in silence, with the pressure of a near alarm at my heart, like a person going to an operation.

When I entered the room, my heart beat so fast that I could hardly speak. The tall form of Uncle Silas rose before me, and I made him a faltering reverence.

He darted from under his brows a wild, fierce glance at old Wyat, and pointed to the door imperiously with his skeleton finger. The door shut, and we were alone.

“A chair?” he said, pointing to a seat.

“Thank you, uncle, I prefer standing,” I faltered.

He also stood⁠—his white head bowed forward, the phosphoric glare of his strange eyes shone upon me from under his brows⁠—his fingernails just rested on the table.

“You saw the luggage corded and addressed, as it stands ready for removal in the hall?” he asked.

I had. Milly and I had read the cards which dangled from the trunk-handles and gun-case. The address was⁠—“Mr. Dudley R. Ruthyn, Paris, via Dover.”

“I am old⁠—agitated⁠—on the eve of a decision on which much depends. Pray relieve my suspense. Is my son to leave Bartram today in sorrow, or to remain in joy? Pray answer quickly.”

I stammered I know not what. I was incoherent⁠—wild, perhaps; but somehow I expressed my meaning⁠—my unalterable decision. I thought his lips grew whiter and his eyes shone brighter as I spoke.

When I had quite made an end, he heaved a great sigh, and turning his eyes slowly to the right and the left, like a man in a helpless distraction, he whispered⁠—

“God’s will be done.”

I thought he was upon the point of fainting⁠—a clay tint darkened the white of his face; and, seeming to forget my presence, he sat down, looking with a despairing scowl on his ashy old hand, as it lay upon the table.

I stood gazing at him, feeling almost as if I had murdered the old man⁠—he still gazing askance, with an imbecile scowl, upon his hand.

“Shall I go, sir?” I at length found courage to whisper.

“Go?” he said, looking up suddenly; and it seemed to me as if a stream of cold sheet-lightning had crossed and enveloped me for a moment.

“Go?⁠—oh!⁠—a⁠—yes⁠—yes, Maud⁠—go. I must see poor Dudley before his departure,” he added, as it were, in soliloquy.

Trembling lest he should revoke his permission to depart, I glided quickly and noiselessly from the room.

Old Wyat was prowling outside, with a cloth in her hand, pretending to dust the carved door-case. She frowned a stare of enquiry over her shrunken arm on me, as I passed. Milly, who had been on the watch, ran and met me. We heard my uncle’s voice, as I shut the door, calling Dudley. He had been waiting, probably, in the adjoining room. I hurried into my chamber, with Milly at my side, and there my agitation found relief in tears, as that of girlhood naturally does.

A little while after we saw from the window Dudley, looking, I thought, very pale, get into a vehicle, on the top of which his luggage lay, and drive away from Bartram.

I began to take comfort. His departure was an inexpressible relief. His final departure! a distant journey!

We had tea in Milly’s room that night. Firelight and candles are inspiring. In that red glow I always felt and feel more safe, as well as more comfortable, than in the daylight⁠—quite irrationally, for we know the night is the appointed day of such as love the darkness better than light, and evil walks thereby. 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