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

All sorts of commodities he had⁠—ribbons, cottons, silks, stockings, lace, and even some bad jewellery; and just as he began his display⁠—an interesting matter in a quiet country house⁠—Madame came upon the ground. He grinned a recognition, and hoped “Madamasel” was well, and “did not look to see her here.”

“Madamasel” thanked him. “Yes, vary well,” and looked for the first time decidedly “put out.”

“Wat a pretty things!” she said. “Catherine, run and tell Mrs. Rusk. She wants scissors, and lace too⁠—I heard her say.”

So Catherine, with a lingering look, departed; and Madame said⁠—

“Will you, dear cheaile, be so kind to bring here my purse, I forgot on the table in my room; also, I advise you, bring your.”

Catherine returned with Mrs. Rusk. Here was a man who could tell them something of the old Frenchwoman, at last! Slyly they dawdled over his wares, until Madame had made her market and departed with me. But when the coveted opportunity came, the pedlar was quite impenetrable. “He forgot everything; he did not believe as he ever saw the lady before. He called a Frenchwoman, all the world over, Madamasel⁠—that wor the name on ’em all. He never seed her in partiklar afore, as he could bring to mind. He liked to see ’em always, ’cause they makes the young uns buy.”

This reserve and oblivion were very provoking, and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Catherine Jones spent sixpence with him;⁠—he was a stupid fellow, or worse.

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 a piece of stuff in his box.

In the meantime, I and Madame were walking over the wide, peaty sheepwalks that lie between Knowl and Church Scarsdale. Since our visit to the mausoleum in the wood, she had not worried me so much as before. She had been, indeed, more than usually thoughtful, very little talkative, and troubled me hardly at all about French and other accomplishments. A walk was a part of our daily routine. I now carried a tiny basket in my hand, with a few sandwiches, which were to furnish our luncheon when we reached the pretty scene, about two miles away, whither we were tending.

We had started a little too late; Madame grew unwontedly fatigued and sat down to rest on a stile before we had got halfway; and there she intoned, with a dismal nasal cadence, a quaint old Bretagne ballad, about a lady with a pig’s head:⁠—

“This lady was neither pig nor maid,
And so she was not of human mould;
Not of the living nor the dead.
Her left hand and foot were warm to touch;
Her right as cold as a corpse’s flesh!
And she would sing like a funeral bell, with a dingdong tune.
The pigs were afraid, and viewed her aloof;
And women feared her and stood afar.
She could do without sleep for a year and a day;
She could sleep like a corpse, for a month and more.
No one knew how this lady fed⁠—
On acorns or on flesh.
Some say that she’s one of the swine-possessed,
That swam over the sea of Gennesaret.
A mongrel body and demon soul.
Some say she’s the wife of the Wandering Jew,
And broke the law for the sake of pork;
And a swinish face for a token doth bear,
That her shame is now, and her punishment coming.”

And so it went on, in a gingling rigmarole. The more anxious I seemed to go on our way, the more likely was she to loiter. I therefore showed no signs of impatience, and I saw her consult her watch in the course of her ugly minstrelsy, and slyly glance, as if expecting something, in the direction of our destination.

When she had sung to her heart’s content, up rose Madame, and began to walk onward silently. I saw her glance once or twice, as before, toward the village of Trillsworth, which lay in front, a little to our left, and the smoke of which hung in a film over the brow of the hill. I think she observed me, for she enquired⁠—

“Wat is that a smoke there?”

“That is Trillsworth, Madame; there is a railway station there.”

“Oh, le chemin de fer, so near! I did not think. Where it goes?”

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. Ouaah!” And she