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

all events, my child, we will take care that no danger reaches you; come, child.”

And by the hand he led me to the study. When the door was shut, and we had reached the far end of the room next the window, I said, but in a low tone, and holding his arm fast⁠—

“Oh, sir, you don’t know what a dreadful person we have living with us⁠—Madame de la Rougierre, I mean. Don’t let her in if she comes; she would guess what I am telling you, and one way or another I am sure she would kill me.”

“Tut, tut, child. You must know that’s nonsense,” he said, looking pale and stern.

“Oh no, papa. I am horribly frightened, and Lady Knollys thinks so too.”

“Ha! I dare say; one fool makes many. We all know what Monica thinks.”

“But I saw it, papa. She stole your key last night, and opened your desk, and read all your papers.”

“Stole my key!” said my father, staring at me perplexed, but at the same instant producing it. “Stole it! Why here it is!”

“She unlocked your desk; she read your papers for ever so long. Open it now, and see whether they have not been stirred.”

He looked at me this time in silence, with a puzzled air; but he did unlock the desk, and lifted the papers curiously and suspiciously. As he did so he uttered a few of those inarticulate interjections which are made with closed lips, and not always intelligible; but he made no remark.

Then he placed me on a chair beside him, and sitting down himself, told me to recollect myself, and tell him distinctly all I had seen. This accordingly I did, he listening with deep attention.

“Did she remove any paper?” asked my father, at the same time making a little search, I suppose, for that which he fancied might have been stolen.

“No; I did not see her take anything.”

“Well, you are a good girl, Maud. Act discreetly. Say nothing to anyone⁠—not even to your cousin Monica.”

Directions which, coming from another person would have had no great weight, were spoken by my father with an earnest look and a weight of emphasis that made them irresistibly impressive, and I went away with the seal of silence upon my lips.

“Sit down, Maud, there. You have not been very happy with Madame de la Rougierre. It is time you were relieved. This occurrence decides it.”

He rang the bell.

“Tell Madame de la Rougierre that I request the honour of seeing her for a few minutes here.”

My father’s communications to her were always equally ceremonious. In a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and the same figure, smiling, courtesying, that had scared me on the threshold last night, like the spirit of evil, presented itself.

My father rose, and Madame having at his request taken a chair opposite, looking, as usual in his presence, all amiability, he proceeded at once to the point.

“Madame de la Rougierre, I have to request you that you will give me the key now in your possession, which unlocks this desk of mine.”

With which termination he tapped his gold pencil-case suddenly on it.

Madame, who had expected something very different, became instantly so pale, with a dull purplish hue upon her forehead, that, especially when she had twice essayed with her white lips, in vain, to answer, I expected to see her fall in a fit.

She was not looking in his face; her eyes were fixed lower, and her mouth and cheek sucked in, with a strange distortion at one side.

She stood up suddenly, and staring straight in his face, she succeeded in saying, after twice clearing her throat⁠—

“I cannot comprehend, Monsieur Ruthyn, unless you intend to insult me.”

“It won’t do, Madame; I must have that false key. I give you the opportunity of surrendering it quietly here and now.”

“But who dares to say I possess such thing?” demanded Madame, who, having rallied from her momentary paralysis, was now fierce and voluble as I had often seen her before.

“You know, Madame, that you can rely on what I say, and I tell you that you were seen last night visiting this room, and with a key in your possession, opening this desk, and reading my letters and papers contained in it. Unless you forthwith give me that key, and any other false keys in your possession⁠—in which case I shall rest content with dismissing you summarily⁠—I will take a different course. You know I am a magistrate;⁠—and I shall have you, your boxes, and places upstairs, searched forthwith, and I will prosecute you criminally. The thing is clear; you aggravate by denying; you must give me that key, if you please, instantly, otherwise I ring this bell, and you shall see that I mean what I say.”

There was a little pause. He rose and extended his hand towards the bell-rope. Madame glided round the table, extended her hand to arrest his.

“I will do everything, Monsieur Ruthyn⁠—whatever you wish.”

And with these words Madame de la Rougierre broke down altogether. She sobbed, she wept, she gabbled piteously, all manner of incomprehensible roulades of lamentation and entreaty; coyly, penitently, in a most interesting agitation, she produced the very key from her breast, with a string tied to it. My father was little moved by this piteous tempest. He coolly took the key and tried it in the desk, which it locked and unlocked quite freely, though the wards were complicated. He shook his head and looked her in the face.

“Pray, who made this key? It is a new one, and made expressly to pick this lock.”

But Madame was not going to tell any more than she had expressly bargained for; so she only fell once more into her old paroxysm of sorrow, self-reproach, extenuation, and entreaty.

“Well,” said my father, “I promised that on surrendering the key you should go. It is enough. I keep my word. You shall have an hour and a half to prepare in. You must then be ready to