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

border, like a widow’s crape. I did not recognise the handwriting; but on opening the funereal missive, it proved to be from my uncle Silas, and was thus expressed.

“My Dearest Niece⁠—This letter will reach you, probably, on the day which consigns the mortal remains of my beloved brother, Austin, your dear father, to the earth. Sad ceremony, from taking my mournful part in which I am excluded by years, distance, and broken health. It will, I trust, at this season of desolation, be not unwelcome to remember that a substitute, imperfect⁠—unworthy⁠—but most affectionately zealous, for the honoured parent whom you have just lost, has been appointed, in me, your uncle, by his will. I am aware that you were present during the reading of it, but I think it will be for our mutual satisfaction that our new and more affectionate relations should be forthwith entered upon. My conscience and your safety, and I trust convenience, will thereby be consulted. You will, my dear niece, remain at Knowl, until a few simple arrangements shall have been completed for your reception at this place. I will then settle the details of your little journey to us, which shall be performed as comfortably and easily as possible. I humbly pray that this affliction may be sanctified to us all, and that in our new duties we may be supported, comforted, and directed. I need not remind you that I now stand to you in loco parentis, which means in the relation of father, and you will not forget that you are to remain at Knowl until you hear further from me.

“I remain, my dear niece, your most affectionate uncle and guardian, Silas Ruthyn.”

“P.S.⁠—Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle, is not the most desirable companion for his ward. But upon the express condition that I am not made the subject of your discussions⁠—a distinction which could not conduce to your forming a just and respectful estimate of me⁠—I do not interpose my authority to bring your intercourse to an immediate close.”

As I read this postscript, my cheek tingled as if I had received a box on the ear. Uncle Silas was as yet a stranger. The menace of authority was new and sudden, and I felt with a pang of mortification the full force of the position in which my dear father’s will had placed me.

I was silent, and handed the letter to my cousin, who read it with a kind of smile until she came, as I supposed, to the postscript, when her countenance, on which my eyes were fixed, changed, and with flushed cheeks she knocked the hand that held the letter on the table before her, and exclaimed⁠—

“Did I ever hear! Well, if this isn’t impertinence! What an old man that is!”

There was a pause, during which Lady Knollys held her head high with a frown, and sniffed a little.

“I did not intend to talk about him, but now I will. I’ll talk away just whatever I like; and I’ll stay here just as long as you let me, Maud, and you need not be one atom afraid of him. Our intercourse to an ‘immediate close,’ indeed! I only wish he were here. He should hear something!”

And Cousin Monica drank off her entire cup of tea at one draught, and then she said, more in her own way⁠—

“I’m better!” and drew a long breath, and then she laughed a little in a waggish defiance. “I wish we had him here, Maud, and would not we give him a bit of our minds! And this before the poor will is so much as proved!”

“I am almost glad he wrote that postscript; for although I don’t think he has any authority in that matter while I am under my own roof,” I said, extemporising a legal opinion, “and, therefore, shan’t obey him, it has somehow opened my eyes to my real situation.”

I sighed, I believe, very desolately, for Lady Knollys came over and kissed me very gently and affectionately.

“It really seems, Maud, as if he had a supernatural sense, and heard things through the air over fifty miles of heath and hill. You remember how, just as he was probably writing that very postscript yesterday, I was urging you to come and stay with me, and planning to move Dr. Bryerly in our favour. And so I will, Maud, and to me you shall come⁠—my guest, mind⁠—I should be so delighted; and really if Silas is under a cloud, it has been his own doing, and I don’t see that it is your business to fight his battle. He can’t live very long. The suspicion, whatever it is dies with him, and what could poor dear Austin prove by his will but what everybody knew quite well before⁠—his own strong belief in Silas’s innocence? What an awful storm! The room trembles. Don’t you like the sound? What they used to call ‘wolving’ in the old organ at Dorminster!”

XXVI The Story of Uncle Silas

And so it was like the yelling of phantom hounds and hunters, and the thunder of their coursers in the air⁠—a furious, grand and supernatural music, which in my fancy made a suitable accompaniment to the discussion of that enigmatical person⁠—martyr⁠—angel⁠—demon⁠—Uncle Silas⁠—with whom my fate was now so strangely linked, and whom I had begun to fear.

“The storm blows from that point,” I said, indicating it with my hand and eye, although the window shutters and curtains were closed. “I saw all the trees bend that way this evening. That way stands the great lonely wood, where my darling father and mother lie. Oh, how dreadful on nights like this, to think of them⁠—a vault!⁠—damp, and dark, and solitary⁠—under the storm.”

Cousin Monica looked wistfully in the same direction, and with a short sigh she