Uncle Silas J. Sheridan Le Fanu (good books to read for beginners .TXT) 📖

and thinking me, I suppose, a person of consequence, removed his hands from behind him, suffering the skirts of his coat to fall forward, and with great celerity and gravity made me a low but important bow; then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason. He bowed me back again into my uncle’s study, and the light of old Wyat’s dreadful candle.

Doctor Jolks was suave and pompous. I longed for a fussy practitioner who would have got over the ground in half the time.

“Coma, madam; coma. Miss Ruthyn, your uncle, I may tell you, has been in a very critical state; highly so. Coma of the most obstinate type. He would have sunk⁠—he must have gone, in fact, had I not resorted to a very extreme remedy, and bled him freely, which happily told precisely as we could have wished. A wonderful constitution⁠—a marvellous constitution⁠—prodigious nervous fibre; the greatest pity in the world he won’t give himself fair play. His habits, you know, are quite, I may say, destructive. We do our best⁠—we do all we can, but if the patient won’t cooperate it can’t possibly end satisfactorily.”

And Jolks accompanied this with an awful shrug. “Is there anything? Do you think change of air? What an awful complaint it is,” I exclaimed.

He smiled, mysteriously looking down, and shook his head undertaker-like.

“Why, we can hardly call it a complaint, Miss Ruthyn. I look upon it he has been poisoned⁠—he has had, you understand me,” he pursued, observing my startled look, “an overdose of opium; you know he takes opium habitually; he takes it in laudanum, he takes it in water, and, most dangerous of all, he takes it solid, in lozenges. I’ve known people take it moderately. I’ve known people take it to excess, but they all were particular as to measure, and that is exactly the point I’ve tried to impress upon him. The habit, of course, you understand is formed, there’s no uprooting that; but he won’t measure⁠—he goes by the eye and by sensation, which I need not tell you, Miss Ruthyn, is going by chance; and opium, as no doubt you are aware, is strictly a poison; a poison, no doubt, which habit will enable you to partake of, I may say, in considerable quantities, without fatal consequences, but still a poison; and to exhibit a poison so, is, I need scarcely tell you, to trifle with death. He has been so threatened, and for a time he changes his haphazard mode of dealing with it, and then returns; he may escape⁠—of course, that is possible⁠—but he may any day overdo the thing. I don’t think the present crisis will result seriously. I am very glad, independently of the honour of making your acquaintance, Miss Ruthyn, that you and your cousin have returned; for, however zealous, I fear the servants are deficient in intelligence; and as in the event of a recurrence of the symptoms⁠—which, however, is not probable⁠—I would beg to inform you of their nature, and how exactly best to deal with them.”

So upon these points he delivered us a pompous little lecture, and begged that either Milly or I would remain in the room with the patient until his return at two or three o’clock in the morning; a reappearance of the coma “might be very bad indeed.”

Of course Milly and I did as we were directed. We sat by the fire, scarcely daring to whisper. Uncle Silas, about whom a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me, lay still and motionless as if he were actually dead.

“Had he attempted to poison himself?”

If he believed his position to be as desperate as Lady Knollys had described it, was this, after all, improbable? There were strange wild theories, I had been told, mixed up in his religion.

Sometimes, at an hour’s interval, a sign of life would come⁠—a moan from that tall sheeted figure in the bed⁠—a moan and a pattering of the lips. Was it prayer⁠—what was it? who could guess what thoughts were passing behind that white-fillited forehead?

I had peeped at him: a white cloth steeped in vinegar and water was folded round his head; his great eyes were closed, so were his marble lips; his figure straight, thin, and long, dressed in a white dressing-gown, looked like a corpse “laid out” in the bed; his gaunt bandaged arm lay outside the sheet that covered his body.

With this awful image of death we kept our vigil, until poor Milly grew so sleepy that old Wyat proposed that she should take her place and watch with me.

Little as I liked the crone with the high-cauled cap, she would, at all events, keep awake, which Milly could not. And so at one o’clock this new arrangement began.

“Mr. Dudley Ruthyn is not at home?” I whispered to old Wyat.

“He went away wi’ himself yesternight, to Cloperton, Miss, to see the wrestling; it was to come off this morning.”

“Was he sent for?”

“Not he.”

“And why not?”

“He would na’ leave the sport for this, I’m thinking,” and the old woman grinned uglily.

“When is he to return?”

“When he wants money.”

So we grew silent, and again I thought of suicide, and of the unhappy old man, who just then whispered a sentence or two to himself with a sigh.

For the next hour he had been quite silent, and old Wyat informed me that she must go down for candles. Ours were already burnt down to the sockets.

“There’s a candle in the next room,” I suggested, hating the idea of being left alone with the patient.

“Hoot! Miss. I dare na’ set a candle but wax in his presence,” whispered the old woman, scornfully.

“I think if we were to stir the fire, and put on a little more coal, we should have a great deal of light.”

“He’ll ha’ the candles,” said Dame Wyat, doggedly; and she tottered from the chamber, muttering to herself; and I heard her