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

to burst like a blaze in my brain. She had delivered her frightful warning, and told her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling, which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful situation. I was stupid⁠—the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as we sometimes see horrors⁠—heads cut off and houses burnt⁠—in a dream, and without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to the side of my head and saying⁠—

“Oh, it won’t be⁠—it won’t be⁠—Oh no!⁠—never!⁠—it could not be!” And in this stunned state Madame found me on her return.

But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The “horror of great darkness” is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights. There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found it⁠—agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the ordeal.

Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch; it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four o’clock, it said. Four o’clock! It would be dark at five⁠—night in one hour!

“Madame, what o’clock is it? Is it evening?” I cried with my hand to my forehead, like a person puzzled.

“Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came upstairs,” answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window.

“Oh, Madame! Madame! I’m frightened,” cried I, with a wild and piteous voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and shaking her arm loose⁠—

“What you mean, cheaile?”

“Oh save me, Madame!⁠—oh save me!⁠—oh save me, Madame!” I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.

“Save a you, indeed! Save! What niaiserie!”

“Oh, Madame! Oh, dear Madame! for God’s sake, only get me away⁠—get me from this, and I’ll do everything you ask me all my life⁠—I will⁠—indeed, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! save me!”

I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.

“And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?” demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare.

“I am, Madame⁠—I am⁠—in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me⁠—take pity on me! I have none to help me⁠—there is no one but God and you!”

Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face.

“Well, maybe you are⁠—how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad⁠—maybe you are mad. You have been my enemy always⁠—why should I care?”

Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death.

“I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue⁠—petite traîtresse! Reflect, if you can, how you ’av always treat Madame. You ’av attempt to ruin me⁠—you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy me⁠—and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to me⁠—you ’ad no mercy for me⁠—you join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? Bah!”

This terrific “Bah!” with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder.

“I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the hound⁠—more than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care⁠—I ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely.”

XXVIII Spiced Claret

I did not lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heaven. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets.

The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was