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

“And you must have these apples⁠—won’t you?” We had brought in our basket two or three of those splendid apples for which Bartram was famous.

I hesitated to go near her, these Hawkeses, Beauty and Pegtop, were such savages. So I rolled the apples gently along the ground to her feet.

She continued to look doggedly at us with the same expression, and kicked away the apples sullenly that approached her feet. Then, wiping her temple and forehead in her apron, without a word, she turned and walked slowly away.

“Poor thing! I’m afraid she leads a hard life. What strange, repulsive people they are!”

When we reached home, at the head of the great staircase old L’Amour was awaiting me; and with a courtesy, and very respectfully, she informed me that the Master would be happy to see me.

Could it be about my evidence as to the arrival of the mysterious chaise that he summoned me to this interview? Gentle as were his ways, there was something undefinable about Uncle Silas which inspired fear; and I should have liked few things less than meeting his gaze in the character of a culprit.

There was an uncertainty, too, as to the state in which I might find him, and a positive horror of beholding him again in the condition in which I had last seen him.

I entered the room, then, in some trepidation, but was instantly relieved. Uncle Silas was in the same health apparently, and, as nearly as I could recollect it, in precisely the same rather handsome though negligent garb in which I had first seen him.

Doctor Bryerly⁠—what a marked and vulgar contrast, and yet, somehow, how reassuring!⁠—sat at the table near him, and was tying up papers. His eyes watched me, I thought, with an anxious scrutiny as I approached; and I think it was not until I had saluted him that he recollected suddenly that he had not seen me before at Bartram, and stood up and greeted me in his usual abrupt and somewhat familiar way. It was vulgar and not cordial, and yet it was honest and indefinably kind.

Up rose my uncle, that strangely venerable, pale portrait, in his loose Rembrandt black velvet. How gentle, how benignant, how unearthly, and inscrutable!

“I need not say how she is. Those lilies and roses, Doctor Bryerly, speak their own beautiful praises of the air of Bartram. I almost regret that her carriage will be home so soon. I only hope it may not abridge her rambles. It positively does me good to look at her. It is the glow of flowers in winter, and the fragrance of a field which the Lord hath blessed.”

“Country air, Miss Ruthyn, is a right good kitchen to country fare. I like to see young women eat heartily. You have had some pounds of beef and mutton since I saw you last,” said Dr. Bryerly.

And this sly speech made, he scrutinised my countenance in silence rather embarrassingly.

“My system, Doctor Bryerly, as a disciple of Aesculapius you will approve⁠—health first, accomplishment afterwards. The Continent is the best field for elegant instruction, and we must see the world a little, by-and-by, Maud; and to me, if my health be spared, there would be an unspeakable though a melancholy charm in the scenes where so many happy, though so many wayward and foolish, young days were passed; and I think I should return to these picturesque solitudes with, perhaps, an increased relish. You remember old Chaulieu’s sweet lines⁠—

“ ‘Désert, aimable solitude,
Séjour du calme et de la paix,
Asile où n’entrèrent jamais
Le tumulte et l’inquiétude.’

“I can’t say that care and sorrow have not sometimes penetrated these sylvan fastnesses; but the tumults of the world, thank Heaven!⁠—never.”

There was a sly scepticism, I thought, in Doctor Bryerly’s sharp face; and hardly waiting for the impressive “never,” he said⁠—

“I forgot to ask, who is your banker?”

“Oh! Bartlet and Hall, Lombard Street,” answered Uncle Silas, dryly and shortly.

Dr. Bryerly made a note of it, with an expression of face which seemed, with a sly resolution, to say, “You shan’t come the anchorite over me.”

I saw Uncle Silas’s wild and piercing eye rest suspiciously on me for a moment, as if to ascertain whether I felt the spirit of Doctor Bryerly’s almost interruption; and, nearly at the same moment, stuffing his papers into his capacious coat pockets, Doctor Bryerly rose and took his leave.

When he was gone, I bethought me that now was a good opportunity of making my complaint of Dickon Hawkes. Uncle Silas having risen, I hesitated, and began,

“Uncle, may I mention an occurrence⁠—which I witnessed?”

“Certainly, child,” he answered, fixing his eye sharply on me. I really think he fancied that the conversation was about to turn upon the phantom chaise.

So I described the scene which had shocked Milly and me, an hour or so ago, in the Windmill Wood.

“You see, my dear child, they are rough persons; their ideas are not ours; their young people must be chastised, and in a way and to a degree that we would look upon in a serious light. I’ve found it a bad plan interfering in strictly domestic misunderstandings, and should rather not.”

“But he struck her violently on the head, uncle, with a heavy cudgel, and she was bleeding very fast.”

“Ah?” said my uncle, dryly.

“And only that Milly and I deterred him by saying that we would certainly tell you, he would have struck her again; and I really think if he goes on treating her with so much violence and cruelty he may injure her seriously, or perhaps kill her.”

“Why, you romantic little child, people in that rank of life think absolutely nothing of a broken head,” answered Uncle Silas, in the same way.

“But is it not horrible brutality, uncle?”

“To be sure it is brutality; but then you must remember they are brutes, and it suits them,” said he.

I was disappointed. I had fancied that Uncle Silas’s gentle nature would have recoiled from such an outrage with horror and indignation; and instead, here