Uncle Silas Part 71

'Now, Tom, you'll tell me, have you ever been to Knowl?'

'Maught a' bin, ma'am, but I don't mind no sich place--no.'

As Tom spoke this with great deliberation, like a man who loves truth, putting a strain upon his memory for its sake, he spun the silver coin two or three times into the air and caught it, staring at it the while, with all his might.

'Now, Tom, recollect yourself, and tell me the truth, and I'll be a friend to you. Did you ride postilion to a carriage having a lady in it, and, I think, several gentlemen, which came to the grounds of Knowl, when the party had their luncheon on the gra.s.s, and there was a--a quarrel with the gamekeepers? Try, Tom, to recollect; you shall, upon my honour, have no trouble about it, and I'll try to serve you.'

Tom was silent, while with a vacant gape he watched the spin of his half-crown twice, and then catching it with a smack in his hand, which he thrust into his pocket, he said, still looking in the same direction--

'I never rid postilion in my days, ma'am. I know nout o' sich a place, though 'appen I maught a' bin there; Knowl, ye ca't. I was ne'er out o'

Derbys.h.i.+re but thrice to Warwick fair wi' horses be rail, an' twice to York.'

'You're certain, Tom?'

'Sartin sure, ma'am.'

And Tom made another loutish salute, and cut the conference short by turning off the path and beginning to hollo after some trespa.s.sing cattle.

I had not felt anything like so nearly sure in this essay at identification as I had in that of Dudley. Even of Dudley's ident.i.ty with the Church Scarsdale man, I had daily grown less confident; and, indeed, had it been proposed to bring it to the test of a wager, I do not think I should, in the language of sporting gentlemen, have cared to 'back' my original opinion. There was, however, a sufficient uncertainty to make me uncomfortable; and there was another uncertainty to enhance the unpleasant sense of ambiguity.

On our way back we pa.s.sed the bleaching trunks and limbs of several ranks of barkless oaks lying side by side, some squared by the hatchet, perhaps sold, for there were large letters and Roman numerals traced upon them in red chalk. I sighed as I pa.s.sed them by, not because it was wrongfully done, for I really rather leaned to the belief that Uncle Silas was well advised in point of law. But, alas! here lay low the grand old family decorations of Bartram-Haugh, not to be replaced for centuries to come, under whose spreading boughs the Ruthyns of three hundred years ago had hawked and hunted!

On the trunk of one of these I sat down to rest, Mary Quince meanwhile pattering about in unmeaning explorations. While thus listlessly seated, the girl Meg Hawkes, walked by, carrying a basket.

'His.h.!.+' she said quickly, as she pa.s.sed, without altering a pace or raising her eyes; 'don't ye speak nor look--fayther spies us; I'll tell ye next turn.'

'Next turn'--when was that? Well, she might be returning; and as she could not then say more than she had said, in merely pa.s.sing without a pause, I concluded to wait for a short time and see what would come of it.

After a short time I looked about me a little, and I saw d.i.c.kon Hawkes--Pegtop, as poor Milly used to call him--with an axe in his hand, prowling luridly among the timber.

Observing that I saw him, he touched his hat sulkily, and by-and-by pa.s.sed me, muttering to himself. He plainly could not understand what business I could have in that particular part of the Windmill Wood, and let me see it in his countenance.

His daughter did pa.s.s me again; but this time he was near, and she was silent. Her next transit occurred as he was questioning Mary Quince at some little distance; and as she pa.s.sed precisely in the same way, she said--

'Don't you be alone wi' Master Dudley nowhere for the world's worth.'

The injunction was so startling that I was on the point of questioning the girl. But I recollected myself, and waited in the hope that in her future transits she might be more explicit. But one word more she did not utter, and the jealous eye of old Pegtop was so constantly upon us that I refrained.

There was vagueness and suggestion enough in the oracle to supply work for many an hour of anxious conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. Was I never to know peace at Bartram-Haugh?

Ten days of poor Milly's absence, and of my solitude, had already pa.s.sed, when my uncle sent for me to his room.

When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my heart died within me.

It was late--just that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties most--when the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night sets in.

When I entered my uncle's sitting-room--though his window-shutters were open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes in the chasms of the dark western clouds--a pair of candles were burning; one stood upon the table by his desk, the other on the chimneypiece, before which his tall, thin figure stooped. His hand leaned on the mantelpiece, and the light from the candle just above his bowed head touched his silvery hair. He was looking, as it seemed, into the subsiding embers of the fire, and was a very statue of forsaken dejection and decay.

'Uncle!' I ventured to say, having stood for some time unperceived near his table.

'Ah, yes, Maud, my dear child--my _dear_ child.'

He turned, and with the candle in his hand, smiling his silvery smile of suffering on me. He walked more feebly and stiffly, I thought, than I had ever seen him move before.

'Sit down, Maud--pray sit there.'

I took the chair he indicated.

'In my misery and my solitude, Maud, I have invoked you like a spirit, and you appear.'

With his two hands leaning on the table, he looked across at me, in a stooping att.i.tude; he had not seated himself. I continued silent until it should be his pleasure to question or address me.

At last he said, raising himself and looking upward, with a wild adoration--his finger-tips elevated and glimmering in the faint mixed light--

'No, I thank my Creator, I am not quite forsaken.'

Another silence, during which he looked steadfastly at me, and muttered, as if thinking aloud--

'My guardian angel!--my guardian angel! Maud, _you_ have a heart.' He addressed me suddenly--'Listen, for a few moments, to the appeal of an old and broken-hearted man--your guardian--your uncle--your _suppliant_. I had resolved never to speak to you more on this subject. But I was wrong. It was pride that inspired me--mere pride.'

I felt myself growing pale and flushed by turns during the pause that followed.

'I'm very miserable--very nearly desperate. What remains for me--what remains? Fortune has done her worst--thrown in the dust, her wheels rolled over me; and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had pa.s.sed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, Maud--I say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and all scored with fire. As people pa.s.sed by Bartram, and looked upon its neglected grounds and smokeless chimneys, they thought my plight, I dare say, about the worst a proud man could be reduced to. They could not imagine one half its misery. But this old hectic--this old epileptic--this old spectre of wrongs, calamities, and follies, had still one hope--my manly though untutored son--the last male scion of the Ruthyns. Maud, have I lost him? His fate--my fate--I may say _Milly's fate_;--we all await your sentence. He loves you, as none but the very young can love, and that once only in a life. He loves you desperately--a most affectionate nature--a Ruthyn, the best blood in England--the last man of the race; and I--if I lose him I lose all; and you will see me in my coffin, Maud, before many months. I stand before you in the att.i.tude of a suppliant--shall I kneel?'

His eyes were fixed on me with the light of despair, his knotted hands clasped, his whole figure bowed toward me. I was inexpressibly shocked and pained.

'Oh, uncle! uncle!' I cried, and from very excitement I burst into tears.

I saw that his eyes were fixed on me with a dismal scrutiny. I think he divined the nature of my agitation; but he determined, notwithstanding, to press me while my helpless agitation continued.

'You see my suspense--you see my miserable and frightful suspense. You are kind, Maud; you love your father's memory; your pity your father's brother; you would not say no, and place a pistol at his head?'

'Oh! I must--I must--I _must_ say no. Oh! spare me, uncle, for Heaven's sake. Don't question me--don't press me. I could not--I _could_ not do what you ask.'

'I yield, Maud--I yield, my dear. I will _not_ press you; you shall have time, your _own_ time, to think. I will accept no answer now--no, _none_, Maud.'

He said this, raising his thin hand to silence me.

'There, Maud, enough. I have spoken, as I always do to you, frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak out, and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel.'

With these words Uncle Silas entered his bed-chamber, and shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought I heard a cry.

I hastened to my own room. I threw myself on my knees, and thanked Heaven for the firmness vouchsafed me; I could not believe it to have been my own.

I was more miserable in consequence of this renewed suit on behalf of my odious cousin than I can describe. My uncle had taken such a line of importunity that it became a sort of agony to resist. I thought of the possibility of my hearing of his having made away with himself, and was every morning relieved when I heard that he was still as usual. I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of my mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling.