Uncle Silas, J. Sheridan Le Fanu [10 ebook reader .txt] 📗

“It won’t be very long,” I pleaded.

“No, dear,” he answered with a sigh.

I was tempted almost to question him more closely on the subject, but he seemed to divine what was in my mind, for he said⁠—

“Let us speak no more of it, but only bear in mind, Maud, what I told you about the oak cabinet, the key of which is here,” and he held it up as formerly: “you remember what you are to do in case Doctor Bryerly should come while I am away?”

“Yes, sir.”

His manner had changed, and I had returned to my accustomed formalities.

It was only a few days later that Dr. Bryerly actually did arrive at Knowl, quite unexpectedly, except, I suppose, by my father. He was to stay only one night.

He was twice closeted in the little study upstairs with my father, who seemed to me, even for him, unusually dejected, and Mrs. Rusk inveighing against “them rubbitch,” as she always termed the Swedenborgians, told me “they were making him quite shaky-like, and he would not last no time, if that lanky, lean ghost of a fellow in black was to keep prowling in and out of his room like a tame cat.”

I lay awake that night, wondering what the mystery might be that connected my father and Dr. Bryerly. There was something more than the convictions of their strange religion could account for. There was something that profoundly agitated my father. It may not be reasonable, but so it is. The person whose presence, though we know nothing of the cause of that effect, is palpably attended with pain to anyone who is dear to us, grows odious, and I began to detest Doctor Bryerly.

It was a grey, dark morning, and in a dark pass in the gallery, near the staircase, I came full upon the ungainly Doctor, in his glossy black suit.

I think, if my mind had been less anxiously excited on the subject of his visit, or if I had not disliked him so much, I should not have found courage to accost him as I did. There was something sly, I thought, in his dark, lean face; and he looked so low, so like a Scotch artisan in his Sunday clothes, that I felt a sudden pang of indignation, at the thought that a great gentleman, like my father, should have suffered under his influence, and I stopped suddenly, instead of passing him by with a mere salutation, as he expected, “May I ask a question, Doctor Bryerly?”

“Certainly.”

“Are you the friend whom my father expects?”

“I don’t quite see.”

“The friend, I mean, with whom he is to make an expedition to some distance, I think, and for some little time?”

“No,” said the Doctor, with a shake of his head.

“And who is he?”

“I really have not a notion, Miss.”

“Why, he said that you knew,” I replied.

The Doctor looked honestly puzzled.

“Will he stay long away? pray tell me.”

The Doctor looked into my troubled face with inquiring and darkened eyes, like one who half reads another’s meaning; and then he said a little briskly, but not sharply⁠—

“Well, I don’t know, I’m sure, Miss; no, indeed, you must have mistaken; there’s nothing that I know.”

There was a little pause, and he added⁠—

“No. He never mentioned any friend to me.” I fancied that he was made uncomfortable by my question, and wanted to hide the truth. Perhaps I was partly right.

“Oh! Doctor Bryerly, pray, pray who is the friend, and where is he going?”

“I do assure you,” he said, with a strange sort of impatience, “I don’t know; it is all nonsense.”

And he turned to go, looking, I think, annoyed and disconcerted.

A terrific suspicion crossed my brain like lightning.

“Doctor, one word,” I said, I believe, quite wildly. “Do you⁠—do you think his mind is at all affected?”

“Insane?” he said, looking at me with a sudden, sharp inquisitiveness, that brightened into a smile. “Pooh, pooh! Heaven forbid! not a saner man in England.”

Then with a little nod he walked on, carrying, as I believed, notwithstanding his disclaimer, the secret with him. In the afternoon Doctor Bryerly went away.

For many days after our quarrel, Madame hardly spoke to me. As for lessons, I was not much troubled with them. It was plain, too, that my father had spoken to her, for she never after that day proposed our extending our walks beyond the precincts of Knowl.

Knowl, however, was a very considerable territory, and it was possible for a much better pedestrian than I to tire herself effectually, without passing its limits. So we took occasionally long walks.

After some weeks of sullenness, during which for days at a time she hardly spoke to me, and seemed lost in dark and evil abstraction, she once more, and somewhat suddenly, recovered her spirits, and grew quite friendly. Her gaieties and friendliness were not reassuring, and in my mind presaged approaching mischief and treachery. The days were shortening to the wintry span. The edge of the red sun had already touched the horizon as Madame and I, overtaken at the warren by his last beams, were hastening homeward.

A narrow carriage-road traverses this wild region of the park, to which a distant gate gives entrance. On descending into this unfrequented road, I was surprised to see a carriage standing there. A thin, sly postilion, with that pert, turned-up nose which the old caricaturist Woodward used to attribute to the gentlemen of Tewkesbury, was leaning on his horses, and looked hard at me as I passed. A lady who sat within looked out, with an extra-fashionable bonnet on, and also treated us to a stare. Very pink and white cheeks she had, very black glossy hair and bright eyes⁠—fat, bold, and rather cross, she looked⁠—and in her bold way she examined us curiously as we passed.

I mistook the situation. It had once happened before that an intending visitor at Knowl had entered the place by that park-road, and lost several hours in a vain search for the