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Uncle Silas by J. S. LeFanu

J >> J. S. LeFanu >> Uncle Silas



[Transcriber's note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original have
been retained in this etext.]



UNCLE SILAS

A Tale of Bartram-Haugh

By J. S. LeFanu

1899



TO
THE RIGHT HON.
THE COUNTESS OF GIFFORD,
AS A TOKEN OF
RESPECT, SYMPATHY, AND ADMIRATION
_This Tale_
IS INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR




_A PRELIMINARY WORD_

The writer of this Tale ventures, in his own person, to address a very few
words, chiefly of explanation, to his readers. A leading situation in this
'Story of Bartram-Haugh' is repeated, with a slight variation, from a short
magazine tale of some fifteen pages written by him, and published long ago
in a periodical under the title of 'A Passage in the Secret History of an
Irish Countess,' and afterwards, still anonymously, in a small volume under
an altered title. It is very unlikely that any of his readers should have
encountered, and still more so that they should remember, this trifle. The
bare possibility, however, he has ventured to anticipate by this brief
explanation, lest he should be charged with plagiarism--always a disrespect
to a reader.

May he be permitted a few words also of remonstrance against the
promiscuous application of the term 'sensation' to that large school of
fiction which transgresses no one of those canons of construction and
morality which, in producing the unapproachable 'Waverley Novels,' their
great author imposed upon himself? No one, it is assumed, would describe
Sir Walter Scott's romances as 'sensation novels;' yet in that marvellous
series there is not a single tale in which death, crime, and, in some form,
mystery, have not a place.

Passing by those grand romances of 'Ivanhoe,' 'Old Mortality,' and
'Kenilworth,' with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed,
constructed with so fine a mastery of the art of exciting suspense and
horror, let the reader pick out those two exceptional novels in the series
which profess to paint contemporary manners and the scenes of common life;
and remembering in the 'Antiquary' the vision in the tapestried chamber,
the duel, the horrible secret, and the death of old Elspeth, the drowned
fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tide-bound party
under the cliffs; and in 'St. Ronan's Well,' the long-drawn mystery, the
suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide;--determine whether
an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of
any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scott's stories, is fairly
applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, yet
observe the same limitations of incident, and the same moral aims.

The author trusts that the Press, to whose masterly criticism and generous
encouragement he and other humble labourers in the art owe so much, will
insist upon the limitation of that degrading term to the peculiar type of
fiction which it was originally intended to indicate, and prevent, as they
may, its being made to include the legitimate school of tragic English
romance, which has been ennobled, and in great measure founded, by the
genius of Sir Walter Scott.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. AUSTIN RUTHYN, OF KNOWL, AND HIS DAUGHTER

II. UNCLE SILAS

III. A NEW FACE

IV. MADAME DE LA ROUGIERRE

V. SIGHTS AND NOISES

VI. A WALK IN THE WOOD

VII. CHURCH SCARSDALE

VIII. THE SMOKER

IX. MONICA KNOLLYS

X. LADY KNOLLYS REMOVES A COVERLET

XI. LADY KNOLLYS SEES THE FEATURES

XII. A CURIOUS CONVERSATION

XIII. BEFORE AND AFTER BREAKFAST

XIV. ANGRY WORDS

XV. A WARNING

XVI. DOCTOR BRYERLY LOOKS IN

XVII. AN ADVENTURE

XVIII. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR

XIX. AU REVOIR

XX. AUSTIN RUTHYN SETS OUT ON HIS JOURNEY

XXI. ARRIVALS

XXII. SOMEBODY IN THE ROOM WITH THE COFFIN

XXIII. I TALK WITH DOCTOR BRYERLY

XXIV. THE OPENING OF THE WILL

XXV. I HEAR FROM UNCLE SILAS

XXVI. THE STORY OF UNCLE SILAS

XXVII. MORE ABOUT TOM CHARKE'S SUICIDE

XXVIII. I AM PERSUADED

XXIX. HOW THE AMBASSADOR FARED

XXX. ON THE ROAD

XXXI. BARTRAM-HAUGH

XXXII. UNCLE SILAS

XXXIII. THE WINDMILL WOOD

XXXIV. ZAMIEL

XXXV. WE VISIT A ROOM IN THE SECOND STOREY

XXXVI. AN ARRIVAL AT DEAD OF NIGHT

XXXVII. DOCTOR BRYERLY EMERGES

XXXVIII. A MIDNIGHT DEPARTURE

XXXIX. COUSIN MONICA AND UNCLE SILAS MEET

XL. IN WHICH I MAKE ANOTHER COUSIN'S ACQUAINTANCE

XLI. MY COUSIN DUDLEY

XLII. ELVERSTON AND ITS PEOPLE

XLIII. NEWS AT BARTRAM GATE

XLIV. A FRIEND ARISES

XLV. A CHAPTER-FULL OF LOVERS

XLVI. THE RIVALS

XLVII. DOCTOR BRYERLY REAPPEARS

XLVIII. QUESTION AND ANSWER

XLIX. AN APPARITION

L. MILLY'S FAREWELL

LI. SARAH MATILDA COMES TO LIGHT

LII. THE PICTURE OF A WOLF

LIII. AN ODD PROPOSAL

LIV. IN SEARCH OF MR. CHARKE'S SKELETON

LV. THE FOOT OF HERCULES

LVI. I CONSPIRE

LVII. THE LETTER

LVIII. LADY KNOLLYS' CARRIAGE

LIX. A SUDDEN DEPARTURE

LX. THE JOURNEY

LXI. OUR BED-CHAMBER

LXII. A WELL-KNOWN FACE LOOKS IN

LXIII. SPICED CLARET

LXIV. THE HOUR OF DEATH

LXV. IN THE OAK PARLOUR

CONCLUSION




UNCLE SILAS

A Tale of Bartram-Haugh




CHAPTER I

_AUSTIN RUTHYN, OF KNOWL, AND HIS DAUGHTER_


It was winter--that is, about the second week in November--and great gusts
were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall
trees and ivied chimneys--a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire
blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in
a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered
up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles
on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty,
and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures,
except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you
would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern
notion of a drawing-room. It was a long room too, and every way capacious,
but irregularly shaped.

A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still;
slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed,
and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the
tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.

The only other person in the room--the only person in the house related to
me--was my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in his county,
but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had
refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a
proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and
purer of blood than two-thirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was
said, they had been invited to enter. Of all this family lore I knew but
little and vaguely; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of
old retainers in the nursery.

I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure
instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never
expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early
disappointed in Parliament, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a
clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely well.
Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a collector; took a part,
on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the
foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this mimic
government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman,
but rather of a student, staying sometimes at one of his places and
sometimes at another, and living a secluded life.

Rather late in life he married, and his beautiful young wife died, leaving
me, their only child, to his care. This bereavement, I have been told,
changed him--made him more odd and taciturn than ever, and his temper also,
except to me, more severe. There was also some disgrace about his younger
brother--my uncle Silas--which he felt bitterly.

He was now walking up and down this spacious old room, which, extending
round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his
wont to walk up and down thus, without speaking--an exercise which used to
remind me of Chateaubriand's father in the great chamber of the Chateau
de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then
returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a background of
shadow, and then again in silence faded nearly out of view.

This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less
accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect. I have known my
father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very
much, I was also much in awe of him.

While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events
of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed
routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering
and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable
seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and
I don't think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned among
us.

There was not even that mild religious bustle which sometimes besets the
wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for
some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a
Swedenborgian. But he did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the
old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the old housekeeper,
Mrs. Rusk, and myself to the parish church every Sunday. And my father, in
the view of the honest rector who shook his head over him--'a cloud without
water, carried about of winds, and a wandering star to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness'--corresponded with the 'minister' of his church, and
was provokingly contented with his own fertility and illumination; and
Mrs. Rusk, who was a sound and bitter churchwoman, said he fancied he saw
visions and talked with angels like the rest of that 'rubbitch.'

I don't know that she had any better foundation than analogy and conjecture
for charging my father with supernatural pretensions; and in all points
when her orthodoxy was not concerned, she loved her master and was a loyal
housekeeper.

I found her one morning superintending preparations for the reception of
a visitor, in the hunting-room it was called, from the pieces of tapestry
that covered its walls, representing scenes _a la Wouvermans_, of falconry,
and the chase, dogs, hawks, ladies, gallants, and pages. In the midst of
whom Mrs. Rusk, in black silk, was rummaging drawers, counting linen, and
issuing orders.

'Who is coming, Mrs. Rusk?'

Well, she only knew his name. It was a Mr. Bryerly. My papa expected him to
dinner, and to stay for some days.

'I guess he's one of those creatures, dear, for I mentioned his name just
to Dr. Clay (the rector), and he says there _is_ a Doctor Bryerly, a great
conjurer among the Swedenborg sect--and that's him, I do suppose.'

In my hazy notions of these sectaries there was mingled a suspicion of
necromancy, and a weird freemasonry, that inspired something of awe and
antipathy.

Mr. Bryerly arrived time enough to dress at his leisure, before dinner. He
entered the drawing-room--a tall, lean man, all in ungainly black, with a
white choker, with either a black wig, or black hair dressed in imitation
of one, a pair of spectacles, and a dark, sharp, short visage, rubbing his
large hands together, and with a short brisk nod to me, whom he plainly
regarded merely as a child, he sat down before the fire, crossed his legs,
and took up a magazine.

This treatment was mortifying, and I remember very well the resentment of
which _he_ was quite unconscious.

His stay was not very long; not one of us divined the object of his visit,
and he did not prepossess us favourably. He seemed restless, as men of busy
habits do in country houses, and took walks, and a drive, and read in the
library, and wrote half a dozen letters.

His bed-room and dressing-room were at the side of the gallery, directly
opposite to my father's, which had a sort of ante-room _en suite_, in which
were some of his theological books.

The day after Mr. Bryerly's arrival, I was about to see whether my father's
water caraffe and glass had been duly laid on the table in this ante-room,
and in doubt whether he was there, I knocked at the door.

I suppose they were too intent on other matters to hear, but receiving no
answer, I entered the room. My father was sitting in his chair, with his
coat and waistcoat off, Mr. Bryerly kneeling on a stool beside him, rather
facing him, his black scratch wig leaning close to my father's grizzled
hair. There was a large tome of their divinity lore, I suppose, open on
the table close by. The lank black figure of Mr. Bryerly stood up, and he
concealed something quickly in the breast of his coat.

My father stood up also, looking paler, I think, than I ever saw him till
then, and he pointed grimly to the door, and said, 'Go.'

Mr. Bryerly pushed me gently back with his hands to my shoulders, and
smiled down from his dark features with an expression quite unintelligible
to me.

I had recovered myself in a second, and withdrew without a word. The last
thing I saw at the door was the tall, slim figure in black, and the dark,
significant smile following me: and then the door was shut and locked, and
the two Swedenborgians were left to their mysteries.

I remember so well the kind of shock and disgust I felt in the certainty
that I had surprised them at some, perhaps, debasing incantation--a
suspicion of this Mr. Bryerly, of the ill-fitting black coat, and white
choker--and a sort of fear came upon me, and I fancied he was asserting
some kind of mastery over my father, which very much alarmed me.

I fancied all sorts of dangers in the enigmatical smile of the lank
high-priest. The image of my father, as I had seen him, it might be,
confessing to this man in black, who was I knew not what, haunted me with
the disagreeable uncertainties of a mind very uninstructed as to the limits
of the marvellous.

I mentioned it to no one. But I was immensely relieved when the sinister
visitor took his departure the morning after, and it was upon this
occurrence that my mind was now employed.

Some one said that Dr. Johnson resembled a ghost, who must be spoken to
before it will speak. But my father, in whatever else he may have resembled
a ghost, did not in that particular; for no one but I in his household--and
I very seldom--dared to address him until first addressed by him. I had no
notion how singular this was until I began to go out a little among friends
and relations, and found no such rule in force anywhere else.

As I leaned back in my chair thinking, this phantasm of my father came, and
turned, and vanished with a solemn regularity. It was a peculiar figure,
strongly made, thick-set, with a face large, and very stern; he wore a
loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an
elderly rather than an old man--though he was then past seventy--but firm,
and with no sign of feebleness.

I remember the start with which, not suspecting that he was close by me, I
lifted my eyes, and saw that large, rugged countenance looking fixedly on
me, from less than a yard away.

After I saw him, he continued to regard me for a second or two; and then,
taking one of the heavy candlesticks in his gnarled hand, he beckoned me to
follow him; which, in silence and wondering, I accordingly did.

He led me across the hall, where there were lights burning, and into a
lobby by the foot of the back stairs, and so into his library.

It is a long, narrow room, with two tall, slim windows at the far end, now
draped in dark curtains. Dusky it was with but one candle; and he paused
near the door, at the left-hand side of which stood, in those days, an
old-fashioned press or cabinet of carved oak. In front of this he stopped.

He had odd, absent ways, and talked more to himself, I believe, than to all
the rest of the world put together.

'She won't understand,' he whispered, looking at me enquiringly. 'No, she
won't. _Will_ she?'

Then there was a pause, during which he brought forth from his breast
pocket a small bunch of some half-dozen keys, on one of which he looked
frowningly, every now and then balancing it a little before his eyes,
between his finger and thumb, as he deliberated.

I knew him too well, of course, to interpose a word.

'They are easily frightened--ay, they are. I'd better do it another way.'

And pausing, he looked in my face as he might upon a picture.

'They _are_--yes--I had better do it another way--another way; yes--and
she'll not suspect--she'll not suppose.'

Then he looked steadfastly upon the key, and from it to me, suddenly
lifting it up, and said abruptly, 'See, child,' and, after a second or two,
'_Remember_ this key.'

It was oddly shaped, and unlike others.

'Yes, sir.' I always called him 'sir.'

'It opens that,' and he tapped it sharply on the door of the cabinet. 'In
the daytime it is always here,' at which word he dropped it into his pocket
again. 'You see?--and at night under my pillow--you hear me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You won't forget this cabinet--oak--next the door--on your left--you won't
forget?'

'No, sir.'

'Pity she's a girl, and so young--ay, a girl, and so young--no
sense--giddy. You say, you'll _remember_?'

'Yes, sir.'

'It behoves you.'

He turned round and looked full upon me, like a man who has taken a sudden
resolution; and I think for a moment he had made up his mind to tell me a
great deal more. But if so, he changed it again; and after another pause,
he said slowly and sternly--'You will tell nobody what I have said, under
pain of my displeasure.'

'Oh! no, sir!'

'Good child!'

'_Except_,' he resumed, 'under one contingency; that is, in case I should
be absent, and Dr. Bryerly--you recollect the thin gentleman, in spectacles
and a black wig, who spent three days here last month--should come and
enquire for the key, you understand, in my absence.'

'Yes, sir.'

So he kissed me on the forehead, and said--

'Let us return.'

Which, accordingly, we did, in silence; the storm outside, like a dirge on
a great organ, accompanying our flitting.




CHAPTER II

_UNCLE SILAS_


When we reached the drawing-room, I resumed my chair, and my father his
slow and regular walk to and fro, in the great room. Perhaps it was the
uproar of the wind that disturbed the ordinary tenor of his thoughts; but,
whatever was the cause, certainly he was unusually talkative that night.

After an interval of nearly half an hour, he drew near again, and sat down
in a high-backed arm-chair, beside the fire, and nearly opposite to me, and
looked at me steadfastly for some time, as was his wont, before speaking;
and said he--

'This won't do--you must have a governess.'

In cases of this kind I merely set down my book or work, as it might be,
and adjusted myself to listen without speaking.

'Your French is pretty well, and your Italian; but you have no German.
Your music may be pretty good--I'm no judge--but your drawing might be
better--yes--yes. I believe there are accomplished ladies--finishing
governesses, they call them--who undertake more than any one teacher would
have professed in my time, and do very well. She can prepare you, and
next winter, then, you shall visit France and Italy, where you may be
accomplished as highly as you please.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'You shall. It is nearly six months since Miss Ellerton left you--too long
without a teacher.'

Then followed an interval.

'Dr. Bryerly will ask you about that key, and what it opens; you show all
that to _him_, and no one else.'

'But,' I said, for I had a great terror of disobeying him in ever so minute
a matter, 'you will then be absent, sir--how am I to find the key?'

He smiled on me suddenly--a bright but wintry smile--it seldom came, and
was very transitory, and kindly though mysterious.

'True, child; I'm glad you are so wise; _that_, you will find, I have
provided for, and you shall know exactly where to look. You have remarked
how solitarily I live. You fancy, perhaps, I have not got a friend, and
you are nearly right--_nearly_, but not altogether. I have a very sure
friend--_one_--a friend whom I once misunderstood, but now appreciate.'

I wondered silently whether it could be Uncle Silas.

'He'll make me a call, some day soon; I'm not quite sure when. I won't tell
you his name--you'll hear that soon enough, and I don't want it talked of;
and I must make a little journey with him. You'll not be afraid of being
left alone for a time?'

'And have you promised, sir?' I answered, with another question, my
curiosity and anxiety overcoming my awe. He took my questioning very
good-humouredly.

'Well--_promise_?--no, child; but I'm under condition; he's not to be
denied. I must make the excursion with him the moment he calls. I have no
choice; but, on the whole, I rather like it--remember, I say, I rather
_like_ it.'

And he smiled again, with the same meaning, that was at once stern and sad.
The exact purport of these sentences remained fixed in my mind, so that
even at this distance of time I am quite sure of them.

A person quite unacquainted with my father's habitually abrupt and odd way
of talking, would have fancied that he was possibly a little disordered in
his mind. But no such suspicion for a moment troubled me. I was quite sure
that he spoke of a real person who was coming, and that his journey was
something momentous; and when the visitor of whom he spoke did come, and he
departed with him upon that mysterious excursion, I perfectly understood
his language and his reasons for saying so much and yet so little.

You are not to suppose that all my hours were passed in the sort of
conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and
singular and even awful as were sometimes my _tete-a-tetes_ with my father,
I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a
confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in
the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different
sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary
Quince, my somewhat ancient maid; and besides all this, I had now and then
a visit of a week or so at the house of some one of our country neighbours,
and occasionally a visitor--but this, I must own, very rarely--at Knowl.

There had come now a little pause in my father's revelations, and my fancy
wandered away upon a flight of discovery. Who, I again thought, could this
intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make
my stay-at-home father forthwith leave his household goods--his books and
his child--to whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knight-errantry?
Who but Uncle Silas, I thought--that mysterious relative whom I had
never seen--who was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me,
unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably vicious--whom I had seldom heard my
father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful
look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my father's
opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have
filled in the character very nearly as I pleased.

It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oak-room, I being then about
fourteen. She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the
process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herself--she had
been stooping over her work--and threw her head back, for her neck was
weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung
before her.

It was a full-length, and represented a singularly handsome young man,
dark, slender, elegant, in a costume then quite obsolete, though I believe
it was seen at the beginning of this century--white leather pantaloons and
top-boots, a buff waistcoat, and a chocolate-coloured coat, and the hair
long and brushed back.

There was a remarkable elegance and a delicacy in the features, but also a
character of resolution and ability that quite took the portrait out of the
category of mere fops or fine men. When people looked at it for the first
time, I have so often heard the exclamation--'What a wonderfully handsome
man!' and then, 'What a clever face!' An Italian greyhound stood by him,
and some slender columns and a rich drapery in the background. But though
the accessories were of the luxurious sort, and the beauty, as I have said,
refined, there was a masculine force in that slender oval face, and a fire
in the large, shadowy eyes, which were very peculiar, and quite redeemed it
from the suspicion of effeminacy.

'Is not that Uncle Silas?' said I.

'Yes, dear,' answered Mrs. Rusk, looking, with her resolute little face,
quietly on the portrait.

'He must be a very handsome man, Mrs. Rusk. Don't you think so?' I
continued.

'He _was_, my dear--yes; but it is forty years since that was painted--the
date is there in the corner, in the shadow that comes from his foot, and
forty years, I can tell you, makes a change in most of us;' and Mrs. Rusk
laughed, in cynical good-humour.

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