could they be talking but me? I was right in both conclusions.
With a fearful resolution I slipped out of bed, opened the door as noiselessly as I might, and crept on my bare, silent feet down the creaking stair, which led, with open balustrade, right into the kitchen, at the end furthest from the chimney. The one candle at the other end could not illuminate its darkness, and I sat unseen, a few steps from the bottom of the stair, listening with all my ears, and staring with all my eyes. The stranger’s huge cloak hung drying before the fire, and he was drinking something out of a tumbler. The light fell full upon his face. It was a curious, and certainly not to me an attractive face. The forehead was very projecting, and the eyes were very small, deep set, and sparkling. The mouth—I had almost said muzzle—was very projecting likewise, and the lower jaw shot in front of the upper. When the man smiled the light was reflected from what seemed to my eyes an inordinate multitude of white teeth. His ears were narrow and long, and set very high upon his head. The hand which he every now and then displayed in the exigencies of his persuasion, was white, but very large, and the thumb was exceedingly long. I had weighty reasons for both suspecting and fearing the man; and, leaving my prejudices out of the question, there was in the conversation itself enough besides to make me take note of dangerous points in his appearance. I never could lay much claim to physical courage, and I attribute my behaviour on this occasion rather to the fascination of terror than to any impulse of self-preservation: I sat there in utter silence, listening like an ear-trumpet. The first words I could distinguish were to this effect:—
‘You do not mean,’ said the enemy, ‘to tell me, Mr Cumbermede, that you intend to bring up the young fellow in absolute ignorance of the decrees of fate?’
‘I pledge myself to nothing in the matter,’ returned my uncle, calmly, but with something in his tone which was new to me.
‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed the other. ‘Excuse me, sir, but what right can you have to interfere after such a serious fashion with the young gentleman’s future?’
‘It seems to me,’ said my uncle, ‘that you wish to interfere with it after a much more serious fashion. There are things in which ignorance may be preferable to knowledge.’
‘But what harm could the knowledge of such a fact do him?’
‘Upset all his notions, render him incapable of thinking about anything of importance, occasion an utter—’
But can anything be more important?’ interrupted the visitor.
My uncle went on without heeding him.
‘Plunge him over head and ears in—’
‘Hot water, I grant you,’ again interrupted the enemy, to my horror; ‘but it wouldn’t be for long. Only give me your sanction, and I promise you to have the case as tight as a drum before I ask you to move a step in it.’
‘But why should you take so much interest in what is purely our affair?’ asked my uncle.
‘Why, of course you would have to pay the piper,’ said the man.
This was too much! Pay the man that played upon me after I was made into bagpipes! The idea was too frightful.
‘I must look out for business, you know; and, by Jove! I shall never have such a chance, if I live to the age of Methuselah.’
‘Well, you shall not have it from me.’
‘Then,’ said the man, rising, ‘you are more of a fool than I took you for.’
‘Sir!’ said my uncle.
‘No offence; no offence, I assure you. But it is provoking to find people so blind—so wilfully blind—to their own interest. You may say I have nothing to lose. Give me the boy, and I’ll bring him up like my own son; send him to school and college, too—all on the chance of being repaid twice over by—’
I knew this was all a trick to get hold of my skin. The man said it on his way to the door, his ape-face shining dim as he turned it a little back in the direction of my uncle, who followed with the candle. I lost the last part of the sentence in the terror which sent me bounding up the stair in my usual four-footed fashion. I leaped into my bed, shaking with cold and agony combined. But I had the satisfaction presently of hearing the thud of the horse’s hoofs upon the sward, dying away in the direction whence they had come. After that I soon fell asleep.
I need hardly say that I never set the pendulum swinging again. Many years after, I came upon it when searching for a key, and the thrill which vibrated through my whole frame announced a strange and unwelcome presence long before my memory could recall its origin.
It must not be supposed that I pretend to remember all the conversation I have just set down. The words are but the forms in which, enlightened by facts which have since come to my knowledge, I clothe certain vague memories and impressions of such an interview as certainly took place.
In the morning, at breakfast, my aunt asked my uncle who it was that paid such an untimely visit the preceding night.
‘A fellow from Minstercombe’ (the county town), ‘an attorney—what did he say his name was? Yes, I remember. It was the same as the steward’s over the way. Coningham, it was.’
‘Mr Coningham has a son there—an attorney too, I think,’ said my aunt.
My uncle seemed struck by the reminder, and became meditative.
‘That explains his choosing such a night to come in. His father is getting an old man now. Yes, it must be the same.’
‘He’s a sharp one, folk say,’ said my aunt, with a pointedness in the remark which showed some anxiety.
‘That he cannot conceal, sharp as he is,’ said my uncle, and there the conversation stopped.
The very next evening my uncle began to teach me. I had a vague notion that this had something to do with my protection against the machinations of the man Coningham, the idea of whom was inextricably associated in my mind with that of the Prince of the Power of the Air, darting from the midst of the churning trees, on a horse whose streaming mane and flashing eyes indicated no true equine origin. I gave myself with diligence to the work my uncle set me.
CHAPTER V. I HAVE LESSONS
It is a simple fact that up to this time I did not know my letters. It was, I believe, part of my uncle’s theory of education that as little pain as possible should be associated with merely intellectual effort: he would not allow me, therefore, to commence my studies until the task of learning should be an easy one. Henceforth, every evening, after tea, he took me to his own room, the walls of which were nearly covered with books, and there taught me.
One peculiar instance of his mode I will give, and let it stand rather as a pledge for the rest of his system than an index to it. It was only the other day it came back to me. Like Jean Paul, he would utter the name of God to a child only at grand moments; but there was a great difference in the moments the two men would have chosen. Jean Paul would choose a thunder-storm, for instance; the following will show the kind of my uncle’s choice. One Sunday evening he took me for a longer walk than usual. We had climbed a little hill: I believe it was the first time I ever had a wide view of the earth. The horses were all loose in the fields; the cattle were gathering their supper as the sun went down; there was an indescribable hush in the air, as if Nature herself knew the seventh day; there was no sound even of water, for here the water crept slowly to the far-off sea, and the slant sunlight shone back from just one bend of a canal-like river; the hay-stacks and ricks of the last year gleamed golden in the farmyards; great fields of wheat stood up stately around us, the glow in their yellow brought out by the red poppies that sheltered in the forest of their stems; the odour of the grass and clover came in pulses; and the soft blue sky was flecked with white clouds tinged with pink, which deepened until it gathered into a flaming rose in the west, where the sun was welling out oceans of liquid red.
I looked up in my uncle’s face. It shone in a calm glow, like an answering rosy moon. The eyes of my mind were opened: I saw that he felt something, and then I felt it too, His soul, with the glory for an interpreter, kindled mine.
He, in turn,