very privately and with little expense. But of course there was an attendance, and the tenants of the Knowl estate also followed the hearse to the mausoleum, as it is called, in the park, where he was laid beside my dear mother. And so the repulsive ceremonial of that dreadful day was over. The grief remained, but there was rest from the fatigue of agitation, and a comparative calm supervened.
It was not the story equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of autumn, and marches the winter in. I love, and always did, that grand undefinable music, threatening and bewailing, with its strange soul of liberty and desolation.
By this night’s mail, as we sat listening to the storm, in the drawing-room at Knowl, there reached me a large letter with a great black seal, and a wonderfully deep-black border, like a widow’s crape. I did not recognise the handwriting; but on opening the funereal missive, it proved to be from my uncle Silas, and was thus expressed:—
“MY DEAREST NIECE — This letter will reach you, probably, on the day which consigns the mortal remains of my beloved brother, Austin, your dear father, to the earth. Sad ceremony, from taking my mournful part in which I am excluded by years, distance, and broken health. It will, I trust, at this season of desolation, be not unwelcome to remember that a substitute, imperfect — unworthy — but most affectionately zealous, for the honoured parent whom you have just lost, has been appointed, in me, your uncle, by his will. I am aware that you were present during the reading of it, but I think it will be for our mutual satisfaction that our new and more affectionate relations should be forthwith entered upon. My conscience and your safety, and I trust convenience, will thereby be consulted. You will, my dear niece, remain at Knowl, until a few simple arrangements shall have been completed for your reception at this place. I will then settle the details of your little journey to us, which shall be performed as comfortably and easily as possible. I humbly pray that this affliction may be sanctified to us all, and that in our new duties we may be supported, comforted, and directed. I need not remind you that I now stand to you in loco parentis, which means in the relation of father, and you will not forget that you are to remain at Knowl until you hear further from me.
“I remain, my dear niece, your most affectionate uncle and guardian,
SILAS RUTHYN.”
P.S. — Pray present my respects to Lady Knollys, who, I understand, is sojourning at Knowl. I would observe that a lady who cherishes, I have reason to fear, unfriendly feelings against your uncle, is not the most desirable companion for his ward. But upon the express condition that I am not made the subject of your discussions — a distinction which could not conduce to your forming a just and respectful estimate of me — I do not interpose my authority to bring your intercourse to an immediate close.”
As I read this postscript, my cheek tingled as if I had received a box on the ear. Uncle Silas was as yet a stranger. The menace of authority was new and sudden, and I felt with a pang of mortification the full force of the position in which my dear father’s will had placed me.
I was silent, and handed the letter to my cousin, who read it with a kind of smile until she came, as I supposed, to the postscript, when her countenance, on which my eyes were fixed, changed, and with flushed cheeks she knocked the hand that held the letter on the table before her, and exclaimed —
“Did I ever hear! Well, if this isn’t impertinence! What an old man that is!”
There was a pause, during which Lady Knollys held her head high with a frown, and sniffed a little.
“I did not intend to talk about him, but now I will. I’ll talk away just whatever I like; and I’ll stay here just as long as you let me, Maud, and you need not be one atom afraid of him. Our intercourse to an “immediate close,” indeed! I only wish he were hear. He should hear something!”
And Cousin Monica drank off her entire cup of tea at one draught, and then she said, more in her own way —
“I’m better!” and drew a long breath, and then she laughed a little in a waggish defiance. “I wish we had him here, Maud, and would not we give him a bit of our minds! And this before the poor will is so much proved!”
“I am almost glad he wrote that postscript; for although I don’t think he has any authority in that matter while I am under my own roof,” I said, extemporising a legal opinion, “and, therefore, shan’t obey him, it has somehow opened my eyes to my real situation.”
I sighed, I believe, very desolately, for Lady Knollys came over and kissed me very gently and affectionately.
“It really seems, Maud, as if he had a supernatural sense, and heard things through the air over fifty miles of heath and hill. You remember how, just as he was probably writing that very postscript yesterday, I was urging you to come and stay with me, and palling to move Dr. Bryerly in our favour. And so I will, Maud, and to me you shall come — my guest, mind — I should be so delighted; and really if Silas is under a cloud, it has been his own doing, and I don’t see that it is your business to fight his battle. He can’t live very long. The suspicion, whatever it is, dies with him, and what could poor dear Austin prove by his will but what everybody knew quite well before — his own strong belief in Silas’s innocence? What an awful storm! The room trembles. Don’t you like the sound? What they used to call ‘wolving’ in the old organ at Dorminster!”
Chapter 26.
The Story of Uncle Silas
AND SO it was like the yelling of phantom hounds and hunters, and the thunder of their coursers in the air — a furious, grand and supernatural music, which in my fancy made a suitable accompaniment to the discussion of that enigmatical person — martyr — angel — demon — Uncle Silas — with whom my fate was now so strongly linked, and whom I had begun to fear.
“The storm blows from that point,” I said, indicating it with my hand and eye, although the window shutters and curtains were closed. “I saw all the trees bend that way this evening. That way stands the great lonely wood, where my darling father and mother lie. Oh, how dreadful on nights like this, to think of them — a vault! — damp, and dark, and solitary — under the storm.”
Cousin Monica looked wistfully in the same direction, and with a short sigh she said —
“We think too much of the poor remains, and too little of the spirit which lives for ever. I am sure they are happy.” And she sighed again. “I wish I dare hope as confidently for myself. Yes, Maud, it is sad. We are such materialists, we can’t help feeling so. We forget how well it is for us that our present bodies are not to last always. They are constructed for a time and place of trouble — plainly mere temporary machines that wear out, constantly exhibiting failure and decay, and with such tremendous capacity for pain. The body lies alone, and so it ought for it is plainly its good Creator’s will; it is only the tabernacle, not the person, who is clothed upon after death, Saint Paul says, ‘with a house which is from heaven.’ So Maud, darling, although the thought will trouble us again and again, there is nothing in it; and the poor mortal body is only the cold ruin of a habitation which they have forsaken before we do. So this great wind, you say, is blowing toward us from the wood there. If so, Maud, it is blowing from Bartram–Haugh, too, over the trees and chimneys of that old place, and the mysterious old man, who is quite right in thinking I don’t like him; and I can fancy him an old enchanter in his castle, waving his familiar spirits on the wind to fetch and carry tidings of our occupations here.”
I lifted my head and listened to the storm, drying away to the distance sometimes — sometimes swelling and pealing around and above us — and through the dark and solitude my thoughts sped away to Bartram–Haugh and Uncle Silas.
“This letter,” I said at last,” makes me feel differently. I think he is a stern old man — is he?”
“It is twenty years, now, since I saw him,” answered Lady Knollys. “I did not choose to visit at his house.”
“Was that before