we looked again he was gone.
Although it was a fine mild day for the wintry season, we yet, cloaked as we were, could not pursue so still an occupation as sketching for more than ten or fifteen minutes. As we returned, in passing a clump of trees, we heard a sudden outbreak of voices, angry and expostulatory; and saw, under the trees, the savage old Zamiel strike his daughter with his stick two great blows, one of which was across the head. “Beauty” ran only a short distance away while the swart old wood-demon stumped hastily after her, cursing and brandishing his cudgel.
My blood boiled. I was so shocked that for a moment I could not speak; but in a moment more I screamed —
“You brute! How dare you strike the poor girl?”
She had only run a few steps, and turned about confronting him and us, her eyes gleaming fire, her features pale and quivering to suppress a burst of weeping. Two little rivulets of blood were trickling over her temple.
“I say, fayther, look at that,” she said, with a strange tremulous smile, lifting her hand, which was smeared with blood.
Perhaps he was ashamed, and the more enraged on that account, for he growled another curse, and started afresh to reach her, whirling his stick in the air. Our voices, however, arrested him.
“My uncle shall hear of your brutality. The poor girl!”
“Strike him, Meg, if he does it again; and pitch his leg into the river to-night, when he’s asleep.”
“I’d serve you the same;” and out came an oath. “You’d have her lick her fayther, would ye? Look out!”
And he wagged his head with a scowl at Milly, and a flourish of his cudgel.
“Be quiet, Milly,” I whispered, for Milly was preparing for battle; and I again addressed him with the assurance that, on reaching home, I would tell my uncle how he had treated the poor girl.
“’Tis you she may thank for’t, a wheedling o’ her to open that gate,” he snarled.
“That’s a lie; we went round by the brook,” cried Milly.
I did not think proper to discuss the matter with him; and looking very angry, and, I thought, a little put out, he jerked and swayed himself out of sight. I merely repeated my promise of informing my uncle as he went, to which, over his shoulder, he bawled —
“Silas won’t mind ye that;” snapping his horny finger and thumb.
The girl remained where she had stood, wiping the blood off roughly with the palm of her hand, and looking at it before she rubbed it on her apron.
“My poor girl,” I said, “you must not cry. I’ll speak to my uncle about you.”
But she was not crying. She raised her head, and looked at us a little askance, with a sullen contempt, I thought.
“And you must have these apples — won’t you?” We had brought in our basket two or three of those splendid apples for which Bartram was famous.
I hesitated to go near her, these Hawkeses, Beauty and Pegtop, were such savages. So I rolled the apples gently along the ground to her feet.
She continued to look doggedly at us with the same expression, and kicked away the apples sullenly that approached her feet. Then, wiping her temple and forehead in her apron, without a word, she turned and walked slowly away.
“Poor thing! I’m afraid she leads a hard life. What strange, repulsive people they are!”
When we reached home, at the head of the great staircase old L’Amour was awaiting me; and with a courtesy, and very respectfully, she informed me that the Master would be happy to see me.
Could it be about my evidence as to the arrival of the mysterious chaise that he summoned me to this interview? Gentle as were his ways, there was something undefinable about Uncle Silas which inspired fear; and I should have liked few things less than meeting his gaze in the character of a culprit.
There was an uncertainty, too, as to the state in which I might find him, and a positive horror of beholding him again in the condition in which I had last seen him.
I entered the room, then, in some trepidation, but was instantly relieved. Uncle Silas was in the same health apparently, and, as nearly as I could recollect it, in precisely the same rather handsome though negligent garb in which I had first seen him.
Doctor Bryerly — what a marked and vulgar contrast, and yet, somehow, how reassuring! — sat at the table near him, and was tying up papers. His eyes watched me, I thought, with an anxious scrutiny as I approached; and I think it was not until I had saluted him that he recollected suddenly that he had not seen me before at Bartram, and stood up and greeted me in his usual abrupt and somewhat familiar way. It was vulgar and not cordial, and yet it was honest and indefinably kind.
Up rose my uncle, that strangely venerable, pale portrait, in his loose Rembrandt black velvet. How gentle, how benignant, how unearthly, and inscrutable!
“I need not say how she is. Those lilies and roses, Doctor Bryerly, speak their own beautiful praises of the air of Bartram. I almost regret that her carriage will be home so soon. I only hope it may not abridge her rambles. It positively does me good to look at her. It is the glow of flowers in winter, and the fragrance of a field which the Lord hath blessed.”
“Country air, Miss Ruthyn, is a right good kitchen to country fare. I like to see young women eat heartily. You have had some pounds of beef and mutton since I saw you last,” said Dr. Bryerly.
And this sly speech made, he scrutinised my countenance in silence rather embarrassingly.
“My system, Doctor Bryerly, as a disciple of Æsculapius you will approve — health first, accomplishment afterwards. The Continent is the best field for elegant instruction, and we must see the world a little, by-and-by, Maud; and to me, if my health be spared, there would be an unspeakable though a melancholy charm in the scenes where so many happy, though so many wayward and foolish, young days were passed; and I think I should return to these picturesque solitudes with, perhaps, an increased relish. You remember old Chaulieu’s sweet lines —
Désert, aimable solitude,
Séjour du calme et de la paix,
Asile où n’entrèrent jamais
Le tumulte et l’inquiétude.
I can’t say that care and sorrow have not sometimes penetrated these sylvan fastnesses; but the tumults of the world, thank Heaven! — never.”
There was a sly scepticism, I thought, in Doctor Bryerly’s sharp face; and hardly waiting for the impressive “never,” he said —
“I forgot to ask, who is your banker?”
“Oh! Bartlet and Hall, Lombard Street,” answered Uncle Silas, dryly and shortly.
Dr. Bryerly made a note of it, with an expression of face which seemed, with a sly resolution, to say, “You shan’t come the anchorite over me.”
I saw Uncle Silas’s wild and piercing eye rest suspiciously on me for a moment, as if to ascertain whether I felt the spirit of Doctor Bryerly’s almost interruption; and, nearly at the same moment, stuffing his papers into his capacious coat pockets, Doctor Bryerly rose and took his leave.
When he was gone, I bethought be that now was a good opportunity of making my complaint of Dickon Hawkes. Uncle Silas having risen, I hesitated, and began,
“Uncle, may I mention an occurrence — which I witnessed?”
“Certainly, child,” he answered, fixing his eye sharply on me. I really think he fancied that the conversation was about to turn upon the phantom chaise.
So I described the scene which had shocked Milly and me, an hour or so ago, in the Windmill Wood.
“You see, my dear child, they are rough persons; their ideas are not ours; their young people must be chastised, and in a way