solicitor is quite clear upon it; and it seems to me there can be no question raised, but for form’s sake.”
“Yes, for form’s sake you take one, and in the meantime, upon a nice question of law, the surmises of a thick-headed attorney and of an ingenious apoth — I beg pardon, physician — are sufficient warrant for telling my niece and ward, in my presence, that I am defrauding her!”
My uncle leaned back in his chair, and smiled with a contemptuous patience over Doctor Bryerly’s head, as he spoke.
“I don’t know whether I used that expression, sir, but I am speaking merely in a technical sense. I mean to say, that, whether by mistake or otherwise, you are exercising a power which you don’t lawfully possess, and that the effect of that is to impoverish the estate, and, by so much as it benefits you, to wrong this young lady.”
“I’m a technical defrauder, I see, and your manner conveys the rest. I thank my God, sir, I am a very different man from what I once was.” Uncle Silas was speaking in a low tone, and with extraordinary deliberation. “I remember when I should have certainly knocked you down, sir, or tried it, at least, for a great deal less.”
“But seriously, sir, what do you propose?” asked Doctor Bryerly, sternly and a little flushed, for I think the old man was stirred within him; and though he did not raise his voice, his manner was excited.
“I propose to defend my rights, sir,” murmured Uncle Silas, very grim. “I’m not without an opinion, though you are.”
“You seem to think, sir, that I have a pleasure in annoying you; you are quite wrong. I hate annoying anyone — constitutionally — I hate it; but don’t you see, sir, the position I’m placed in? I wish I could please everyone, and do my duty.”
Uncle Silas bowed and smiled.
“I’ve brought with me the Scotch steward from Tolkingden, your estate, Miss, and if you let us we will visit the spot and make a note of what we observe, that is, assuming that you admit waste, and merely question our law.”
“If you please, sir, you and your Scotchman shall do no such thing; and, bearing in mind that I neither deny nor admit anything, you will please further never more to present yourself, under any pretext whatsoever, either in this house or on the grounds of Bartram–Haugh, during my lifetime.”
Uncle Silas rose up with the same glassy smile and scowl, in token that the interview was ended.
“Good-bye, sir,” said Doctor Bryerly, with a sad and thoughtful air, and hesitating for a moment, he said to me, “Do you think, Miss, you could afford me a word in the hall?”
“Not a word, sir,” snarled Uncle Silas, with a white flash from his eyes.
There was a pause.
“Sit where you are, Maud.”
Another pause.
“If you have anything to say to my ward, sir, you will please to say it here.”
Doctor Bryerly’s dark and homely face was turned on me with an expression of unspeakable compassion.
“I was going to say, that if you think of any way in which I can be of the least service, Miss, I’m ready to act, that’s all; mind, any way.”
He hesitated, looking at me with the same expression as if he had something more to say; but he only repeated —
“That’s all, Miss.”
“Won’t you shake hands, Doctor Bryerly, before you go?” I said, eagerly approaching him.
Without a smile, with the same sad anxiety in his face, with his mind, as it seemed to me, on something else, and irresolute whether to speak it or be silent, he took my fingers in a very cold hand, and holding it so, and slowly shaking it, his grave and troubled glance unconsciously rested on Uncle Silas’s face, while in a sad tone and absent way he said —
“Good-bye, Miss.”
From before that sad gaze my uncle averted his strange eyes quickly, and looked, oddly, to the window.
In a moment more Doctor Bryerly let my hand go with a sigh, and with an abrupt little nod to me, he left the room; and I heard that smallest of sounds, the retreating footsteps of a true friend, lost.
“Lead us not into temptation; if we pray so, we must not mock the eternal Majesty of Heaven by walking into temptation of our own accord.”
This oracular sentence was not uttered by my uncle until Doctor Bryerly had been gone at least five minutes.
“I’ve forbid him my house, Maud — first, because his perfectly unconscious insolence tries my patience nearly beyond endurance; and again, because I have heard unfavourable reports of him. On the question of right which he disputes, I am perfectly informed. I am your tenant, my dear niece; when I am gone you will learn how scrupulous I have been; you will see how, under the pressure of the most agonising pecuniary difficulties, the terrific penalty of a misspent youth, I have been careful never by a hair’s breadth to transgress the strict line of my legal privileges; alike, as your tenant, Maud, and as your guardian; how, amid frightful agitations, I have kept myself, by the miraculous strength and grace vouchsafed me — pure.
“The world,” he resumed after a short pause, “has no faith in any man’s conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge. What I was I will describe in blacker terms, and with more heartfelt detestation, than my traducers — a reckless prodigal, a godless profligate. Such I was; what I am, I am. If I had no hope beyond this world, of all men most miserable; but with that hop, a sinner saved.”
Then he waxed eloquent and mystical. I think his Swedenborgian studies had crossed his notions of religion with strange lights. I never could follow him quite in these excursions into the region of symbolism. I only recollect that he talked of the deluge and the waters of Mara, and said, “I am washed — I am sprinkled,” and then, pausing, bathed his thin temples and forehead with eau de Cologne; a process which was, perhaps, suggested by his imagery of sprinkling and so forth.
Thus refreshed, he sighed and smiled, and passed to the subject of Doctor Bryerly.
“Of Doctor Bryerly, I know that he is sly, that he loves money, was born poor, and makes nothing by his profession. But he possesses many thousand pounds, under my poor brother’s will, of your money; and he has glided with, of course a modest ‘nolo episcopari,’ into the acting trusteeship, with all its multitudinous opportunities, of your immense property. That is not doing so badly for a visionary Swedenborgian. Such a man must prosper. But if he expected to make money of me, he is disappointed. Money, however, he will make of his trusteeship, as you will see. It is a dangerous resolution. But if he will seek the life of Dives, the worst I wish him is to find the death of Lazarus. But whether, like Lazarus, he be borne of angels into Abraham’s bosom, or, like the rich man, only dies and is buried, and the rest, neither living nor dying do I desire his company.”
Uncle Silas here seemed suddenly overtaken by exhaustion. He leaned back with a ghastly look, and his lean features glistened with the dew of faintness. I screamed for Wyat. But he soon recovered sufficiently to smile his odd smile, and with it and his frown, nodded and waved me away.
Chapter 48.
Question and Answer
MY UNCLE, after all, was not ill that day, after the strange fashion of his malady, be it what it might. Old Wyat repeated in her sour laconic way that there was “nothing to speak of amiss with him.” But there remained with me a sense of pain and fear. Doctor Bryerly, notwithstanding my uncle’s sarcastic reflections, remained, in my estimation, a true and wise friend. I had all my life been accustomed to rely upon others, and here, haunted by many unavowed and ill-defined alarms and doubts, the disappearance