him, he expressed his admiration of what he was pleased to call my cleverness in so exactly conveying what he wished, and his gratitude for the handsome terms in which I had spoken of my old guardian.
Chapter 53.
An Odd Proposal
AS I AND Mary Quince returned from our walk that day, and had entered the hall, I was surprised most disagreeably by Dudley’s emerging from the vestibule at the foot of the great staircase. He was, I suppose, in his travelling costume — a rather soiled white surtout, a great coloured muffler in folds about his throat, his “chimney-pot” on, and his fur cap sticking out from his pocket. He had just descended, I suppose, from my uncle’s room. On seeing me he stepped back, and stood with his shoulders to the wall, like a mummy in a museum.
I pretended to have a few words to say to Mary before leaving the hall, in the hope that, as he seemed to wish to escape me, he would take the opportunity of getting quickly off the scene.
But he had changed his mind, it would seem, in the interval; for when I glanced in that direction again he had moved toward us, and stood in the hall with his hat in his hand. I must do him the justice to say he looked horribly dismal, sulky, and frightened.
“Ye’ll gi’e me a word, Miss — only a thing I ought to say — for your good; by — — mind, it’s for your good, Miss.”
Dudley stood a little way off, viewing me, with his hat in both hands and a “glooming” countenance.
I detested the idea of either hearing or speaking to him; but I had no resolution to refuse, and only saying “I can’t imagine what you can wish to speak to me about,” I approached him. “Wait there at the banister, Quince.”
There was a fragrance of alcohol about the flushed face and gaudy muffler of this odious cousin, which heightened the effect of his horribly dismal features. He was speaking, besides, a little thickly; but his manner was dejected, and he was treating me with an elaborate and discomfited respect which reassured me.
“I’m a bit up a tree, Miss,” he said shuffling his feet on the oak floor. “I behaved a d ——— fool; but I baint one o’ they sort. I’m a fellah as ‘ill fight his man, an’ stan’ up to ‘m fair, don’t ye see? An I baint one o’ they sort — no, dang it, I baint.”
Dudley delivered his puzzling harangue with a good deal of undertoned vehemence, and was strangely agitated. He, too, had got an unpleasant way of avoiding my eye, and glancing along the floor from corner to corner as he spoke, which gave him a very hang-dog air.
He was twisting his fingers in his great sandy whisker, and pulling it roughly enough to drag his cheek about by that savage purchase; and with his other hand he was crushing and rubbing his hat against his knee.
“The old boy above there be half crazed, I think; he don’t mean half as he says thof, not he. But I’m in a bad fix anyhow — a regular sell it’s been, and I can’t get a tizzy out of him. So, ye see, I’m up a tree, Miss; and he sich a one, he’ll make it a wuss mull if I let him. He’s as sharp wi’ me as one o’ them lawyer chaps, dang ’em, and he’s a lot of I O’s and rubbitch o’ mine; and Bryerly writes to me he can’t gi’e me my legacy, ‘cause h’es got a notice from Archer and Sleigh a warnin’ him not to gi’e me as much as a bob; for I signed it away to governor, he says — which I believe’s a lie. I may a’ signed some writing —‘appen I did — when I was a bit cut one night. But that’s no way to catch a gentleman, and ‘twon’t stand. There’s justice to be had, and ‘twon’t stand, I say; and I’m not in ‘is hands that way. Thof I may be a bit up the spout, too, I don’t deny; only I baint a-goin’ the whole hog all at once. I’m none o’ they sort. He’ll find I baint.”
Here Mary Quince coughed demurely from the foot of the stair, to remind me that the conversation was protracted.
“I don’t very well understand,” I said gravely; “and I am now going upstairs.”
“Don’t jest a minute, Miss; it’s only a word, ye see. We’ll be goin’ t’ Australia, Sary Mangles, an’ me, aboard the Seamew, on the 5th. I’m for Liverpool to-night, and she’ll meet me there, an’— an’, please God Almighty, ye’ll never see me more; an’ I’d rather gi’e ye a lift, Maud, before I go: an’ I tell ye what, if ye’ll just gi’e me your written promise ye’ll gi’e me that twenty thousand ye were offering to gi’e the Governor, I’ll take ye cleverly out o’ Bartram, and put ye wi’ your cousin Knollys, or anywhere ye like best.”
“Take me from Bartram — for twenty thousand pounds! Take me away from my guardian! You seem to forget, sir,” my indignation rising as I spoke, “that I can visit my cousin, Lady Knollys, whenever I please.”
“Well, that is as it may be,” he said, with a sulky deliberation, scraping about a little bit of paper that lay on the floor with the toe of his boot.
“It is as it may be, and that is as I say, sir; and considering how you have treated me — your mean, treacherous, and infamous suit, and your cruel treason to your poor wife, I am amazed at your effrontery.”
I turned to leave him, being, in truth, in one of my passions.
“Don’t ye be a flyin’ out,” he said peremptorily, and catching me roughly by the wrist. “I baint a-going to vex ye. What a mouth you be, as can’t see your way! Can’t ye speak wi’ common sense, like a woman — dang it — for once, and not keep brawling like a brat — can’t ye see what I’m saying? I’ll take you out o’ all this, and put ye wi’ your cousin, or wheresoever you list, if y’ell gi’e me what I say.”
He was, for the first time, looking me in the face, but with contracted eyes, and a countenance very much agitated.
“Money?” said I, with a prompt disdain.
“Ay, money — twenty thousand pounds — there. On or off?” he replied, with an unpleasant sort of effort.
“You ask my promise for twenty thousand pounds, and you shan’t have it.”
My cheeks were flaming, and I stamped on the ground as I spoke.
If he had known how to appeal to my better feelings, I am sure I should have done, perhaps not quite that, all at once at least, but something handsome, to assist him. But this application was so shabby and insolent! What could he take me for? That I should suppose his placing me with Cousin Monica constituted her my guardian? Why, he must fancy me the merest baby. There was a kind of stupid cunning in this that disgusted my good-nature and outraged my self-importance.
“You won’t gi’e me that, then?” he said, looking down again, with a frown, and working his mouth and cheeks about as I could fancy a man rolling a piece of tobacco in his jaw.
“Certainly not, sir,” I replied.
“Take it, then,” he replied, still looking down, very black and discontented.
I joined Mary Quince, extremely angry. As I passed under the carved oak arch of the vestibule, I saw his figure in the deepening twilight. The picture remains in its murky halo fixed in memory. Standing where he last spoke in the centre of the hall, not looking after me, but downward, and, as well as I could see, with the countenance of man who has lost a game, and a ruinous wager too — that is black and desperate. I did not utter a syllable on the way up. When I reached my room, I began to reconsider the interview more at my leisure. I was, such were my ruminations, to have agreed at once to his preposterous offer, and to have been driven, while he smirked and grimaced behind my back at his acquaintances, through Feltram in his dog-cart to Elverston; and then, to the just indignation of my uncle, to have been delivered up to Lady Knollys’ guardianship, and to have handed my driver, as I alighted, the handsome fare of 20,000l. It required the impudence of Tony Lumpkin, without either his fun or his shrewdness, to have conceived such a prodigious