Why was Madame here? Why was Dudley concealed about the place? Why was I a prisoner within the walls? What were those dangers which Meg Hawkes seemed to think so great and so imminent as to induce her to risk her lover’s safety for my deliverance? All these menacing facts stood grouped together against the dark certainty that never were men more deeply interested in making away with one human being, than were Uncle Silas and Dudley in removing me.
Sometimes to these dreadful evidences I abandoned my soul. Sometimes, reading Cousin Monica’s sunny letter, the sky would clear, and my terrors melt away like nightmares in the morning. I never repented, however, that I had sent my letter by Tom Brice. Escape from Bartram–Haugh was my hourly longing.
That evening Madame invited herself to tea with me. I did not object. It was better just then to be on friendly relations with everybody, if possible, even on their own terms. She was in one of her boisterous and hilarious moods, and there was a perfume of brandy.
She narrated some compliments paid her that morning in Feltram by that “good crayature” Mrs. Litheways, the silk-mercer, and what “‘ansom faylow” was her new foreman —(she intended plainly that I should “queez” her)— and how “he follow” her with his eyes wherever she went. I thought, perhaps, he fancied she might pocket some of his lace or gloves. And all the time her great wicked eyes were rolling and glancing according to her ideas of fascination, and her bony face grinning and flaming with the “strong drink” in which she delighted. She sang twaddling chansons, and being, as was her wont under such exhilarating influences, in a vapouring mood, she vowed that I should have my carriage and horses immediately.
“I weel try what I can do weeth your Uncle Silas. We are very good old friends, Mr. Ruthyn and I,” she said with a leer which I did not understand, and which yet frightened me.
I never could quite understand why these Jezebels like to insinuate the dreadful truth against themselves; but they do. Is it the spirit of feminine triumph overcoming feminine shame, and making them vaunt their fall as an evidence of bygone fascination and existing power? Need we wonder? Have not women preferred hatred to indifference, and the reputation of witchcraft, with all its penalties, to absolute insignificance? Thus, as they enjoyed the fear inspired among simple neighbours by their imagined traffic with the father of ill, did Madame, I think, relish with a cynical vainglory the suspicion of her satanic superiority.
Next morning Uncle Silas sent for me. He was seated at his table, and spoke his little French greeting, smiling as usual, pointing to a chair opposite.
“How far, I forget,” he said, carelessly laying his newspaper on the table, “did you yesterday guess Dudley to be?”
“Eleven hundred miles I thought it was.”
“Oh yes, so it was;” and then there was an abstracted pause. “I have been writing to Lord Ilbury, your trustee,” he resumed. “I ventured to say, my dear Maud —(for having thoughts of a different arrangement for you, more suitable under my distressing circumstances, I do not wish to vacate without some expression of your estimate of my treatment of you while under my roof)— I ventured to say that you thought me kind, considerate, indulgent — may I say so?”
I assented. What could I say?
“I said you had enjoyed our poor way of living here — our rough ways and liberty. Was I right?”
Again I assented.
“And, in fact, that you had nothing to object against your poor old uncle, except indeed his poverty, which you forgave. I think I said truth. Did I, dear Maud?”
Again I acquiesced.
All this time he was fumbling among the papers in his coat-pocket.
“That is satisfactory. So I expected you to say,” he murmured. “I expected no less.”
On a sudden a frightful change spread across his face. He rose like a spectre with a white scowl.
“Then how do you account for that?” he shrieked in a voice of thunder, and smiting my open letter to Lady Knollys, face upward, upon the table.
I stared at my uncle, unable to speak, until I seemed to lose sight of him; but his voice, like a bell, still yelled in my ears.
“There! young hypocrite and liar! explain that farrago of slander which you bribed my servants to place in the hands of my kinswoman, Lady Knollys.”
And so on and on it went, I gazing into darkness, until the voice itself became indistinct, grew into a buzz, and hummed away into silence.
I think I must have had a fit.
When I came to myself I was drenched with water, my hair, face, neck, and dress. I did not in the least know where I was. I thought my father was ill, and spoke to him. Uncle Silas was standing near the window, looking unspeakably grim. Madame was seated beside me, an open bottle of ether, one of Uncle Silas’s restoratives, on the table before me.
“Who’s that — who’s ill — is anyone dead?” I cried.
At last I was relieved by long paroxysms of weeping. When I was sufficiently recovered, I was conveyed into my own room.
Chapter 58.
Lady Knollys’ Carriage
NEXT MORNING— it was Sunday — I lay on my bed in my dressing-gown, dull, apathetic, with all my limbs sore, and, as I thought, rheumatic, and feeling so ill that I did not care to speak or lift my head. My recollection of what had passed in Uncle Silas’s room was utterly confused, and it seemed to me as if my poor father had been there and taken a share — I could not remember how — in the conference.
I was too exhausted and stupid to clear up this horrible muddle, and merely lay with my face toward the wall, motionless and silent, except for a great sigh every now and then.
Good Mary Quince was in the room — there was some comfort in that; but I felt quite worn out, and had rather she did not speak to me; and indeed for the time I felt absolutely indifferent as to whether I lived or died.
Cousin Monica this morning, at pleasant Elverston, all-unconscious of my sad plight, proposed to Lady Mary Carysbroke and Lord Ilbury, her guests, to drive over to church at Feltram, and then pay us a visit at Bartram–Haugh, to which they readily agreed.
Accordingly, at about two o’clock, this pleasant party of three arrived at Bartram. They walked, having left the carriage to follow when the horses were fed; and Madame de la Rougierre, who was in my uncle’s room when little Giblets arrived to say that the party were in the parlour, whispered for a little with my uncle, who then said —
“Miss Maud Ruthyn has gone out to drive, but I shall be happy to see Lady Knollys here, if she will do me the favour to come upstairs and see me for a few moments; and you can mention that I am very far from well.”
Madame followed him out upon the lobby, and added, holding him by the collar, and whispering earnestly in his ear —
“Bring hair ladysheep up by the backstairs — mind, the backstairs.”
And the next moment Madame entered my room, with long tiptoe steps, and looking, Mary Quince said, as if she were going to be hanged.
On entering she looked sharply round, and being satisfied of Mary Quince’s presence, she turned the key in the door, and made some affectionate enquiries about me in a whisper; and then she stole to the window and peeped out, standing back some way; after which she came to my bedside, murmured some tender sentences, drew the curtain a little, and making some little fidgety adjustments about the room; among the rest she took the key from the lock, quietly, and put it into her pocket.
This was so odd a procedure that honest Mary Quince rose stoutly from her chair, pointing to the lock, with her frank little blue eyes fixed on Madame, and she whispered —