“How delightful! you darling,” cried I, embracing and kissing her; “for my part, I should be ready in five minutes; what do you say, Milly?”
Poor Milly’s wardrobe, I am afraid, was more portable than handsome; and she looked horribly affrighted, and whispered in my ear —
“My best petticoat is away at the laundress; say in a week, Maud.”
“What does she say?” asked Lady Knollys.
“She fears she can’t be ready,” I answered, dejectedly.
“There’s a deal of my slops in the wash,” blurted out poor Milly, staring straight at Lady Knollys.
“In the name of wonder, what does my cousin mean?” asked Lady Knollys.
“Her things have not come home yet from the laundress,” I replied; and at this moment our wondrous old butler entered to announce to Lady Knollys that his master was ready to receive her, whenever she was disposed to favour him; and also to make polite apologies for his being compelled, by his state of health, to give her the trouble of ascending to his room.
So Cousin Monica was at the door in a moment, over her shoulder calling to us, “Come, girls.”
“Please, not yet, my lady — you alone; and he requests the young ladies will be in the way, as he will send for them presently.”
I began to admire poor “Giblets” as the wreck of a tolerably respectable servant.
“Very good; perhaps it is better we should kiss and be friends in private first,” said Cousin Knollys, laughing; and away she went under the guidance of the mummy.
I had an account of this tête-à-tête afterwards from Lady Knollys.
“When I saw him, my dear,” she said, “I could hardly believe my eyes; such white hair — such a white face — such mad eyes — such a death-like smile. When I saw him last, his hair was dark; he dressed himself like a modern Englishman; and he really preserved a likeness to the full-length portrait at Knowl, that you fell in love with, you know; but, angels and ministers of grace! such a spectre! I asked myself, is it necromancy, or is it delirium tremens that has reduced him to this? And said he, with that odious smile, that made me fancy myself half insane —
“‘You see a change, Monica?’
“What a sweet, gentle, insufferable voice he has! Somebody once told me about the tone of a glass flute that made some people hysterical to listen to, and I was thinking of it all the time. There was always a peculiar quality to his voice.
“‘I do see a change, Silas,’ I said at last; ‘and, no doubt, so do you in me — a great change.’
“‘There has been time enough to work a greater than I observe in you since you last honoured me with a visit,’ said he.
“I think he was at his old sarcasms, and means that I was the same impertinent minx he remembered long ago, uncorrected by time; and so I am, and he must not expect compliments from old Monica Knollys.
“‘It is a long time, Silas; but that, you know, is not my fault,’ said I.
“‘Not your fault, my dear — your instinct. We are all imitative creatures: the great people ostracised me, and the small ones followed. We are very like turkeys, we have so much good sense and so much generosity. Fortune, in a freak, wounded my head, and the whole brood were upon me, pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them, dear Monica. It wasn’t your fault only your instinct, so I quite forgive you; but no wonder the peckers wear better than the pecked. You are robust; and I, what I am.’
“‘Now, Silas. I have not come here to quarrel. If we quarrel now, mind, we can never make it up — we are too old, so let us forget all we can, and try to forgive something; and if we can do neither, at all events let there be truce between us while I am here.’
“‘My personal wrongs I can quite forgive, and I do, Heaven knows, from my heart; but there are things which ought not to be forgiven. My children have been ruined by it. I may, by the mercy of Providence, be set right in the world, and so soon as that time comes, I will remember, and I will act; but my children — you see that wretched girl, my daughter — education, society, all would come too late — my children have been ruined by it.’
“‘I have not done it; but I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘You menace litigation whenever you have the means; but you forget that Austin placed you under promise, when he gave you the use of this house and place, never to disturb my title to Elverston. So there is my answer, if you mean that.’
“‘I mean what I mean,’ he replied, with his old smile.
“‘You mean then,’ said I, ‘that for the pleasure of vexing me with litigation, you are willing to forfeit your tenure of this house and place.’
“‘Suppose I did mean precisely that, why should I forfeit anything? My beloved brother, by his will, has given me a right to the use of Bartram–Haugh for my life, and attached no absurd condition of the kind you fancy to his gift.’
“Silas was in one of his vicious old moods, and liked to menace me. His vindictiveness got the better of his craft; but he knows as well as I do that he never could succeed in disturbing the title of my poor dear Harry Knollys; and I was not at all alarmed by his threats; and I told him so, as coolly as I speak to you now.
“‘Well, Monica,’ he said, ‘I have weighed you in the balance, and you are not found wanting. For a moment the old man possessed me: the thought of my children, of past unkindness, and present affliction and disgrace, exasperated me, and I was mad. It was but for a moment — the galvanic spasm of a corpse. Never was breast more dead than mine to the passions and ambitions of the world. They are not for white locks like these, nor for a man who, for a week in every month, lies in the gate of death. Will you shake hands? Here — I do strike a truce; and I do forget and forgive everything.’
“I don’t know what he meant by this scene. I have no idea whether he was acting, or lost his head, or, in fact, why or how it occurred; but I am glad, darling, that, unlike myself, I was calm, and that a quarrel has not been forced upon me.”
When our turn came and we were summoned to the presence, Uncle Silas was quite as usual; but Cousin Monica’s heightened colour, and the flash of her eyes, showed plainly that something exciting and angry had occurred.
Uncle Silas commented in his own vein upon the effect of Bartram air and liberty, all he had to offer; and called on me to say how I liked them. And then he called Milly to him, kissed her tenderly, smiled sadly upon her, and turning to Cousin Monica, said —
“This is my daughter Milly — oh! she has been presented to you down-stairs, has she? You have, no doubt, been interested by her. As I told her cousin Maud, though I am not yet quite a Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, she is a very finished Miss Hoyden. Are not you, my poor Milly? You owe your distinction, my dear, to that line of circumvallation which has, ever since your birth, intercepted all civilisation on its way to Bartram. You are much obliged, Milly, to everybody who, whether naturally or un-naturally, turned a sod in that invisible, but impenetrable work. For your accomplishments — rather singular that fashionable — you are indebted, in part to your cousin, Lady Knollys. Is not she, Monica? Thank her, Milly.”
“This is your truce, Silas,” said Lady Knollys, with a quiet sharpness. “I think, Silas Ruthyn, you want to provoke me to speak in a way before these young creatures which we should all regret.”
“So my badinage excites your temper, Monnie. Think how you would feel, then, if I had found you by the highway side, mangled by robbers, and set my foot upon your throat, and spat in your face. But — stop this. Why have I said this? simply to emphasize my forgiveness. See, girls, Lady Knollys and I, cousins long estranged, forget and forgive the past, and join hands over its buried injuries.”
“Well, be it so; only let us have done with ironies and covert taunts.”
And