“Well, Miss Maud, I never did expect to see the like o’ that!” exclaimed honest Mary Quince. “Did you ever see such a young lady? She’s no more like one o’ the family than I am. Law bless us! and what’s she dressed like? Well, well, well!” And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while I could not forbear laughing.
“And such a scrap o’ furniture! Well, well, well!” and the same clicking of the tongue followed.
But, in a few minutes, back came Cousin Milly, and, with a barbarous sort of curiosity, assisted in unpacking my trunks, and stowing away the treasures, on which she ventured a variety of admiring criticisms, in the presses which, like cupboards, filled recesses in the walls, with great oak doors, the keys of which were in them.
As I was making my hurried toilet, she entertained me now and then with more strictly personal criticisms.
“Your hair’s a shade darker than mine — it’s none the better o’ that though — is it? Mine’s said to be the right shade. I don’t know — what do you say?”
I conceded the point with good grace.
“I wish my hands was as white though — you do lick me there; but it’s all gloves, and I never could abide ’em. I think I’ll try though — they are very white, sure.”
“I wonder which is the prettiest, you or me? I don’t know, I’m sure — which do you think?”
I laughed outright at this challenge, and she blushed a little, and for the first time seemed for a moment a little shy.
“Well, you are a half an inch longer than me, I think — don’t you?”
I was fully an inch taller, so I had no difficulty in making the proposed admission.
“Well, you do look handsome! doesn’t she, Quinzy, lass? but your frock comes down almost to your heels — it does.”
And she glanced from mine to hers, and made a little kick up with the heel of the navvy boot to assist her in measuring the comparative distance.
“Maybe mine’s a thought too short?” she suggested. “Who’s there? Oh! it’s you, is it?” she cried as Mother Hubbard appeared at the door. “Come in, L’Amour — don’t you know, lass, you’re always welcome?”
She had come to let us know that Uncle Silas would be happy to see me whenever I was ready; and that my cousin Millicent would conduct me to the room where he awaited me.
In an instant all the comic sensations awakened by my singular cousin’s eccentricities vanished, and I was thrilled with awe. I was about to see in the flesh — faded, broken, aged, but still identical — that being who had been the vision and the problem of so many years of my short life.
Chapter 32.
Uncle Silas
I THOUGHT my odd cousin was also impressed with a kind of awe, though different in degree from mine, for a shade overcast her face, and she was silent as we walked side by side along the gallery, accompanied by the crone who carried the candle which lighted us to the door of that apartment which I may call Uncle Silas’s presence chamber.
Milly whispered to me as we approached —
“Mind how you make a noise; the governor’s as sharp as a weasel, and nothing vexes him like that.”
She was herself toppling along on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and L’Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles.
A voice, clear and penetrating, from within summoned us to enter. The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle Silas.
At the far end of a handsome wainscoted room, near the hearth in which a low fire was burning, beside a small table on which stood four waxlights, in tall silver candlesticks, sat a singular-looking old man.
The dark wainscoting behind him, and the vastness of the room, in the remoter parts of which the light which fell strongly upon his face and figure expended itself with hardly any effect, exhibited him with the forcible and strange relief of a finely painted Dutch portrait. For some time I saw nothing but him.
A face like marble, with a fearful monumental look, and, for an old man, singularly vivid strange eyes, the singularity of which rather grew upon me as I looked; for his eyebrows were still black, though his hair descended from his temples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk, nearly to his shoulders.
He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ample black velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat, with loose sleeves, showing his snowy shirt some way up the arm, and a pair of wrist buttons, then quite out of fashion, which glimmered aristocratically with diamonds.
I know I can’t convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its singular look of power, and an expression so bewildering — was it derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?
The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed upon me as he rose; an habitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character of a scowl, did not relax as he advanced toward me with his thin-lipped smile. He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, the import of which I was too much agitated to catch, and he took both my hands in his, welcomed me with a courtly grace which belonged to another age, and led me affectionately, with many inquiries which I only half comprehended, to a chair near his own.
“I need not introduce my daughter; she has saved me that mortification. You’ll find her, I believe, good-natured and affectionate; au reste, I fear a very rustic Miranda, and fitted rather for the society of Caliban than of a sick old Prospero. Is it not so, Millicent?”
The old man paused sarcastically for an answer, with his eyes fixed severely on my odd cousin, who blushed and looked uneasily to me for a hint.
“I don’t know who they be — neither one nor t’other.”
“Very good, my dear,” he replied, with a little mocking bow. “You see, my dear Maud, what a Shakespearean you have got for a cousin. It’s plain, however, she has made acquaintance with some of our dramatists; she has studied the rôle of Miss Hoyden so perfectly.”
It was not a reasonable peculiarity of my uncle that he resented, with a good deal of playful acrimony, my poor cousin’s want of education, for which, if he were not to blame, certainly neither was she.
“You see her, poor thing, a result of all the combined disadvantage of want of refined education, refined companionship, and, I fear, naturally, of refined tastes; but a sojourn at a good French conventual school will do wonders, and I hope to manage by-and-by. In the meantime we jest at our misfortunes, and love one another, I hope, cordially.”
He extended his thin, white hand with a chilly smile towards Milly, who bounced up, and took it with a frightened look; and he repeated, holding her hand rather slightly I thought, “Yes, I hope, very cordially,” and then turning again to me, he put it over the arm of his chair, and let it go, as a man might drop something he did not want from a carriage window.
Having made this apology for poor Milly, who was plainly bewildered, he passed on, to her and my relief, to other topics, every now and then expressing his fears that I was fatigued, and his anxiety that I should partake of some supper or tea; but these solicitudes somehow seemed to escape his remembrance almost as soon as uttered; and he maintained the conversation, which soon degenerated into a close, and to me a painful examination, respecting my dear father’s illness and its symptoms, upon which I could give no information, and his habits, upon which I could.
Perhaps