His conversation was easy, polished, and, with a sentimental glazing, cold; but across this artificial talk, with its French rhymes, racy phrases, and fluent eloquence, like a streak of angry light, would, at intervals, suddenly gleam some dismal thought of religion. I never could quite satisfy myself whether they were affectations or genuine, like intermittent thrills of pain.
The light of his large eyes was very peculiar. I can liken it to nothing but the sheen of intense moonlight on burnished metal. But that cannot express it. It glared white and suddenly — almost fatuous. I thought of Moore’s lines whenever I looked on it:—
Oh, ye dead! oh, ye dead! whom we know by the light you give From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live.
I never saw in any other eye the least glimmer of the same baleful effulgence. His fits, too — his hoverings between life and death — between intellect and insanity — a dubious, marsh-fire existence, horrible to look on!
I was puzzled even to comprehend his feelings toward his children. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was ready to lay down his soul for them; at others, he looked and spoke almost as if he hated them. He talked as if the image of death was always before him, yet he took a terrible interest in life, while seemingly dozing away the dregs of his days in sight of his coffin.
Oh! Uncle Silas, tremendous figure in the past, burning always in memory in the same awful lights; the fixed white face of scorn and anguish! It seems as if the Woman of Endor had led me to that chamber and showed me a spectre.
Dudley had not left Bartram–Haugh when a little note reached me from Lady Knollys. It said —
“DEAREST MAUD — I have written by this post to Silas, beseeching a loan of you and my Cousin Milly. I see no reason your uncle can possibly have for refusing me; and, therefore, I count confidently on seeing you both at Elverston to-morrow, to stay for at least a week. I have hardly a creature to meet you. I have been disappointed in several visitors; but another time we shall have a gayer house. Tell Milly — with my love — that I will not forgive her if she fails to accompany you.
“Believe me ever your affectionate cousin,
“MONICA KNOLLYS.”
Milly and I were both afraid that Uncle Silas would refuse his consent, although we could not divine any sound reason for his doing so, and there were many in favour of his improving the opportunity of allowing poor Milly to see some persons of her own sex above the rank of menials.
At about twelve o’clock my uncle sent for us, and, to our great delight, announced his consent, and wished us a very happy excursion.
Chapter 42.
Elverston and its People
SO MILLY and I drove through the gabled high street of Feltram next day. We saw my gracious cousin smoking with a man like a groom, at the door of the “Plume of Feathers.” I drew myself back as we passed, and Milly popped her head out of the window.
“I’m blessed,” said she, laughing, “if he hadn’t his thumb to his nose, and winding up his little finger, the way he does with old Wyat — L’Amour, ye know; and you may be sure he said something funny, for Jim Jolliter was laughin’, with his pipe in his hand.”
“I wish I had not seen him, Milly. I feel as if it were an ill omen. He always looks so cross; and I dare say he wished us some ill,” I said.
“No, no, you don’t know Dudley: if he were angry, he’d say nothing that’s funny; no, he’s not vexed, only shamming vexed.”
The scenery through which we passed was very pretty. The road brought us through a narrow and wooded glen. Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my raptures, and requite them.
Then over one of those beautiful Derbyshire moors we drove, and so into a wide wooded hollow, where was our first view of Cousin Monica’s pretty gabled house, beautified with that indescribable air of shelter and comfort which belongs to an old English residence, with old timber grouped round it, and something in its aspect of the quaint old times and bygone merry-makings, saying sadly, but genially, “Come in; I bid you welcome. For two hundred years, or more, have I been the house of this beloved old family, whose generations I have seen in the cradle and in the coffin, and whose mirth and sorrows and hospitalities I remember. All their friends, like you, were welcome; and you, like them, will here enjoy the warm illusions that cheat the sad conditions of mortality; and like them you will go your way, and others succeed you, till at last I, too, shall yield to the general law of decay, and disappear.”
By this time poor Milly had grown very nervous; a state which she described in such very odd phraseology as threw me, in spite of myself — for I affected an impressive gravity in lecturing her upon her language — into a hearty fit of laughter.
I must mention, however, that in certain important points Milly was very essentially reformed. Her dress, though not very fashionable, was no longer absurd. And I had drilled her into speaking and laughing quietly; and for the rest I trusted to the indulgence which is always, I think, more honestly and easily obtained from well-bred than from under-bred people.
Cousin Monica was out when we arrived; but we found that she had arranged a double-bedded room for me and Milly, greatly to our content; and good Mary Quince was placed in the dressing-room beside us.
We had only just commenced our toilet when our hostess entered, as usual in high spirits, welcomed and kissed us both again and again. She was, indeed, in extraordinary delight, for she had anticipated some stratagem or evasion to prevent our visit; and in her usual way she spoke her mind as frankly about Uncle Silas to poor Milly as she used to do of my dear father to me.
“I did not think he would let you come without a battle; and you know if he chose to be obstinate it would not have been easy to get you out of the enchanted ground, for so it seems to be with that awful old wizard in the midst of it. I mean, Silas, your papa, my dear. Honestly, is not he very like Michael Scott?”
“I never saw him,” answered poor Milly. “At least, that I’m aware of,” she added, perceiving us smile. “But I do think he’s a thought like old Michael Dobbs, that sells the ferrets, maybe you mean him?”
“Why, you told me, Maud, that you and Milly were reading Walter Scott’s poems. Well, no matter. Michael Scott, my dear, was a dead wizard, with ever so much silvery hair, lying in his grave for ever so many years, with just life enough to scowl when they took his book; and you’ll find him in the “Lay of the Last Mistrel,” exactly like your papa, my dear. And my people tell me that your brother Dudley has been seen drinking and smoking about Feltram this week. How long does hie remain at home? Not very long, eh? And, Maud, dear, he has not been making love to you? Well, I see; of course he has. And apropos of love-making, I hope that impudent creature, Charles Oakley, has not been teasing you with notes or verses.”
“Indeed but he has though,” interposed Miss Milly; a good deal to my chagrin, for I saw no particular reason for placing his verses in Cousin Monica’s hands. So I confessed the two little copies of verses, with the qualification, however, that I did not know from whom they came.
“Well now, dear Maud, have not I told you fifty times over to have nothing to say to him? I’ve found