And just then Milly joined us, shouting to us to look at the herons flying; so Cousin Monica did, and smiled and nodded in thanks to Milly, and was again silent and thoughtful as we walked on.
‘You are to come to me, mind, both of you girls,’ she said, abruptly;’ you shall. I’ll manage it.’
When silence returned, and Milly ran away once more to try whether the old gray trout was visible in the still water under the bridge, Cousin Monica said to me in a low tone, looking hard at me —
‘You’ve not seen anything to frighten you, Maud? Don’t look so alarmed, dear,’ she added with a little laugh, which was not very merry, however. ‘I don’t mean frighten in any awful sense — in fact, I did not mean frighten at all. I meant — I can’t exactly express it — anything to vex, or make you uncomfortable; have you?’
‘No, I can’t say I have, except that room in which Mr. Charke was found dead.’
‘Oh! you saw that, did you? — I should like to see it so much. Your bedroom is not near it?’
‘Oh, no; on the floor beneath, and looking to the front. And Doctor Bryerly talked a little to me, and there seemed to be something on his mind more than he chose to tell me; so that for some time after I saw him I really was, as you say, frightened; but, except that, I really have had no cause. And what was in your mind when you asked me?’
‘Well, you know, Maud, you are afraid of ghosts, banditti, and everything; and I wished to know whether you were uncomfortable, and what your particular bogle was just now — that, I assure you, was all; and I know,’ she continued, suddenly changing her light tone and manner for one of pointed entreaty, ‘what Doctor Bryerly said; and I implore of you, Maud, to think of it seriously; and when you come to me, you shall do so with the intention of remaining at Elverston.’
‘Now, Cousin Monica, is this fair? You and Doctor Bryerly both talk in the same awful way to me; and I assure you, you don’t know how nervous I am sometimes, and yet you won’t, either of you, say what you mean. Now, Monica, dear cousin, won’t you tell me?’
‘You see, dear, it is so lonely; it’s a strange place, and he so odd. I don’t like the place, and I don’t like him. I’ve tried, but I can’t, and I think I never shall. He may be a very — what was it that good little silly curate at Knowl used to call him? — a very advanced Christian — that is it, and I hope he is; but if he is only what he used to be, his utter seclusion from society removes the only check, except personal fear — and he never had much of that — upon a very bad man. And you must know, my dear Maud, what a prize you are, and what an immense trust it is.’
Suddenly Cousin Monica stopped short, and looked at me as if she had gone too far.
‘But, you know, Silas may be very good now, although he was wild and selfish in his young days. Indeed I don’t know what to make of him; but I am sure when you have thought it over, you will agree with me and Doctor Bryerly, that you must not stay here.’
It was vain trying to induce my cousin to be more explicit.
‘I hope to see you at Elverston in a very few days. I will shame Silas into letting you come. I don’t like his reluctance.’
‘But don’t you think he must know that Milly would require some little outfit before her visit?’
‘Well, I can’t say. I hope that is all; but be it what it may, I’ll make him let you come, and immediately, too.’
After she had gone, I experienced a repetition of those undefined doubts which had tortured me for some time after my conversation with Dr. Bryerly. I had truly said, however, I was well enough contented with my mode of life here, for I had been trained at Knowl to a solitude very nearly as profound.
CHAPTER XL
IN WHICH I MAKE ANOTHER COUSIN’S ACQUAINTANCE
My correspondence about this time was not very extensive. About once a fortnight a letter from honest Mrs. Rusk conveyed to me how the dogs and ponies were, in queer English, oddly spelt; some village gossip, a critique upon Doctor Clay’s or the Curate’s last sermon, and some severities generally upon the Dissenters’ doings, with loves to Mary Quince, and all good wishes to me. Sometimes a welcome letter from cheerful Cousin Monica; and now, to vary the series, a copy of complimentary verses, without a signature, very adoring — very like Byron, I then fancied, and now, I must confess, rather vapid. Could I doubt from whom they came?
I had received, about a month after my arrival, a copy of verses in the same hand, in a plaintive ballad style, of the soldierly sort, in which the writer said, that as living his sole object was to please me, so dying I should be his latest thought; and some more poetic impieties, asking only in return that when the storm of battle had swept over, I should ‘shed a tear’ on seeing ‘the oak lie, where it fell.’ Of course, about this lugubrious pun, there could be no misconception. The Captain was unmistakably indicated; and I was so moved that I could no longer retain my secret; but walking with Milly that day, confided the little romance to that unsophisticated listener, under the chestnut trees. The lines were so amorously dejected, and yet so heroically redolent of blood and gunpowder, that Milly and I agreed that the writer must be on the verge of a sanguinary campaign.
It was not easy to get at Uncle Silas’s ‘Times’ or ‘Morning Post,’ which we fancied would explain these horrible allusions; but Milly bethought her of a sergeant in the militia, resident in Feltram, who knew the destination and quarters of every regiment in the service; and circuitously, from this authority, we learned, to my infinite relief, that Captain Oakley’s regiment had still two years to sojourn in England.
I was summoned one evening by old L’Amour, to my uncle’s room. I remember his appearance that evening so well, as he lay back in his chair; the pillow; the white glare of his strange eye; his feeble, painful smile.
‘You’ll excuse my not rising, dear Maud, I am so miserably ill this evening.’
I expressed my respectful condolence.
‘Yes; I am to be pitied; but pity is of no use, dear,’ he murmured, peevishly. ‘I sent for you to make you acquainted with your cousin, my son. Where are you Dudley?’
A figure seated in a low lounging chair, at the other side of the fire, and which till then I had not observed, at these words rose up a little slowly, like a man stiff after a day’s hunting; and I beheld with a shock that held my breath, and fixed my eyes upon him in a stare, the young man whom I had encountered at Church Scarsdale, on the day of my unpleasant excursion there with Madame, and who, to the best of my belief, was also one of that ruffianly party who had so unspeakably terrified me in the warren at Knowl.
I suppose I looked very much affrighted. If I had been looking at a ghost I could not have felt much more scared and incredulous.
When I was able to turn my eyes upon my uncle he was not looking at me; but with a glimmer of that smile with which a father looks on a son whose youth and comeliness he admires, his white face was turned towards the young man, in whom I beheld nothing but the image of odious and dreadful associations.
‘Come, sir,’ said my uncle, we must not be too modest. Here’s your cousin Maud — what do you say?’
‘How are ye, Miss?’ he said, with a sheepish grin.
‘Miss! Come, come. Miss us, no Misses,’ said my uncle; ‘she is Maud, and you Dudley, or I mistake; or we shall have you calling Milly, madame. She’ll not refuse you her hand, I venture to think. Come, young gentleman, speak for yourself.’
‘How are ye, Maud?’ he said, doing his best, and drawing near, he extended his hand.’ You’re welcome to Bartram-Haugh, Miss.’
‘Kiss your cousin, sir. Where’s your gallantry? On my honour, I disown you,’ exclaimed my uncle, with more energy than he had shown before.
With a clumsy effort, and a grin that was both sheepish and impudent, he grasped my hand and advanced his face. The imminent salute gave me strength to spring back a step or two, and he hesitated.
My uncle laughed peevishly.
‘Well, well, that will do, I suppose. In my time first-cousins did not meet
like strangers; but perhaps we were wrong; we are learning modesty from the Americans, and old English ways are too gross for us.’
‘I have — I’ve seen him before — that is;’ and at this point I stopped.
My uncle turned his strange glare, in a sort of scowl of enquiry, upon me.
‘Oh! — hey! why this is news. You never told me. Where have you met — eh, Dudley?’
‘Never saw her in my days, so far as I’m aweer on,’ said the young man.
‘No! Well, then, Maud, will you enlighten us?’ said Uncle Silas, coldly.
‘I did see that young gentleman before,’ I faltered.
‘Meaning me, ma’am?’ he asked, coolly.
‘Yes — certainly you. I did, uncle,’ answered I.
‘And where was it, my dear? Not at Knowl, I fancy. Poor dear Austin did not trouble me or mine much with his hospitalities.’
This was not a pleasant tone to take in speaking of his dead brother and benefactor; but at the moment I was too much engaged upon the one point to observe it.
‘I met’ — I could not say my cousin— ‘I met him, uncle — your son — that young gentleman — I saw him, I should say, at Church Scarsdale, and afterwards with some other persons in the warren at Knowl. It was the night our gamekeeper was beaten.’
‘Well, Dudley, what do you say to that?’ asked Uncle Silas.
‘I never was at them places, so help me. I don’t know where they be; and I never set eyes on the young lady before, as I hope to be saved, in all my days,’ said he, with a countenance so unchanged and an air so confident that I began to think I must be the dupe of one of those strange resemblances which have been known to lead to positive identification in the witness-box, afterwards proved to be utterly mistaken.
‘You look so — so uncomfortable, Maud, at the idea of having seen him before, that I hardly wonder at the vehemence of his denial. There was plainly something disagreeable; but you see as respects him it is a total mistake. My boy was always a truth-telling fellow — you may rely implicitly on what he says. You were not at those places?’
‘I wish I may —— ,’ began the ingenuous youth, with increased vehemence.
‘There, there — that will do; your honour and word as a gentleman — and that you are, though a poor one — will quite satisfy your cousin Maud. Am I right, my dear? I do assure you, as a gentleman, I never knew him to say the thing that was not.’
So Mr. Dudley Ruthyn began, not to curse, but to swear, in the prescribed form, that he had never seen me before, or the places I had named, ‘since I was weaned, by — — ‘
‘That’s enough — now shake hands, if you won’t kiss, like cousins,’ interrupted my uncle.
And very uncomfortably I did lend him my hand to shake.
‘You’ll want some supper, Dudley, so Maud and I will excuse your going. Goodnight, my dear boy,’ and he smiled and waved him from the room.
‘That’s as fine a young fellow, I think, as any English father can boast for his son — true, brave, and kind, and quite an Apollo. Did you observe how finely proportioned he is, and what exquisite features the fellow has? He’s rustic and rough, as you see; but a year or two in the militia — I’ve a promise of a commission for him — he’s too old for the line — will form and polish him. He wants nothing but manner; and I protest when he has had a little drilling of that kind, I do believe he’ll be as pretty a fellow as you’d find in England.’
I listened with amazement. I could discover nothing but what was disagreeable in the horrid bumpkin, and thought such an instance of the blindness of parental partiality was hardly credible.
I looked down, dreading another direct appeal to my judgment; and Uncle Silas, I suppose, referred those downcast looks to maiden modesty, for he forbore to task mine by any new interrogatory.
Dudley Ruthyn’s cool and resolute denial of ever having seen me or the places I had named, and the inflexible serenity of his countenance while doing so, did very much shake my confidence in my own identification of him. I could not be quite certain that the person I had seen at Church Scarsdale was the very same whom I afterwards saw at Knowl. And now, in this particular instance, after the lapse of a still longer period, could I be perfectly certain that my memory, deceived by some accidental points of resemblance, had not duped me, and wronged my cousin, Dudley Ruthyn?
I suppose my uncle had expected from me some signs of acquiesence in his splendid estimate of his cub, and was nettled at my silence. After a short interval he said —
‘I’ve seen something of the world in my day, and I can say without a misgiving of partiality, that Dudley is the material of a perfect English gentleman. I am not blind, of course — the training must be supplied; a year or two of good models, active self-criticism, and good society. I simply say that the material is there.’
Here was another interval of silence.
‘And now tell me, child, what these recollections of Church — Church — what?’
‘Church Scarsdale,’ I replied.
‘Yes, thank you — Church Scarsdale and Knowl — are?’
So I related my stories as well as I could.
‘Well, dear Maud, the adventure of Church Scarsdale is hardly so terrific as I expected,’ said Uncle Silas with a cold little laugh; ‘and I don’t see, if he had really been the hero of it, why he should shrink from avowing it. I know I should not. And I really can’t say that your pic-nic party in the grounds of Knowl has frightened me much more. A lady waiting in the carriage, and two or three tipsy young men. Her presence seems to me a guarantee that no mischief was meant; but champagne is the soul of frolic, and a row with the gamekeepers a natural consequence. It happened to me once — forty years ago, when I was a wild young buck — one of the worst rows I ever was in.’
And Uncle Silas poured some eau-de-cologne over the corner of his handkerchief, and touched his temples with it.
‘If my boy had been there, I do assure you — and I know him — he would say so at once. I fancy he would rather boast of it. I never knew him utter an untruth. When you know him a little you’ll say so.’
With these words Uncle Silas leaned back exhausted, and languidly poured some of his favourite eau-de-cologne over the palms of his hands, nodded a farewell, and, in a whisper, wished me goodnight.
‘Dudley’s come,’ whispered Milly, taking me under the arm as I entered the lobby. ‘But I don’t care: he never gives me nout; and he gets money from Governor, as much as he likes, and I never a sixpence. It’s a shame!’
So there was no great love between the only son and only daughter of the younger line of the Ruthyns.
I was curious to learn all that Milly could tell me of this new inmate of Bartram-Haugh; and Milly was communicative without having a great deal to relate, and what I heard from her tended to confirm my own disagreeable impressions about him. She was afraid of him. He was a ‘woundy ugly customer in a wax, she could tell me.’ He was the only one ‘she ever knowed as had pluck to jaw the Governor.’ But he was ‘afeard on the Governor, too.’
His visits to Bartram-Haugh, I heard, were desultory; and this, to my relief, would probably not outlast a week or a fortnight. ‘He was such a fashionable cove:’ he was always ‘a gadding about, mostly to Liverpool and Birmingham, and sometimes to Lunnun, itself.’ He was ‘keeping company one time with Beauty, Governor thought, and he was awfully afraid he’d a married her; but that was all bosh and nonsense; and Beauty would have none of his chaff and wheedling, for she liked Tom Brice;’ and Milly thought that Dudley never ‘cared a crack of a whip for her.’ He used to go to the Windmill to have ‘a smoke with Pegtop;’ and he was a member of the Feltram Club, that met at the ‘Plume o’ Feathers.’ He was ‘a rare good shot,’ she heard; and ‘he was before the justices for poaching, but they could make nothing of it.’ And the Governor said ‘it was all through spite of him — for they hate us for being better blood than they.’ And ‘all but the squires and those upstart folk loves Dudley, he is so handsom
e and gay — though he be a bit cross at home.’ And, ‘Governor says, he’ll be a Parliament man yet, spite o’ them all.’
Next morning, when our breakfast was nearly ended, Dudley tapped at the window with the end of his clay pipe — a ‘churchwarden’ Milly called it — just such a long curved pipe as Joe Willet is made to hold between his lips in those charming illustrations of ‘Barnaby Rudge’ — which we all know so well — and lifting his ‘wideawake’ with a burlesque salutation, which, I suppose, would have charmed the ‘Plume of Feathers,’ he dropped, kicked and caught his ‘wideawake,’ with an agility and gravity, as he replaced it, so inexpressibly humorous, that Milly went off in a loud fit of laughter, with the ejaculation —
‘Did you ever?’
It was odd how repulsively my confidence in my original identification always revived on unexpectedly seeing Dudley after an interval.
I could perceive that this piece of comic by-play was meant to make a suitable impression on me. I received it, however, with a killing gravity; and after a word or two to Milly, he lounged away, having first broken his pipe, bit by bit, into pieces, which he balanced in turn on his nose and on his chin, from which features he jerked them into his mouth, with a precision which, along with his excellent pantomime of eating them, highly excited Milly’s mirth and admiration.
CHAPTER XLI
MY COUSIN DUDLEY
Greatly to my satisfaction, this engaging person did not appear again that day. But next day Milly told me that my uncle had taken him to task for the neglect with which he was treating us.
‘He did pitch into him, sharp and short, and not a word from him, only sulky like; and I so frightened, I durst not look up almost; and they said a lot I could not make head or tail of; and Governor ordered me out o’ the room, and glad I was to go; and so they had it out between them.’
Milly could throw no light whatsoever upon the adventures at Church Scarsdale and Knowl; and I was left still in doubt, which sometimes oscillated one way and sometimes another. But, on the whole, I could not shake off the misgivings which constantly recurred and pointed very obstinately to Dudley as the hero of those odious scenes.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 242