Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (ebook voice reader TXT) 📕

“My odious, stupid, perjured face,” I whispered, furiously, at the same time stamping on the floor, and giving myself quite a smart slap on the cheek. “I can’t go down⁠—I’m ready to cry⁠—I’ve a mind to return to Bartram today; I am always blushing; and I wish that impudent Captain Oakley was at the bottom of the sea.”

I was, perhaps, thinking more of Lord Ilbury than I was aware; and I am sure if Captain Oakley had arrived that day, I should have treated him with most unjustifiable rudeness.

Notwithstanding this unfortunate blush, the remainder of our visit passed very happily for me. No one who has not experienced it can have an idea how intimate a small party, such as ours, will grow in a short time in a country house.

Of course, a young lady of a well-regulated mind cannot possibly care a pin about anyone of the opposite sex until she is well assured that he is beginning, at least, to like her better than all the world beside; but I could not deny to myself that I was rather anxious to know more about Lord Ilbury than I actually did know.

There was a “Peerage,” in its bright scarlet and gold uniform, corpulent and tempting, upon the little marble table in the drawing-room. I had many opportunities of consulting it, but I never could find courage to do so.

For an inexperienced person it would have been a matter of several minutes, and during those minutes what awful risk of surprise and detection. One day, all being quiet, I did venture, and actually, with a beating heart, got so far as to find out the letter “Il,” when I heard a step outside the door, which opened a little bit, and I heard Lady Knollys, luckily arrested at the entrance, talk some sentences outside, her hand still upon the door-handle. I shut the book, as Mrs. Bluebeard might the door of the chamber of horrors at the sound of her husband’s step, and skipped to a remote part of the room, where Cousin Knollys found me in a mysterious state of agitation.

On any other subject I would have questioned Cousin Monica unhesitatingly; upon this, somehow, I was dumb. I distrusted myself, and dreaded my odious habit of blushing, and knew that I should look so horribly guilty, and become so agitated and odd, that she would have reasonably concluded that I had quite lost my heart to him.

After the lesson I had received, and my narrow escape of detection in the very act, you may be sure I never trusted myself in the vicinity of that fat and cruel “Peerage,” which possessed the secret, but would not disclose without compromising me.

In this state of tantalizing darkness and conjecture I should have departed, had not Cousin Monica quite spontaneously relieved me.

The night before our departure she sat with us in our room, chatting a little farewell gossip.

“And what do you think of Ilbury?” she asked.

“I think him clever and accomplished, and amusing; but he sometimes appears to me very melancholy⁠—that is, for a few minutes together⁠—and then, I fancy, with an effort, re-engages in our conversation.”

“Yes, poor Ilbury! He lost his brother only about five months since, and is only beginning to recover his spirits a little. They were very much attached, and people thought that he would have succeeded to the title, had he lived, because Ilbury is difficile⁠—or a philosopher⁠—or a Saint Kevin; and, in fact, has begun to be treated as a premature old bachelor.”

“What a charming person his sister, Lady Mary, is. She has made me promise to write to her,” I said, I suppose⁠—such hypocrites are we⁠—to prove to Cousin Knollys that I did not care particularly to hear anything more about him.

“Yes, and so devoted to him. He came down here, and took The Grange, for change of scene and solitude⁠—of all things the worst for a man in grief⁠—a morbid whim, as he is beginning to find out; for he is very glad to stay here, and confesses that he is much better since he came. His letters are still addressed to him as Mr. Carysbroke; for he fancied if his rank were known, that the county people would have been calling upon him, and so he would have found himself soon involved in a tiresome round of dinners, and must have gone somewhere else. You saw him, Milly, at Bartram, before Maud came?”

Yes, she had, when he called there to see her father.

“He thought, as he had accepted the trusteeship, that he could hardly, residing so near, omit to visit Silas. He was very much struck and interested by him, and he has a better opinion of him⁠—you are not angry, Milly⁠—than some ill-natured people I could name; and he says that the cutting down of the trees will turn out to have been a mere slip. But these slips don’t occur with clever men in other things; and some persons have a way of always making them in their own favour. And, to talk of other things, I suspect that you and Milly will probably see Ilbury at Bartram; for I think he likes you very much.”

You; did she mean both, or only me?

So our pleasant visit was over. Milly’s good little curate had been much thrown in her way by our deep and dangerous cousin Monica. He was most laudably steady; and his flirtation advanced upon the field of theology, where, happily, Milly’s little reading had been concentrated. A mild and earnest interest in poor, pretty Milly’s orthodoxy was the leading feature of his case; and I was highly amused at her references to me, when we had retired at night, upon the points which she had disputed with him, and her anxious reports of their low-toned conferences, carried on upon a sequestered ottoman, where he patted and stroked his crossed leg, as he smiled tenderly and shook his head at