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

I’ll judge for myself. Is that her a-coming?”

“No; it was a distant sound.”

Madame peeped round the corner. No one was approaching.

“Well, you go round that away, and you only look at her, you know, for she is such fool⁠—so nairvous.”

“Oh, is that the way with her?” said Dud, knocking out the ashes of his pipe on a tombstone, and replacing the Turkish utensil in his pocket. “Well, then, old lass, goodbye,” and he shook her hand. “And, do ye see, don’t ye come up till I pass, for I’m no hand at playacting; an’ if you called me ‘sir,’ or was coming it dignified and distant, you know, I’d be sure to laugh, a’most, and let all out. So goodbye, d’ye see, and if you want me again be sharp to time, mind.”

From habit he looked about for his dogs, but he had not brought one. He had come unostentatiously by rail, travelling in a third-class carriage, for the advantage of Jack Briderly’s company, and getting a world of useful wrinkles about the steeplechase that was coming off next week.

So he strode away, cutting off the heads of the nettles with his cane as he went; and Madame walked forth into the open space among the graves, where I might have seen her, had I stood up, looking with the absorbed gaze of an artist on the ruin.

In a little while, along the path, I heard the clank of a step, and the gentleman in the green cutaway coat, sucking his cane, and eyeing me with an offensive familiar sort of stare the while, passed me by, rather hesitating as he did so.

I was glad when he turned the corner in the little hollow close by, and disappeared. I stood up at once, and was reassured by a sight of Madame, not very many yards away, looking at the ruin, and apparently restored to her right mind. The last beams of the sun were by this time touching the uplands, and I was longing to recommence our walk home. I was hesitating about calling to Madame, because that lady had a certain spirit of opposition within her, and to disclose a small wish of any sort was generally, if it lay in her power, to prevent its accomplishment.

At this moment the gentleman in the green coat returned, approaching me with a slow sort of swagger.

“I say, Miss, I dropped a glove close by here. May you have seen it?”

“No, sir,” I said, drawing back a little, and looking, I dare say, both frightened and offended.

“I do think I must ’a dropped it close by your foot, Miss.”

“No, sir,” I repeated.

“No offence, Miss, but you’re sure you didn’t hide it?”

I was beginning to grow seriously uncomfortable.

“Don’t be frightened, Miss; it’s only a bit o’ chaff. I’m not going to search.”

I called aloud, “Madame, Madame!” and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, “Madame, Madame,” and added, “She’s as deaf as a tombstone, or she’ll hear that. Gi’e her my compliments, and say I said you’re a beauty, Miss;” and with a laugh and a leer he strode off.

Altogether this had not been a very pleasant excursion. Madame gobbled up our sandwiches, commending them every now and then to me. But I had been too much excited to have any appetite left, and very tired I was when we reached home.

“So, there is lady coming tomorrow?” said Madame, who knew everything. “Wat is her name? I forget.”

“Lady Knollys,” I answered.

“Lady Knollys⁠—wat odd name! She is very young⁠—is she not?”

“Past fifty, I think.”

“Hélas! She’s vary old, then. Is she rich?”

“I don’t know. She has a place in Derbyshire.”

“Derbyshire⁠—that is one of your English counties, is it not?”

“Oh yes, Madame,” I answered, laughing. “I have said it to you twice since you came;” and I gabbled through the chief towns and rivers as catalogued in my geography.

“Bah! to be sure⁠—of course, cheaile. And is she your relation?”

“Papa’s first cousin.”

“Won’t you present-a me, pray?⁠—I would so like!”

Madame had fallen into the English way of liking people with titles, as perhaps foreigners would if titles implied the sort of power they do generally with us.

“Certainly, Madame.”

“You will not forget?”

“Oh no.”

Madame reminded me twice, in the course of the evening, of my promise. She was very eager on this point. But it is a world of disappointment, influenza, and rheumatics; and next morning Madame was prostrate in her bed, and careless of all things but flannel and James’s powder.

Madame was désolée; but she could not raise her head. She only murmured a question.

“For ’ow long time, dear, will Lady Knollys remain?”

“A very few days, I believe.”

“Hélas! ’ow onlucky! maybe tomorrow I shall be better. Ouah! my ear. The laudanum, dear cheaile!”

And so our conversation for that time ended, and Madame buried her head in her old red cashmere shawl.

IX Monica Knollys

Punctually Lady Knollys arrived. She was accompanied by her nephew, Captain Oakley.

They arrived a little before dinner; just in time to get to their rooms and dress. But Mary Quince enlivened my toilet with eloquent descriptions of the youthful Captain whom she had met in the gallery, on his way to his room, with the servant, and told me how he stopped to let her pass, and how “he smiled so ’ansom.”

I was very young then, you know, and more childish even than my years; but this talk of Mary Quince’s interested me, I must confess, considerably. I was painting all sort of portraits of this heroic soldier, while affecting, I am afraid, a hypocritical indifference to her narration, and I know I was very nervous and painstaking about my toilet that evening. When I went down to the drawing-room, Lady Knollys was there, talking volubly to my father as I entered⁠—a woman not really old, but such as very young people fancy aged⁠—energetic, bright, saucy, dressed handsomely in purple satin, with a good deal of lace, and a rich point⁠—I know not