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

wish to see him. I felt a horror even of the room, and for more than an hour after a kind of despair and terror, such as I have never experienced before or since at the idea of death.

Cousin Monica had had her bed placed in my room, and Mary Quince’s moved to the dressing-room adjoining it. For the first time the superstitious awe that follows death, but not immediately, visited me. The idea of seeing my father enter the room, or open the door and look in, haunted me. After Lady Knollys and I were in bed, I could not sleep. The wind sounded mournfully outside, and the small sounds, the rattlings, and strainings that responded from within, constantly startled me, and simulated the sounds of steps, of doors opening, of knockings, and so forth, rousing me with a palpitating heart as often as I fell into a doze.

At length the wind subsided, and these ambiguous noises abated, and I, fatigued, dropped into a quiet sleep. I was awakened by a sound in the gallery⁠—which I could not define. A considerable time had passed, for the wind was now quite lulled. I sat up in my bed a good deal scared, listening breathlessly for I knew not what.

I heard a step moving stealthily along the gallery. I called my cousin Monica softly; and we both heard the door of the room in which my father’s body lay unlocked, someone furtively enter, and the door shut.

“What can it be? Good Heavens, Cousin Monica, do you hear it?”

“Yes, dear; and it is two o’clock.”

Everyone at Knowl was in bed at eleven. We knew very well that Mrs. Rusk was rather nervous, and would not, for worlds, go alone, and at such an hour, to the room. We called Mary Quince. We all three listened, but we heard no other sound. I set these things down here because they made so terrible an impression upon me at the time.

It ended by our peeping out, all three in a body, upon the gallery. Through each window in the perspective came its blue sheet of moonshine; but the door on which our attention was fixed was in the shade, and we thought we could discern the glare of a candle through the keyhole. While in whispers we were debating this point together, the door opened, the dusky light of a candle emerged, the shadow of a figure crossed it within, and in another moment the mysterious Doctor Bryerly⁠—angular, ungainly, in the black cloth coat that fitted little better than a coffin⁠—issued from the chamber, candle in hand; murmuring, I suppose, a prayer⁠—it sounded like a farewell⁠—as much frightened as if I had just seen a sorcerer stealing stepped cautiously upon the gallery floor, shutting and locking the door upon the dead; and then having listened for a second, the saturnine figure, casting a gigantic and distorted shadow upon the ceiling and sidewall from the lowered candle, strode lightly down the long dark passage, away from us.

I can only speak for myself, and I can honestly say that I felt as much frightened as if I had just seen a sorcerer stealing from his unhallowed business. I think Cousin Monica was also affected in the same way, for she turned the key on the inside of the door when we entered. I do not think one of us believed at the moment that what we had seen was a Doctor Bryerly of flesh and blood, and yet the first thing we spoke of in the morning was Doctor Bryerly’s arrival. The mind is a different organ by night and by day.

XXIII I Talk with Doctor Bryerly

Doctor Bryerly had, indeed, arrived at half-past twelve o’clock at night. His summons at the hall-door was little heard at our remote side of the old house of Knowl; and when the sleepy, half-dressed servant opened the door, the lank Doctor, in glossy black clothing, was standing alone, his portmanteau on its end upon the steps, and his vehicle disappearing in the shadows of the old trees.

In he came, sterner and sharper of aspect than usual.

“I’ve been expected? I’m Doctor Bryerly. Haven’t I? So, let whoever is in charge of the body be called. I must visit it forthwith.”

So the Doctor sat in the back drawing-room, with a solitary candle; and Mrs. Rusk was called up, and, grumbling much and very peevish, dressed and went down, her ill-temper subsiding in a sort of fear as she approached the visitor.

“How do you do, Madam? A sad visit this. Is anyone watching in the room where the remains of your late master are laid?”

“No.”

“So much the better; it is a foolish custom. Will you please conduct me to the room? I must pray where he lies⁠—no longer he! And be good enough to show me my bedroom, and so no one need wait up, and I shall find my way.”

Accompanied by the man who carried his valise, Mrs. Rusk showed him to his apartment; but he only looked in, and then glanced rapidly about to take “the bearings” of the door.

“Thank you⁠—yes. Now we’ll proceed, here, along here? Let me see. A turn to the right and another to the left⁠—yes. He has been dead some days. Is he yet in his coffin?”

“Yes, sir; since yesterday afternoon.”

Mrs. Rusk was growing more and more afraid of this lean figure sheathed in shining black cloth, whose eyes glittered with a horrible sort of cunning, and whose long brown fingers groped before him, as if indicating the way by guess.

“But, of course, the lid’s not on; you’ve not screwed him down, hey?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s well. I must look on the face as I pray. He is in his place; I here on earth. He in the spirit; I in the flesh. The neutral ground lies there. So are carried the vibrations, and so the light of earth and heaven reflected back and forward⁠—apaugasma, a wonderful though helpless engine, the ladder of Jacob, and behold