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 t.i.tle, 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 her questionable doctrine. Milly"s reverence for her instructor, and his admiration, grew daily; and he was known among us as Milly"s confessor.
He took luncheon with us on the day of our departure, and with an adroit privacy, which in a layman would have been sly, presented her, in right of his holy calling, with a little book, the binding of which was mediaeval and costly, and whose letter-press dealt in a way which he commended, with some points on which she was not satisfactory; and she found on the fly-leaf this little inscription:--"Presented to Miss Millicent Ruthyn by an earnest well-wisher, 1st December 1844." A text, very neatly penned, followed this; and the "presentation" was made unctiously indeed, but with a blush, as well as the accustomed smile, and with eyes that were lowered.
The early crimson sun of December had gone down behind the hills before we took our seats in the carriage.
Lord Ilbury leaned with his elbow on the carriage window, looking in, and he said to me--
"I really don"t know what we shall do, Miss Ruthyn; we shall all feel so lonely. For myself, I think I shall run away to Grange."
This appeared to me as nearly perfect eloquence as human lips could utter.
His hand still rested on the window, and the Rev. Sprigge Biddlepen was standing with a saddened smirk on the door steps, when the whip smacked, the horses scrambled into motion, and away we rolled down the avenue, leaving behind us the pleasantest house and hostess in the world, and trotting fleetly into darkness towards Bartram-Haugh.
We were both rather silent. Milly had her book in her lap, and I saw her every now and then try to read her "earnest well-wisher"s" little inscription, but there was not light to read by.
When we reached the great gate of Bartram-Haugh it was dark. Old Crowl, who kept the gate, I heard enjoining the postilion to make no avoidable noise at the hall-door, for the odd but startling reason that he believed my uncle "would be dead by this time."
Very much shocked and frightened, we stopped the carriage, and questioned the tremulous old porter.
Uncle Silas, it seemed, had been "silly-ish" all yesterday, and "could not be woke this morning," and "the doctor had been here twice, being now in the house."
"Is he better?" I asked, tremblingly.
"Not as I"m aweer on, Miss; he lay at G.o.d"s mercy two hours agone; "appen he"s in heaven be this time."
"Drive on--drive fast," I said to the driver. "Don"t be frightened, Milly; please Heaven we shall find all going well."
After some delay, during which my heart sank, and I quite gave up Uncle Silas, the aged little servant-man opened the door, and trotted shakily down the steps to the carriage side.
Uncle Silas had been at death"s door for hours; the question of life had trembled in the scale; but now the doctor said "he might do."
"Where was the doctor?"
"In master"s room; he blooded him three hours agone."
I don"t think that Milly was so frightened as I. My heart beat, and I was trembling so that I could hardly get upstairs.
CHAPTER XLIV
_A FRIEND ARISES_
At the top of the great staircase I was glad to see the friendly face of Mary Quince, who stood, candle in hand, greeting us with many little courtesies, and a very haggard and pallid smile.
"Very welcome, Miss, hoping you are very well."
"All well, and you are well, Mary? and oh! tell us quickly how is Uncle Silas?"
"We thought he was gone, Miss, this morning, but doing fairly now; doctor says in a trance like. I was helping old Wyat most of the day, and was there when doctor blooded him, an" he spoke at last; but he must be awful weak, he took a deal o" blood from his arm, Miss; I held the basin."
"And he"s better--decidedly better?" I asked.
"Well, he"s better, doctor says; he talked some, and doctor says if he goes off asleep again, and begins a-snoring like he did before, we"re to loose the bandage, and let him bleed till he comes to his self again; which, it seems to me and Wyat, is the same thing a"most as saying he"s to be killed off-hand, for I don"t believe he has a drop to spare, as you"ll say likewise, Miss, if you"ll please look in the basin."
This was not an invitation with which I cared to comply. I thought I was going to faint. I sat on the stairs and sipped a little water, and Quince sprinkled a little in my face, and my strength returned.
Milly must have felt her father"s danger more than I, for she was affectionate, and loved him from habit and relation, although he was not kind to her. But I was more nervous and more impetuous, and my feelings both stimulated and overpowered me more easily. The moment I was able to stand I said--thinking of nothing but the one idea--
"We must see him--_come_, Milly."
I entered his sitting-room; a common "dip" candle hanging like the tower of Pisa all to one side, with a dim, long wick, in a greasy candlestick, profaned the table of the fastidious invalid. The light was little better than darkness, and I crossed the room swiftly, still transfixed by the one idea of seeing my uncle.
His bed-room door beside the fireplace stood partly open, and I looked in.
Old Wyat, a white, high-cauled ghost, was pottering in her slippers in the shadow at the far side of the bed. The doctor, a stout little bald man, with a paunch and a big bunch of seals, stood with his back to the fireplace, which corresponded with that in the next room, eyeing his patient through the curtains of the bed with a listless sort of importance.
The head of the large four-poster rested against the opposite wall. Its foot was presented toward the fireplace; but the curtains at the side, which alone I could see from my position, were closed.