Uncle Silas: a tale of Bartram-Haugh

Front matter

% SDak 0s 5§arlram-Pau0^ LONDON PRINTED BY S POTT I S WO O D £ AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE UNCLE SILAS: Jl fait of §artram-|attg|. BT J. S. LE FANU AUTHOR OP 'WTLDER'S HAND,' 'THE, HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD,' ETC. NF.W EDITION. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1865. [The right of Translation in reserved.] MADAME DE LA ROUGIERRE AT AUSTIN RUTHYN'S DESK. UNCLE SILAS. BU J. SHERIDAN LE FANU. HUfo ©biticn. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1865. TO THE RIGHT HON. THE COUNTESS OF GIFFORD, AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT, SYMPATHY, AND ADMIRATION, &|jis sale IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOE. A PRELIMINARY WORD. The writer of this Tale ventures, in Iris own person, to address a very few words, chiefly of explanation, to his readers. A leading situation in this ' Story of Bartram-Haugh ' is repeated, with a slight variation, from a short magazine tale of some fifteen pages written by him, and published long ago in a periodical under the title of ' A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess,' and afterwards, still anonymously, in a small volume under an altered title.

It is very unlikely that any of his readers should have encountered, and still more so that they should remember, this trifle. The bare possibility, however, he has ventured to anticipate by this brief explana\ tion, lest he should be charged with plagiarism — always a disrespect to a reader. May he be permitted a few words also of remonstrance against the promiscuous application of the term ' sensation ' to that large school of fiction which transgresses no one of those canons of construction and morality which, in producing tlie unapproachable ' Waverley Novels,' their great author im posed upon himself? No one, it is assumed, would describe Sir Walter Scott's romances as ' sensation novels ; ' yet in that marvellous series there is not a single tale in which death, crime, and, in some form, mystery, have not a place.

A PRELIMINARY WORD. Passing by those grand romances of ' Ivanhoe,' ' Old Mortality,' and ' Kenil worth,' with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed, constructed with so fine a mastery of the art of exciting suspense and horror, let the reader pick out those two exceptional novels in the series which profess to paint contemporary manners and the scenes of common hfe ; and remembering in the ' Antiquary ' the vision in the tapestried chamber, the duel, the horrible secret, and the death of old Elspeth, the drowned fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tide-bound party under the cliffs ; and in ' St. Ronan's Well,' the long-drawn mystery, the suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide ; — determine whether an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scott's stories, is fairly applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, yet observe the same limitations of incident, and the same moral aims.

Chapter I. Austin Ruthyn, Op Knowl, And His Daughter

It was winter — that is, about the second week in November — and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thun dering among our taU trees and ivied chimneys — a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceil ing, in small ebony panels ; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the tea-table ; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken tho room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawing-room. ft was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped.

A girl, of a httle more than seventeen, looking, I beheve, younger stiU ; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl. The only other person m tne room — the only person in the house related to me — was my father. He wm Mr. Ruthyn. of Knowl, so called in his county, but he had aiany other places, was B of a very ancient lineage, who had refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and purer of blood than two-thirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was said, they had been invited to enter. Of all thi7 family lore I knew but little and vaguely ; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of old retainers in the nursery.

I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early disappointed in Parlia ment, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely weU. Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a coUector ; took a part, on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this niiniu; government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman, but rather of a ci-udent, staying some times at one of his places and sometimes at another, and riving a secluded life. Rather late in life he married, and his beautiful young wife died, leaving me, their only chUd, to his care.

This bereavement, I have been told, changed him — made him more odd and taciturn than ever, and his temper also, except to me, more severe. There was also some disgrace about his younger brother — my uncle SUas -which he felt bitterly. He m now walking up and down this spacious old room, which, extending round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his wont to walk up and down thus, without speaking — an exercise which used to remind me of Chateau briand's father in the great chamber of the Chateau de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a bach ground of shadow, and then again in sUence faded nearly out of view. . This monotony and sUence would have been terrifying to person less accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect.

I have known my father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very much, I was also much in awe of him. While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed routine, that a very trifling occurwas enough to set people wondering and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable seclusion ; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl ; and I don't think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned among us. There was not even that mUd religious bustle which sometimes besets the wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a Swedenborgian.

But ha did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the old housekeeper, Mrs. Rusk, aud myself to the parish church every Sunday. And my father, in the view of the honest rector who shook his head over him — ' a cloud without water, carried about of winds, and a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness ' — corresponded with the ' minister ' of his church, and was provokingly contented with his own fertility and illumination ; and Mrs. Rusk, who was a sound and bitter churchwoman, said he fancied he saw visions and talked with angels hke the rest of that 'rubbitch.' I don't know that she had any better foimdation than analogy and conjecture for charging my father with supernatural preten sions ; and in all points when her orthodoxy was not concerned, she loved her master and was a loyal housekeeper.

I found her one morning superintending preparations for the reception of a visitor, in the hunting-room it was caUed, from tho pieces of tapestry that covered its walls, representing scenes « la Wouvermans, of falconry, and the chase, dogs, hawks, ladies, gal lants, and pages. In the midst of whom Mrs. Rusk, in black silk, was rummaging drawers, counting linen, and issuing orders. b2 ' Who is coming, Mrs. Rusk ? ' Wei), she only knew his name. It was a Mr. Bryerly. My papa expected him to dinner, and to stay for some days. 'I guess he's one of those creatures, dear, for I mentioned his name just to Dr. Clay (the rector), and he says there is a Doctor Bryerly, a great conjurer among the Swedenborg suet— and that's him, I do suppose.' In my hazv notions of these sectaries there was mingled a suspicion of necromancy, and a weird freemasonry, that inspired some thing of awe and antipathy.

Mr. Bryerly arrived time enough to dress at his leisure, before dinner. He entered the drawing-room — a tall, lean man, all in ungainly black, with a white choker, with either a black wig, or black hair dressed in imitation of one, a pair of spectacles, and a dark, sharp, short visage, rubbing his large hands together, and with a short brisk nod to me, whom he plainly regarded merely as a child, he sat down before the fire, crossed his legs, and took up a magazine. This treatment was mortifying, and I remember very well the resentment of which he was quite unconscious. His stay was not very long ; not one of us divined the object of his visit, and he did not prepossess us favourably. He seemed restless, as men of busy habits do in countryhouses, and took walks, and a drive, and read in the library, and wrote half a dozen letters.

His bed-room and dressing-room were at the side of the gaUery, directly opposite to my father's, which had a sort of aute-room en suite, in which were some of his theological books. The day after Mr. Bryerly's arrival, 1 was about to see whether my father's water earaffe and glass had been duly laid on the table in this ante-room, and in doubt whether he was there, I knocked at the door. I suppose they were too intent on other matters to hear, but receiving no answer, I entered the room. My father was sittin" in his chair, with his coat and waistcoat off, Mr. Bryerly kneeling on a stool beside him, rather facing him, his black scratch wi? leaning close to my father's grizzled hair. There was a large tome of their divinity lore, I suppose, open on the table close by. The lank black figure of Mr. Bryerly stood up, and he, concealed something quickly in the breast of his coat.

My father stood up also, looking paler, I think, than I ever saw him till then, and he pointed grimly to the door, and said, ' Go.' Mr. Bryerly pushed me gently back with his hands to my shoulders, and smiled down from his dark features with an expres sion quite unintelligible to rae. I had recovered myself in a second, and withdrew without 3 word. The last thing I saw at the door was the tall, shin figure in black, and the dark, significant smile following me : and then the door was shut and locked, and the two Swedcnborgians weTe left to their mysteries. I remember so weU the kind of shock and disgust I felt in the certainty that I had surprised them at some, perhaps, debasing incantation — a suspicion of this Mr. Bryerly, of the ill-fitting black coat, and white choker — and a sort of fear came upon me, and I fancied he was asserting some kind of mastery over my father, which very much alarmed me.

I fancied all sorts of dangers in the enigmatical smile of the lank high-priest. The image of my father, as I had seen him, it might be, confessing to this man in black, who was I knew not what, haunted me with the disagreeable uncertainties of a mind very uninstrueted as to the limits of the marveUous. I mentioned it to no one. But I was immensely relieved when the sinister visitor took his departure the morning after, and it was upon this occurrence that my mind was now employed. Some one said that Dr. Johnson resembled a ghost, who must be spoken to before it will speak. But my father, in whatever else he may have resembled a ghost, did not in that particular; for no one but I in his household — and I very seldom — dared to address him until first addressed by him. I had no notion how singular this was until I began to go out a little among friends and relations, and found no such rule in force anywhere else.

As I leaned back in my chair thinking, this phantasm of my father came, and turned, and vanished with a solemn regularity. It was a peculiar figure, strongly made, thick-set, with a face large, and very stern ; he wore a loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an elderly rather than an old man — though he was then past seventy — but firm, and with no sign of feebleness. I remember the start with which, not suspecting that he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw that large, rugged counte nance looking fixedly on me, from less than a yard away. After I saw him, he continued to regard me for a second or two ; and then, taking one of the heavy candlesticks in his gnarled hand, he beckoned me to follow him ; which, in silence and won dering, I accordingly did.

He led me across the hall, where there were rights burning, and into a lobby by the foot of the back stairs, and so into his library. It is a long, narrow room, with two tall, slim windows at the far end, now draped in dark curtains. Dusky it was with but one candle ; and he paused near the door, at the left-hand side of which stood, in those days, an old-fashioned press or cabinet of carved oak. In front of this he stopped. He had odd, absent ways, and talked more to himself, I beheve, than to all the rest of the world put together. ' She won't understand,' he whispered, looking at me enquirmarlv. ' No, she won't. WiU she ? ' Then there was a pause, during which he brought forth from his breast pocket a smaU bunch of some half-dozen k-ws, on one of which he looked frowningly, every now and then balancing it a little before his eyes, between his finger and thumb, as he delibe rated.

I knew him too weU, of course, to interpose a word. ' They are easily frightened — ay, they are. I'd better do it another way.' And pausing; he looked in my face as he might upon a picture. ' They are — yes — I had better do it another way — another way ; yes — and she'll not suspect — she'll not suppose.' Then he looked steadfastly upon the key, and from it to me, suddenly lifting it up, and said abruptly, ' See, child,' and, after a second or two, ' Remember this key.' It was oddly shaped, and unlike others. ' Yes, sir.' I always caUed him ' sir.' ' It opens that,' and he tapped it sharply on the door of the cabinet. ' In the daytime it is always here,' at which word he dropped it into his pocket again. ' You see ? — and at night under my piUow — you hear me ? ' 'Yes, sir.' 'You won't forget this cabinet — oak — next the door— on your left — you won't forget ? ' 'No, sir.' ' Pity she s a girl, and so young — ay, a girl, and so young — no sense — giddy.

You say, you'U remember ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' It behoves you.' He turned round and looked full upon me, hke a man who has taken a sudden resolution ; and I think for a moment he had made up his mind to teU me a great deal more. But if so, he changed it again ; and after another pause, he said slowly and sternly — ' You will teU ?;obodv what I have said, under pain of my displeasure.' ' Oh ! no, sir ! ' 'GoodcMld!' 'Except,' he resumed, 'under one contingency; that is, in case I should be abseut, and Dr. Bryerly — you recoUect the thin gentle man, in spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last month — should come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my absence.' ' Yes, sir.' So he kissed me on the forehead, and said — ' Let us return.' Which, accordingly, we did, in silence ; the storm outside, like a dirge on a great organ, accompanying our flitting.

Chapter II. Uncle Silas

When we reached the drawing-room, I resumed my chair, and my father his slow and regular walk to and fro, in the great room. Perhaps it was the uproar ofthe wind that disturbed the ordinary tc-nor of his thoughts ; but, whatever was the cause, certainly he was unusuaUy talkative that night. After an interval of nearly half an hour, he drew near again, and sat down in a high-backed arm-chair, beside the fire, and nearly opposite to me, and looked at me steadfastly for some time, as was his wont, before speaking ; and said he— 'This won't do — you must have a governess.' In cases of this kind I merely set down my book or work, as it might be, and adjusted myself to listen without speaking. ' Your French is pretty weU, and your Itahan ; but you have no German. Your music may be pretty good — I'm no judge — but your drawing might bo better — yes — yes.

I beheve there are accomplished ladies — finishing governesses, they call them — who undertake more than any one teacher would have professed in my time, and do very weU. She can prepare you, and next winter, then, you shall visit France and Italy, where you may be accomplished as highly as you please.' ' Thank you, sir.' 'You shall. It is nearly six months since Miss EUerton left you — too long without a teacher.' Then followed an interval. ' Dr. Bryerly wiU ask you about that key, and what it opens; you show all that to him, and no one else.' ' But,' I said, for I had a great terror of disobeying him in ever so minute a matter, ' you will then be absent, sir — how am I to find the key ? ' He smiled on me suddenly— a bright but wintry smile — it sel dom came, and was very transitory, and kindly though mysterious. ' True, child ; I'm glad you are so wise ; that, you wiU find, I have provided for, and you shall know exactly where to look.

You have remarked how solitarily I Uve. You fancy, perhaps, I have not got a friend, and you are nearly right — nearly, but not altogether. I have a very sure friend — one — a friend whom I once misunderstood, but now appreciate.' I wondered sUently whether it could be Uncle Silas. 'He'U make me a call, some day soon ; I'm not quite sure when. I won't tell you his name — you'll hear that soon enough, and I don't want it talked of; and I must make a httle journey with him. You'll not be afraid of being left alone for a time ? ' 1 And have you promised, sir ? ' I answered, with another question, my curiosity and anxiety overcoming my awe. He took my questioning very good-humouredly. ' WeU— promise ? — no, child ; but I'm under condition ; he's not to be denied. I must make the excursion with him the moment he calls.

I haye no choice ; but, on the whole, I rather like it — remember, I say, I rather like it.' And he smiled again, with the same meaning, that was at once stern and sad. The exact purport of these sentences remained fixed in my mind, so that even at this distance of time I am quite sure of them. A person quite unacquainted with my father's habituaUy abrupt and odd way of talking, would have fancied that he was possibly a httle disordered in his mind. But no such suspicion for a moment troubled me. I was quite sure that he spoke of a real person who was coming, and that his journey was something momentous ; and when the visitor of whom he spoke did come, and he departed with him upon that mysterious excursion, I perfectly understood his language and his reasons for saying so much and yet so httle.

You are not to suppose that all my hours were passed in the sort of conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and singular and even awful as were sometimes my tete-a-tetes with my father, I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary Quince, my somewhat ancient maid ; and besides all this, I had now and then a visit of a week or so at the hoose of some one of our county neighbours, and occasionally a visitor — but this, I must own, very rarely — at Knowl. There had come now a httle pause in my father's revelations, and my fancy wandered away upon a flight of discovery.

Who, I again thought, could this intending visitor be, who was to come. armed with the prerogative to make my stay-at-home father forthwith leave his household gods — his books and his child — to whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knight-errantry ? Who but Uncle Silas, I thought — that mysterious relative whom I had never seen — who was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me, unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably vicious — whom I had seldom heard my father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my father's opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have fiUed in the character very nearly as I pleased. It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oak-room, I being then about fourteen.

She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herself — she had been stooping over her work — and threw her head back, for her neck was weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung before her. It was a full-length, and represented a singularly handsome young man, dark, slender, elegant, in a costume then quite obsolete, though I believe it was seen at the beginning of this century — white leather pantaloons and top-boots, a buff waistcoat, and a chocolate-coloured coat, and the hair long and brushed back. There was a remarkable elegance and a delicacy in the features, but also a character of resolution and ability that quite took the portrait out of the category of mere fops or fine men. When people looked ut it for the first time, I have so often heard the exclamation — ' What a wonderfully handsome man ! ' and then, ' What a clever face ! ' An Italian greyhound stood by him, and some slender columns and a rich drapery in the background.

But though the accessories were of the luxurious sort, and the beauty, as I have said, refined, there was a masculine force in that slender oval face, and a lire in the large, shadowy eyes, which were very peculiar, and quite redeemed it from the suspicion of effemi nacy. ' Is not that Uncle SUas ? ' said I. 'Yes, dear,' answered Mrs. Rusk, looking, with her resolute httle face, quietly on the portrait. ' He must be a very handsome man, Mrs. Rusk. Don't you think so ? ' I continued. ' He was, my dear — yes ; but it is forty years since that was painted — the date is there in the corner, in the shadow that comes from his foot, and forty years, I can teU you, makes a change in most of us ; ' and Mrs. Rusk laughed, in cynical good-humour. There was a little pause, both stril looking on the handsome man in top-boots, and I said — 'And why, Mrs. Rusk, is papa always so sad about Uncle Silas?' ' What 's that, chUd ? ' said my father's voice, very near.

I looked round, with a start, and flushed and faltered, receding a step from him. ' No harm, dear. You have said nothing wrong,' he said gently, observing my alarm. ' You said I was always sad, I think, about Uncle SUas. WeU, I don't know how you gather that ; but if I were, I will now teU you, it would not be unnatural. Your uncle is a man of great talents, great faults, and great wrongs. His talents have not availed him; his faults are long ago repented of; aud his wrongs I believe he feels less than I do, but they are deep. Did she say any more, madam ? ' he demanded abruptly of Mrs. Rusk. ' Nothing, sir,' with a stiff httle courtesy, answered Mrs. Rusk, who stood in awe of him. ' And there is no need, chUd,' he continued, addressing himself to me, ' that you should think more of him at present.

Clear your head of Uncle Silas. One day, perhaps, you will know him— yes, very well — and understand how villains have injured him.' Then my father retired, and at the door he said — ' Mrs. Rusk, a word, if you please,' beckoning to that lady, who trotted after him to the library. I think he then laid some injunction upon the housekeeper, which was transmitted by her to Mary Quince, for from that time forth I could never lead either to talk with me about Uncle Silas. They let me talk on, but were reserved and silent themselves, and seemed embarrassed, and Mrs. Rusk sometimes pettish and angry, when I pressed for information. Thus curiosity was piqued ; and round the slender portrait in the leather pantaloons and top-boots gathered many-coloured circles of mystery, and the handsome features seemed to smde down upon my baffled curiosity with a provoking significance.

Why is it that this form of ambition — curiosity — which entered into the temptation of our first parent, is so specially hard to resist ? Knowledge is power — and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls ; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.

CHAPTER ILL

A NEW PACE. 1 think it was about a fortnight after that conversation in which my father had expressed his opinion, and given me the mysterious charge about the old oak cabinet in his library, as already detailed, that I was one night sitting at the great drawing-roora window, lost in the melancholy reveries of night, and in admiration of the moonlighted scene. I was the only occupant of the room ; and the lights near the fire, at its farther end, hardly reached to the window at which I sat. The shorn grass sloped gently downward from the windows tiU it met the broad level on which stood, in clumps, or solitarily scattered, some of the noblest timber in England. Hoar in the moon beams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass, and in the background crowning the, undulations of the distance, in masses, were piled those woods among which lay the solitary tomb where the remains of my beloved mother rested.

The air was stUl. The sUvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious woods, which formed the background of the picture, my thoughts recurred to my father's mysterious inti mations and the image of the approaching visitor ; and the thought of the unknown journey saddened me. In all that concerned his reUgion, from very early association, there was to me something of the unearthly and spectral. When my dear mamma died I was not nine years old ; and I remember, two days before the funeral, there came to Knowl, where she died, a thin httle man, with large black eyes, and a very grave, dark face.