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you shall have time, your own time, to think. I will accept no answer now — no, none, Maud.”
He said this, raising his thin hand to silence me.
“There, Maud, enough. I have spoken, as I always do to you, frankly, perhaps too frankly; but agony and despair will speak out, and plead, even with the most obdurate and cruel.”
With these words Uncle Silas entered his bed-chamber, and shut the door, not violently, but with a resolute hand, and I thought I heard a cry.
I hastened to my own room. I threw myself on my knees, and thanked Heaven for the firmness vouchsafed me; I could not believe it to have been my own.
I was more miserable in consequence of this renewed suit on behalf of my odious cousin than I can describe. My uncle had taken such a line of importunity that it became a sort of agony to resist. I thought of the possibility of my hearing of his having made away with himself, and was every morning relieved when I heard that he was still as usual. I have often wondered since at my own firmness. In that dreadful interview with my uncle I had felt, in the whirl and horror of mind, on the very point of submitting, just as nervous people are said to throw themselves over precipices through sheer dread of falling.
Chapter 51.
Sarah Matilda Comes to Light
SOME TIME after this interview, one day as I sat, sad enough, in my room, looking listlessly from the window, with good Mary Quince, whom, whether in the house or in my melancholy rambles, I always had by my side, I was startled by the sound of a loud and shrill female voice, in violent hysterical action, gabbling with great rapidity, sobbing, and very nearly screaming in a sort of fury.
I started up, staring at the door.
“Lord bless us!” cried honest Mary Quince, with round eyes and mouth agape, staring in the same direction.
“Mary — Mary, what can it be?”
“Are they beating some one down yonder? I don’t know where it comes from,” gasped Quince.
“I will — I will — I’ll see her. It’s her I want. Oo — hoo — hoo — hoo — oo — o — Miss Maud Ruthyn of Knowl. Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Hoo — hoo — hoo — hoo — oo!”
“What on earth can it be?” I exclaimed, in great bewilderment and terror.
It was now plainly very near indeed, and Ii heard the voice of our mild and shaky butler evidently remonstrating with the distressed damsel.
“I’ll see her,” she continued, pouring a torrent of vile abuse upon me, which stung me with a sudden sense of anger What had I done to be afraid of anyone? How dared anyone in my uncle’s house — in my house — mix my name up with her detestable scurrilities?
“For Heaven’s sake, Miss, don’t ye go out,” cried poor Quince; “it’s some drunken creature.”
But I was very angry, and, like a fool as I was, I threw open the door, exclaiming in a loud and haughty key —
“Here is Miss Ruthyn of Knowl. Who wants to see her?”
A pink and white young lady, with black tresses, violent, weeping, shrill, voluble, was flouncing up the last stair, and shook her dress out on the lobby; and poor old Giblets, as Milly used to call him, was following in her wake, with many small remonstrances and entreaties, perfectly unheeded.
The moment I looked at this person, it struck me that she was the identical lady whom I had seen in the carriage at Knowl Warren. The next moment I was in doubt; the next, still more so. She was decidedly thinner, and dressed by no means in such lady-like taste. Perhaps she was hardly like her at all. I began to distrust all these resemblances, and to fancy, with a shudder, that they originated, perhaps, only in my own sick brain.
On seeing me, this young lady — as it seemed to me, a good deal of the barmaid or lady’s-maid species — dried her eyes fiercely, and, with a flaming countenance, called upon me peremptorily to produce her “lawful husband.” Her loud, insolent, outrageous attack had the effect of enhancing my indignation, and I quite forget what I said to her, but I well remember that her manner became a good deal more decent. She was plainly under the impression that I wanted to appropriate her husband, or, at least, that he wanted to marry me; and she ran on at such a pace, and her harangue was so passionate, incoherent, and unintelligible, that I thought her out of her mind; she was far from it, however. I think if she had allowed me even a second for reflection, I should have hit upon her meaning. As it was, nothing could exceed my perplexity, until, plucking a soiled newspaper from her pocket, she indicated a particular paragraph, already sufficiently emphasised by double lines of red ink at its sides. It was a Lancashire paper, of about six weeks since, and very much worn and soiled for its age. I remember in particular a circular stain from the bottom of a vessel, either of coffee or brown stout. The paragraph was as follows, recording an event a year or more anterior to the date of the paper:—
“MARRIAGE. — On Tuesday, August 7, 18 — at Leatherwig Church, by the Rev. Arthur Hughes, Dudley R. Ruthyn, Esq., only son and heir of Silas Ruthyn, Esq., of Bartram–Haugh, Derbyshire, to Sarah Matilda, second daughter of John Mangles, Esq., of Wiggan, in this county.”
At first I read nothing but amazement in this announcement, but in another moment felt how completely I was relieved; and showing, I believe, my intense satisfaction in my countenance — for the young lady eyed me with considerable surprise and curiosity — I said —
“This is extremely important. You must see Mr. Silas Ruthyn this moment. I am certain he knows nothing of it. I will conduct you to him.”
“No more he does — I know that myself,” she replied, following me with a self-asserting swagger, and a great rustling of cheap silk.
As we entered, Uncle Silas looked up from his sofa, and closed his Revue des Deux Mondes.
“What is all this?” he enquired, drily.
“This lady has brought with her a newspaper containing an extraordinary statement which affects our family,” I answered.
Uncle Silas raised himself, and looked with a hard, narrow scrutiny at the unknown young lady.
“A libel, I suppose, in the paper?” he said, extending his hand for it.
“No, uncle — no; only a marriage,” I answered.
“Not Monica?” he said, as he took it. “Pah, it smells all over of tobacco and beer,” he added, throwing a little eau de Cologne over it.
He raised it with a mixture of curiosity and disgust, saying again “pah,” as he did so.
He read the paragraph, and as he did his face changed from white, all over, to lead colour. He raised his eyes, and looked steadily for some seconds at the young lady, who seemed a little awed by his strange presence.
“And you are, I suppose, the young lady, Sarah Matilda née Mangles, mentioned in this little paragraph?” he said, in a tone you would have called a sneer, were it not that it trembled.
Sarah Matilda assented.
“My son is, I dare say, within reach. It so happens that I wrote to arrest his journey, and summon him here, some days since — some days since — some days since,” he repeated slowly, like a person whose mind has wandered far away from the theme on which he is speaking.
He had rung his bell, and old Wyat, always hovering about his rooms, entered.
“I want my son, immediately. If not in the house, send Harry to the stables; if not there, let him be followed, instantly. Brice is an active fellow, and will know where to find him. If he is in Feltram, or at a distance, let Brice take a horse, and Master Dudley can ride it back. He must be here without the loss of one moment.”
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