Uncle Silas | Page 5

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 well, and your Italian; but you have no German. Your music may be pretty good--I'm no judge--but your drawing might be better--yes--yes. I believe 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 well. 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 Ellerton left you--too long without a teacher.'
Then followed an interval.
'Dr. Bryerly will 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 seldom came, and was very transitory, and kindly though mysterious.
'True, child; I'm glad you are so wise; that, you will find, I have provided for, and you shall know exactly where to look. You have remarked how solitarily I live. 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 silently whether it could be Uncle Silas.
'He'll 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 little journey with him. You'll not be afraid of being left alone for a time?'
'And have you promised, sir?' I answered, with another question, my curiosity and anxiety overcoming my awe. He took my questioning very good-humouredly.
'Well--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 have 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 habitually abrupt and odd way of talking, would have fancied that he was possibly a little 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 little.
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 t��te-a-t��tes 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 house of some one of our country neighbours, and occasionally a visitor--but this, I must own, very rarely--at Knowl.
There had come now a little 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 goods--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 filled in