— or anyone.”
I really was curious about Cormoran; but Cormoran was not to be defined to me by Milly; nor did she, in reality, know more than I respecting the arrival of the night before.
One day I was surprised to see Doctor Bryerly on the stairs. I was standing in a dark gallery as he walked across the floor of the lobby to my uncle’s door, his hat on, and some papers in his hand.
He did not see me; and when he had entered Uncle Silas’s door, I went down and found Milly awaiting me in the hall.
“So Doctor Bryerly is here,” I said.
“That’s the thin fellow, wi’ the sharp look, and the shiny black coat, that went up just now?” asked Milly.
“Yes, he’s gone into your papa’s room,” said I.
“‘Appen ’twas he come t’other night. He may be staying here, though we see him seldom, for it’s a barrack of a house — it is.”
The same thought had struck me for a moment, but was dismissed immediately. It certainly was not Doctor Bryerly’s figure which I had seen.
So, without any new light gathered from this apparition, we went on our way, and made our little sketch of the ruined bridge. We found the gate locked as before; and, as Milly could not persuade me to climb it, we got round the paling by the river’s bank.
While at our drawing, we saw the swarthy face, sooty locks, and old weather-stained red coat of Zamiel, who was glowering malignly at us from among the trunks of the forest trees, and standing motionless as a monumental figure in the side aisle of a cathedral. When we looked again he was gone.
Although it was a fine mild day for the wintry season, we yet, cloaked as we were, could not pursue so still an occupation as sketching for more than ten or fifteen minutes. As we returned, in passing a clump of trees, we heard a sudden outbreak of voices, angry and expostulatory; and saw, under the trees, the savage old Zamiel strike his daughter with his stick two great blows, one of which was across the head. “Beauty” ran only a short distance away while the swart old wood-demon stumped hastily after her, cursing and brandishing his cudgel.
My blood boiled. I was so shocked that for a moment I could not speak; but in a moment more I screamed —
“You brute! How dare you strike the poor girl?”
She had only run a few steps, and turned about confronting him and us, her eyes gleaming fire, her features pale and quivering to suppress a burst of weeping. Two little rivulets of blood were trickling over her temple.
“I say, fayther, look at that,” she said, with a strange tremulous smile, lifting her hand, which was smeared with blood.
Perhaps he was ashamed, and the more enraged on that account, for he growled another curse, and started afresh to reach her, whirling his stick in the air. Our voices, however, arrested him.
“My uncle shall hear of your brutality. The poor girl!”
“Strike him, Meg, if he does it again; and pitch his leg into the river to-night, when he’s asleep.”
“I’d serve you the same;” and out came an oath. “You’d have her lick her fayther, would ye? Look out!”
And he wagged his head with a scowl at Milly, and a flourish of his cudgel.
“Be quiet, Milly,” I whispered, for Milly was preparing for battle; and I again addressed him with the assurance that, on reaching home, I would tell my uncle how he had treated the poor girl.
“’Tis you she may thank for’t, a wheedling o’ her to open that gate,” he snarled.
“That’s a lie; we went round by the brook,” cried Milly.
I did not think proper to discuss the matter with him; and looking very angry, and, I thought, a little put out, he jerked and swayed himself out of sight. I merely repeated my promise of informing my uncle as he went, to which, over his shoulder, he bawled —
“Silas won’t mind ye that;” snapping his horny finger and thumb.
The girl remained where she had stood, wiping the blood off roughly with the palm of her hand, and looking at it before she rubbed it on her apron.
“My poor girl,” I said, “you must not cry. I’ll speak to my uncle about you.”
But she was not crying. She raised her head, and looked at us a little askance, with a sullen contempt, I thought.
“And you must have these apples — won’t you?” We had brought in our basket two or three of those splendid apples for which Bartram was famous.
I hesitated to go near her, these Hawkeses, Beauty and Pegtop, were such savages. So I rolled the apples gently along the ground to her feet.
She continued to look doggedly at us with the same expression, and kicked away the apples sullenly that approached her feet. Then, wiping her temple and forehead in her apron, without a word, she turned and walked slowly away.
“Poor thing! I’m afraid she leads a hard life. What strange, repulsive people they are!”
When we reached home, at the head of the great staircase old L’Amour was awaiting me; and with a courtesy, and very respectfully, she informed me that the Master would be happy to see me.
Could it be about my evidence as to the arrival of the mysterious chaise that he summoned me to this interview? Gentle as were his ways, there was something undefinable about Uncle Silas which inspired fear; and I should have liked few things less than meeting his gaze in the character of a culprit.
There was an uncertainty, too, as to the state in which I might find him, and a positive horror of beholding him again in the condition in which I had last seen him.
I entered the room, then, in some trepidation, but was instantly relieved. Uncle Silas was in the same health apparently, and, as nearly as I could recollect it, in precisely the same rather handsome though negligent garb in which I had first seen him.
Doctor Bryerly — what a marked and vulgar contrast, and yet, somehow, how reassuring! — sat at the table near him, and was tying up papers. His eyes watched me, I thought, with an anxious scrutiny as I approached; and I think it was not until I had saluted him that he recollected suddenly that he had not seen me before at Bartram, and stood up and greeted me in his usual abrupt and somewhat familiar way. It was vulgar and not cordial, and yet it was honest and indefinably kind.
Up rose my uncle, that strangely venerable, pale portrait, in his loose Rembrandt black velvet. How gentle, how benignant, how unearthly, and inscrutable!
“I need not say how she is. Those lilies and roses, Doctor Bryerly, speak their own beautiful praises of the air of Bartram. I almost regret that her carriage will be home so soon. I only hope it may not abridge her rambles. It positively does me good to look at her. It is the glow of flowers in winter, and the fragrance of a field which the Lord hath blessed.”
“Country air, Miss Ruthyn, is a right good kitchen to country fare. I like to see young women eat heartily. You have had some pounds of beef and mutton since I saw you last,” said Dr. Bryerly.
And
