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Bustle, or anything you like. You must. I was blubbering like Milly, and hugging my best; and, indeed, I wonder how we kept our feet. So Milly and I were better friends than ever. Meanwhile, the winter deepened, and we had short days and long nights, and long fireside gossipings at Bartram-Haugh. I was frightened at the frequency of the strange collapses to which Uncle Silas was subject.
Having learned that my departure from Knowl was to be so very soon, she resolved not to leave me before the day of my journey to Bartram-Haugh; and as day after day passed by, and the hour of our leave-taking approached, she became more and more kind and affectionate. A feverish and sorrowful interval it was to me.
All the time Doctor Bryerly was relating his conference with the head of the family at Bartram-Haugh my cousin commented on the narrative with a variety of little 'pishes' and sneers, which I thought showed more of vexation than contempt. I was glad to hear all that Doctor Bryerly related. It gave me a kind of confidence; and I experienced a momentary reaction.
The purchase was partly an indication of the trepidations of that period Of my life. At all events, I had her pin and she my pound, and I venture to say I was the gladder of the two. It was moonlight when we reached Bartram-Haugh. It had a forlorn character of desertion and decay, contrasting almost awfully with the grandeur of its proportions and richness of its architecture.
She was to be for the Christmas at Elverston, and that was only six miles away from Bartram-Haugh, so I had the excitement of a pleasant look forward. She also said that she would include poor Milly in her invitation; and a vision of Captain Oakley rose before me, with his handsome gaze turned in wonder on poor Milly, for whom I had begun to feel myself responsible.
Uncle Silas was terribly ill when we returned to Bartram-Haugh, the result of an overdose of opium; but for the doctor's aid he would have died. Remembering how desperate Lady Knollys had told me his monetary position was, a new and dreadful suspicion began to haunt me. "Had he attempted to poison himself?" I remember I was left alone with him while his attendant fetched a fresh candle.
Suspicion might not have been excited for a year after my death, and then would never, in all probability, have pointed to Bartram as the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Rougierre was unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of Bartram-Haugh.
He read it to you, eh? 'No, sir. 'Oh, but he told you so much as relates to you and your uncle, Mr. Silas Ruthyn, of Bartram-Haugh? 'No, indeed, sir. 'Ha! I wish he had. And with these words Doctor Bryerly's countenance darkened. 'Mr. Silas Ruthyn is a religious man? 'Oh, very! said I. 'You've seen a good deal of him? 'No, I never saw him, I answered. 'H'm? Odder and odder!
Sometimes to these dreadful evidences I abandoned my soul. Sometimes, reading Cousin Monica's sunny letter, the sky would clear, and my terrors melt away like nightmares in the morning. I never repented, however, that I had sent my letter by Tom Brice. Escape from Bartram-Haugh was my hourly longing. That evening Madame invited herself to tea with me. I did not object.
'Everybody expected that there would, for there were very savage things printed on both sides, and I think, too, that the persons who thought worst of him expected that evidence would yet turn up to convict Silas of the crime they chose to impute; and so years have glided away, and many of the people who remembered the tragedy of Bartram-Haugh, and took the strongest part in the denunciation, and ostracism that followed, are dead, and no new light had been thrown upon the occurrence, and your uncle Silas remains an outcast.