I went down that evening to the sitting-room which had been
assigned to Milly and me, in search of a book—my good Mary
Quince always attending me. The door was a little open, and I
was startled by the light of a candle proceeding from the fireside, together with a considerable aroma of tobacco and brandy.
On my little work-table, which he had drawn beside the
hearth, lay Dudley's pipe, his brandy-flask, and an empty tumbler; and he was sitting with one foot on the fender, his elbow on his knee, and his head resting in his hand, weeping. His back being a little toward the door, he did not perceive us; and we saw him rub his knuckles in his eyes, and heard the sounds of his selfish lamentation.
Mary and I stole away quietly, leaving him in possession, wondering when he was to leave the house, according to the sentence which I had heard pronounced upon him.
I was delighted to see old 'Giblets' quietly strapping his
luggage in the hall, and heard from him in a whisper that he
was to leave that evening by rail—he did not know whither.
About half an hour afterwards, Mary Quince, going out to
reconnoitre, heard from old Wyat in the lobby that he had just
started to meet the train.
Blessed be heaven for that deliverance! An evil spirit had
been cast out, and the house looked lighter and happier. It
was not until I sat down in the quiet of my room that the
scenes and images of that agitating day began to move before
my memory in orderly procession, and for the first time I
appreciated, with a stunning sense of horror and a perfect rapture
of thanksgiving, the value of my escape and the immensity
of the danger which had threatened me. It may have been
miserable weakness—I think it was. But I was young, nervous, and afflicted with a troublesome sort of conscience, which occasionally went mad, and insisted, in small things as well as great, upon sacrifices which my reason now assures me were absurd. Of Dudley I had a perfect horror; and yet had that system of solicitation, that dreadful and direct appeal to my compassion, that placing of my feeble girlhood in the seat of the arbiter of my aged uncle's hope or despair, been long persisted in, my resistance might have been worn out—who can tell?—and I self-sacrificed! Just as criminals in Germany are teased, and watched, and cross-examined, year after year, incessantly, into a sort of madness; and worn out with the suspense, the iteration, the self-restraint, and insupportable fatigue, they at last cut all short, accuse themselves, and go infinitely relieved to the scaffold—you may guess, then, for me, nervous, self-diffident, and alone, how intense was the comfort of knowing that Dudley was actually married, and the harrowing importunity which had just commenced for ever silenced.
That night I saw my uncle. I pitied him, though I feared him. I was longing to tell him how anxious I was to help him, if only he could point out the way. It was in substance what I had already said, but now strongly urged. He brightened; he sat up perpendicularly in his chair with a countenance, not weak or fatuous now, but resolute and searching, and which contracted into dark thought or calculation as I talked.
I dare say I spoke confusedly enough. I was always nervous
in his presence; there was, I fancy, something mesmeric in the
odd sort of influence which, without effort, he exercised over
my imagination.
Sometimes this grew into a dismal panic, and Uncle Silas—polished, mild—seemed unaccountably horrible to me. Then it was no longer an accidental fascination of electro-biology. It was something more. His nature was incomprehensible by me. He was without the nobleness, without the freshness, without the softness, without the frivolities of such human nature as I had experienced, either within myself or in other persons. I instinctively felt that appeals to sympathies or feelings could no more affect him than a marble monument. He seemed to accommodate his conversation to the moral structure of others, just as spirits are said to assume the shape of mortals. There were the sensualities of the gourmet for his body, and there ended his human nature, as it seemed to me. Through that semi-transparent structure I thought I could now and then discern the light or the glare of his inner life. But I understood it not.