Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu, page 213
After her first shock, all her terrors were concentrated on the one point — Stanley’s imminent danger. He must be saved. She made him return; she even accompanied him as far as the top of the rude flight of steps I have mentioned so often, and there awaited his return — the condition imposed by his cowardice — and made more dreadful by the circumstance that they had heard retreating footsteps along the walk, and Stanley saw the tall figure of Uncle Julius or Lorne, as he called himself, turning the far corner.
There was a long wait here, lest he should return; but he did not appear, and Stanley — though I now believe observed by this strange being — executed his horrible task, replaced the implements, and returned to Rachel, and with her to Redman’s Farm; where — his cool cunning once more ascendant — he penned those forgeries, closing them with Mark Wylder’s seal, which he compelled his sister — quite unconscious of all but that their despatch by post, at the periods pencilled upon them, was essential to her wretched brother’s escape. It was the success of this, his first stratagem, which suggested that long series of frauds which, with the aid of Jim Dutton, selected for his striking points of resemblance to Mark Wylder, had been carried on for so long with such consummate art in a different field.
It was Lake’s ungoverned fury, when Larkin discovered the mistake in posting the letters in wrong succession, which so nearly exploded his ingenious system. He wrote in terms which roused Jim Dutton’s wrath. Jim had been spinning theories about the reasons of his mysterious, though very agreeable occupation, and announced them broadly in his letter to Larkin. But he had cooled by the time he reached London, and the letter from Lake, received at his mother’s and appointing the meeting at Brandon, quieted that mutiny.
I never heard that Jim gave any member of the family the least trouble afterward. He handed to Lord Chelford a parcel of those clever and elaborate forgeries, with which Lake had last furnished him, with a pencilled note on each, directing the date and town at which it was to be despatched. Years after, when Jim was emigrating, I believe Lord Chelford gave him a handsome present.
Lord Chelford was advised by the friend whom he consulted that he need not make those painful particulars public, affecting only a dead man, and leading to no result.
Lake admitted that Rachel had posted the letters in London, believing them to be genuine, for he pretended that they were Wylder’s. It is easy to look grave over poor Rachel’s slight, and partly unconscious, share in the business of the tragedy. But what girl of energy and strong affections would have had the melancholy courage to surrender her brother to public justice under the circumstances? Lord Chelford, who knew all, says that she ‘acted nobly.’
‘Now, Joseph, being a just man, was minded to put her away privily.’ The law being what? That she was to be publicly stigmatised and punished. His justice being what? Simply that he would have her to be neither — but screened and parted ‘with privily.’ Let the Pharisees who would have summum jus against their neighbours, remember that God regards the tender and compassionate, who forbears, on occasion, to put the law in motion, as the just man.
The good vicar is a great territorial magnate now; but his pleasures and all his ways are still simple. He never would enter Brandon as its master, and never will, during Dorcas Brandon’s lifetime. And although with her friend, Rachel Lake, she lives abroad, chiefly in Italy and Switzerland, Brandon Hall, by the command of its proprietor, lies always at her disposal.
I don’t know whether Rachel Lake will ever marry. The tragic shadow of her life has not chilled Lord Chelford’s strong affection. Neither does the world know or suspect anything of the matter. Old Tamar died three years since, and lies in the pretty little churchyard of Gylingden. And Mark’s death is, by this time, a nearly forgotten mystery.
Jos. Larkins’s speculations have not turned out luckily. The trustees of Wylder, a minor, tried, as they were advised they must, his title to Five Oaks, by ejectment. A point had been overlooked — as sometimes happens — and Jos. Larkin was found to have taken but an estate for the life of Mark Wylder, which terminated at his decease. The point was carried on to the House of Lords, but the decision of ‘the court below’ was ultimately affirmed.
The flexible and angry Jos. Larkin then sought to recoup himself out of the assets of the deceased captain; but here he failed. In his cleverness — lest the inadequate purchase-money should upset his bargain — he omitted the usual covenant guaranteeing the vendor’s title to sell the fee-simple, and recited, moreover, that, grave doubts existing on the point, it was agreed that the sum paid should not exceed twelve years’ purchase. Jos. then could only go upon the point that it was known to Lake at the period of the sale that Mark Wylder was dead. Unluckily, however, for Jos.’s case, one of his clever letters, written during the negotiation, turned up, and was put in evidence, in which he pressed Captain Lake with the fact, that he, the purchaser, was actually in possession of information to the effect that Mark was dead, and that he was, therefore, buying under a liability of having his title litigated, with a doubtful result, the moment he should enter into possession. This shut up the admirable man, who next tried a rather bold measure, directed against the Reverend William Wylder. A bill was filed by Messrs. Burlington and Smith, to compel him to execute a conveyance to their client — on the terms of the agreement. The step was evidently taken on the calculation that he would strike, and offer a handsome compromise; but Lord Chelford was at his elbow — the suit was resisted. Messrs. Burlington and Smith did not care to run the awful risk which Mr. Larkin, behind the scenes, invited them to accept for his sake. There was first a faltering; then a bold renunciation and exposure of Mr. Jos. Larkin by the firm, who, though rather lamely, exonerated themselves as having been quite taken in by the Gylingden attorney.
Mr. Jos. Larkin had a holy reliance upon his religious reputation, which had always stood him in stead. But a worldly judge will sometimes disappoint the expectations of the Christian suitor; and the language of the Court, in commenting upon Mr. Jos. Larkin, was, I am sorry to say, in the highest degree offensive— ‘flagitious,’ ‘fraudulent,’ and kindred epithets, were launched against that tall, bald head, in a storm that darkened the air and obliterated the halo that usually encircled it. He was dismissed, in a tempest, with costs. He vanished from court, like an evil spirit, into the torture-chamber of taxation.
The whole structure of rapine and duplicity had fallen through with a dismal crash. Shrewd fellows wondered, as they always do, when a rash game breaks down, at the infatuation of the performer. But the cup of his tribulation was not yet quite full. Jos. Larkin’s name was ultimately struck from the roll of solicitors and attorneys, and there were minute and merciless essays in the papers, surrounding his disgrace with a dreadful glare. People say he has not enough left to go on with. He had lodgings somewhere near Richmond, as Howard Larkin, Esq., and is still a religious character. I am told that he shifts his place of residence about once in six months, and that he has never paid one shilling of rent for any, and has sometimes positively received money for vacating his abode. So substantially valuable is a thorough acquaintance with the capabilities of the law. I saw honest Tom Wealdon about a fortnight ago — grown stouter and somewhat more phlegmatic by time, but still the same in good nature and inquisitiveness. From him I learned that Jos. Larkin is likely to figure once more in the courts about some very ugly defalcations in the cash of the Penningstal Mining Company, and that this time the persecutions of that eminent Christian are likely to take a different turn, and, as Tom said, with a gloomy shrewdness, to end in ‘ten years penal.’
Some summers ago, I was, for a few days, in the wondrous city of Venice. Everyone knows something of the enchantment of the Italian moon, the expanse of dark and flashing blue, and the phantasmal city, rising like a beautiful spirit from the waters. Gliding near the Lido — where so many rings of Doges lie lost beneath the waves — I heard the pleasant sound of female voices upon the water — and then, with a sudden glory, rose a sad, wild hymn, like the musical wail of the forsaken sea: —
The spouseless Adriatic mourns her lord.
The song ceased. The gondola which bore the musicians floated by — a slender hand over the gunwale trailed its fingers in the water. Unseen I saw Rachel and Dorcas, beautiful in the sad moonlight, passed so near we could have spoken — passed me like spirits — never more, it may be, to cross my sight in life.
UNCLE SILAS
A TALE OF BARTRAM-HAUGH
First published in 1864, this is Le Fanu’s best known novel and probably his most widely admired. A gothic thriller, the story concerns young Maud Ruthyn and her relationship with her mysterious uncle Silas. This central relationship is reflected in the title under which the novel was first serialised in the Dublin University Magazine between July and December 1864: Maud Ruthyn and Uncle Silas. Accused of murder and shunned by society, Silas lives alone in his sinister mansion, Bartram-Haugh. When Maud is sent to live with Silas after her father’s death, her faith in her uncle’s innocence is sorely tested by her terrifying experiences – but the reader (and Maud) is kept guessing until the final shocking conclusion.
The novel is based on Le Fanu’s own short story ‘A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess’ (1839). Indeed, although the novel is set in Britain, apparently in order to appeal to British readers and thus to secure Le Fanu a readership in that country, Elizabeth Bowen famously remarked that she saw the tale as ‘an Irish story transposed to an English setting’.
The atmosphere of mounting unease and mystery, the sinister old house and the motifs of the wicked relative and the imprisoned, terrorised heroine all betray the influence of the eighteenth-century master of the gothic, Ann Radcliffe and her many imitators. This is true of much ‘sensation’ fiction and with this novel, Le Fanu earns his place alongside Wilkie Collins and M. E. Braddon as a master of the genre. The plot unfolds gradually, building a sense of mystery and oppression, aided by Maud’s first-person narrative, which allows readers to experience at first hand the horrors heaped upon her by characters like the repugnant cad Dudley and the sadistic French governess Madam de la Rougierre. But it is the enigma surrounding the inscrutable Byronic anti-hero Silas that provides the main interest and which makes Uncle Silas a classic of sensation and Gothic fiction.
The title page of the first edition
A poster for the 1947 film adaptation
CONTENTS
A PRELIMINARY WORD
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLIII
CHAPTER XLIV
CHAPTER XLV
CHAPTER XLVI
CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII
CHAPTER XLIX
CHAPTER L
CHAPTER LI
CHAPTER LII
CHAPTER LIII
CHAPTER LIV
CHAPTER LV
CHAPTER LVI
CHAPTER LVII
CHAPTER LVIII
CHAPTER LIX
CHAPTER LX
CHAPTER LXI
CHAPTER LXII
CHAPTER LXIII
CHAPTER LXIV
CHAPTER LXV
CONCLUSION
A still from the 1968 television adaptation
A 1987 BBC television adaptation, re-titled ‘The Dark Angel’, starred Peter O’Toole as Silas
TO THE RIGHT HON.
THE COUNTESS OF GIFFORD,
AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT, SYMPATHY, AND ADMIRATION
This Tale
IS INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR
A PRELIMINARY WORD
The writer of this Tale ventures, in his own person, to address a very few words, chiefly of explanation, to his readers. A leading situation in this ‘Story of Bartram-Haugh’ is repeated, with a slight variation, from a short magazine tale of some fifteen pages written by him, and published long ago in a periodical under the title of ‘A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess,’ and afterwards, still anonymously, in a small volume under an altered title. It is very unlikely that any of his readers should have encountered, and still more so that they should remember, this trifle. The bare possibility, however, he has ventured to anticipate by this brief explanation, lest he should be charged with plagiarism — always a disrespect to a reader.
May he be permitted a few words also of remonstrance against the promiscuous application of the term ‘sensation’ to that large school of fiction which transgresses no one of those canons of construction and morality which, in producing the unapproachable ‘Waverley Novels,’ their great author imposed upon himself? No one, it is assumed, would describe Sir Walter Scott’s romances as ‘sensation novels;’ yet in that marvellous series there is not a single tale in which death, crime, and, in some form, mystery, have not a place.
Passing by those grand romances of ‘Ivanhoe,’ ‘Old Mortality,’ and ‘Kenilworth,’ with their terrible intricacies of crime and bloodshed, constructed with so fine a mastery of the art of exciting suspense and horror, let the reader pick out those two exceptional novels in the series which profess to paint contemporary manners and the scenes of common life; and remembering in the ‘Antiquary’ the vision in the tapestried chamber, the duel, the horrible secret, and the death of old Elspeth, the drowned fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tide-bound party under the cliffs; and in ‘St. Ronan’s Well,’ the long-drawn mystery, the suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide; — determine whether an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scott’s stories, is fairly applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, yet observe the same limitations of incident, and the same moral aims.
The author trusts that the Press, to whose masterly criticism and generous encouragement he and other humble labourers in the art owe so much, will insist upon the limitation of that degrading term to the peculiar type of fiction which it was originally intended to indicate, and prevent, as they may, its being made to include the legitimate school of tragic English romance, which has been ennobled, and in great measure founded, by the genius of Sir Walter Scott.
CHAPTER I
AUSTIN RUTHYN, OF KNOWL, AND HIS DAUGHTER
It was winter — that is, about the second week in November — and great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneys — a very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the tea-table; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawingroom. It was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped.
A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark grey-eyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the tea-table, in a reverie. I was that girl.
The only other person in the room — the only person in the house related to me — was my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in his county, but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and purer of blood than two-thirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was said, they had been invited to enter. Of all this family lore I knew but little and vaguely; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of old retainers in the nursery.
I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early disappointed in Parliament, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely well. Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a collector; took a part, on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this mimic government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman, but rather of a student, staying sometimes at one of his places and sometimes at another, and living a secluded life.
