CHAPTER XLI

MY COUSIN DUDLEY

Greatly to my satisfaction, this engaging person did not appear again that day.  But next day Milly told me that my uncle had taken him to task for the neglect with which he was treating us.

’He did pitch into him, sharp and short, and not a word from him, only sulky like; and I so frightened, I durst not look up almost; and they said a lot I could not make head or tail of; and Governor ordered me out o’ the room, and glad I was to go; and so they had it out between them.’

Milly could throw no light whatsoever upon the adventures at Church Scarsdale and Knowl; and I was left still in doubt, which sometimes oscillated one way and sometimes another.  But, on the whole, I could not shake off the misgivings which constantly recurred and pointed very obstinately to Dudley as the hero of those odious scenes.

Oddly enough, though, I now felt far less confident upon the point than I did at first sight.  I had begun to distrust my memory, and to suspect my fancy; but of this there could be no question, that between the person so unpleasantly linked in my remembrance with those scenes, and Dudley Ruthyn, a striking, though possibly only a general resemblance did exist.

Milly was certainly right as to the gist of Uncle Silas’s injunction, for we saw more of Dudley henceforward.

He was shy; he was impudent; he was awkward; he was conceited;—­altogether a most intolerable bumpkin.  Though he sometimes flushed and stammered, and never for a moment was at his ease in my presence, yet, to my inexpressible disgust, there was a self-complacency in his manner, and a kind of triumph in his leer, which very plainly told me how satisfied he was as to the nature of the impression he was making upon me.

I would have given worlds to tell him how odious I thought him.  Probably, however, he would not have believed me.  Perhaps he fancied that ‘ladies’ affected airs of indifference and repulsion to cover their real feelings.  I never looked at or spoke to him when I could avoid either, and then it was as briefly as I could.  To do him justice, however, he seemed to have no liking for our society, and certainly never seemed altogether comfortable in it.

I find it hard to write quite impartially even of Dudley Ruthyn’s personal appearance; but, with an effort, I confess that his features were good, and his figure not amiss, though a little fattish.  He had light whiskers, light hair, and a pink complexion, and very good blue eyes.  So far my uncle was right; and if he had been perfectly gentlemanlike, he really might have passed for a handsome man in the judgment of some critics.

But there was that odious mixture of mauvaise honte and impudence, a clumsiness, a slyness, and a consciousness in his bearing and countenance, not distinctly boorish, but low, which turned his good looks into an ugliness more intolerable than that of feature; and a corresponding vulgarity pervading his dress, his demeanour, and his very walk, marred whatever good points his figure possessed.  If you take all this into account, with the ominous and startling misgivings constantly recurring, you will understand the mixed feelings of anger and disgust with which I received the admiration he favoured me with.