Book: Uncle Max

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I said I was glad to hear it, for she evidently expected me to say
something; and then I asked how long Dr. Hamilton had given him lessons
in Latin and mathematics. She was only too ready to tell me, and seemed
pleased at my interest.

'Ever since Nat hurt his arm in the railway accident; and I will say that
Dr. Hamilton brought him round in a wonderful way; he found him at his
books one evening, and ordered him off to bed in a hurry; but when he
came next time he had a long talk with Nat, and promised to give him an
hour when he could spare it. Sometimes Nat goes up to Gladwyn, but
oftener Dr. Hamilton drops in here; he has taken a fancy to our kitchen,
he says; but that is his way of putting it. There are plenty of folks who
find fault with the doctor, and say he is not what he ought to be to his
own flesh and blood; but I always will have it, and Nathaniel says the
same, that the doctor has a fine character. Why, Nat swears by him,'

I was beginning to be afraid that Mrs. Barton would never arrive at a
full stop,--she was a little like Mrs. Drabble in that; they were both
discursive and parenthetical speakers, only Mrs. Drabble's meaning was
more involved,--but before I had time to answer, a deep voice from the
kitchen startled us.

'Mother, how long do you mean to keep Miss Garston in that cold, dark
place? It is enough to starve her,' And at this rebuke Mrs. Barton
hurried me into the front kitchen. I was tired by this time, and glad to
bid them both good-night. And yet the widow's talk interested me. It was
not Mr. Hamilton's fault that he had a face like a Romish priest;
evidently he had his good points, like other people, in spite of his
rudeness in laughing at me. But I could not--no, I could not tolerate
that remark of his, 'that a girl would do anything to make herself talked
about.' It was odious, cynical, utterly malevolent. I hoped Uncle Max
would defer the introduction as long as possible. I never wished to know
anything of Gladwyn or its master. These thoughts occupied me until I
fell asleep; and then I dreamt of Jill.

Once or twice I woke in the night, disturbed by a low growl from Tinker,
who slept in the passage. I heard afterwards that his dreams were always
haunted by cats. He was an inveterate enemy to all the feline species,
with the exception of Peter, the great tabby cat. They had long ago sworn
an armistice, and, in his way, Tinker took a great deal of notice of
Peter.

It was strange to look round the low cottage room by the flickering,
fast-dying firelight. The rain still pattered on the garden paths. I was
rather dismayed to find that it had not ceased the next morning; it is so
pleasant to wake up in a fresh place and see the bright sunshine. This
piece of good luck was denied me, however. When I looked out of my window
I could only see dripping laurels and great pools in the gravel walks.
The gray sky had not a break in it. I was glad when I was ready to go
down to my parlour, for the fire and breakfast-table would look cheerful
by comparison; and afterwards I would set to work so busily that I should
not have time to notice the rain.

And so it proved; for until my early dinner--or rather luncheon--was
served, I was employed in unpacking and arranging my books and ornaments.

On my journeys to and fro I often paused at the low staircase window
to reconnoitre the weather. There was no garden behind the cottage; a
small gravelled yard, where Mrs. Barton kept her poultry and some rabbits
belonging to Nathaniel, opened by a gate into a field. There was a
cow-house there, and a white cow was standing rather disconsolately
under some trees. I found out afterwards that both the field and the cow
belonged to Mrs. Barton, so I could always rely on a good supply of sweet
new milk.

Nathaniel had put up my book-shelves when I had sent them with the other
furniture, so I had only to arrange the books. I made use, too, of some
nails he had driven in for my pictures.

The parlour really looked very nice when I had finished; the new
cream-coloured curtains were up, and I had tied them back with amber
silk; two or three sunny little landscapes, and Charlie's portrait, a
beautifully-painted photograph, hung on the walls; my favourite books
were in their places, and the mantelpiece and the corner cupboards held
some of the lovely old china that had belonged to mother. Aunt Philippa
had wished me to leave it behind, as she feared it might be broken; but
I liked to feast my eyes on the soft rich colours, and every piece was
precious to me.

When I had disposed the furniture to the best advantage,--had placed my
davenport and work-table and special chair in the bow-window, and had
replaced the shabby red cloth by a handsome tapestry one,--I called Mrs.
Barton to see the room.

She held up her hands in astonishment.

'Dear me, Miss Garston, it looks quite a different place. What will
Nathaniel say when he sees it?--he is so fond of books and pretty things.
It only wants sunshine and a bird-cage, and perhaps a geranium or two,
to make it quite a bower. May I make so bold, ma'am, as to ask who that
pleasant-faced young gentleman is in the oak frame?'--but I think she
was sorry that she had asked the question when I told her it was my
twin-brother, now in heaven.

'That is where my husband and my dear little daughter both are,' she
said, with moist eyes, as she turned away from the picture. 'Oh, there is
a deal of trouble in the world, but you are young to know it, ma'am.' And
then she looked kindly at me, and went away, to give Nathaniel his
dinner.




CHAPTER VII

GILES HAMILTON, ESQ.


It was quite late in the afternoon when I put the last finishing-touches
to my sitting-room, and it was already dusk when I left the cottage and
walked quickly up the road that led to the vicarage.

My busy day had not tired me, and I should have enjoyed a solitary ramble
in spite of the wet roads and dark November sky, only I knew Uncle Max
would be waiting for me. A keen sense of independence, of liberty, of
congenial work in prospective, seemed to tingle in my veins, as though
new life were coursing through them. I was no longer trammelled by the
constant efforts to move in other people's grooves. I was free to think
my own thought and lead my own life without reproof or hindrance.

The vicarage was a red, irregular house, shut off from the road by
a low wall, with a court-yard planted somewhat thickly with shrubs: the
living-rooms were chiefly at the back of the house, and their windows
looked out on a pleasant garden: a glass door in the hall opened on a
broad gravel terrace bordered by standard rose-trees, and beyond lay a
smooth green lawn almost as level as a bowling-green; a laurel hedge
divided it from an extensive kitchen-garden, to which Uncle Max and Mr.
Tudor devoted a great deal of their spare time and superfluous energies.

It was far too large a house for an unmarried man: the broad staircase
and spacious rooms seemed to require the echo of children's voices. Uncle
Max used to call it the barracks, but I think in his heart he liked the
roomy emptiness; when he was restless he would prowl up and down the wide
landing from one unused room to another. It was an old-fashioned house,
and more than one generation had grown up in it. Uncle Max was fond of
telling me about his predecessors' histories. Two little children had
died in the big nursery overlooking the garden. There was a little brown
room where a _ci-devant_ vicar had written his sermons, with a big
cupboard in the wall where he hung his cassock. He had a grown-up family,
but his wife was dead. One day he married again and brought home a slim,
pale-faced girl--a certain Priscilla Howe--to be the mistress of his
house. There were stories rife in the village that her step-children were
too much for poor, pretty Priscilla; that while her husband wrote his
sermons in the little brown room the young wife pined and moped in her
green sitting-room.

Uncle Max found a picture of her one day in a garret where they stored
apples; a faint musty smell clung to the canvas. 'Priscilla Howe' was
written in one corner; there was a childish look on the small oval face;
large melancholy eyes seemed appealing to one out of the canvas. She was
dressed in a heavy white material like dimity, and held a few primroses
between her fingers. What an innocent, pathetic little bride the
stern-faced vicar must have brought home!

I read her epitaph afterwards when Uncle Max showed me her
grave,--'Priscilla, wife of Ralph Combermere, aged twenty, and her infant
son.' What a sad little inscription! But Uncle Max read something sadder
still one day. A letter in faded ink was found in a corner of the same
old garret, and the signature was 'Priscilla'; there was only one
sentence legible in the whole, and to whom it was written remained a
mystery: 'Trust me, dear love, that I shall ever do my duty, in spite of
flaunts and jeers and most unkindly looks; and if God spares me health,
which I cannot believe, He may yet right me in the eyes that no longer
look at me with fondness.'

Poor Priscilla! so her husband had ceased to love her. No wonder the poor
child dwindled and pined among 'the flaunts and jeers and most unkindly
looks' of her step-children. One could imagine her clasping her baby to
her sad heart as she closed her eyes to the bitter misunderstanding of
this life. 'Where the weary are at rest,'--they might have written those
words upon her tomb.

The thought of Priscilla used to haunt me when I roamed about the
passages on windy days; the old garret especially seemed haunted by her
memory. Uncle Max once said to me that he could have constructed a
romance out of her poor little history. 'She came from a place called
Ecclesbourne Hall,' he said, one day. 'She was an heiress; old Ralph
Combermere knew what he was about when he transplanted the pale primrose.
Do you know, Ursula, this room is supposed to be haunted? And one of the
maids told me seriously that Mistress Combermere walks here on windy
nights with her babe in her arms. Fancy such a report in an English
vicarage!'

When I reached the house the little maid who opened the door informed me
that Uncle Max was in his study: it was a large room with a bow-window
overlooking the garden, and I knew Uncle Max never used any other room
except for his meals. I had volunteered to announce myself. I was never
formal with Max, so I knocked at the door, and, without waiting to hear
his voice in reply, marched in without ceremony.

But the next moment I stood discomfited on the threshold, for instead of
Uncle Max's familiar face I saw a dark, closely-cropped head bending over
the table as though searching for something, and the ruddy firelight
reflected the broad shoulders and hairless profile of the obnoxious Mr.
Hamilton.

My first idea was to escape, and my fingers were already on the
door-handle, when he turned abruptly and saw me. 'I beg your pardon,'
coming towards me and speaking in the deep peculiar voice I had already
heard. 'I was hunting for the matches that Cunliffe always mislays. You
are Miss Garston, are you not? I was told to expect you.' And then he
actually shook hands with me in an off-hand way.

I am not generally devoid of presence of mind, but at that moment I
behaved as awkwardly as a school-girl. If I could only have thought of
some excuse for leaving him,--an errand or a message to Mrs. Drabble; but
no form of words would occur to me. I could only mutter an apology for my
abrupt entrance, and ask after Uncle Max, stammering with confusion all
the time, and then take the chair he was placing for me, while he renewed
his search for the match-box.

'Oh, Cunliffe has only gone down to the village to post his letters: he
will be back in a few minutes. Ah! here are the matches. Now we shall be
able to see each other.' And he coolly lighted Uncle Max's reading-lamp
and two candles, and stirred the fire with such a vigorous hand that the
huge lump of coal splintered into fragments.

'There; I do like a mighty blaze. Take that newspaper, Miss Garston, if
the flame scorches your face. I know young ladies are afraid of their
complexions.' Why need he have said that, as though my brown skin were
Sara's pretty pink cheeks? 'Why do you not throw off your wraps if the
room be too hot?' And he spoke so imperatively that I actually obeyed
him, and got rid of my hat and ulster, which he deposited on the couch.

I did not like the look of Mr. Hamilton any better than I had liked it
yesterday. His dark, smoothly-shaven face was not to my taste; it looked
stern and forbidding. He had a low forehead, and there was a hard set
look about the mouth, and the eyes were almost disagreeable in their
keenness.

Perhaps I was prejudiced, but he looked to me like a man who rarely
laughed, and who would take a pleasure in saying bitter things; his voice
was not unpleasant, but it had a peculiar depth in it, and now and then
there was an odd break in it that was almost a hesitation.

'Well,' he said, looking full at me, but, I was sure, not in the least
wishful to set me at my ease, 'I suppose I ought to introduce myself. My
name is Hamilton.'

I bowed. I certainly did not think it necessary that I should tell him
that I was aware of that fact.

'We met yesterday, when you were good enough to put up with Nap's
company. I was half disposed to introduce myself then: only I feared you
would be shocked at such a piece of unconventionality; young ladies have
such strict ideas of decorum.'

'And very properly so, too,' I put in severely, for my irritation was
getting the better of my nervousness. I could not bear the tone in which
he said 'young ladies.' I felt convinced he had an antipathy to the whole
sex.

'Our skies were very uncivil in their welcome,' he went on, quite
disregarding my remark: 'it was the wettest night we have had for an age.
I was quite savage when I found the horses had been taken out of their
warm stables: the coachman was an ass, as I told him.'

'You scolded him somewhat severely.'

'Ah! did you hear me?' smiling a little at that, as though he were
amused. 'I am afraid I speak my mind pretty freely, in spite of
bystanders. Well, Miss Garston, so I hear you have come down as a sort of
female Quixote among us. Heathfield is to be the scene of your mission.'

I was so angry at the tone in which he said this that I made no reply.
What right had a perfect stranger to meddle in my business? It was all
Uncle Max's fault; if he had only held his tongue.

'Cunliffe was up at Gladwyn the other night,' he continued in the same
off-hand way, 'and he told us all about it.'

'I am sorry to hear it,' very stiffly.

'Sorry! Why? Good deeds ought to be talked about, ought they not, _pro
bono publico_, eh? Why not, Miss Garston?'

'Good intentions are not deeds.'

'True; you have me there. I suppose you think you must not reckon on your
chickens before they are hatched; the _pro bono publico_ scheme is not
properly hatched yet, except in theory. I am afraid I shall make you
angry if I tell you I was rather amused at the whole thing.'

'I am glad to afford you amusement, Mr. Hamilton.'

'Ah, I see you are deeply offended; what a pity, and in five minutes too!
That comes of my unfortunate habit of speaking my mind. Let me follow
this out. I am afraid Cunliffe has been a traitor; that fellow is not
reliable: no parsons are. Let me hear what you have against me, Miss
Garston. I have spoken against your pet theory, and you are aggrieved in
consequence,'

He spoke in a half-jesting manner, but his ironical voice challenged me.

I felt I detested him, and he should know why.

'I expected to be misunderstood,' I returned coldly, 'but hardly to be
accused of hysterical goodness. To be sure, a girl will do anything
nowadays to get herself talked about!'

'Oh,' in a low voice, 'that rascal! But I will be even with him. How many
more of my speeches did Cunliffe repeat?'

'Oh, I had heard enough,' I replied hastily. 'Does it not strike you as
a little hard, Mr. Hamilton, that one should be judged beforehand in this
harsh manner?--that because some girls are full of vagaries, the whole
sex must be condemned?'

'Oh, if you put it in that cut-and-dried way, I must plead guilty: in
fact, I should owe you some sort of apology, only'--with a stress on the
word--'my speech was not intended for the house-top. I am rather a
sceptic about female missions, Miss Garston, and do not always measure my
words when I am discussing abstract theories with a friend. In my opinion
Cunliffe is the one you ought to blame, though if the speech rankles I
will take my share.'

'I certainly wish you had not said it, Mr. Hamilton.'

'There, now,'--in an injured voice,--'that is the way you treat my
handsome apology, and I am not a man ever to own myself in the wrong,
mind you. What does it matter, may I ask, what I think of girls in the
abstract? I had not met you, Miss Garston, or discussed the subject in
its bearings: so where may the offence lie? Of course you have no answer
ready; of course you have taken offence where none is meant. This is so
like a woman--to undertake to renovate society, and lose her temper at
the first adverse word.'

He was looking at me with a peculiar but not unkindly smile as he spoke;
in fact, his expression was almost pleasant; but I was too much
prejudiced to be softened. I did not care in the least what he thought
of my temper; I was quite sure he had one of his own.

'No one likes to meet discouragement on the threshold,' I answered
curtly.

'Not if it comes out with timbrels and dances, like Jephtha's
daughter, to be sacrificed: that was discouragement on the threshold
with a vengeance. I was always sorry for that old fellow. Well, _apropos_
of that touching remark,--which, by the way, is exquisitely
feminine,--supposing we strike a truce. I daresay you look upon me as an
interfering stranger; but the fact is, I am the poor folk's doctor down
here; so you cannot work without me. That alters the case, eh?'--with a
smile meant to be propitiatory, but really too triumphant for my taste.

'Under those circumstances I could wish that you had less narrow views of
women's work,' I returned, with some warmth.

He opened his eyes so widely at this that at any other moment I should
have been amused.

'By all that is wonderful, it is the first time I have been accused of
narrowness.' And here he gave a gruff little laugh. 'I think I had better
leave yon alone, Miss Garston, and label you "dangerous." There is a hot
sparkle in your eyes that warns me to keep off the premises. "Trespassers
will be taken up." I begin to feel uncomfortable. Cunliffe has put me _en
parole_, and I dare not break bounds. Can you manage to sit in
the same room a little longer with such a heretic?'

'Heretics can be converted.'

He shrugged his shoulders at this.

'Not such a hardened sceptic as myself. Now, look here, Miss Garston.
I will say something civil. I believe you are in earnest; so it shall be
_pax_ between us; and I will promise not to thwart you. As for women's
mission in general, I believe their principal mission is not to stop at
home and mind their own business; in fact, home and homely duties are the
last straws that break the back of the emancipated woman.' And with these
audacious words Mr. Hamilton stirred the fire again with prodigious
energy. Happily, Uncle Max came into the room at that moment; so I was
spared any reply.

Max must have thought that I was suspiciously glad to see him, for he
looked from one to the other rather anxiously.

'Sorry to be so late, Ursula; but I met Pardoe, and he entrapped me into
an argument. Well, how have you and my friend Hamilton got on together?'

I turned away without answering, but Mr. Hamilton responded, in a
melancholy voice--

'I have been suppressed, like the dormouse in Alice's teapot. There is
very little left of me. I had no idea your niece had such a taste for
argument, Cunliffe. I take it rather unkindly that I was not warned off
the track.'

'So you two have been quarrelling.' And Uncle Max looked a little vexed.
'What a fellow you are, Hamilton, for stroking a person the wrong way! Of
course Ursula has believed all your cross-grained remarks?'

'Swallowed them whole and entire; and a fit of moral indigestion is the
result. Well, I must be going; but first let me administer a palliative,
Miss Garston. What time do you have breakfast? If it be before ten, I
shall be happy to introduce you to a very eligible case.'

I would have given much to dispense with Mr. Hamilton's patronage; but
under the circumstances it would have been absurd to refuse his offer.
I could not sacrifice my work to my temper; but I recognised with a
sinking heart that Mr. Hamilton would cross my daily path. The idea
was as delightful to me as the anticipation of a daily east wind. I
restrained myself, however, and briefly mentioned that I would be ready
by nine.

'Oh, that is an hour too early: I will call for you at ten. Let me see,
you are at the White Cottage. You are not curious about your first
patient; in that you are not a true daughter of Eve. Well, good-bye, Miss
Garston; good-bye, Cunliffe.' And he left the room without shaking hands
with me again.

Uncle Max followed him out into the hall, and they stood so long talking
that I lost patience, and went into the kitchen to see Mrs. Drabble.

She received me in a resigned way, as usual, and talked without taking
breath once while she buttered the hot cakes and prepared the tea-tray.
I understood her to say that Mr. Tudor's collars were her chief cares in
life; that no young gentleman she had ever known was so hard to please in
the matter of starch; that her master was a lamb in comparison; and did
I not think he was looking ill and overworking himself?

I had some difficulty in finding out to whom she was alluding, but I
imagined she meant her master, who was certainly looking a little thin,
and then she went off on another tack.

'Folks seem mighty curious about you, Miss Ursula; people do say
that only a young lady crossed in love would think of doing such an
out-of-the-way thing as putting up at the White Cottage and nursing
poor people. There was Rebecca Saunders,--you know Rebecca at the
post-office,--she said to me last night, "So your young lady has come,
Mrs. Drabble; the vicar was at the station, I hear, and Dr. Hamilton came
down by the same train: wasn't that curious, now? I am thinking she must
be a mighty independent sort of person to take this work on her; there
has been trouble somewhere, take my word for it, for it is not in young
folks' nature to go in for work and no play."'

'Oh, I mean to play as well as work,' I returned, laughing. 'Don't tell
me any more, Mrs. Drabble; people will talk in a village, but I would
rather not hear what they say.' And then I went back to the study and
made tea for Uncle Max, and tried to pretend that I felt quite myself,
and was not the least uneasy in my mind,--as though I could deceive Max.

'Well, Ursula,' he said, shaking his head at me, 'did Hamilton or Mrs.
Drabble give you those hot cheeks?'

'Oh, Uncle Max,' I returned hastily, 'I am so sorry Mr. Hamilton is your
friend.'

'Why so, little she-bear?'

'Because--because--I detest him: he is the most disagreeable,
insufferable, domineering person I have ever met.'

'Candid; but then you were always outspoken, my dear. Now, shall I tell
you what this disagreeable, insufferable, domineering person said to me
in the hall?'

'Oh, nothing he said will make any difference in my opinion, I assure
you.'

'Possibly not, but it is too good to be lost. He said, "That little girl
actually believes in herself and her work; it is quite refreshing to meet
with such _naivete_ nowadays. Ursula did you call her? Well, the name
just suits her." How do you like that, poor little bear?'

'I like it as well as I liked all Mr. Hamilton's speeches. Max, do you
really care for that odious man? Must I be civil to him?'

'Indeed, I hope you will be civil, Ursula,' replied Uncle Max, in an
alarmed voice. 'My dear, Giles Hamilton, Esq., is my most influential
parishioner; he is rich; he doctors all my poor people _gratis_, bullies
them one moment, and does them a good turn in the next; he is clever,
kind-hearted, and has no end of good points, and, though he is eccentric
and has plenty of faults, we chum together excellently, and I am very
intimate with his people.'

'His people--who are they?' I asked irritably.

'Oh, it is a queer household up at Gladwyn,' returned Max, rather
uneasily. 'Hamilton has a cousin living with him, as well as his two
sisters; her name is Darrell,--Etta Darrell; she is a stylish-looking
woman, about five-and-thirty; one never knows a lady's age exactly.'

'Are his sisters very young, then? Does Miss Darrell manage the house?'

'Yes. How could you guess that?' looking at me in surprise. 'Gladys,
Miss Hamilton, is about three-and-twenty, but she is very delicate;
the younger one, Elizabeth, is two years younger; they are Hamilton's
half-sisters,--his father married twice: that accounts for a good deal.'

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