Uncle Max Part 8

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 pa.s.sage. 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ca.s.sock. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sages 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 s.e.x.

'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 a.s.s, 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.'