Читать книгу Uncle Max - Rosa Nouchette Carey - Страница 17

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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 naïveté 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.'

'How do you mean—accounts for a good deal, Max?'

'Why people say that Hamilton doesn't always get on with his sisters,' he returned reluctantly: 'there are often misunderstandings in families—want of harmony, and that sort of thing. Mind, I do not say it is true.'

'But you are so often at Gladwyn, you ought to know, Max.'

'Yes, of course; and now and then I have seen Hamilton a little stern with his sisters; he is rather irritable by nature. I don't quite understand things myself, but I have got it into my head that they would be happier without Miss Darrell; she is a splendid manager, but it puts Miss Hamilton out of her right place.'

'But she is an invalid, you say?'

'No, not an invalid, only very delicate, and a little morbid; not quite what a girl ought to be. You could do some good there, Ursula,' rather eagerly. 'Miss Hamilton has no friends of her own age; she is reserved—peculiar. You might be a comfort to her; you are sympathetic, sensible, and have known trouble yourself. I should like to see you use your influence there.'

'I will try, if you wish it, Max. And her name is Gladys?'

'Yes, Gladys, of Gladwyn,' he returned, with a smile, but I thought he said it with rather a singular intonation, but it had a musical sound, and I repeated it again to myself—'Gladys, of Gladwyn.'