Uncle Max. Rosa Nouchette Carey
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,