CHAPTER XVIII.

UNCLE BRYAN COMMENCES THE STORY OF HIS LIFE.

'Chris is growing quite a man,' observed my mother one evening to uncle Bryan.

Her words attracted uncle Bryan's attention, and he regarded me with more interest than he usually evinced. We three were alone. Jessie was spending the evening with some neighbours, and was not expected home before ten o'clock. The family she visited was named West. I did not know them personally, but I was curious about them, not only because Jessie's visits to their house had lately grown very frequent, but because they were a theatrical family. They were, in a certain sense, famous in the neighbourhood because of their vocation, which lifted them out of the humdrum ordinary course of common affairs. During the whole time we had lived in Paradise-row, I had made no friends among our neighbours. It was different with Jessie: before she had been with us six months, she knew and was known by nearly every person in the locality. She informed me that she was fond of company, and she accepted invitations to tea from one and another. But lately she had confined her intimacy to the Wests, and whenever I came home, and she was absent, I was told she was spending an hour at their house. Many weeks before the observation which commences this chapter was made, Jessie and I had had a conversation about the Wests. She introduced their name, and after informing me that she was going to have tea with them on the following evening, asked me if I would come for her at nine o'clock and bring her home. But I demurred to this, as being likely to be considered an intrusion.

'What nonsense you talk!' she exclaimed. They are the most delightful persons in the world.'

'Your friendships are quickly made, Jessie,' I said, with a jealous pang.

'Directly I see persons I know whether I like them or not. Don't you?'

'I can't say,' I replied sententiously; 'I have never considered it.'

'Well, consider it now. Don't be disagreeable. Directly you saw me, didn't you like me?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Very well, then; that shows you _do_ make up your mind properly about these things, as a man ought to do.'

I thrilled with pleasure at this cunning compliment.

'But you are different, Jessie, from any one else.' (What I really wanted to say was, 'You are different in my eyes from any one else;' but the most important words oozed away, from my want of courage.)

'Am I?' she cried softly and complacently, as was her way when she felt she was about to be flattered. How different? In what way? Tell me.'

'You are prettier and nicer. There's no one in the world like you.'

'That's what you think.'

'That's what everybody must think.'

'Why, Chris!' she exclaimed, making a telescope with her two hands, and peeping at me through them, I declare your moustachois are coming.'

I blushed scarlet. 'Are they?' I inquired, with an effort at unconsciousness, notwithstanding that I had already many times secretly contemplated in my looking-glass, with the most intense interest, these coming signs of manliness. 'But never mind them, Jessie; tell me about the Wests.'

'They are the most wonderful people, and the most delightful. I'm in love with all of them.'

My blushes died away; jealous pangs assailed me again.

'Are there many of them?' I asked gloomily.

'Ever so many; but you must see for yourself. You will come for me, then? You mustn't knock at the door and say, "Tell Miss Trim I am waiting for her;" you must come right into the house.'

But being angry with the Wests, and beginning to hate them because Jessie was so fond of them, I insisted that it would not be proper, because I had never been invited; and after a little quarrel, in which I deemed it necessary, as an assertion of manliness, to become more and more obstinate in my refusal, Jessie said with a pout, 'Oh, very well; if you're determined to stand upon your dignity, you'll see that other people can do so as well as you.' Thus it fell about that it became a point almost of honour with me not to go to the Wests, nor to express any desire to go; but I suffered agonies in consequence, and was tempted many times to humble myself. Jessie knew as well as possible what was going on in my mind; but she was offended with me on the subject, and would not assist me--would not even give me an opportunity of humbling myself.

But all this while I have left uncle Bryan regarding me, as I have said, with more than usual interest. From me he turned his attention to the wall, upon which hung the picture of Jessie, in crayons, which I had finished. I said nothing, but proceeded with my work.

'What are you drawing now, Chris?' asked my uncle.

Of course it was a sketch of Jessie. I murmured some words to the effect that it was nothing particular, and was about to put it in my desk, when uncle Bryan expressed a wish to see it. I could not refuse, and I handed it to him. It happened to be one of my happiest efforts; it would have been difficult to find a more winsome face than that which uncle Bryan gazed upon. He contemplated it for a long time without speaking--for so long a time that I asked him if he liked it, so as to break the awkward silence. He did not answer me. With the sketch still in his hand he said to my mother,

'Emma, I have not treated you fairly.'

My mother looked up from her work in surprise. Uncle Bryan continued:

'What I am about to tell you ought to have been told before; but probably no better time than this could be chosen. By the time I have finished, you will perhaps understand my motive for saying so; but whether you do or not, it is due to you that I should clear away some part of the mystery which hangs around Jessie.'

Although I was burning with curiosity, I rose to leave the room, thinking from his manner that what he was about to say was intended only for my mother's ears.

'Nay, Chris,' he said, you can stay. 'You are almost a man, as your mother says, and you may learn something from my words. I am about to read some pages in my life.'

He turned from us, so that we could not see his face; and full five minutes elapsed before he spoke. I was awaiting to hear with so much eagerness what he had to tell, that the five minutes seemed an hour. With his face still averted, he addressed my mother.

'Emma, you know the house in which I was born?'

'Yes, Bryan.'

'And you knew my family--my father and mother?'

'Yes.'

'They are not alive?'

I could scarcely restrain an exclamation of surprise at such a question from the lips of a son concerning his parents. My mother's tone was soft and pitiful as she replied,

'They have been dead many years, Bryan. They died within a year of my marriage with your brother.'

'During the time you and my brother courted, and afterwards indeed, my name must have been occasionally mentioned.'

'It was, Bryan.'

'In what terms?'

He paused for a reply, but my mother held her tongue.

'Be frank and candid with me, Emma; it will not hurt me. What you heard was not to my credit?'

He was determined that the subject should not be evaded; and my mother was wise enough not to thwart him.

'It was said that you had a violent temper.'

'It was doubtless true; but,' said uncle Bryan somewhat grimly, 'time must have softened it. No one now can accuse me justly--if there is such a thing as justice in the world--of showing violence, in the ordinary meaning of the word.'

'I can bear witness to that, Bryan.'

'Go on; there was more.'

'And that it was impossible to agree with you, or your opinions.'

'My opinions! That is one of the things I wanted to arrive at. Remember, Emma, that after I left home, I held no communication with my parents; that I was as one dead to them. What was said of my opinions? Nay, nay; you hurt me more by your silence than you can possibly do by anything you can say.'

'I heard that, as a boy, you associated yourself with a society of Freethinkers, who openly boasted of their infidelity.'

'I can guess the rest; I was wanting in respect to my elders, and in obedience and duty. They did not spare me, evidently. When I left home I was seventeen years of age; I ran away--no, I walked away, in fact, for they did not care to stop me--as much displeased with the narrow-minded views of those who were nearest to me in blood, as they were doubtless with my violent temper and my independent expression of opinion. A free exercise of the reasoning powers with which we are endowed was, in their eyes, a sacrilege. Still, when I was fairly gone, they might have let me rest. Of my after career they had no knowledge.'

These last words he did not put as a question, but as a satisfactory reflection. The simplest assent from my mother would have contented him; but she was too truthful to give utterance to it, and all his suspicions were aroused by her silence.

'I repeat--of my after career, they had no knowledge.'

She would have spared him, but he would not allow her to do so.

'They had!' he exclaimed, his rapid breathing showing how deeply he was moved.' What did they know?'

'The rumour was very vague, Bryan----'

'But discreditable. To what effect?'

'I really cannot explain, nor could they have done so, I believe.' My mother was much distressed. 'If Chris were not here----'

'Say no more.' I could not see his face, but his tone indicated that he had recovered his composure. 'I can fill up the blanks. Chris is older than I was when I threw myself upon the world, and it will be best for him to hear the story I shall relate.'

'Whatever impression I might have gained,' said my mother solicitously, 'from the vague rumours I heard has been entirely obliterated since I have known you. Believe me that this is so, dear Bryan.'

'Thank you for saying so much. But I doubt whether my parents would ever have believed that I was not the blackest of black sheep. They were hard and intolerant to me from the first, and I have no pleasurable recollections of even my earliest days. I do not know if it was the same when you were first introduced into it as it is in my remembrance, but the home in which I was born and reared was ruled by cold and formal laws, and by a cold and formal master. How it came about is a mystery I have never tried to solve, but it is a plain fact that I was not a favourite with my parents. My brother--your husband--was; he was much younger than I, but I saw it clearly. His nature was a more pliable one than mine; he could be easily led, not because he was weak, but because he was sympathetic and amiable. I was neither. Perhaps I imbibed some drops of gall with my mother's milk; but I don't pretend to account for my cross grain. My parents might have loved me after their fashion, but their mode of showing their love deprived it of all tenderness. It is a blessing to a man to be able to think of his mother with affection and veneration when she has passed away from him. Such a feeling, and the roads he must have trodden to acquire it, are a counterfoil to much that may be bad in his own nature; but this feeling is not mine. My mother was a weak-minded woman, entirely dominated by the strong mind of her husband. She had no will of her own; she followed the current of his likes and dislikes, of his opinions, of his commands, without question and without inquiry, as a spaniel follows its master. Many persons would see a kind of virtue in this submission; I do not. My father was dogmatic and stern; I could have forgiven him that, if he had been honest-minded. But he was a hypocrite, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. With great appearance of candour, he, when conversing with acquaintances in the presence of my mother and myself, would give expression to sentiments in which he did not believe; then, when we were alone, he would take off his mask of dissimulation, and go over the ground again according to his own conviction, and justify his deceit. If my mother ever thought of these things, she must have been bewildered; I did think of him, and I was indignant. Most especially was he a hypocrite in religious matters; his prayers and his practice were utterly at variance. I could not respect one who professed to believe that charity was a good thing, and who declined to practise it. He was intolerant to a degree; his was the only right way--all others were wrong. It was my evil fortune--I suppose I must call it so--to possess a mind which led me to sift things for myself; I _could_ not accept established doctrines, and this, in my father's eyes, was not only a great presumption but a great crime. It is not necessary for me to state how, little by little, I became estranged from such parental affection as might have been bestowed upon me had I been docile and obedient--as might have been mine if I had tried to win it. I sought for congenial companionship away from the social circle in which my parents moved; it is true that I found associates among men who, doubtless with more reason than myself, were dissatisfied with things as they were, and that I identified myself--being, as a youth, proud of the connection--with a body of so-called Freethinkers, whose chief crime was that they were groping to find truth by the light of reason. My father, hearing of this connection, sternly commanded me to relinquish it, and when I refused, threatened me. He declared he would drive the evil spirit out of me, and he tried to do so by blows; but he hurt only my body--my spirit he strengthened. About this time a circumstance occurred which for ever destroyed all chance of peace between us. We had a servant at home, a poor half-witted creature--an orphan without a friend in the world. One would have supposed that my father, being so fond of his prayers, would have been kind to this servant because of her utterly dependent condition, and because she performed her work as well and as faithfully as her dull wits allowed her. Had this been so, I think I might have been inclined to waver in my estimate of him; but the contrary was the case. My father, through his unvarying harshness towards the poor girl, made her life a torture to her. I constituted myself her champion, and stepped between her and his blows many a time. Boy as I was, he chose to place misconstruction upon my championship, and each became more embittered against the other. I fed my bitterness by contemplation of the girl's misery, and the unhappy war went on until it was terminated by a tragic circumstance. One day the servant was missing; the next, the body was found in the river. The idea fixed itself firmly in my mind that my father was accountable for her death; I even hinted as much to him when my blood was boiling with a new injustice inflicted upon myself. What passed between us after that, it will be as well not to recall; the result was that I left my home, and no hand was held out to stay me. I never saw my parents from that day, nor have I ever mentioned them until this evening. Whether I have done them injustice cannot now be decided; but I have no doubt, if the world were to judge between us, the verdict would be against me.

'I retained my name because, in my opinion, I had done nothing to disgrace it, and because I abhor deceit. I was neither elated nor depressed at the step I had taken. It is said that the springtime of life is bright with sunshine. The springtime of my life was joyless and gloomy. I had no hope in anything, no belief in anything, no faith in anything. I had no special ambition and no desire to become rich; all that I desired was to earn a decent living by the labour of my hands and the exercise of my abilities. I determined to make no friendships, and to live only in myself and by myself. Although I had no thought of it at the time, I can see now that the rules I laid down for myself were just the rules, with fair opportunities, to lead to success in life.

'In my determination to sever myself entirely from my family, I wandered away from my native place until I was distant from it hundreds of miles. Then, a stranger among strangers, I applied myself to the task of obtaining a situation. I could read, I could write, and I was a fair bookkeeper; but these qualifications did not avail me, and I was driven to hard shifts. Had I been shipwrecked on a lonely land I should have fared better. I did nothing dishonest, nor would I have done it to save my life; but I shrunk from nothing to earn a few pence. I accepted employment in whatever shape it was offered; no toil was too low for me, so long as it would buy me bread. The hardships which the world dealt out to me did not dishearten me, did not humble me; I bore them with pride, and in my bitter frame of mind I found a certain pleasure even in misery. My unmerited sufferings were arguments to convince me that I was right in my estimate of things. Look where I would, I could nowhere find morality and humanity exercised in their larger sense; where charity was most due, it was least given; virtue and goodness were terms; all over the civilised world religious precepts were being preached; all over the civilised world religious precepts were being violated; what was good in the Bible was turned to bad account--its power was so used as to teach people to fear, not to love. During these days I used to creep into the churches and laugh at the moralities there laid down. It was a hard bitterly-sweet time; I did not repine; in my pride I exulted in my condition. Many a night did I walk the streets homeless and hungry, laughing at my sufferings. Life had no attractions for me, and I did not desire to live. But I was part of a scheme--I recognised that, although I could not solve the problem--and I would do nothing to myself; I would simply wait. From men and women in as miserable a position as myself I rejected all overtures of friendship; I had nothing in common with them. But on a starless night I met one to whom was drawn by humanity, if you like to call it by that name. A woman this, a girl indeed, homeless as I was, friendless as I was. Nay, you may listen, Emma. I became like a brother to her, and she like a sister to me. Neither knew how the other lived, neither asked; and when we were specially unfortunate we wandered by instinct to a certain street, and met by premeditated chance. Then we would talk together for hours, or sit in silence in the shadow of a friendly refuge. She told me her story--a pitiful story, but common: it hardened me the more. I never saw her face by daylight; a dark shadow encompassed her and her history. "I am so tired of life!" she said to me; "these stones must be happier than I, for they cannot feel. Would it be wrong to die?" I drove the thought from her mind. "Be brave, and play your part," I said aloud, and added mentally, "It will not be for long." I can hear now the faint echo of her dreary laugh at my words, and the strangely-pitiful tone in which she repeated, "Be brave, and play my part!" I knew she would not live long; a desperate cold had settled on her lungs, and her cough, as we walked the desolate streets or sat in them after midnight, was a sound to cause the stars to weep. She died in my arms during one of these wanderings. I had no special foreboding of her death, nor had she, I believe; she was seized with a violent fit of coughing, and she clung to me, as she had often done, for support, then suddenly she fell to the ground, and I saw blood coming from her mouth. "Don't leave me," she sighed, almost with her last breath; "you can do me no good. Thank God it is over!" An inquest was held, and I gave evidence. Necessarily some particulars concerning my own mode of life came out, and after the inquest a man offered me money. I rejected it; I had resolved never to accept charity. The man was surprised; questioned me; and learning that I was willing to work, offered me employment. I remained with him long enough to clothe myself decently and to save a little money, and then I turned my back upon a place which had become hateful to me. It must have been a rumour of my connection with the poor girl who died in my arms that was twisted to my discredit in my native town, and it was your mention of it that has caused me to drift into details which, when I commenced, I had no intention of relating.'