GILLIAN AND HER UNCLE.
When Daniel Hart was left alone, he sat for a moment troubled by the
outburst of passionate feeling with which Bentley had left the room.
Daniel Hart thought over the old times till the great, brave heart in
his bosom swelled heavily, and he arose from his chair, pacing up and
down the room with his hands locked behind him, and the balls of his two
thumbs pressed against each other, as was his habit when drawn into deep
or disagreeable reflection. He was not aware that the tramp of his heavy
shoes resounded through the house, but kept on step, step, step, like a
sentinel on duty, till at last the door opened, and the bright face of
Gillian Bentley looked in.
“Ah, it is you, Uncle Daniel, and all alone,” she said, closing the door
after her. “I’m so glad. Every thing seems strange and still here. I
cannot sleep, try ever so much. Don’t look at me so. Indeed I tried, but
the moon came blinking in through the hickory branches, and up I sprang,
put on my dressing-gown, huddled myself into a shawl, and sat down by
the open window till I am quite chilled through.”
“It was dangerous business,” said Hart, with a quiver in his voice.
“Like your mother, too—very like your mother, gal.”
“Ah, I was thinking of her, my poor mother, when the moonlight came in:
it seems as if she must be somewhere in this old house waiting for me,
Uncle Hart. You’re not sleepy, I am sure, by the way you walk. Sit here
in this great chair, and let me snuggle down on the footstool by your
knee, while you tell me about my mother—my splendid, beautiful
mother—for I have her features here, deep, deep in my heart. It was the
first memory of my life buried there, Uncle Daniel.”
Gillian threw one arm over the farmer’s shoulder, and with a little
gentle force led him back to the oak chair, while she sunk down to the
stool at his feet with the grace and sweep of a bird of paradise when it
settles to rest.
“There now, Uncle Daniel, just imagine me your daughter ten years old,
determined to be naughty and to keep you up half the night, while I try
to believe that you have given me one good scolding, and made up as a
dutiful papa is bound to do.”
“Wall,” said Uncle Daniel, and a broad smile swept over his face, spite
of the trouble that spoke in his voice, “Wall, now, what shall we talk
about? What can an old chap like me have to say to a fine lady that
comes down at midnight in her silks and satins like a queen, and wants
to make believe sociable? It’s like a game-cock coming in among a lot of
guinea hens and turkey gobblers: they have nothing to do but to give up
the yard and huddle under some old cart out of the way.”
“Am I so very unlike everybody here, then?” said Gillian, in a tone of
childish mortification. “What is it—my poor old dressing-gown and this
shawl? Indeed I’d nothing else. Somebody packed them on the very top of
the trunk.”
With a pretty flush on her face, and a degree of eager haste, which
proved her quite earnest in her shame, she wrapped the blue silk
dressing-gown, with its soft facing of swan’s-down, close about her, and
strove to cover it under the rich folds of a camel’s-hair shawl, with a
delicate azure ground, and overrun with great palm leaves, in which a
thousand gorgeous tints, struggled into contrast, or slept in harmony.
“There now, dear uncle, that I am getting respectable, please tell me if
I look the least bit like my poor mamma?”
The old man gazed down on that bright face till his eyes filled with
tears. He did not speak, but lifted his hand and laid it on her head.
“A little,” said Gillian, smiling through the mist that shone in her
eyes. “Just the least little bit, please: say that much.”
“Yes, gal, you’re like our Sarah—just as a wild rose from the swamp puts
you in mind of a damask rose in a garden. I should a known you was her
darter if I’d met you in Kamtschatka. She hadn’t your fine feathers, but
no one could mistake about your being birds of the old nest.”
“Yes, that’s it,” cried Gillian. “That’s the way I feel here—like a poor
little bird that’s been flying and flying among the myrtles without
settling anywhere; but once under the old hickory tree, that is rattling
its nuts down to the frosty grass this minute, the tired birdie longs to
folds its wings and feel at home. It’s like living a dream over again to
find myself here.”
“And this is the way she used to talk,” said Hart, gazing with looks of
wistful fondness into the beautiful face uplifted to his.
“Who? my mother? Did she feel like a bird glad to rest?”
“No, like a bird forever wanting to try the wing. From the time she was
ten years old she was always talking of the foreign parts she intended
to visit; the people she meant to know; and the things she meant to do.”
“Why, Uncle Daniel, did my mother have such ideas?”
“Yes, yes, she did strange things in her fancy, just as she travelled
over strange countries.”
“But she was very young—not much over my age when she died.”
“When she died?”
“Yes, when she died. Two or three years older, perhaps, but not more
than that.”
“Then you remember the time?”
“Yes, but not the circumstance. We were in Naples. I remember their
coming to the convent where I had been left for some reason, and telling
me I no longer had a mother—that she was gone.”
“And this was all?”
“No. One day when I asked for the place where my mother was laid, the
old nurse took me up to a beautiful spot back of Naples, where you could
hardly see the graves for the roses that blossomed over them—not for a
week or a month, but all the year around—and told me that was the place
where I must seek for her.”
“And did you find the spot?”
“I don’t know. Neither the nurse nor I could read. We could only guess
where she lay by the brightness of the roses; but we found a little
hollow on the hill-side, completely choked up with blossoms. The
loveliest spot you ever set eyes on, so shaded that the softest moss
crept over the little marble slabs all around, except one, and that was
pure and white as snow. We picked that out for the one and came away.”
“And this is all you know of your mother?”
“What more should I know, poor, little child that I was? Papa never
speaks of her; no other human being that I ever saw knew any thing about
her: that was why there was no sleep for me to-night, till I had come
down and had a talk with you.”
“It was the way she used to come when any thing troubled her,” said
Hart, looking thoughtfully into the fire.
“And that proves how much we are alike. I wasn’t so certain about the
nice old lady, or even Cousin Hannah; but the moment I felt your hand on
my head I was sure of you.”
The old farmer shook in his chair; he was almost crying.
“That’s right, gal—that’s right. It’s the way Sarah Hart’s darter should
feel on coming home. It’s the way she would have felt herself if she—but
what has become of her? God help us all—when did she die—where did she
die?”
Gillian turned suddenly pale. Her eyes grew wild and large.
“Oh, uncle, what a strange question!”
“Every thing about her is strange,” muttered Hart, shaking his head
doubtfully. “I don’t know how to talk or what to say; secrets always
trouble me, especially when I don’t understand them. In all these years
never to have heard a word: and now to be, as it was, knocked down with
a single word, and left to brood over it. Young lady, what kind of a man
is your father?”
“My father—my father! Why, Uncle Hart, who ever thought of asking that
question before? What child ever did ask it? Why he is a grand, true
man, gentle as an angel, and proud as—as an emperor. With wise men he is
always the wisest; with good men he seems best of all. I never saw a
human being that dared to take a liberty with papa, and yet he is mild
and kind as a little child.”
“But you haven’t dared to ask him right straight-forward about your own
mother and her folks.”
“That’s true, and yet I could not tell the reason to save my life.”
“It’s because there’s something kept back.”
“No, I hope not—I hope not,” murmured Gillian, thoughtfully.
“You wasn’t afraid to ask me about her?”
“Not in the least. I only hesitated a little about the time of night,
that is all.”
“Now tell me what you want to know.”
“Every thing.”
“Very well: why not? There ain’t nothing to tell that a body need be
ashamed on; and you’ll never see the day, gal, bright and peart as you
be, that Sarah Hart mightn’t have gone ahead of her own child.”
“I’m sure of that. It’s just what I was hoping to hear. It’s so pleasant
to look up to one’s own parents. Well——”
Gillian folded both her white hands over the farmer’s knee, and looked
up to him with her eyes brimfull of tender expectation.
“Well!”