OUR NEW HOME.
A day or two afterwards I surprised my mother and uncle Bryan in the
midst of a conversation which I supposed had reference to myself. My
mother was in a very earnest mood, but uncle Bryan, except that he
listened attentively to what she was saying, seemed in no way stirred.
In all my life's experiences I never met or heard of a man who was
more thoroughly attentive to every little detail that passed around
him than was uncle Bryan; but although he gave his whole mind to the
smallest matter for the time being, he evinced no indication of it,
and persons who did not understand his character might reasonably have
supposed him to be utterly indifferent to what was going on.
'You will promise me, Bryan,' my mother said.
'I will promise nothing, Emma,' he replied; 'I made a promise once in
my life, and I received a promise in return. I know what came of it.'
He smiled bitterly, and added, his words seeming to me to be prompted
more by inner consciousness than by the signs of distress in my
mother's face, 'But you can make your mind easy. It is not in my
nature to force my views upon any one. Force! as if it were any matter
of mine! What comes to him must come as it has come to me--through the
light of experience.'
'Do you not believe, Bryan----'
He interrupted her, almost vehemently. 'I believe in nothing! If that
does not content you, I cannot help it.'
'If I could assist you, Bryan--if I could in any way relieve you----'
'You cannot. I am fixed. Life for me is tasteless.'
Something of desolation was in his tone as he said this, but its
plaintiveness was not designed by the speaker. Rather did he intend to
express defiance, and a renunciation of sympathy.
'But, Bryan,' said my mother, with a tender movement towards him----
'I must stop you,' he said, 'for fear you should say something which
would compel an explanation from me. Let matters rest I am but one
among hundreds of millions of crawlers. Once I saw other than visible
signs--or fancied that I saw them, fool that I was! The time has gone,
never to return; the power of comprehension has gone, never to return.
You must take me as you find me. There is very little in the world
that I like or dislike; but I can heartily despise one thing:
insincerity. Have you anything more to say?'
'No, Bryan;' and I could see that my mother was both pained and
relieved.
'I have; two or three words. A question first. You can be satisfied to
remain here?'
'Yes, Bryan, if it satisfies you. I can do no better.'
A gleam came into his eyes. 'That is sincere,' he said, with a
pleasanter smile than the last. 'Very well, then; it does satisfy me.
What I want to say now is, that there must be no break. You must not
remain, and let me get accustomed to you, and then leave me for a
woman's reason.'
'I will not, Bryan.'
With that, the conversation ended. In the night, when my mother and I
were alone in our bedroom, I said,
'Do you think uncle Bryan is a good man now, mother?'
'Is it not good of him, Chris, to give us a home?'
'Yes,' I said; but I was not quite satisfied with her answer. 'His
shell is very rough, though.'
My mother laughed. I loved to hear her laugh; it was so different from
uncle Bryan's. His laughter had no gladness in it.
'We shall find a sweet place here and there, Chris,' she said.
She tried to, I am sure, and she brightened the house with her
pleasant ways. One night we were sitting together as usual; I was
doing a sum on a slate which uncle Bryan had set for me; he was
reading; my mother was mending clothes. We had been sitting quiet for
a long time, when my mother commenced to sing one of her simple songs,
very softly, as though she were singing to herself. In the midst of
her singing she became aware that uncle Bryan was present, and with a
rapid apprehensive glance at him she paused. He looked up from his
book at once.
'Why do you stop, Emma?' he asked.
'I thought I might disturb you.'
'You do not; I like to hear you.'
The charm, however, was broken for that night, and my mother knew it,
and sang but little. Two or three nights afterwards, when uncle Bryan
was engrossed in his book, my mother began to sing again over her
work. I knew every trick of her features, and I think she was
designing enough to watch her opportunity, for there was never a more
perfect master than she of the delicate cunning which kindness to
rough and cross natures often requires. It was with much curiosity
that I quietly observed uncle Bryan's behaviour while my mother sang.
He held his book steadily before him, but he did not turn a page; and
to my, perhaps, too curious eyes there appeared to be, in the very
curve of his shoulders, a grateful recognition of my mother's wish to
please him. I could not see his face, but I liked him better at that
time than I had ever yet done. Truly, my mother was right; here at
least was one sweet place found in the rough shell. She continued her
singing in the same soft strains; and often afterwards sang when we
three were sitting together of an evening.
Exactly three weeks after we had taken up our quarters with uncle
Bryan, my mother and I paid a visit to the neighbourhood in which she
had made the acquaintance of the fairy in the cotton-print dress; but
although it was Saturday night we saw no trace of the little girl. My
mother was much disappointed; and then she went to the house in which
the young woman lived who had given her sixpence, and learned that she
had moved, the landlady did not know whither. I was glad to get away
from the neighbourhood, although I was almost as much disappointed as
my mother was at not finding our little fairy.
Our new life, having thus fairly commenced, went on for a long time
with but little variation. Uncle Bryan allowed my mother to do exactly
as she pleased, and she, without in the slightest way disturbing his
regular habits, made the house very different from what it was when
she first entered it. Every room in it, down to the basement, where
she did the cooking, was always sweet and clean. We also had flowers
on the sill of our bedroom window, and their graceful forms and bright
colours were a refreshing relief to the dark back wall. It delights me
to see the taste for _growing_ flowers cultivated by the poor. Flowers
are purifiers; they breed good thoughts. Quite a rivalry was
established between uncle Bryan and my mother in the care and
attention which they bestowed on their respective window-sills. It
went on silently and pleasantly, and my mother was not displeased
because uncle Bryan was the victor. He trained some creepers from the
window of his little back room to the window of our bedroom, and my
mother watched them with intense interest creeping up, and up, until
they reached the sill. 'They are like a message of love from your
uncle, my dear,' she said. It is by such small precious links as these
that heart is bound to heart. Yet the feelings with which uncle Bryan
inspired me were by no means of a tender nature. He made no effort to
win my affection; as a general rule, his bearing towards me was
sufficiently cold to check tender impulse, and the words, 'I believe
in nothing!' which I had heard him address sternly to my mother, had
impressed me very seriously. I regarded him sometimes with fear and
aversion.
I was sent to a cheap school, a very few pence a week being paid for
my education. My career in the school is scarcely worthy of record.
All that was taught there were reading, writing, and arithmetic; and
when these were learned our education was completed. The master never
allowed himself to be tripped up by his pupils. Arithmetic was his
strong point, and the rule-of-three was his boundary.
In that happy hunting-ground we bought and sold the usual illimitable
quantities of eggs, and yards of calico, and firkins of butter; and
there we should have wallowed until we were old men, had we remained
long enough, without ever reaching another heaven. My principal
reminiscences of those days are connected with the bully of the
school; who, whenever we met in the streets out of school-hours,
compelled me to make three very low and humble bows to him before he
would allow me to pass. I have not the satisfaction of being able to
record that he met with the usual fate (in fiction) of school
bullies--that of being soundly licked, and of being compelled to eat
humble pie for ever afterwards. He was a successful tyrant. His
position occasionally compelled him to fight two boys at a
time--one down, the other come up--but he was never beaten. A tyrant
he was, and a tyrant he remained until I lost sight of him. In his
career, virtue was never triumphant.