Uncle Max | Page 6

the service of my sick poor, and for this post you have
previously trained yourself.'
'I think it will be a good sort of life,' I returned carelessly, but how my
heart was beating! 'I like it so much, and I should like to be near you,
Uncle Max, and work under you as my vicar. I have thought about this
for years. Charlie and I often talked of it. I was to live with him and
Lesbia and devote my time to this work. He thought it such a nice idea
to go and nurse poor people in their homes. And he promised that he
would come and sing to them. But now I must carry out my plan alone,
for Charlie cannot help me now.' And as I thought of the sympathy that
had never failed me my voice quivered and I could say no more.
'I wish we were all in heaven,' growled Uncle Max,--but his tone was a
little husky,--'for this world is a most uncomfortable place for good
people, or people with a craze. I think Charlie is well out of it.'
'Under which category do you mean to place me?' I asked, trying to
laugh.
'My dear, there is a craze in most women. They have such an obstinate
faith in their own good intentions. If they find half a dozen fools to
believe in them, they will start a crusade to found a new Utopia.
Women are the most meddlesome things in creation: they never let well
alone. Their pretty little fingers are in every human pie. That is why we
get so much unwholesome crust and so little meat, and, of course, our

digestion is ruined.'
'Uncle Max--' But he would not be serious any longer.
'Ursula, I utterly refuse to inhale any more of this mist. I think a
comfortable arm-chair by the fire would be far more conducive to
comfort. You have given me plenty of food for thought, and I mean to
sleep on it. Now, not another word. I am going to ring the bell.' And
Uncle Max was as good as his word.

CHAPTER II
BEHIND THE BARS
It was quite true, as I had told Uncle Max, that the scheme had been no
new one; it was no sudden emanation from a girl's brain, morbid with
discontent and fruitless longings; it had grown with my youth and had
become part of my environment. As a child the thought had come to me
as I followed my father into one cottage after another in his
house-to-house visitation. He had been a conscientious, hard-working
clergyman; in fact, his work killed him, for he overtasked a constitution
that was not naturally strong. I accompanied my mother, too, in her
errands of mercy, and saw a great deal of the misery engendered by
drink, ignorance, and want of forethought. In the case of the sick poor,
the gross mismanagement and want of cleanly and thrifty habits led to
an amount of discomfort and suffering that even now makes me
shudder. The parish was overgrown and insufficiently worked; the
greater part of the population belonged to the working-classes;
dissenting chapels and gin-palaces flourished. Often did my childish
heart ache at the surroundings of some squalid home, where the parents
toiled all day for worse than naught, just to satisfy their unhealthy
cravings, while the children grew up riotous, half starved, and full of
inherited vices. There was a little child I saw once, a cripple, dying
slowly of some sad spinal disease, lying in a dark corner, on what
seemed to me a heap of rags. Oh, God, I can see that child's face now! I
remember when we heard of its death my mother burst into tears. They

were tears of joy, she told me afterwards, that another suffering child's
life was ended; 'and there are hundreds and hundreds of these little
creatures, Ursula,' she said, 'growing up in sin and misery; and the
world goes on, and people eat and drink and are merry, for it is none of
their business, and yet it is not the will of the Father that one of these
little ones should perish.'
I had learned much from my father, but still more from my mother.
Uncle Max had called her a good woman, but she was more than that:
she possessed one of those rare unselfish natures that cannot remain
satisfied with their own personal happiness: they wish to include the
whole world. She wanted to inculcate in me her own spirit of
self-sacrifice. I can remember some of her short, trenchant sentences
now.
'Never mind happiness: that is God's gift to a few: do your duty.'
'If you have loved your fellow-creatures sufficiently you will not be
afraid to die. A good