Uncle Max | Page 7

conscience will smooth your pillow.'
And once, in her last illness, when Charlie asked if she were
comfortable, 'Not very, but I shall soon be quite comfortable, for I shall
hope to forget in heaven how little I have done, after all, here; and yet I
always wanted to help others.'
Oh, how good she was! And Charlie was good too, after the fashion of
young men: not altogether thoughtless, full of the promptings of his
kind heart; but Uncle Max was right when he said his last illness had
ripened him: it was not the old careless Charlie who had wooed Lesbia
who lay there: it was another and a better Charlie.
In the old days he had rallied me in a brotherly manner on my
old-fashioned, grave ways. 'You are not a modern young lady, Ursie,'
he would say; and he would often call me 'grandmother Ursula'; but all
the same he would listen to my plans with the utmost tolerance and
good nature.
Ah, those talks in the twilight, before the fatal disease developed itself,

and he lay in idle fashion on the couch with his arms under his head,
while I sat on the footstool or on the rug in the firelight! We were to
live together,--yes, that was always the dream; even when Lesbia's fair
face came between us, he would not hear of any difference. I was to
live with him and Lesbia, Lesbia was rich, and, though Charlie had
little, they were to marry soon.
I was to form a part of that luxurious household, but my time was to be
my own, and I was to devote it to the sick poor of Rutherford. 'Mind,
Ursula, you may work, but I will not have you overwork,' Charlie had
once said, more decidedly than usual; 'you must come home for hours
of rest and refreshment. You have a beautiful voice, and it shall be
properly trained; you may sing to your invalids as much as you like,
and sometimes I will come and sing too; but you must remember you
have social duties, and I shall expect you to entertain our friends.' And
it was the idea of this dual life of home sympathy and outside work that
had so strongly seized upon my imagination.
When Charlie died I was too sick at heart to carry out my plan. 'How
can one work alone?' I would say sorrowfully to myself; but after a
time the emptiness of my life and dissatisfaction with my surroundings
brought back the old thoughts.
I remembered the dear old rectory life, where every one was in earnest,
and contrasted it with the trifling pursuits that my aunt and cousin
called duties. My present existence seemed to shut me in like prison
bars. Only to be free, to choose my own life! And then came
emancipation in the shape of hard hospital work, when health and
spirits returned to me; when, under the stimulus of useful employment
and constant exercise of body and mind, I slept better, fretted less, and
looked less mournfully out on the world. Uncle Max was right when he
said a year at St. Thomas's would save me.
By and by the idea dawned upon me that I might still carry out my plan;
there were poor people at Heathfield, where Uncle Max's parish was.
What should hinder me from living there under Uncle Max's wing and
trying to combine the two lives, as Charlie wished?

I was young, full of activity. I did not wish to shut myself out from my
kind. I could discharge my duties to my own class and enjoy a
moderate amount of pleasure. I was young enough to desire that; but
the greater part of my time would be placed at the disposal of my
poorer neighbours. People might think it singular at first, but they
would not talk for ever, and the life would be a happy one to me.
All this had been said in that voluminous letter of mine to Uncle Max;
he might argue and shake his head over it, thereby proving himself a
wise man, but he could not but know that I was absolutely under my
own control, as far as a woman could be. I need ask no one's advice in
the disposal of my own life; his own and Uncle Brian's guardianship
was merely nominal now. After five-and-twenty I was declared my
own mistress in every sense of the word.
Uncle Brian came out to meet us as soon as he heard Uncle Max's voice
in the hall; the two were very great friends, and they shook hands
cordially.
'Glad to see you, Cunliffe; why did you not let us know that you were
coming up to town? We could have put you