The Queen of Hearts
Page 6
CHAPTER II.
I was taken home on the appointed day to suffer the trial--a hard oneeven at my tender years--of witnessing my mother's passionate grief andmy father's mute despair. I remember that the scene of our first meetingafter Caroline's death was wisely and considerately shortened by myaunt, who took me out of the room. She seemed to have a confused desireto keep me from leaving her after the door had closed behind us; but Ibroke away and ran downstairs to the surgery, to go and cry for my lostplaymate with the sharer of all our games, Uncle George.
I opened the surgery door and could see nobody. I dried my tears andlooked all round the room--it was empty. I ran upstairs again to UncleGeorge's garret bedroom--he was not there; his cheap hairbrush and oldcast-off razor-case that had belonged to my grandfather were not on thedressing-table. Had he got some other bedroom? I went out on the landingand called softly, with an unaccountable terror and sinking at my heart:
"Uncle George!"
Nobody answered; but my aunt came hastily up the garret stairs.
"Hush!" she said. "You must never call that name out here again!"
She stopped suddenly, and looked as if her own words had frightened her.
"Is Uncle George dead?" I asked. My aunt turned red and pale, andstammered.
I did not wait to hear what she said. I brushed past her, down thestairs. My heart was bursting--my flesh felt cold. I ran breathlesslyand recklessly into the room where my father and mother had received me.They were both sitting there still. I ran up to them, wringing my hands,and crying out in a passion of tears:
"Is Uncle George dead?"
My mother gave a scream that terrified me into instant silence andstillness. My father looked at her for a moment, rang the bell thatsummoned the maid, then seized me roughly by the arm and dragged me outof the room.
He took me down into the study, seated himself in his accustomed chair,and put me before him between his knees. His lips were awfully white,and I felt his two hands, as they grasped my shoulders, shakingviolently.
"You are never to mention the name of Uncle George again," he said, ina quick, angry, trembling whisper. "Never to me, never to yourmother, never to your aunt, never to anybody in this world!Never--never--never!"
The repetition of the word terrified me even more than the suppressedvehemence with which he spoke. He saw that I was frightened, andsoftened his manner a little before he went on.
"You will never see Uncle George again," he said. "Your mother and Ilove you dearly; but if you forget what I have told you, you will besent away from home. Never speak that name again--mind, never! Now kissme, and go away."
How his lips trembled--and oh, how cold they felt on mine!
I shrunk out of the room the moment he had kissed me, and went and hidmyself in the garden.
"Uncle George is gone. I am never to see him any more; I am never tospeak of him again"--those were the words I repeated to myself, withindescribable terror and confusion, the moment I was alone. There wassomething unspeakably horrible to my young mind in this mystery whichI was commanded always to respect, and which, so far as I then knew,I could never hope to see revealed. My father, my mother, my aunt, allappeared to be separated from me now by some impassable barrier. Homeseemed home no longer with Caroline dead, Uncle George gone, and aforbidden subject of talk perpetually and mysteriously interposingbetween my parents and me.
Though I never infringed the command my father had given me in his study(his words and looks, and that dreadful scream of my mother's, whichseemed to be still ringing in my ears, were more than enough to insuremy obedience), I also never lost the secret desire to penetrate thedarkness which clouded over the fate of Uncle George.
For two years I remained at home and discovered nothing. If I asked theservants about my uncle, they could only tell me that one morning hedisappeared from the house. Of the members of my father's family I couldmake no inquiries. They lived far away, and never came to see us; andthe idea of writing to them, at my age and in my position, was out ofthe question. My aunt was as unapproachably silent as my father andmother; but I never forgot how her face had altered when she reflectedfor a moment after hearing of my extraordinary adventure while goinghome with the servant over the sands at night. The more I thought ofthat change of countenance in connection with what had occurred on myreturn to my father's house, the more certain I felt that the strangerwho had kissed me and wept over me must have been no other than UncleGeorge.
At the end of my two years at home I was sent to sea in the merchantnavy by my own earnest desire. I had always determined to be a sailorfrom the time when I first went to stay with my aunt at the sea-side,and I persisted long enough in my resolution to make my parentsrecognize the necessity of acceding to my wishes.
My new life delighted me, and I remained away on foreign stations morethan four years. When I at length returned home, it was to find a newaffliction darkening our fireside. My father had died on the very daywhen I sailed for my return voyage to England.
Absence and change of scene had in no respect weakened my desire topenetrate the mystery of Uncle George's disappearance. My mother'shealth was so delicate that I hesitated for some time to approach theforbidden subject in her presence. When I at last ventured to refer toit, suggesting to her that any prudent reserve which might have beennecessary while I was a child, need no longer be persisted in now that Iwas growing to be a young man, she fell into a violent fit of trembling,and commanded me to say no more. It had been my father's will, she said,that the reserve to which I referred should be always adopted toward me;he had not authorized her, before he died, to speak more openly; and,now that he was gone, she would not so much as think of acting on herown unaided judgment. My aunt said the same thing in effect when Iappealed to her. Determined not to be discouraged even yet, I undertooka journey, ostensibly to pay my respects to my father's family, but withthe secret intention of trying what I could learn in that quarter on thesubject of Uncle George.
My investigations led to some results, though they were by no meanssatisfactory. George had always been looked upon with something likecontempt by his handsome sisters and his prosperous brothers, and hehad not improved his position in the family by his warm advocacy of hisbrother's cause at the time of my father's marriage. I found that myuncle's surviving relatives now spoke of him slightingly and carelessly.They assured me that they had never heard from him, and that they knewnothing about him, except that he had gone away to settle, as theysupposed, in some foreign place, after having behaved very basely andbadly to my father. He had been traced to London, where he had sold outof the funds the small share of money which he had inherited after hisfather's death, and he had been seen on the deck of a packet bound forFrance later on the same day. Beyond this nothing was known about him.In what the alleged baseness of his behavior had consisted none of hisbrothers and sisters could tell me. My father had refused to painthem by going into particulars, not only at the time of his brother'sdisappearance, but afterward, whenever the subject was mentioned. Georgehad always been the black sheep of the flock, and he must have beenconscious of his own baseness, or he would certainly have written toexplain and to justify himself.
Such were the particulars which I gleaned during my visit to my father'sfamily. To my mind, they tended rather to deepen than to reveal themystery. That such a gentle, docile, affectionate creature as UncleGeorge should have injured the brother he loved by word or deed at anyperiod of their intercourse, seemed incredible; but that he should havebeen guilty of an act of baseness at the very time when my sisterwas dying was simply and plainly impossible. And yet there was theincomprehensible fact staring me in the face that the death of Carolineand the disappearance of Uncle George had taken place in the same week!Never did I feel more daunted and bewildered by the family secret thanafter I had heard all the particulars in connection with it that myfather's relatives had to tell me.
I may pass over the events of the next few years of my life brieflyenough.
My nautical pursuits filled up all my time, and took me far away frommy country and my friends. But, whatever I did, and wherever I went, thememory of Uncle George, and the desire to penetrate the mystery of hisdisappearance, haunted me like familiar spirits. Often, in the lonelywatches of the night at sea, did I recall the dark evening on the beach,the strange man's hurried embrace, the startling sensation of feelinghis tears on my cheeks, the disappearance of him before I had breathor self-possession enough to say a word. Often did I think over theinexplicable events that followed, when I had returned, after mysister's funeral, to my father's house; and oftener still did I puzzlemy brains vainly, in the attempt to form some plan for inducing mymother or my aunt to disclose the secret which they had hitherto keptfrom me so perseveringly. My only chance of knowing what had reallyhappened to Uncle George, my only hope of seeing him again, rested withthose two near and dear relatives. I despaired of ever getting my motherto speak on the forbidden subject after what had passed between us, butI felt more sanguine about my prospects of ultimately inducing my auntto relax in her discretion. My anticipations, however, in this directionwere not destined to be fulfilled. On my next visit to England I foundmy aunt prostrated by a paralytic attack, which deprived her of thepower of speech. She died soon afterward in my arms, leaving me her soleheir. I searched anxiously among her papers for some reference to thefamily mystery, but found no clew to guide me. All my mother's lettersto her sister at the time of Caroline's illness and death had beendestroyed.