'How are the young to be taught, then, if the old will not teach them?'
In the presence of my mother's distress he had no answer to make, and I felt that it was out of consideration for her, and not from any desire to spare himself, that he went into the shop and left us to ourselves.
Then Jessie to my mother:
'I hope you will forgive me, but if I knew I should have died for it I could not have helped doing what I've done. Don't be grieved for me; I am not worth it. I am going to spend the morning with Miss West.'
My mother and I went to church by ourselves; but I fear that my mood was not a very devout one. My mind was filled with what had taken place at home, and its probable consequences.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
COLOUR-BLIND.
The consequences were more serious than any one of us could possibly have imagined, with the single exception of uncle Bryan; where we hoped, he reasoned, and reasoned with bitterness against himself. There are in the world a sort of men with whom you are for ever at a disadvantage--men who from various motives are strangely, and ofttimes cruelly, reticent as regards themselves, their thoughts, and their actions. These men receive your confidences, but do not confide in you in return; they listen to your schemes, your hopes, your fears, but say not a word concerning their own. You wear your heart upon your sleeve; they lock up theirs jealously, and place upon them an impenetrable seal, which perhaps once or twice in a lifetime they remove--perhaps never. Uncle Bryan was one of these men. Scarcely by a look had he ever shown us his heart, and it required a nature not only more noble and generous, but more self-sacrificing, than mine not to misjudge him--to be even tolerant of him.
All our hopes of a more harmonious feeling between him and Jessie were utterly shattered, and my birthday, instead of being the commencement of a brighter and better era in our home relations, inaugurated an era of much unhappiness and discomfort. In the most unfortunate, and yet, as it seemed to me, in the most natural way, we were placed in a painfully-delicate position of antagonism. Who was to blame for this? I found the answer to this question without difficulty. Who but uncle Bryan was to blame? The part which Jessie had taken in the conversations between them was dictated by the best of feelings--was good and tender--and I admired her, not only for her courage, but for the affection she had displayed towards him, and for her efforts to wean him from his moroseness and infidelity. That she had failed was no fault of hers. The fault lay entirely in himself, and in his insensibility to softening influences. That, if she had succeeded, the result would have been both good and beautiful, was incontrovertible. I argued the matter very closely in my mind, for, notwithstanding my love for Jessie, I was anxious not to do uncle Bryan an injustice, and I could come but to one conclusion. What home could be happy with a master who possessed such a nature as his? He was like a dark shadow moving among us, and turning our joy into gloom.
These were partly the result of my reflections. Other considerations also arose. We were all bound to one another by ties of affection. That was a certainty, in the first blush of my reflections; but afterwards a doubt occurred to my mind. By what tie of affection was Jessie bound to uncle Bryan? He himself, when he told my mother and me the story of his life, had confessed it: by none. The charge of Jessie had almost been forced upon him, and his sense of duty had compelled him to accept it. It was not humanity that had impelled him to give Jessie a home. And if, after she came among us, she had failed to win his love, it was because his heart was hard and cold, and incapable of tenderness. I recalled a hundred little ways in which she had wooed him, and every one of them was an argument against him. Then I thought of her helpless dependent position, and my love for her and my anger against him grew stronger. That he was hard to her was an additional reason why I should show her openly, and without false weakness, that in me she had a champion and a friend who would be true to her until death. Even if I did not love her, I argued, this championship of one who was cast as a stranger amongst us would have been demanded of my manliness.