My mother crept to my side, but I was not to be turned from my purpose. I could hear and feel the rapid beating of her heart against my hand, which she had taken in hers and pressed to her bosom, but the selfish intensity of my own grief made me deaf and blind to everything else. Uncle Bryan did not answer me; he strove feebly to pass me again, but I prevented him from doing so. Something in my attitude caused Josey West to place herself between us.
'I hope you are satisfied,' I said. 'You have driven her from us. What is the next thing you intend to do?'
I paused for his reply, but he did not speak.
'I intended to ask Jessie to-night to be my wife. I don't know what her answer would have been, but I think I know what it might have been but for your systematic cruelty. Will it add to your satisfaction to know that I had set all my hopes of happiness upon her, and that you have driven these from my heart, as you have driven her from your door? I loved her with all my soul. I was not worthy of her; she is far above me and every one here; but I loved her most truly and sincerely, and you have stepped between us and parted us for ever. Does it please you to be assured of this?----Nay, mother, I will speak. I have been silent until now, out of my love for you, and because I knew that you had given even him a place in your tender heart. He has requited you nobly for it. If I had spoken openly before now, things might have been different, but I held my tongue, like a coward, and because I had some latent notion that he deserved respect from me. I think so no longer. On my last birthday,' I continued, addressing him, 'you gave me certain advice which I believed to be good; among other things you said that it is seldom a man can look back upon his life with satisfaction. You drew that from your own experience. With what kind of satisfaction do you look back upon your own life? A man with any tenderness for others in his nature would shrink with horror from the contemplation of such a life as yours. But perhaps you find it a pleasant task to blight the hopes and happiness of those who have the misfortune to come in contact with you. Having no children of your own upon whom you could practise in this way, you turned your attention to others, and you have succeeded most thoroughly. You said to me, when I was of age, that I was a man, with a man's responsibility, and a man's work to do, and you bade me do it faithfully. I have tried to do it--my mother knows that, and so does Miss West, I think--in the hope that it would lead to a good result. But when you addressed those words to me, did you think of yourself, and the example of your own life? They sounded well, but did you think of your own responsibility--or did you think that you, apart from all other men in the world, had no responsibility which it behoved you to look to? You brought Jessie here, a friendless, helpless girl--a girl whom nobody but you could help loving for the goodness that is in her. She brought sunshine into this house, which was gloomy enough without her. She had no mother, no father, no friends, and you were her only protector. How have you fulfilled your duty towards her? Shall I answer for you? You have behaved like a tyrant, in whom all human feeling was deadened. When she strove to love you, you compelled her, by harsh words and cold looks and repellent acts, to hate you. She has good cause for her feelings towards you now, for you did your best to make every hour and every day of her life a misery to her. She told me herself that she was only happy out of the house; so that you did your work well. If you saw faults in her which no one else saw, and which had their birth in your own hard unfeeling nature, what right had you to torture her in the way you did? She was but a child, and you are an old man. Why could you not have dealt tenderly and gently by her? Ask my mother--ask Miss West--ask any of her friends--if there is anything in her character that might not be turned to good account? But you could not see it. Lightheartedness and an innocent flow of spirits are crimes in your eyes. You made her pay bitterly for the shelter you gave her; you have shown the generosity of your nature in its fullest light by making her say, after a long experience of you, that she would starve rather than enter your house again. When you told us the story of your life, you said you wished me to hear it because I might learn something from it. I have learnt something--but not the lesson you wished me to learn. I have learnt that such a life as yours, such a nature as yours, brings desolation upon every life and nature within its influence, and that it would be a happier fate for me to drop down dead this minute than live as you have lived, a torture to all around you.'
'Chris, Chris!' implored my mother, with streaming eyes, and with a gesture of entreaty towards uncle Bryan, who sat before me now, with his head bowed upon his hands. Remember, my dear child, remember!'
'Remember what, mother?' I cried pitilessly. 'That he has robbed me of all that can make life dear to me--of all that is dear to me? You should ask me rather to forget when you point to him, whom I would teach a different lesson if he were not an old man, with one foot in the grave. Shall I remember that he has no belief in goodness here or hereafter--that he believes neither in God nor man? Will such remembrances as these plead in his favour? One thing I will and do remember--that I owe him money for the food he has given me and you. But I will pay him to the last farthing, so that nothing may remain between us but what I owe him for having brought misery into my life. That is a debt that can never be wiped out. And Jessie will pay him also; she told me she would. But for that resolve she would not, for a long time past, have eaten a meal at his expense. Are these the things you wish me to remember?'
I knew that I was striking him hard with every word I uttered, but I would not spare him. I ransacked my mind to hurt him.
'And you, mother,' I said pitilessly, do you think you are just to me in pleading for him, and in disguising the opinion you have of him? When, knowing that all my hopes were set on Jessie, and that it was impossible for her and him to live happily in the same house, I proposed to make a home elsewhere where we could live in happiness without him, did you show your love for me by saying that we must never leave him, and that, wherever our home was, he must share it? When he told us his story, for the purpose, as I now see, of setting us more and more against Jessie, and I asked you afterwards if you would like me to look on things as he does, what was your answer? "God forbid!" you said; "it would take all the sweetness out of your life."' (Uncle Bryan removed his hand from his eyes at this, and raised them for one moment to my mother's white face; there was no reproach in them, but a look of humble grateful affection.) 'In what was Jessie wrong that she should have been driven from us? In wishing him to go to church with us? Ask your own heart, mother, for an answer to that, and remember what occurred on the first Sunday night we were in this house. If I had known then what I know now, I would have starved rather than have accepted the shelter of his roof. Remember how, for days and weeks together, Jessie has been submissive and tender to him, striving by every means in her power to win his affection; and remember how her efforts were received and rewarded. But for him Jessie might have been my wife; you loved her, and she loved you. How often have you told me that you saw nothing in her but what was good! I think at one time she would have consented to share my lot, but that dream is over now. There was an influence strong enough to turn love into hate, and to poison all our lives. I will remember that to my dying day, which I hope may not be far off. I have nothing worth living for. But one thing I am resolved upon--that while I live, those who love me shall choose between me and him.'
Josey West caught my arm suddenly and sharply.
'Are you mad?' she cried. 'Learn the lesson you want to teach others. Look at your mother.'