“Merciful Providence, my poor uncle!” she faintly cried; and, tottering towards a pallet-bed that was near to her, she sank down on the side of it, and gazed with grief and with horror on the miserable object before her.
Seated in a wooden elbow chair, she did indeed behold her uncle; but he was there as a mere piece of animated clay. His hair, which always used to be so nicely trimmed and powdered, now hung in long white untamed locks over a countenance so yellow and emaciated as to be absolutely fearful to look upon. Part of it fell over the eyes, which were seen within it like two bits of yellow glass, motionless and void of all speculation. The under jaw hung forward, and the tongue lolled out, as if all muscular power was lost. An old Indian dressing-gown, which Chirsty remembered to have been his pride, as having been presented to him by a great rajah, and as being made of the most valuable stuff that Cashmere could produce, but now begrimed by every species of filth, covered his person. A broad band of girth was passed around his breast under his arms, and attached to the back of his chair, to prevent his weakness or his involuntary motions from precipitating him on the floor. His feet were both occupied in drumming upon the ground, and his hands were extended before him, with the fingers continually crawling like reptiles on his knees, whilst he was ceaselessly emitting a low muttering whine, that never moulded itself into words. The very first glance she had of him convinced Chirsty that her poor uncle was in the last stage of confirmed and hopeless idiocy.
“What would a letter have done, think ye, to such a clod as that ’ere?” demanded the unfeeling wretch Sarah, “or what will you make of un, now you have seen un?”
“My poor unhappy uncle!” said Chirsty, starting from her seat and going fondly towards him, and weeping over him; “how sadly indeed hast thou been changed! When, alas! did this awful affliction fall upon him? But why has he been removed from his own comfortable home to such a place as this?”
“Such a place as this, quotha!” cried Sarah. “Why, what sort of a place would ye have un in? There is not a more comfortabler room in the whole house. And see, if I didn’t bring down that ’ere old wardrobe, that we might have summat to hold un’s things in; though I must say,” added she in an undertone, “that he hasn’t much left now that’s worth the caring for.”
“But why has he been removed to such an establishment as this?” said Chirsty. “Surely, surely, his malady, helpless and unoffending as it has rendered him, could have given no disturbance in his own house, why then has he been torn from it? and how could his wife have agreed to treatment so cruel and so unnecessary?”
“His wife!” exclaimed Sarah with a laugh. “It was his wife who sent un here; and surely his wife has the most natral right to judge what’s best for un.”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Chirsty, “his wife! There must be some horrible villainy under all this.”
“What!” exclaimed Sarah. “What is there horrible in a gay woman like her ridding her house of such a filthy slavering mummy as this? He would be a pretty ornament, truly, to grace some of the rich Mrs. Ross’s splendid routes, as I now and then see the papers call them. Besides, she pays well for his board here, and it is our interest not to let un die.”
“Rich!” exclaimed Chirsty indignantly. “Her riches are my uncle’s riches; and if one spark of Christian feeling yet remained in her bosom, she ought to have employed them in relieving, so far as they could relieve, this most heavy affliction of a just and wise Providence.”