Chapter V: Gillian and Her Uncle

When Daniel Hart was left alone, he sat for a moment troubled by the outburst of passionate feeling with which Bentley had left the room.

Daniel Hart thought over the old times till the great, brave heart in his bosom swelled heavily, and he arose from his chair, pacing up and down the room with his hands locked behind him, and the balls of his two thumbs pressed against each other, as was his habit when drawn into deep or disagreeable reflection. He was not aware that the tramp of his heavy shoes resounded through the house, but kept on step, step, step, like a sentinel on duty, till at last the door opened, and the bright face of Gillian Bentley looked in.

“Ah, it is you, Uncle Daniel, and all alone,” she said, closing the door after her. “I’m so glad. Every thing seems strange and still here. I cannot sleep, try ever so much. Don’t look at me so. Indeed I tried, but the moon came blinking in through the hickory branches, and up I sprang, put on my dressing-gown, huddled myself into a shawl, and sat down by the open window till I am quite chilled through.”

“It was dangerous business,” said Hart, with a quiver in his voice. “Like your mother, too—very like your mother, gal.”

“Ah, I was thinking of her, my poor mother, when the moonlight came in: it seems as if she must be somewhere in this old house waiting for me, Uncle Hart. You’re not sleepy, I am sure, by the way you walk. Sit here in this great chair, and let me snuggle down on the footstool by your knee, while you tell me about my mother—my splendid, beautiful mother—for I have her features here, deep, deep in my heart. It was the first memory of my life buried there, Uncle Daniel.”

Gillian threw one arm over the farmer’s shoulder, and with a little gentle force led him back to the oak chair, while she sunk down to the stool at his feet with the grace and sweep of a bird of paradise when it settles to rest.

“There now, Uncle Daniel, just imagine me your daughter ten years old, determined to be naughty and to keep you up half the night, while I try to believe that you have given me one good scolding, and made up as a dutiful papa is bound to do.”

“Wall,” said Uncle Daniel, and a broad smile swept over his face, spite of the trouble that spoke in his voice, “Wall, now, what shall we talk about? What can an old chap like me have to say to a fine lady that comes down at midnight in her silks and satins like a queen, and wants to make believe sociable? It’s like a game-cock coming in among a lot of guinea hens and turkey gobblers: they have nothing to do but to give up the yard and huddle under some old cart out of the way.”

“Am I so very unlike everybody here, then?” said Gillian, in a tone of childish mortification. “What is it—my poor old dressing-gown and this shawl? Indeed I’d nothing else. Somebody packed them on the very top of the trunk.”

With a pretty flush on her face, and a degree of eager haste, which proved her quite earnest in her shame, she wrapped the blue silk dressing-gown, with its soft facing of swan’s-down, close about her, and strove to cover it under the rich folds of a camel’s-hair shawl, with a delicate azure ground, and overrun with great palm leaves, in which a thousand gorgeous tints, struggled into contrast, or slept in harmony.

“There now, dear uncle, that I am getting respectable, please tell me if I look the least bit like my poor mamma?”

The old man gazed down on that bright face till his eyes filled with tears. He did not speak, but lifted his hand and laid it on her head.

“A little,” said Gillian, smiling through the mist that shone in her eyes. “Just the least little bit, please: say that much.”

“Yes, gal, you’re like our Sarah—just as a wild rose from the swamp puts you in mind of a damask rose in a garden. I should a known you was her darter if I’d met you in Kamtschatka. She hadn’t your fine feathers, but no one could mistake about your being birds of the old nest.”

“Yes, that’s it,” cried Gillian. “That’s the way I feel here—like a poor little bird that’s been flying and flying among the myrtles without settling anywhere; but once under the old hickory tree, that is rattling its nuts down to the frosty grass this minute, the tired birdie longs to folds its wings and feel at home. It’s like living a dream over again to find myself here.”

“And this is the way she used to talk,” said Hart, gazing with looks of wistful fondness into the beautiful face uplifted to his.

“Who? my mother? Did she feel like a bird glad to rest?”

“No, like a bird forever wanting to try the wing. From the time she was ten years old she was always talking of the foreign parts she intended to visit; the people she meant to know; and the things she meant to do.”

“Why, Uncle Daniel, did my mother have such ideas?”

“Yes, yes, she did strange things in her fancy, just as she travelled over strange countries.”

“But she was very young—not much over my age when she died.”

“When she died?”

“Yes, when she died. Two or three years older, perhaps, but not more than that.”

“Then you remember the time?”

“Yes, but not the circumstance. We were in Naples. I remember their coming to the convent where I had been left for some reason, and telling me I no longer had a mother—that she was gone.”

“And this was all?”

“No. One day when I asked for the place where my mother was laid, the old nurse took me up to a beautiful spot back of Naples, where you could hardly see the graves for the roses that blossomed over them—not for a week or a month, but all the year around—and told me that was the place where I must seek for her.”

“And did you find the spot?”

“I don’t know. Neither the nurse nor I could read. We could only guess where she lay by the brightness of the roses; but we found a little hollow on the hill-side, completely choked up with blossoms. The loveliest spot you ever set eyes on, so shaded that the softest moss crept over the little marble slabs all around, except one, and that was pure and white as snow. We picked that out for the one and came away.”

“And this is all you know of your mother?”

“What more should I know, poor, little child that I was? Papa never speaks of her; no other human being that I ever saw knew any thing about her: that was why there was no sleep for me to-night, till I had come down and had a talk with you.”

“It was the way she used to come when any thing troubled her,” said Hart, looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“And that proves how much we are alike. I wasn’t so certain about the nice old lady, or even Cousin Hannah; but the moment I felt your hand on my head I was sure of you.”

The old farmer shook in his chair; he was almost crying.

“That’s right, gal—that’s right. It’s the way Sarah Hart’s darter should feel on coming home. It’s the way she would have felt herself if she—but what has become of her? God help us all—when did she die—where did she die?”

Gillian turned suddenly pale. Her eyes grew wild and large.

“Oh, uncle, what a strange question!”

“Every thing about her is strange,” muttered Hart, shaking his head doubtfully. “I don’t know how to talk or what to say; secrets always trouble me, especially when I don’t understand them. In all these years never to have heard a word: and now to be, as it was, knocked down with a single word, and left to brood over it. Young lady, what kind of a man is your father?”

“My father—my father! Why, Uncle Hart, who ever thought of asking that question before? What child ever did ask it? Why he is a grand, true man, gentle as an angel, and proud as—as an emperor. With wise men he is always the wisest; with good men he seems best of all. I never saw a human being that dared to take a liberty with papa, and yet he is mild and kind as a little child.”

“But you haven’t dared to ask him right straight-forward about your own mother and her folks.”

“That’s true, and yet I could not tell the reason to save my life.”

“It’s because there’s something kept back.”

“No, I hope not—I hope not,” murmured Gillian, thoughtfully.

“You wasn’t afraid to ask me about her?”

“Not in the least. I only hesitated a little about the time of night, that is all.”

“Now tell me what you want to know.”

“Every thing.”

“Very well: why not? There ain’t nothing to tell that a body need be ashamed on; and you’ll never see the day, gal, bright and peart as you be, that Sarah Hart mightn’t have gone ahead of her own child.”

“I’m sure of that. It’s just what I was hoping to hear. It’s so pleasant to look up to one’s own parents. Well——”

Gillian folded both her white hands over the farmer’s knee, and looked up to him with her eyes brimfull of tender expectation.

“Well!”