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BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
THE FAMILY SECRET.
CHAPTER I.
WAS it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every
family had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to
know, but I reverence the observation, whoever made it. It speaks
a startling truth through an appropriately grim metaphor--a truth
which I have discovered by practical experience. Our family had a
skeleton in the cupboard, and the name of it was Uncle George.
I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I
traced it to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by
slow degrees. I was a child when I first began to suspect that
there was such a thing, and a grown man when I at last discovered
that my suspicions were true.
My father was a doctor, having an excellent practice in a large
country town. I have heard that he married against the wishes of
his family. They could not object to my mother on the score of
birth, breeding, or character--they only disliked her heartily.
My grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aunts all declared that
she was a heartless, deceitful woman; all disliked her manners,
her opinions, and even the expression of her face--all, with the
exception of my father's youngest brother, George.
George was the unlucky member of our family. The rest were all
clever; he was slow in capacity. The rest were all remarkably
handsome; he was the sort of man that no woman ever looks at
twice. The rest succeeded in life; he failed. His profession was
the same as my father's, but he never got on when he started in
practice for himself. The sick poor, who could not choose,
employed him, and liked him. The sick rich, who could--especially
the ladies--declined to call him in when they could get anybody
else. In experience he gained greatly by his profession; in money
and reputation he gained nothing.
There are very few of us, however dull and unattractive we may be
to outward appearance, who have not some strong passion, some
germ of what is called romance, hidden more or less deeply in our
natures. All the passion and romance in the nature of my Uncle
George lay in his love and admiration for my father.
He sincerely worshipped his eldest brother as one of the noblest
of human beings. When my father was engaged to be married, and
when the rest of the family, as I have already mentioned, did not
hesitate to express their unfavorable opinion of the disposition
of his chosen wife, Uncle George, who had never ventured on
differing with anyone before, to the amazement of everybody,
undertook the defense of his future sister-in-law in the most
vehement and positive manner. In his estimation, his brother's
choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and
did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his
awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering--it made no
difference to Uncle George. She was to be his brother's wife,
and, in virtue of that one great fact, she became, in the
estimation of the poor surgeon, a very queen, who, by the laws of
the domestic constitution, could do no wrong.
When my father had been married a little while, he took his
youngest brother to live with him as his assistant.
If Uncle George had been made president of the College of
Surgeons, he could not have been prouder and happier than he was
in his new position. I am afraid my father never understood the
depth of his brother's affection for him. All the hard work fell
to George's share: the long journeys at night, the physicking of
wearisome poor people, the drunken cases, the revolting
cases--all the drudging, dirty business of the surgery, in short,
was turned over to him; and day after day, month after month, he
struggled through it without a murmur. When his brother and his
sister-in-law went out to dine with the county gentry, it never
entered his head to feel disappointed at being left unnoticed at
home. When the return dinners were given, and he was asked to
come in at tea-time, and left to sit unregarded in a corner, it
never occurred to him to imagine that he was treated with any
want of consideration or respect. He was part of the furniture of
the house, and it was the business as well as the pleasure of his
life to turn himself to any use to which his brother might please
to put him.
So much for what I have heard from others on the subject of my
Uncle George. My own personal experience of him is limited to
what I remember as a mere child. Let me say something, however,
first about my parents, my sister and myself.
My sister was the eldest born and the best loved. I did not come
into the world till four years after her birth, and no other
child followed me. Caroline, from her earliest days, was the
perfection of beauty and health. I was small, weakly, and, if the
truth must be told, almost as plain-featured as Uncle George
himself. It would be ungracious and undutiful in me to presume to
decide whether there was any foundation or not for the dislike
that my father's family always felt for my mother. All I can
venture to say is, that her children never had any cause to
complain of her.
Her passionate affection for my sister, her pride in the child's
beauty, I remember well, as also her uniform kindness and
indulgence toward me. My personal defects must have been a sore
trial to her in secret, but neither she nor my father ever showed
me that they perceived any difference between Caroline and
myself. When presents were made to my sister, presents were made
to me. When my father and mother caught my sister up in their
arms and kissed her they scrupulously gave me my turn afterward.
My childish instinct told me that there was a difference in their
smiles when they looked at me and looked at her; that the kisses
given to Caroline were warmer than the kisses given to me; that
the hands which dried her tears in our childish griefs, touched
her more gently than the hands which dried mine. But these, and
other small signs of preference like them, were such as no
parents could be expected to control. I noticed them at the time
rather with wonder than with repining. I recall them now without
a harsh thought either toward my father or my mother. Both loved
me, and both did their duty by me. If I seem to speak
constrainedly of them here, it is not on my own account. I can
honestly say that, with all my heart and soul.
Even Uncle George, fond as he was of me, was fonder of my
beautiful child-sister.
When I used mischievously to pull at his lank, scanty hair, he
would gently and laughingly take it out of my hands, but he would
let Caroline tug at it till his dim, wandering gray eyes winked
and watered again with pain. He used to plunge perilously about
the garden, in awkward imitation of the cantering of a horse,
while I sat on his shoulders; but he would never proceed at any
pace beyond a slow and safe walk when Caroline had a ride in her
turn. When he took us out walking, Caroline was always on the
side next the wall. When we interrupted him over his dirty work
in the surgery, he used to tell me to go and play until he was
ready for me; but he would put down his bottles, and clean his
clumsy fingers on his coarse apron, and lead Caroline out again,
as if she had been the greatest lady in the land. Ah! how he
loved her! and, let me be honest and grateful, and add, how he
loved me, too!
When I was eight years old and Caroline was twelve, I was
separated from home for some time. I had been ailing for many
months previously; had got ben efit from being taken to the
sea-side, and had shown symptoms of relapsing on being brought
home again to the midland county in which we resided. After much
consultation, it was at last resolved that I should be sent to
live, until my constitution got stronger, with a maiden sister of
my mother's, who had a house at a watering-place on the south
coast.
I left home, I remember, loaded with presents, rejoicing over the
prospect of looking at the sea again, as careless of the future
and as happy in the present as any boy could be. Uncle George
petitioned for a holiday to take me to the seaside, but he could
not be spared from the surgery. He consoled himself and me by
promising to make me a magnificent model of a ship.
I have that model before my eyes now while I write. It is dusty
with age; the paint on it is cracked; the ropes are tangled; the
sails are moth-eaten and yellow. The hull is all out of
proportion, and the rig has been smiled at by every nautical
friend of mine who has ever looked at it. Yet, worn-out and
faulty as it is--inferior to the cheapest miniature vessel
nowadays in any toy-shop window--I hardly know a possession of
mine in this world that I would not sooner part with than Uncle
George's ship.
My life at the sea-side was a very happy one. I remained with my
aunt more than a year. My mother often came to see how I was
going on, and at first always brought my sister with her; but
during the last eight months of my stay Caroline never once
appeared. I noticed also, at the same period, a change in my
mother's manner. She looked paler and more anxious at each
succeeding visit, and always had long conferences in private with
my aunt. At last she ceased to come and see us altogether, and
only wrote to know how my health was getting on. My father, too,
who had at the earlier periods of my absence from home traveled
to the sea-side to watch the progress of my recovery as often as
his professional engagements would permit, now kept away like my
mother. Even Uncle George, who had never been allowed a holiday
to come and see me, but who had hitherto often written and begged
me to write to him, broke off our correspondence.
I was naturally perplexed and amazed by these changes, and
persecuted my aunt to tell me the reason of them. At first she
tried to put me off with excuses; then she admitted that there
was trouble in our house; and finally she confessed that the
trouble was caused by the illness of my sister. When I inquired
what that illness was, my aunt said it was useless to attempt to
explain it to me. I next applied to the servants. One of them was
less cautious than my aunt, and answered my question, but in
terms that I could not comprehend. After much explanation, I was
made to understand that "something was growing on my sister's
neck that would spoil her beauty forever, and perhaps kill her,
if it could not be got rid of." How well I remember the shudder
of horror that ran through me at the vague idea of this deadly
"something"! A fearful, awe-struck curiosity to see what
Caroline's illness was with my own eyes troubled my inmost heart,
and I begged to be allowed to go home and help to nurse her. The
request was, it is almost needless to say, refused.
Weeks passed away, and still I heard nothing, except that my
sister continued to be ill. One day I privately wrote a letter to
Uncle George, asking him, in my childish way, to come and tell me
about Caroline's illness.
I knew where the post-office was, and slipped out in the morning
unobserved and dropped my letter in the box. I stole home again
by the garden, and climbed in at the window of a back parlor on
the ground floor. The room above was my aunt's bedchamber, and
the moment I was inside the house I heard moans and loud
convulsive sobs proceeding from it. My aunt was a singularly
quiet, composed woman. I could not imagine that the loud sobbing
and moaning came from her, and I ran down terrified into the
kitchen to ask the servants who was crying so violently in my
aunt's room.
I found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers
with serious faces. They started when they saw me as if I had
been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.
"He's too young to feel it much," I heard one say to the other.
"So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it
happened no later."
In a few minutes they had told me the worst. It was indeed my
aunt who had been crying in the bedroom. Caroline was dead.
I felt the blow more severely than the servants or anyone else
about me supposed. Still I was a child in years, and I had the
blessed elasticity of a child's nature. If I had been older I
might have been too much absorbed in grief to observe my aunt so
closely as I did, when she was composed enough to see me later in
the day.
I was not surprised by the swollen state of her eyes, the
paleness of her cheeks, or the fresh burst of tears that came
from her when she took me in her arms at meeting. But I was both
amazed and perplexed by the look of terror that I detected in her
face. It was natural enough that she should grieve and weep over
my sister's death, but why should she have that frightened look
as if some other catastrophe had happened?
I asked if there was any more dreadful news from home besides the
news of Caroline's death.
My aunt, said No in a strange, stifled voice, and suddenly turned
her face from me. Was my father dead? No. My mother? No. Uncle
George? My aunt trembled all over as she said No to that also,
and bade me cease asking any more questions. She was not fit to
bear them yet she said, and signed to the servant to lead me out
of the room.
The next day I was told that I was to go home after the funeral,
and was taken out toward evening by the housemaid, partly for a
walk, partly to be measured for my mourning clothes. After we had
left the tailor's, I persuaded the girl to extend our walk for
some distance along the sea-beach, telling her, as we went, every
little anecdote connected with my lost sister that came tenderly
back to my memory in those first days of sorrow. She was so
interested in hearing and I in speaking that we let the sun go
down before we thought of turning back.
The evening was cloudy, and it got on from dusk to dark by the
time we approached the town again. The housemaid was rather
nervous at finding herself alone with me on the beach, and once
or twice looked behind her distrustfully as we went on. Suddenly
she squeezed my hand hard, and said:
"Let's get up on the cliff as fast as we can."
The words were hardly out of her mouth before I heard footsteps
behind me--a man came round quickly to my side, snatched me away
from the girl, and, catching me up in his arms without a word,
covered my face with kisses. I knew he was crying, because my
cheeks were instantly wet with his tears; but it was too dark for
me to see who he was, or even how he was dressed. He did not, I
should think, hold me half a minute in his arms. The housemaid
screamed for help. I was put down gently on the sand, and the
strange man instantly disappeared in the darkness.
When this extraordinary adventure was related to my aunt, she
seemed at first merely bewildered at hearing of it; but in a
moment more there came a change over her face, as if she had
suddenly recollected or thought of something. She turned deadly
pale, and said, in a hurried way, very unusual with her:
"Never mind; don't talk about it any more. It was only a
mischievous trick to frighten you, I dare say. Forget all about
it, my dear--forget all about it."
It was easier to give this advice than to make me follow it. For
many nights after, I thought of nothing but the strange man who
had kissed me and cried over me.
Who could he be? Somebody who loved me very much, and who was
very sorry. My childish logic carried me to that length. But when
I tried to think over all the grown-up gentlemen who loved me
very much, I could never get on, to my own satisfaction, beyond
my father and my Uncle George.
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