第26章

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 Itraced 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.