My uncle would wander over the house, up and down, but seemed to prefer the little drawing-room: I made it my special business to keep a good fire there. He never went to the study; never opened the door in the chimney-corner. He very seldom spoke, and seldomer to me than to any other. It _was_ a dreary time! Our very souls had longed for him back, and thus he came to us!
Sorely I wept over the change that had passed upon the good man. He must have received some terrible shock! It was just as if his mother, John said, had got hold of him, and put a knife in his heart! It was well, however, that he was not wandering about the heath, exposed to the elements! and there was yet time for many a good thing to come! Where one _must_ wait, one _can_ wait.
John had to learn this, for, say what he would, the idea of marrying while my uncle remained in such plight, was to me unendurable.
The spring came, but brought little change in the condition of my uncle. In the month of May, Dr. Southwell advised our taking him abroad. When we proposed it to him, he passed his hand wearily over his forehead, as if he felt something wrong there, and gave us no reply. We made our preparations, and when the day arrived, he did not object to go.
We were an odd party: John and I, bachelor and spinster; my uncle, a silent, moody man, who did whatever we asked him; and the still, open-eyed Martha Moon, who, I sometimes think, understood more about it all than any of us. I could talk a little French, John a good deal of German. When we got to Paris, we found my uncle considerably at home there. When he cared to speak, he spoke like a native, and was never at a loss for word or phrase.
It was he, indeed, who took us to a quiet little hotel he knew; and when we were comfortably settled in it, he began to take the lead in all our plans. By degrees he assumed the care and guidance of the whole party; and so well did he carry out what he had silently, perhaps almost unconsciously undertaken, that we conceived the greatest hopes of the result to himself. A mind might lie quiescent so long as it was ministered to, and hedged from cares and duties, but wake up when something was required of it! No one would have thought anything amiss with my uncle, that heard him giving his orders for the day, or acting cicerone to the little company--there for his sake, though he did not know it. How often John and I looked at each other, and how glad were our hearts! My uncle was fast coming to himself! It was like watching the dead grow alive.