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The House on the Moor, v. 1/3

by Mrs. Oliphant · English · Gutenberg #45816 · 336,625 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The House on the Moor, v. 1/3

Author: Mrs. Oliphant


        
Release date: May 29, 2014 [eBook #45816]
                Most recently updated: November 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR, V. 1/3 ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)








                         THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR

                                  BY

                             THE AUTHOR OF

                  "MARGARET MAITLAND," "ADAM GRAEME,"

                        "THE LAIRD OF NORLAW,"

                               &c., &c.

                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:

                    HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

                     SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

                     13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

                                 1861.

                _The right of Translation is reserved._


                                LONDON:

                PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET,

                            REGENT'S PARK.




PREFACE.


This book was overshadowed and interrupted by the heaviest grief. The
author says so, not to deprecate criticism, but to crave the tender
forbearance of her unknown friends.




                        THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR.




CHAPTER I.


In a gloomy room, looking out through one narrow window upon a moor, two
young people together, and yet alone, consumed the dreary hours of a
February afternoon. The scene within doors exhibited scarcely less
monotony and dreariness than did the moor without, which stretched black
and heavy to the hills under a leaden sky. The room was well-sized, and
lighted only by that one window, which was deeply sunk in the deep wall,
and hung with terrible curtains of red moreen, enough to kill what
little amount of light there was. A large dining-table, of cold,
well-polished mahogany, occupied the centre of the apartment--an
old-fashioned sideboard and mysterious bureau of the same character
stood out darkly from the walls--and hard, angular chairs furnished
forth the dining-room, as it was called--but which was, indeed,
drawing-room, study, boudoir, everything to the brother and sister who
held occupation of it now.

And here were none of those traces of feminine presence which one reads
of in books--no pretty things, no flowers, no embroideries, nothing to
cast a grace upon the dulness. Perhaps that might be partly Susan's
fault; but when one lives all one's life on the borders of Lanwoth Moor,
ten miles off from the humblest attempt at a town, without any money,
and seeing nobody to stir one's ambition, even a girl of seventeen may
be pardoned if she can make little brightness except that of her
presence in her shady place. To tell the truth, nobody made much
account of Susan; she was not expected to exert much influence on the
changeless atmosphere of Marchmain. No one supposed her to be the flower
of that solitude: any little embellishments which she tried were put
down ruthlessly; and the little girl had long ago learned, as the first
duties of womankind, to do as she was bid, and hold her peace. She was
seated now before the fire, making a little centre with her work upon
the cold glimmer of the uncovered table. She was very fair in her
complexion, with hair almost flaxen, white teeth, blue eyes, and a
pretty colour. She did not look intellectual, nor interesting, nor
melancholy; but sat leaning very closely over her work, because there
was not much light, and Horace stood full between her and what little
there was. She had a pair of scissors, a reel of cotton, and a paper of
buttons on the table before her; and on the back of her chair hang a
huge bag, made of printed cotton, which it was safe to believe was her
work-bag. There she sat, with a little firelight playing vainly upon her
dark woollen dress--a domestic creature, not very happy, but very
contented, dully occupied in the silence and the gray afternoon, living
a life against which her youth protested, but somehow managing to get on
with tolerable comfort, as women unawakened and undisturbed do.

Of a different character altogether was the other inmate of this room.
On the end of the table nearest the light lay a confusion of open books
and an old-fashioned inkstand, which two instruments of learning had, it
seemed, gone towards the composition of a German exercise, which
appeared, half finished, and with a big blot on the last word, between
them. Twenty times over, while that blurred page was being compounded,
the young student had flown at the fire in silent irritability, and
poked it half out; and he now stood in the recess of the window, between
the red curtains, blocking up the light, and looking out with angry eyes
upon the dim black blast of February rain which came with the darkness
from the hills. It was certainly a dismal prospect. The very shower was
not the hearty, violent shower which sweeps white over a landscape in
vehement sheets of water; it had not a characteristic of storm or
vitality about it; but, saturating, penetrating, invisible, went chill
to the heart of the sodden land, if heart was in that wild, low stretch
of blackened moss and heather, where nothing living moved. The young man
stood in the window, looking out with a vexation and dull rage
indescribable upon the falling night. He had this only in common with
Susan, that his features were cast in an unheroic type, and could only
have been handsome under the influence of good humour and good spirits,
two beneficent fairies unknown to that lowering face. Good health and
much exercise kept the colour on his cheeks and the light in his
eye--against his will, one was tempted to suppose. He was short-sighted,
and contracted his eyes in his gaze out, till the eyelids hung in heavy
folds over the stormy stare which he sent across the moor--and querulous
lines of discontent puckered the full youthful lips, which were made for
a sweeter expression. Weariness, disgust, the smouldering rage of one
oppressed, was in his face. He was not only in unnatural circumstances,
but somebody had injured him: he carried his head with all the loftiness
and superiority of a conscious victim; but it was evident that the
sentiment of wrong--just or unjust--poisoned and embittered all his
life.

"Rain!" he exclaimed, jerking the word out as if he threw something at
fate. "My luck!--not so much as the chance of a run on the moor!"

"Are you tired of your German already, Horace?" asked Susan, as he came
to the fire to make a last attempt upon its life--lifting up her
contented woman's face, not without the shadow of a smile upon it, to
her restless brother.

"Tired? D'ye think I'm a child or a girl like you? Do you think I can
spend my days over German exercises? What's the good of it? Have _I_ a
chance of ever using that or any other language, unless, perhaps, as a
beggar? Pshaw!--look after your work, and don't aggravate me."

"But it would please papa," said Susan, with some timidity, as if this
was rather a doubtful argument; "and then, perhaps he might be persuaded
to do what you wish, Horace, if you tried to please _him_."

"To please papa," said her brother, imitating her words with
contemptuous mockery, "is an inducement indeed. To please _him_! Why
should I please him, I should like to know? What has he ever done for
me? At least, I shan't cheat him with a false submission. I'd rather
chuck the lot of them into the fire, than have him suppose that I read
German, or anything else, for _his_ sake!"

"But oh, Horace, you would make me _so_ unhappy!" said Susan, with a
little unconscious gesture of entreaty, letting her work fall, and
clasping her hands as she looked up in his face.

"I suppose so," said the young man, with perfect indifference.

"And you don't care?" cried his sister, moved to a momentary overflow of
those sudden tears of mortification and injured affection which women
weep over such cool, conscious, voluntary disregard. "I would do
anything in the world for you, but you don't mind how I feel; and yet
there are only two of us in the world."

"So much the better," said Horace, throwing himself down in a chair
before the fire; "and as for those vain professions, what is the use of
them, I should like to know? What _could_ you do for me, if you were
ever so anxious? Anything in the world, in our circumstances, means
simply nothing, Susan. Oh! for heaven's sake, don't cry!--you're a good
girl, and sew on my buttons--but what, in the name of fortune, could
_you_ do? You know as well as I that it is only a fashion of words----"

"I did not mean it so," cried Susan, quickly--but stopping as suddenly,
cast a hurried, painful look at him, and dried her tears with a hasty
hand--the look which natural Truth casts upon that cruel, reasonable
fool, Wisdom, whom she cannot contest, yet knows in the wrong. A little
indignation burning up upon her ingenuous cheek helped the hurried hand
to dry the tears, and she returned to her work with a little tremble of
haste, such as a discussion with her brother very frequently threw Susan
into. She did not pretend to argue with him: she was not clever, but his
philosophy filled her with impatience. She "could not bear it." She felt
inclined to get up and seize hold of him, and try physical measures to
shake this arrogant pretence of truth out of him; for Susan, though she
could not argue, was not without a temper and opinion of her own.

Silence ensued. Susan made nervous haste with her needlework, and
stumbled over it in her little flutter of vexation; but Horace was too
much absorbed to notice this girlish show of feeling. When he had rocked
in his chair a little, placing one foot on the side of the old-fashioned
grate, he suddenly sprang up and thrust away his seat. "By George!"
cried Horace--but not as that exclamation is usually uttered, "I've not
got a friend in the world!--there isn't a man in existence, so far as I
know, that will do anything for me!"

"Oh, Horace!" said Susan, "think how much better off you are than some
people. Don't always make the worst of everything! Think of poor Roger
Musgrave at Tillington, who has neither father nor home--his godfather
dead without making any provision for him, and nothing to do and nobody
to look to, poor fellow--and breaking his heart for grief besides, and
Peggy says will either 'list or die!"

"And a very good alternative too," said Horace; "he's very well off for
a poor milk-and-water nobody--free! and able to 'list if he likes, or
die if he likes, without any one troubling their head about the matter.
As to home and father, I heartily wish he had my share of these precious
commodities. Do you think anywhere else a man like me would sell his
soul for a bed and a dinner? There! there! hold your tongue, or talk of
what you understand."

"What do I understand, I wonder," cried Susan, "sewing on your worship's
buttons? A man like you!--you are only nineteen after all, when the
truth is told."

"I am man enough to make my own way," said the youth, angrily; "it is
not a question of years or days, if indeed you were able to judge of it
at all, which you are not."

"If I were so very certain of my own strength," cried Susan, following
up her advantage, "I'd run away, if I did not care for home, or father,
or--or anybody. If I did not mind about duty or affection, or such
trifles, I'd go and make my own way, and not talk of it--I would! I know
something, though I'm not so wise as you. I think it's shocking to talk
discontent for ever, and gloom at everything. Why don't you go away?
Think of the great people in books, that go to London with sixpence in
their pockets, and turn out great merchants--or with a tragedy, and turn
out Dr. Johnson. Think of Chatterton, whom you were reading of. You are
better off a great deal than he!"

"Chatterton was a fool," said Horace. "I promise you I'll wait for the
tide, and not shoot myself when it's in the flow. I am much obliged for
your advice. I've neither a tragedy nor a sixpence that I can call my
own--but some of these days I'll go."

Pronouncing these words with slow and formal emphasis, as if he meant
something dreadful, Horace marched solemnly to his German exercise, and
sat down to it once more. The evening grew darker round the two; by
degrees Susan's head drooped down on her needlework, till you could see
that she had been seized by a womanish panic, and was secretly putting
up the linen on her knee to wipe her wet eyes. This terror and
compunction worked its way silently as the early wintry night came on.
By-and-by, through the quietness, which was broken only by Horace's pen,
the ashes from the grate, and a slow patter outside of the wet which
dropped from the eaves, there broke a little hurried, suppressed sob.
Then Susan's white work, more distinct than herself in the twilight,
went down suddenly upon the floor, and a darkling figure glided round to
Horace's side. "Oh, don't think of it any more!" cried Susan; "it was
only my ill-temper. Oh, Horace, never mind me!--don't think of it
again."

"Think of what?" said Horace, peevishly; "what on earth do you mean,
thrusting your arms about me? I did not ask to be petted, did I?--what
do you mean?"

"Oh, Horace--what we were saying," said his sister, with humility.

"What were we saying? Can I remember all the nonsense you talk?" cried
the young man, shaking off her arms with impatience--"can't you keep to
your own business, and let me alone? Oh, you wanted me to be Whittington
and the cat, didn't you?--thank you, that's not my vocation. Isn't it
bad enough I must stand your sauciness, without standing your
repentance--oh, for mercy's sake, go away!"

Susan went away without another word, gathered her work into her big
work-bag, and went out of the room, not without making it sufficiently
audible that she had closed the door.

"He's a coward! he does nothing but talk!" she said between her teeth,
as she went up the dark stairs; but nobody save herself knew that her
momentary passion had brought these words to Susan's lips, and ten
minutes after she would not have believed she had said them--nevertheless,
sometimes passion, unawares, says the truth.




CHAPTER II.


The household of Marchmain consisted of four persons. The brother and
sister we have already seen, their father, and one female servant. In
this little interval of twilight, while Susan puts on her clean collar
for dinner, and which Horace, who would rather disarrange than improve
his dress, out of pure ill-humour and disrespect, spends in the dark,
staring into the fire with his head between his hands, we will explain
to our readers the economy of this singular household. At this hour all
is dark in the solitary house. Without, the chill invisible rain, the
great unbroken blackness of the moor and the night--within, an unlighted
hall and staircase, with a red glow of firelight at the end of a long
passage, betraying the kitchen, and a faint thread of light coming out
beneath a door opposite the dining-room. Thrift, severe and rigid,
reigns in this dwelling. In Mr. Scarsdale's own room a single candle
burns, when it is no longer possible to read without one; but there are
no lights in the family sitting-room till the dinner is placed on the
table, and Peggy has nothing but firelight in the kitchen, and Susan
puts on her collar by intuition upstairs. Everything is under inexorable
rule and law. The family have breakfast between nine and ten, sometimes
even later; for Mr. Scarsdale is not a man to modify his own habits for
any consideration of suitability. From that time till six o'clock, when
there is dinner, the young people see nothing of their father. He sits
with them in the evening, imposing silence by his presence; and that, so
far as family intercourse goes, is the chronicle of their life.

Let us enter at this door, which marks itself off from the floor of the
hall by that slender line of light. It has the same prospect as the
dining-room, when there is any daylight to see it; but it is smaller
than that gloomy apartment; two large bookcases, shut in by a brass
network, stand out with sharp and angular corners from the walls, no
attempt having been made to fill up the vacant space at either side of
them, or to harmonize these gaunt pieces of furniture with anything else
in the room. There are two or three chairs, which stand fixed and
immovable in corners, plainly testifying that nobody ever sits there;
and before the fire a library table, and in a round-backed elbow-chair
the father of the house. He sits there reading with a forlorn
persistence wonderful to see--reading for no purpose, reading with
little interest, yet turning page after page with methodical regularity,
and bending his lowering forehead on the book as if it were the business
of his life. He is dark, not so much in complexion as in sentiment--a
close, self-absorbed, impenetrable man. It is not difficult to perceive
that he is neither a student by ardent inclination, nor by profession a
searcher into books; but what is the secret of these solitary studies is
hard to discover. He sits with his head leaning upon one hand, and the
other turning the pages--sits often for hours in that one position. He
is scarcely ever stimulated into interest, and never owns the enlivening
touch of that zeal and curiosity which hunts for proofs or illustrations
of a favourite theory through a dozen volumes. There is no heap of
books by his side, but only one orderly volume, which is not of the
class of those fantastic delightful reverie books in which studious men
delight. The blank, straightforward manner in which he reads on comes to
be impressive in its singularity after a time. He seems to pursue this
occupation as a clerk keeps books, and counts his progress, you could
imagine, by the number of the pages he has read, and by no less tangible
criterion; and nothing moves the settled darkness of his uncommunicative
face.

Behind him, hung by the side of the window, in the worst light of the
room, is a portrait, a very common work, done by a mediocre painter, but
in all probability very like its original, for the face looks down
through the gloom with a real smile, which paint cannot give--a sweet,
home-like, domestic woman, such another as Susan will be when the years
and the hours have carried her into her own life. There can be no doubt
it is Susan's mother and this man's wife. There is no other picture in
the house, and he cares so little for anyone seeing this, that he has
hung it in the shadows of the red moreen curtains, where nobody can
distinguish the features. Most likely he knows the features well enough
to penetrate that darkness; for though he sits with his back to it most
usually, it is for his pleasure it is here.

Nobody knows anything about this man; he has not any family connection
whatever with the house or locality. Nobody can understand why of all
places in the world he should come here to the tumble-down old house on
the edge of the moor, which nobody else would live in. When he came, ten
years ago, the country people paid him visits--half in curiosity, half
in kindness--which were never returned, till at last society dropped
off entirely, even from the attempt to break upon his seclusion. To
account for his ungraciousness, rumours of great crimes and great
misfortunes were whispered about him; but as the novelty failed, these
sunk into abeyance; and it was tacitly understood or believed now that
the loss of a great lawsuit, which materially lessened his means, was
the cause of his withdrawal from the world. He was then but a young man,
scarcely forty; and if neither sport nor society had attractions for him
then, it was not to be supposed that his heart had expanded now. He
lived in a severe, rectangular, mathematical poverty, which calculated
every item, and left room for no irregularity. He kept his children
rigidly within the same bounds which confined himself. If they formed
acquaintances, it must needs have been at "kirk or market," in the roads
or the fields, for he strictly forbade them from either receiving or
accepting invitations; while for his own part he gave a certain cold
attention to their education as a duty, but spent as little time as
possible in their society. It is not surprising, under these
circumstances, that this gloomy and brooding man should have roused the
kindred temper of his son to a slight degree of desperation, or
succeeded in making the thraldom of his life very irksome to a youth who
was neither amiable nor submissive, to begin with. Mr. Scarsdale did not
even pretend a fatherly regard for Horace; all his life he had treated
the lad with a cutting and desperate civility, which would have pierced
a more sensitive child to the heart; and from his boyhood had given him
a certain position of equality and rivalship, totally contrary to the
relationship they really held, and which at once stimulated the pride
and raised the passions of the solitary youth. This unhappy state of
things had never come to a climax by any outburst of passion. Horace
might be as disrespectful, as sullen, as defiant as he pleased. His
father extorted a certain hard lineal obedience, but neither expected
nor seemed to wish for, reverence, love, or any filial sentiment; and
this aspect of affairs had become so habitual, that even Susan did not
observe it. Most likely she thought all fathers were more or less the
same; her whole heart of tenderness went back to her little recollection
of her mother--and Mr. Scarsdale was still human so far as Susan was
concerned. He was not kind certainly, but at least he seemed conscious
that he _was_ her father and she his child.

Notwithstanding his seclusion, his limited means, and morose habits, he
still bore the appearance, and something of the manners, of a
gentleman--something which even those neighbours whose kindnesses he had
repulsed acknowledged by an involuntary respect. When the half-hour
chimed from his clock on the mantel-piece--almost the only article of
luxury visible in the house--he closed his book as a labourer gives up
his work, pausing only to place a mark in the page, and, taking up his
candle, went solemnly upstairs. He was scarcely of middle size, but so
spare and erect that he seemed tall; thin almost to the point of
emaciation, with marked and prominent features, unlike either of his
children. Yet, strangely enough, though Horace's face resembled that of
his mother, the expression--the spiritual resemblance--was like this
dark and brooding face: possibly, the very pang and keenness of
opposition between the father and the son lay in their likeness. Mr.
Scarsdale carried his candle up the gloomy staircase, leaving his study
in darkness, to exchange his easy dressing-gown for a coat, and prepare
himself for dinner. Dinner for ten years, at least, had been to him a
solitary meal: during all that time his doors had never opened to admit
a stranger; but he never once failed in the customary punctilio, or
neglected to close his book when the timepiece chimed the half-hour.

Meanwhile, the preparations of the kitchen were coming to a climax. This
was the only cheerful place in the house. It had a large old-fashioned
chimney, with a settle in its warm corner, and the warmth centered in
that recess as in a chamber of light. Bundles of herbs were hung up to
dry over the mantel-shelf, where was a little oil-lamp attached to the
wall, but rarely lighted--so that the apartment itself, with its broad
but high window, its great wooden presses and tables, was but half seen
in the wavering light. There stood Peggy, putting on her "dinner cap."
Peggy was, at least, as tall as her master, and very little younger. She
was his foster-sister, attached all her life to his family, and knew the
secret of his retirement, if anybody did; but Peggy was of the faithful
type of ancient servants, and gave no sign. She had been comely in her
youth, and was still fresh-coloured and neat when she pleased--and she
did please at dinner-time. She had on a dark stuff gown, with a white
soft muslin handkerchief covering her neck under it, as is the fashion
with elderly women in the north country; a great white apron, and the
before-mentioned cap, which had pink ribbons in it. Peggy had rather a
large face, and features big and strong. Had she been born a lady, with
nothing to do, she would have been a strong-minded woman; but Providence
had been kinder to Peggy. As it was, she had her own opinions about most
things, and hesitated not at all to express her approbation and
disapprobation. She was, in short, very much what old servants were, as
we have said, a generation or two ago. But one thing was the pride of
Peggy's life: to have everything in perfect order for her master's
dinner, which was the event of the day to her; to feel convinced that
her cookery was as careful and delicate as if she had been attended by a
score of scullions; to do everything indeed, as far as it lay in one
pair of active hands and one vigorous brain to do, as perfectly as if a
whole establishment of servants waited on the comforts of "the
family"--was the ambition of Mr. Scarsdale's solitary waiting-woman. If
no one else felt the compliment, Peggy was continually flattered and
inspirited by her master's evening-coat.

And it was she, though nearly fifty, who did everything in the house, it
was she alone who knew the former history of "the family" which she
tended so carefully. If ever Mr. Scarsdale unbended his reserved soul
for a moment, it was Peggy who received the rare confidence. It was she
who had helped the inherent woman to come to feminine life in poor
little Susan's neglected education; and it was she, the only busy,
cheerful living inhabitant of the house, who now carried those slender
silver candlesticks into the dark dining-room, and disturbed Master
Horace in his reverie with the gleam of the unexpected light.




CHAPTER III.


There were strange elements of incongruity in the scene presented by
that dinner-table. Mr. Scarsdale sat at the head of the table, with his
son and daughter at the sides, and Peggy behind his chair, erect and
stately in his evening dress. All the furniture of the table, the linen,
the silver, the china, were of the finest description, and in beautiful
order; and strangely around this little centre of light gloomed the
meagre unadorned walls, the homely furniture, the heavy hangings of the
cheerless apartment, which, however, scarcely formed a greater contrast
to the dainty arrangements of the table than Horace Scarsdale's gray
morning jacket, and disordered hair, did to the formal toilette of his
father. Susan sat at Mr. Scarsdale's right hand, in her clean collar.
Her dress was very homely; but Susan, at seventeen, was one of those
women who have a natural fitness for their place everywhere, and never
fall out of harmony. Perhaps she was not over-sensitive by nature; at
all events, she was not distressed by the silence of this meal, at which
there was no conversation. It was their invariable custom, and Susan had
seen no other family-table to make her aware of the misery of this.
Horace was of another temper: everything was an offence to the unhappy
lad; the silence galled almost beyond endurance; and when his father
addressed him as he did always, with formal politeness, upon helping him
to anything, the blood rushed to the young man's cheeks with such sudden
violence and force, that no one, who watched his countenance, could
have been surprised to see him answer with some demonstration of
passion. But he never did; he replied, in the stifled voice of rage,
with thanks and formal courtesy. Thus they sat like two enemies, forced
to civility by the circumstances of sitting at the same table, and
together ate, as if it choked them, their unblessed bread. "Shall I help
you to some soup?" asked Mr. Scarsdale, and Horace made a stubborn bow
and said, "Thank you." Neither spoke the other's name, neither even
looked in the other's face--yet, by that strange magic of antagonism,
which is as strong as love, were aware, instinctively, of every
movement, almost of every sentiment, which influenced each other's
conduct for the moment. But they had this little duel all to
themselves--Susan, dulled by habit, and knowing that it had always been
so, observed it not--Peggy, behind her master's chair, saw everything,
and said nothing. Sometimes, indeed, an acute observer might have
noticed that the faithful servant set down something on the table with
an unnecessary emphasis, which answered, instead of words, to give her
impatience vent, and which her master never failed to notice. Peggy,
too, did not hesitate to interfere in the business of the table--to
remark that Mr. Horace did not eat, and to recommend a particular dish
to Miss Susan. Peggy's dialect was rather a remarkable one, and
difficult to identify. She was a North-countrywoman by birth, but had
lived in many districts of England, and had taken up, with great
impartiality and candour of mind, their different manners of speech. But
Mr. Scarsdale, who had killed all natural utterance in his children, had
no power over Peggy; he never even tried to restrain her. Her discourse
ran on a cheerful chorus during the whole solemn period of dinner; and
this it was, more perhaps than anything else, which prevented a
positive outbreak between the father and the son.

"Young Master Roger, Miss Susan, dear, he's agoin' hoam," said Peggy;
"he's got father and mother livin' _after_ all, as I hear say, and none
so poorly off neither, for all his goin' off in a despair wi' talk o'
'listin'. Natur's a mystery, that's for certain--to turn off a manchild
upon a godfayther, and rather to 'list nor to go hoam! I dunno know
which is worst if ye ask me. Stewed chicken, master, and done perfect,
though I say it as should not; but I'm none so pleased with the peatoes.
I'll not have no more from the mill--they're agoin' in the disease.
Wine?--this very minute, if I had the keys."

Mr. Scarsdale brought forth the keys from his pocket; and, totally
regardless of Peggy's monologue, which ran on in further gossip, broke
the silence of the table in his own person--a most portentous and
unusual incident. He spoke without either addressing or looking at
anyone, though it was, in fact, a question which he asked.

"There is, I believe," observed Mr. Scarsdale, "a spare bedroom in the
house?"

Peggy did not hear for the first moment, being taken aback by the
unusual event; and Susan said, timidly, "Yes, papa," taking the remark
to herself.

"The door was open this very day, master," said Peggy, when she
recovered her surprise; "I judge you wur lookin' with your own eyes what
like it was; but the good of a spare bedroom in this house I would wish
a wise woman to tell to me."

Mr. Scarsdale made no response, but delivered himself of his further
intelligence as though he heard her not. "I wish it to be put in order,"
he said, briefly; "Colonel Sutherland arrives here on a visit,
to-morrow."

Even Horace was moved to a momentary start and look of surprise at his
father's immovable countenance, while Susan clasped her hands in spite
of herself, and cried--"Oh! papa, is it my uncle?" with the most eager
and joyful anxiety suddenly suffusing her face.

But Susan's voice was drowned in Peggy's more decided accents. "Master
Edward!" cried Peggy, with a restrained shout of triumph--"blessings on
his honest face! he never crossed a door but he brought comfort--and as
handsome a man as eye could see, and the pleasantest gentleman to speak
to that ever said good-morrow. So he's Cornel now!--and well deserves
it, I'll be bold to say. Custard, master?--as light as a May breeze--and
the very tarts you had in holiday times, when you were a boy. I had a
thought of old times, and knew no reason--to be sure, it was for a
forewarning of the news!"

Mr. Scarsdale thrust the china dish containing the tarts out of his way
with an unusual expression of impatience. Then, recollecting himself,
took it up and turned to Horace--that is to say, turned his head to him,
without turning his eyes, as was his custom. "May I have the pleasure of
helping you?" said the father, with a tone of suppressed bitterness.
Horace put forth his plate immediately; Peggy's harmless confectionery
was evidently vexatious and annoying to Mr. Scarsdale, and his son took
pains to express his enjoyment of it, and compliment Peggy on her
handiwork. It was as rare an event to hear Horace's voice at dinner as
his father's. The approaching event seemed to have loosed the tongues of
both.

This little incident put an end to Peggy's gossip; she removed the
remainder of her tarts with a visible flutter of offence, and set down
the wine on the table with double emphasis. When Peggy withdrew, Mr.
Scarsdale took a book from his pocket, and set up a small folding
reading-desk, which had been placed by his hand when the cloth was
withdrawn. There he sat, with his glass of purple claret reflected in
the shining mahogany, and the two tall, slender candles illuminating a
little circle round him, and his head relieved against the dark
curtains, which looked almost black in the feeble light. A line of magic
drawn round him could not have screened him more completely from the
other inmates of the room. Horace thrust his chair away rudely, and
leaving it thus at a little distance from the table, went to the window
and disappeared behind the curtains to look out on the night. Susan
stole quietly round to the side of the table, and produced out of her
big bag her evening work--an occupation dear to her heart, though it was
only a patchwork quilt, the only fancy work that Susan knew; but before
she sat down, withdrew her brother's chair noiselessly to the side of
the fire, where it looked human and companionable. Then silence, entire
as if these three human creatures were statues, fell upon the room,
where still Mr. Scarsdale sat at the shining table with its two lines of
reflection, with the claret jug at his elbow, and his book supported on
the reading-desk, and the glass before him half-full of purple wine. He
turned the leaves at regular intervals, and went through them with
mechanical gravity; but his ears were keen to every rustle of the
curtain, and with all the virulence of domestic strife the mind of this
singular father watched his son.

As for Susan, her whole mind, as she worked in silence, was full of the
wonderful intimation she had just heard. Perhaps by this time you are
disposed to think that Susan was very insensible and dull in her
feelings not to be miserable about the enmity which existed between her
father and brother; but Susan was accustomed to it, and had never seen
other fathers and sons, and had seen this go on in the same way so long,
that, though she felt it uncomfortable, she entertained no apprehensions
about it. As for Horace, if he would remain by himself in the window,
looking out upon the black night, Susan could not help it. He was not
more miserable there than he would be at the table with his father's
austere shadow upon him; and conversation was tacitly prohibited in
those dismal evenings. Susan's was still an unawakened mind; her brother
did not encourage her to think her own influence over him of any
importance, nor permitted her to suppose that she had any power to
soothe him; and the trembling, timid, mediatory love, which holds a
fearful balance in many a divided household, needs love and softness of
some kind, on one side or the other, to keep it alive. Love Susan found
none in either of her two nearest relatives. She loved them by nature
and custom; sometimes a terrible impatience of their discord seized
her, and a momentary impulse of passion, to do something or say
something which should stir this stagnant, stormy calm, or perhaps
change the manner of their existence, had possessed her once or twice in
her life; but the tender, anxious, intense love which cruelty cannot
kill when it has once developed itself, never can develop itself without
the stimulus and creating power of dear love from some one to begin
with. Thus it was that Susan beheld with vexation and distress
sometimes, but without agony, the unnatural feud beside her, that she
took neither side, because either side was equally cold, repulsive, and
unaffectionate. She did not know life; she knew not even the fictitious
life of books. She did not fear when her brother rushed out into the
night, as he did often, that Horace would fall into the rude snares of
village dissipation, or run in the way of vulgar crime. She was not
alarmed for a possible outbreak of violence between the father and son;
such things had never been suggested to her inexperienced mind.

So she sat in the silence, not resenting it for her own part, content in
herself, and making out of that dismal quiet a little circle of domestic
tranquillity when she arranged her patches and contrasted her colours,
and secretly entertained vague anticipations of unknown pleasure, and a
warmth of inextinguishable personal happiness, in the very heart of the
misery through which her life had grown.

At eight o'clock to a minute Peggy brought in the tea-tray, and removed
the claret-jug, which, though he had only once filled his glass, stood
all that time by Mr. Scarsdale's side. Then he took his cup of tea from
his daughter's hand without even looking at her, and went on with his
reading. Comfort was not to be got out of anything in this house. Horace
drank his standing--told his sister it did not rain now, and went off
out of the room like a wind. And when Susan looked over her tea-tray to
see her father's eyes fixed upon his book, and the door closed upon her
brother, and herself compelled to sit formally there till Mr. Scarsdale,
sipping it slowly and by intervals, had finished his second cup of
tea--a certain forlorn sensation of solitude and discomfort moistened
Susan's eyes, and brought an ache to her heart. Then her thoughts went
back with a joyful rebound to the promised visitor of to-morrow--her
mother's brother, an actual relation, whose love and kindness she had a
claim on. She lost herself in wonder what like he would be, and how he
would treat his sister's children. To-morrow would solve Susan's long
and troubled problem--whether all men were like papa: to-morrow would
give her a glimpse into that world of which she knew nothing. Nature was
sceptical in Susan's heart: she could not believe that papa was the
type and impersonation of man. Kindness, unknown and longed for, seemed
coming to her in the person of that uncle. She returned to her patches,
longing to run into the cheerful kitchen to Peggy, to ask all about the
new-comer; but bound by the customary punctilio of the house to sit
there silent and occupied opposite the reading-desk--a bondage which
Susan had never felt more oppressive than on this particular
night--while Mr. Scarsdale still turned the mechanical pages, and Horace
roamed through the black moor and the falling rain, cursing his fate.




CHAPTER IV.


This same evening, while Susan sat at her patchwork, comforting herself
with fancies concerning the unknown uncle who was to make so strange and
unexpected a break upon their solitude, an old gentleman, carrying his
own carpet-bag, went into one of the carriages of the night-trains about
to start from Edinburgh for the south. He was not a first-class
passenger, but the railway people put up instinctive fingers to their
caps as he addressed them. He was tall, thin, erect--of a soldierly
bearing, with a grey moustache and gray hair, wearing thin upon the
crown. That he was a little deaf it was easy to perceive, from the
sudden stoop he made when the person sitting next him in the carriage
put a question to him unexpectedly; and that his eyes were touched by
years and usage was equally apparent when, unable to find his
spectacles, he held his time-bill at arm's length to read it the better.
But there was something ingratiating and prepossessing even in the bend
which brought his ear to the level of the voice which addressed him,
with that instinctive and delicate courtesy which will not treat the
most trivial application with carelessness. The good woman who spoke
felt flattered--she could not tell how; it was only to ask when the
train would start--a thing which her next neighbour knew no better than
she did--but the ready attention, and sincere endeavour which the old
soldier instantly made to satisfy her, gave the questioner all the
feeling of a personal compliment. When the long line of carriages got
under weigh, our friend wrapped himself up in his warm cloak, and leaned
back in his unluxurious corner. It was a gloomy, rainy, miserable night;
the little lamp jolting in the roof, and throwing a feeble illumination
over four benches full of drowsing night-travellers, was the only light
visible in earth and heaven, save when the nocturnal express plunged
with ostentatious speed through some little oasis of a station, with
faint lamps gleaming through the universal gloom. The old soldier,
however, was not easily disturbed by the discomforts of his journey; if
there were any special meditations in his mind, he showed no sign of
them; but, with his face half buried in his cloak, kept motionless in
his corner--where, in the very midst of the black night, or, to speak
more properly, about three o'clock in the winter morning, the guard
awaked him. He had reached the end of his journey. The rest of the night
he passed in the Railway Inn of a country town, from which he set out
next morning in a gig, to face the raw February blast for a drive of
fourteen miles over an exposed country. Colonel Edward Sutherland,
though he had been twenty years in India, had come home still a poor
man; and habits of economy were strong upon the old officer, accustomed
all his life, even in the luxurious eastern climate, to spare and
restrain unnecessary expenses. He was a solitary man, but he was not a
free old bachelor, at liberty to expend his own means on his own
pleasure; wife and many children had been left behind in Indian graves,
but he had a boy at Addiscombe, and one at St. Andrew's, and
consequently not a shilling of his income to spare; so he placed his
carpet bag carefully below the seat out of the reach of rain, and tied a
travelling-cap over his ears, and muffled his cloak half over his face,
and so turned his face to the wind for his chilly journey to Lanwoth
Moor.

"Ay, sure the wind's in the east--it's ever in the east on this road,"
said the man who drove him. "When it's could as could all the country
over, it's double could Lanwoth way. Beg your pardon, Cornel," said the
man, touching his cap, "but it's strange for a gen'l'man to goo this
gate in ought but a shay."

"That is my business, my man," said the traveller, quietly; "is it a
good road?"

"Bits," said the postboy, shrugging his shoulders; "and bits the very
dyeuce for the poor beasts; but we never goo this direction, Cornel, not
twicest in a year--not all the way. There's Tillington, five mile this
side o' Lanwoth, but the road strikes off to the reet--Lord blees you,
gen'l'men know better nor to build on a moorside. The wind comes down
off the fells fit to pull your skin off, Cornel; and ne'er a shelter,
and ne'er a tree, but bits o' saplings in the moss. Rain and snow and
hail, they sweep a' things before them. I'd never set a brute beast, let
alone a christian, with its nose to Lanwoth Moor."

"Yet somebody must live there," said the traveller, shivering in spite
of himself within his cloak.

"Not a soul, Cornel, but the one house," said the driver, eagerly; "not
a thatch roof or a clay wall--nought but Marchmain. They say it was
built at the riding of the Marches, that's once in the hunderd year, and
a' foor strife, foor to part the lands of the twae Allonbys, brothers
and foes as should never be seen in God's world. But sure there it
stands, black as hate, and----"--the man made a sudden pause, and looked
suddenly up in the old officer's face--"Cornel, you're gooing there?"

"Do you know me, driver?" said Colonel Sutherland, with a little
curiosity.

The man held down his head with a sly, half-abashed smile, not quite
sure whether to pretend knowledge or to confess that he acquired his
information from the card on the carpet bag. The result of his
deliberations was an equivocal reply. "I know an army gen'l'man when I
see him, sir," he said, raising his slouching rustic shoulders, and
quickening his speech out of its Cumbrian drawl. "My father was an ould
53d, and Cornel Toppe Sawyer's own man; and, begging your pardon,
Cornel, a blind man could see you had borne command."

Colonel Sutherland was human; he was not only human, but a little
amiable vanity was one of his foibles. He inclined his ear blandly to
this clever compliment, and perhaps thought his driver rather a sensible
fellow; but at that moment the blast came wild in their faces--wet,
dismal, cold--a wind that cut to the bone, and the chattering teeth and
shivering frame which owned its influence was not lively enough for
conversation. The horse winced, and turned his unfortunate head aside,
making a momentary pause. The hills--low, gray, and piebald, with their
yellow circles of lichen, and brown turrets of rock--were blurred into
the dull horizon, which expressed nothing but that dismal, penetrating
moisture and murderous cold; and when, by a sudden turn of the road, the
hapless traveller found himself suddenly under the shelter of high banks
and hedges which intercepted the blast, the sudden contrast was so
grateful that Colonel Sutherland withdrew his cloak from his blue face,
and looked about him with a sigh of relief. There was nothing very
particular to see: a common country road descending a slope--for which
some necessity of the soil had made a deep cutting expedient--with a
village within sight, and a soft, broad valley; green fields, dotted
with farm-houses and haystacks, and leafless trees. The houses were all
of the silvery-grey limestone of the district, and walls of the same
stone, more frequent than hedge-rows, divided the fields. The old
Colonel, drawing breath under the shadow of the bank, thought to himself
that under sunshine the prospect would be very pleasant, and was
scarcely pleased to find that this, the only comfortable bit of the
road, was the one on which their progress was most rapid--and to hear
that they were still ten long dreary miles from Marchmain.

"There was talk enow in the country, Cornel," said the driver, resuming
his discourse, "when a strange gen'l'man coom'd to take that 'ouse.
Ne'er a sowl in twenty mile but had heard of Marchmain. I reckon you've
never been there?"

"No," said the traveller, briefly.

"He's a terrible quiet gen'l'man too, as we hear say," continued the
man; "a great scholard, I do suppose--and ignorant folks have little
understanding on the ways of sich. They say strange foot has never
crossed the door this nine year. It's a terrible place to bring up
children, Cornel, is Lanwoth Moor, and the young gen'l'man and Miss
they're kepp as close at hoam as if they were but six-year-olds; never a
gun on young master's shoulder, and the young lady ne'er saw a dance in
her born days. Them things come natural to young folks. I'm saying but
what I hear: it might be a parcel o' stories for ought I know--but Mr.
Scarsdale yonder, he's a very uncommon man."

"Poor children!" said Colonel Sutherland half aloud, with a sigh. The
open air, the rustle of the wind, and the noise of the wheels improved
the Colonel's hearing, as it so often does a gentle imperfection of the
kind. He beard every word of these scattered observations, and began to
feel more anxiety touching his visit to his morose brother-in-law than
he would have thought possible when he started. He knew, it was true,
the secret calamity which had driven his sister's husband to the
wilderness; but his own simple, pious, cheery spirit had no
understanding of the unwholesome passions of a self-regarding soul. He
had blamed himself for years for unconsciously feeling his relative's
withdrawal from life to be pusillanimous and unworthy of a man; but
nothing had suggested to the practical and innocent-minded soldier a
gloomy retreat such as that which began to be revealed to him by hints
and suggestions now. He was unable to conceive how a man with children
could make an utter hermit of himself, "especially children under their
extraordinary circumstances," said the Colonel anxiously, in his own
heart. He grew silent, absorbed, troubled, as they proceeded on their
way. When, immediately after settling himself on his return from India
in a home of his own, that home often longed for, to which his sons
could come in their holidays, he had volunteered a visit to his
brother-in-law--it was the reciprocity of honest affection and kindred
which the veteran wished to re-establish between his own family and
their nearest relatives. He set out to visit the Scarsdales in the full
idea that they too would visit him, and that the father of that
household lived like himself in the tenderest friendship with those
inheritors of his blood in whom he renewed his own youth; and with an
old man's sentiment of tender gallantry, this old soldier thought of
Susan, the only surviving woman of his race, his sister's daughter and
representative, his baby-favourite long ago. Perhaps a floating idea of
appropriating this only woman of the house had dawned upon his fatherly
mind with other matters--for the Addiscombe cadet was a year older than
Susan, and boys are so likely to marry when they go to India. At all
events, it was a sunny, simple picture of family kindness and comfort
which had presented itself to the honest eyes of the old soldier when he
set out upon his journey. This prospect began to cloud over sadly now;
he could not understand nor explain these singular circumstances, which
must be facts, and visible to the common eye. A lonely house which no
one else would live in, a seclusion which no stranger ever broke, young
people shut out from the society of their fellows, and gloom and mystery
upon the whole house! The Colonel wrapt his face once more in his cloak
and subsided into deafness and silence, pondering painfully in his own
mind what might be required of himself under such unexpected
circumstances, and what he could do for the relief of Horace and Susan,
whom in his kind heart he fondly called "the children." These
deliberations had come to no satisfactory result, when, rounding a
corner of the road, the bare extent of Lanwoth Moor became suddenly
visible, stretching to the fells, and the sky to the horizon, blurred
with rain, where it was scarcely possible to tell which was hill and
which was cloud.

They drove along in silence, a long half mile, seeing nothing but that
same blank expanse traversed by the long, deep cuttings of an attempted
drainage, until at last the driver silently, with a certain sympathy for
the silence of his companion, pointed out the solitary walls rising on
the edge of the moor. The house was a square, common-place erection of
two stories, with no remarkable feature, but that one side was raised a
story higher than the other, and stood up square and gray, like the
little distinguishing tower of an Italian house. Like--yet how
unlike!--the rough, gray limestone, unpolished and savage, the deep
walls into which those small windows sank like cavernous eyes, the cold
blue slated roof, the cold door coming bare out upon the path, without a
morsel of garden or any enclosure, all enclosed and backed by that
monotonous mystery of moor, the distant spectral hills, the clouds that
carried them out in ghostly ranges, the wind and the rain so blended
together that they made but one--and they went to the heart with a chill
indescribable, and not to be resisted.

Colonel Sutherland looked upon all this with a sensation of anguish. It
was incomprehensible to him. That he should find his relatives here, and
not in the cheerful village house he had expected, overpowered him with
complete wonder. He ceased even to be indignant at the father who
sacrificed wilfully the happiness of his children--he suspended his
judgment till he should hear what extraordinary circumstances had fixed
them thus. In his unsuspecting heart he felt certain that something
which he did not know must have produced this exaggerated and unnatural
retirement. The sudden impression produced upon him by the sight of this
house made his cheek pale, and added a nervous trembling to the shiver
of the cold; he got down, stumbling at the door, which the driver
watched with undisguised curiosity, as if something unnatural and
portentous was about to make its appearance--and, in his emotion, let
the money fall out of the purse which he took out to pay his conductor.
While he stooped to pick it up, the door opened hastily, and Peggy
rushed forth and seized the carpet-bag. At sight of her the Colonel
recovered a little from his confusion and tremor.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently, "there is some sunshine here at
last."

The driver opened his eyes somewhat disappointed. Peggy was not known at
the country town, though Mr. Scarsdale's extraordinary life had been
heard of there; and the vigorous servant-woman, who began to scold
forthwith between the exclamations of her joyful recognition, reduced
the mysterious house to matter-of-fact. The man drove off, not knowing
what to make of it; and fearing to hear of some new misfortune, with his
honest heart beating with grief, sympathy, and anxiety to mend the
position of his friends, Colonel Sutherland, after twenty years'
absence, entered at his brother-in-law's inhospitable door.




CHAPTER V.


The kitchen of Marchmain was built out from the house, and was a long
and somewhat narrow apartment, quite unlike the rest of the building.
People said it had been a cottage standing on the spot before this house
was built, and arbitrarily connected with it--and the unceiled roof and
large old-fashioned chimney favoured the notion. The mud or brick floor
had been, however, replaced by a deal one; and the roof was now covered,
instead of thatch, with the less picturesque but safer slates, which
gave so cold an aspect to the house. Within, two large articles of
furniture filled up half the space, though furniture these fixed
encumbrances could scarcely be called. One was a prodigious press, in
which Peggy kept her household linen--the other, a great square box with
a sloping lid, which contained the immediate supply of coals, brought
from the coal cellar outside. Beneath the window--which was large but
high, so that Peggy, though she was tall, could do no more than look
out, and Susan could only reach up to it on tiptoe--stood a large deal
table, clean to the utmost extent of cleanliness, where Peggy did her
ironing--(Peggy was punctilious in her concerns, and kept everything in
its proper place)--another table in quite another quarter was
appropriated to the cooking--and a third, a small round one, stood aside
in a corner to be lifted in front of the fireplace at nights when
Peggy's work was over, beside the big old heavy elbow-chair, where Peggy
took an evening nap and sipped a fourth cup of tea.

In this apartment, in the morning of the same day, while Colonel
Sutherland drove through the rain, Susan, excited, happy, and restless,
fluttered round Peggy at her work. Susan had in her hand the front of
one of Master Horace's new shirts, which she pretended to be
stitching--but everybody knows that stitching is a delicate operation,
and not to be performed on foot, or in a state of restlessness. This was
the time of the day when Susan was most free to follow her own desires.
Horace was out, and Mr. Scarsdale in his study. When this fortunate
concurrence of circumstances was secured, Susan came lightly out of the
dull dining-room to the bright kitchen, the only place in the house
which had an appearance or sentiment of home. Peggy was better company
for Susan than a thousand philosophers; she laughed, she sang, she
danced about, she looked like a young living creature, as she was, in
Peggy's womanly presence. Her father and her brother were rather hard
examples of the rule of man to Susan. Horace exacted endless
sympathy--sympathy more bitter than it was in her to bestow--and scorned
it when it was given; but Peggy cherished the girl with an all-indulgent
tenderness--a motherly, nursely, homely love, advising, and interfering,
and fretting, which kept her heart and her youth alive. But something
more than usual occupied their thoughts to-day.

"Ay, honey--as if it was yesterday," said Peggy. "R'c'lect him!--he was
not the young man to be forgot, I can tell you! Many a handsome lady
would have gone over seas to follow the young soldier. He was just the
innocentest, bravest, kindest man I ever looked in the eye."

"Why in the eye?" said Susan, who was a little matter-of-fact, and liked
to understand a new phrase.

"Eh, child! his heart was in it!" cried Peggy. "When your mamma was
alive, she was a dear, blessed creature, and kept religion and comfort
in the house; but when Mr. Edward came, it was pleasure to be about, and
the world was changed. He never arguified with a soul, nor set up his
opinions, nor took slights nor offences, nor a single mortal thing that
a' persons beside did. He was just right himself and happy himself
without thinking upon't, and was a happiness to be nigh night and day.
The master, so far as I can think, had never a cross word with Mr.
Edward. Think you any other man would ever have come, or been let come,
to this house?"

"No, indeed," said Susan, gravely; "it is very strange. I wonder how he
thought of it at all; one would suppose he must like us, Peggy, to come
here--though I don't see how that can be either. Hasn't he been in India
all our lives?"

"Little matter for that; but you understand nothing about friends'
feelings; and how should you, poor forlorn infant!" said Peggy. "He
likes you, I'll warrant; and he's held you on his knee, Miss Susan--and
besides, for your mamma's sake."

"To be sure, for mamma's sake," said Susan, satisfied; "but surely,
other people, when she knew so many, must have loved mamma. Peggy, what
can make papa so stiff and hard to strangers, and putting everybody out
of the house, and never letting us make any friends--what do you think
it can be?"

Peggy drew a long breath, which seemed to end in some inward words, said
for her own private relief and satisfaction.

"Your papa has his own reasons, Miss Susan, and that's neither for you
nor me; but you see he lets Mr. Edward come. Who can tell how many
more?--for Mr. Edward has the tongue of a nightingale, and steals
folks's hearts."

"I wish he would sing into papa's," said Susan, laughing; "there's never
any music at Marchmain, Peggy. Oh, I wonder when Uncle Edward will come;
look out and see if there's anybody in the road; such a morning! and
Horace will come in all muddy and sulky, and not get goodtempered the
whole of the day. Peggy," cried Susan, jumping down from the chair she
had mounted to look out, "are boys _always_ so dreadfully cross?"

"Indeed, Miss Susan, they're little to be trusted," said Peggy, with a
grave face of wisdom, prudently refraining from blaming Horace, while
she inculcated the moral lessons supposed to be most advantageous to
feminine youth.

Susan shrugged her shoulders with a private internal reflection, which
perhaps meant, "I should like to judge for myself;" but which said, "I
am very glad, then, that we see so little of them." For people don't
permit themselves to be very ingenuous, even in their thoughts--at least
women and young girls do not. "I suppose, then," she said very demurely
aloud, "there never was but one Uncle Edward in the whole world, Peggy."

"Eh, honey! if there were a hunderd the world would be saved, like the
Lord said to Abraham," cried Peggy. "My heart jumped when the master
said it last night. I said to myself, 'a good man's coming, and a
blessing will come with him.' If I saw you out of this, you two
unfortunate things, I would be content to go foot foremost the same day
to Lanwoth Church."

"That would be cheerful and pleasant for us, I am sure," cried Susan; "I
wonder how you dare say such a thing, Peggy--all about your own
nonsense, and not a word of Uncle Edward! But, I say, Peggy--oh! tell
me--Uncle Edward's not a _young_ man?"

Peggy took time to consider, pausing in her work for the purpose, with
her hands covered with flour--for it was baking day. "I'm bound to allow
he cannot be young--nay, it's fifteen years since he was home," cried
Peggy, with a sigh. "Time flies!--it was the very same year, Miss Susan,
that your mamma died."

Susan paused with a question on her lips, awed by these last words; for
she understood dimly that it was in some season of extreme and
mysterious calamity that her mother's life concluded. She could not have
told how this impression had settled on her mind, but there it certainly
was.

"Peggy," she said suddenly, putting into words the suggestion of the
moment, "was it mamma's death that made papa so--so--"--Susan hesitated
for a word, and at last, with a natural hypocrisy, substituted one that
did not express her meaning for a less dutiful term--"so sad?"

Peggy made no audible answer, but she screwed her lips into a tight
round circle, through which came an invisible, inarticulate "No," most
emphatic and unmistakable though unpronounced, shaking her head
violently as she did so. Susan was first frightened, then amused, at the
extraordinary pantomime.

"Don't shake your head off, however," she cried, laughing. "But about
Uncle Edward--you never will keep to the point, you troublesome Peggy!
If he is an old man, what is he? Has he got any children?--where does he
live?--do you know anything about him at all?"

"Not a mortal thing," said Peggy, relieving herself by speaking loud.
"Who can hear anything here, I would like to know? Not of my own
brother, Miss Susan, let alone your mamma's. But he's coming, bless
him! I'm strong in the hope nature will come with him, and something
will be done for you two."

"Peggy, you never spoke of us two before like that," said Susan. "Has
anything happened to us that we don't know?"

"Oh, bless the innocent!--what do you know?" cried Peggy. "If I never
said it before, it was because I saw no hope; but I've told your papa my
mind, and that I can tell you, Miss Susan; and I'll tell it to Mr.
Edward, if Providence spares me, before he's been twelve hours in this
unlucky house!"

"You are very odd to-day, Peggy," said Susan, looking at her with
curiosity. "But I am sure if Uncle Edward gets us permission to see
people sometimes, I should be very glad--but then, we have affronted
everybody," added Susan, with a little shrug of her shoulders. "However,
he is coming himself--that is the great matter. Peggy, what will you
have ready if he comes early? He cannot wait all the time till dinner!
How foolish I was, never to think of it before! What _shall_ we do?"

"We'll have in the lunch, Miss Susan, and as good a lunch as anybody
need wish for," said Peggy, in triumph. "Is that all the good Peggy is
for, to think upon things at the last moment?--for as sure as I'm
living, there's a wheel upon the big stones in the road!"

Susan sprang up upon the chair, leaped down again, her colour rising,
her heart beating. Then she ran breathless towards the door--then
paused. "Oh, Peggy! who must tell papa?" she cried, in great excitement
and trepidation. Peggy, without pausing to answer her question, rushed
past her and through the hall, to throw the door open and seize upon the
carpet-bag, as before related. Peggy was not afraid of papa, and her
shriek of joy and welcome, "Eyeh, Master Edward!" penetrated even
through the closed windows and doors of the study, where Mr. Scarsdale
sat as usual, while Susan stood in the hall, eagerly bending forward to
see the newcomer, and speculating with herself whether it was safe to
secure herself the pleasure of her uncle's first greeting, without the
dreadful operation of telling papa. The issue was, a sudden spring
forward on the part of the excited girl, while her uncle--sad,
oppressed, and wondering--stooped his deaf ear to Peggy, and tremulously
bent over his carpet-bag. Susan had no sooner seen his face than the
long restrained heart yearned within her--her mother's brother--somebody
who loved them! She sprang forward and clasped his arm with both her
hands, and fell a-crying, poor child, as girls use, and looked up in his
face, all-conquering in her wistfulness, and her smiles, and her tears.
The old man caught her in his arms, and read her face as if it had been
a picture, with eager wet eyes that, after a moment, could scarcely tell
what they gazed on. In that moment the poor lonely girl woke up, by dint
of finding it, to discover the love that had been wanting, the
immeasurable lack of her young life. And the old soldier took his
sister's child--the only woman of the family--a new, tender, delicate
tie, almost more touching and intimate than any other, into his fatherly
old heart; and, on the instant, took courage about all the unknown
troubles of the mysterious house, and was at home and himself again.
They went in together to the dull dining-room, where Susan had no desire
to remember that papa had not been told, and grew friends in half a
minute, saying nothing but the common words that every stranger at the
end of a journey hears from his entertainers. But the "Oh, Uncle, I am
so glad you are come!"--the glistening eyes--the joyful young
voice--the little figure fluttering about him, unable to rest for
anxiety that he should rest, and have exactly what he wanted--spoke more
eloquently than volumes of fine words. And Susan's face had already
almost reconciled Uncle Edward to the savage solitude of Marchmain, and
the dreary blank of Lanwoth Moor.




CHAPTER VI.


WHEN Colonel Sutherland had been established for nearly half-an-hour in
the angular arm-chair, which was the most luxurious seat this room
afforded, where he sat holding Susan's hand and keeping her by his side,
it suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten the other members of
the family in his satisfaction with his new-found niece. "But, my dear
child, your father?" he said, hastily; "he expected me, did he not?--he
is surely at home."

And instantly Susan's countenance fell.

The old Colonel had begun to recover his spirits about his
brother-in-law's house. He saw Susan in blooming health, affectionate,
frank, and cheerful, and he began, with natural hopefulness, to impute
the dismal house and solitary life to some caprice, and to imagine to
himself a loving, united family, who were society enough to themselves.
But it was impossible to mistake the cloud which fell instantly upon
Susan's face. "Oh!--I ought to have told papa," she said, with a
hesitation and reluctance in her voice which went to her uncle's heart.
He drew her still closer to him, and looked in her face anxiously. But
Susan knew nothing of that domestic martyrdom which conceals and smiles
on the family skeleton. She was not aware how great a skeleton it
was--it was simply a thing of course, to her inexperienced spirit.

"I should think he must have heard--I should think Peggy must have told
him," said Susan. "He is not so angry when Peggy goes into the study as
when I go; but if you like, I will go and tell him, uncle, now."

"Never mind, Susan. I daresay your father will come when he chooses. A
deaf man would have heard Peggy's shout," said Colonel Sutherland; "and
Horace--was there nobody but my little girl who came to see the old
uncle--is your brother in the study too?"

"In the study!--he would as soon go down the well or up the chimney,"
said Susan, with a very short and half-frightened laugh. "No,
uncle--Horace is in Faneleigh Woods, or on the Moor. He never minds the
weather. I do think at this time of the year he gets wet through three
times a-week; but I am sure Horace will be very glad to see you--as glad
as I was--oh, I am quite sure!"

This expression of conviction, made with some heat and anxiety, had a
very different effect from that which Susan intended--it revealed to the
Colonel very plainly that Susan was anything but _quite_ sure of
Horace's sentiment; and, perhaps, Colonel Sutherland's first sensation
thereupon was offence and indignation; and his personal dignity suffered
a momentary mortification, from the idea that he had volunteered a visit
which was welcome to nobody but this little girl. This personal feeling,
however, was but momentary. A deeper pain returned to his heart; he
looked anxiously into Susan's blue eyes to find out, if possible, how
and why this unnatural state of things existed; or, failing that, what
effect upon her the loneliness and the hardness of her life had made.
But there were no mysteries in those eyes of Susan's--her girlish,
undisturbed heart, clouded by a little terror of her father, which took
no deeper form than that of discomfort and uneasiness, gleamed in them
with otherwise unmingled joy and satisfaction. All the natural filial
love hitherto denied her had sprung to life in a moment in Susan's
heart. She looked at her uncle with an affectionate pride, which made
her breast swell and astonished herself. To stand by his side, to feel
her hand held in his kind hand, to know by intuition that there was
interest for all her little affairs, and sympathy for all her unregarded
troubles in this new friend, was a new life to Susan. She felt
encouraged and emboldened without knowing how, as she appropriated,
involuntarily, his affection, his aid, his succour. She kept naming him
over and over within herself, with a secret inexplainable swell of pride
and comfort. Susan had never been disposed before to use the possessive
pronoun in regard to anything more important than pin-cushions and
scissors; and now to say, "My uncle!" was something as new as pleasant.
But notwithstanding that reference to her father curbed her tongue and
brought a shade of restraint over her thoughts in spite of herself; and
Uncle Edward's affectionate questions flagged--he too had something else
to think of--the change was apparent to both; and Susan, for the first
time in her life, moved to exert herself to seek a less unfortunate
subject, immediately remembered that her uncle must want refreshment,
and proposed to call Peggy to bring in his luncheon.

"Suppose we ring," said Colonel Sutherland, putting out his hand with a
smile to the unused bell-rope.

Susan started with terror to prevent him.

"Oh, uncle, we never ring!" she cried, in an alarmed tone.

The sound of that bell tinkling through the house might produce Susan
could not tell what tragedy in the study. She put out her trembling
hand and caught at her uncle's to stop his intended action. When she did
so, to Susan's great surprise the Colonel, dropping the bell, turned
round upon her suddenly, and put his arm round her.

"My poor child!" he exclaimed, with some sudden access of feeling,
scarcely intelligible to Susan, and with tears in his eyes.

She did not know what it meant, and yet she was very much inclined to
cry too.

At this moment fortunately Peggy came in unsummoned, bringing the tray,
but not the dainty dish which her care had prepared for Mr. Edward. When
she set it down upon the table, she addressed the visitor with the tone
and manner of one who has something disagreeable to say.

"The master's in his study, Mr. Edward: he never comes out on't at this
hour of the day. Will you please to step athwart the hall, and see him
there?"

"Certainly," said Colonel Sutherland, and rose at once, releasing Susan,
who could not help feeling a little tremor for the consequences of his
visit to her father. The old Colonel himself stepped solemnly, with a
certain melancholy in his whole figure and bearing, as he went out of
the room. It went to his heart to see the clouded face with which Susan
responded to his mention of her father, and he went to meet him
forgetting even the discourtesy which did not come to meet
him--oppressed, and grieved, and wondering. When he had closed the door
behind him he laid his arm on Peggy's arm, detaining her.

"What does it all mean?" he asked, with a troubled face, and stooped his
deaf ear to Peggy's voice.

"What does't mean? Mischief and the devil!--and good reason he has to be
proud of his handiwork," cried Peggy, vehemently, though in a whisper;
"and oh, Mr. Edward! before the two unfortunate things are killed and
murdered, save him from himself!"

Perhaps Colonel Sutherland did not perfectly hear this strange
communication; he nodded and went on after her, looking puzzled and
distressed--he was not of an intrusive or interfering nature. He had no
idea of thrusting into any man's secrets, with the view of doing him
good. And then, what influence had he, whom after twenty years absence
his host would not come to meet. So he went across the hall, stooping
his lofty grizzled head, and with a great confusion of grieved thoughts
in his mind--while Susan, left behind, went to the window to look for
Horace, and stirred the fire into a flame, and placed the tray and the
arm-chair in the most comfortable position possible, and trembled a
little, in a vague idea that Uncle Edward might somehow dissolve in that
awful study, or come out a different man.

In the study, just risen up from his chair, Mr. Scarsdale received his
visitor; he scarcely made a step forward to meet him, but he shook him
coldly by the hand. They stood there together, two strangely different
men--the recluse standing bolt upright, with his wide dressing gown
falling off from his spare figure, and his book open on the table--cold,
self-absorbed, in a passion of unnatural stillness; the soldier, with
his tall stooping figure, his deaf ear bending with that benign and kind
humility which made the infirmity a grace, and his anxious countenance
afraid to lose a word of anything that might be said to him. Mr.
Scarsdale's greetings were few and hurried; he asked when he returned,
and how he had travelled, and then, reaching a chair which happened to
be within arm's length, begged that Colonel Sutherland would sit down,
in a tone which plainly signified that the request itself was a favour.
Colonel Sutherland did so, looking at him with a strange
wistfulness--and then, reseating himself, his host spoke.

"Since you have come to Marchmain, I have something to say to you at the
commencement of what I suppose you will call our renewed intercourse. I
will deal with you frankly. I should not have ventured to invite, if you
had left it to me, a man of your tastes and feelings here."

"I can guess as much," said Colonel Sutherland, with a passing, angry
blush.

"I should not," said Mr. Scarsdale, coldly; "because my establishment is
very limited. I live in great seclusion, and I remember that you are a
lover of society, and what is called cheerfulness. But you _have_ come,
and yours is the responsibility if our life oppresses you. And one thing
I would say; I do not fear your discretion, having warned you. You are
aware of the very peculiar circumstances under which I stand--you know,
in short, the blight of my life. Pshaw! why speak of it, or give it a
name?--you know, of course, thanks to your sister's frankness, exactly
what I mean. Now this, I beg you to observe, is totally unknown to my
children: my son is not aware of his advantage over his father. I do not
mean that he shall be, until," added Mr. Scarsdale, with a ghastly
smile, "until the time of his triumph approaches; but, in the meantime,
I have to request that you will not think of extending to these young
people a confidence which I do not wish them to possess."

A flood of painful feelings rose during this speech over the Colonel's
face, of which kindness misconstrued and personal dignity wounded were
the least and lightest. He looked with an amazed, grieved,
uncomprehending wonder in the face of his brother-in-law, and was silent
for a few minutes, while the first pangs of indignant pain were
subsiding, though he involuntarily rose to his feet, an action which Mr.
Scarsdale followed. Perhaps this last rudeness might have roused the
warlike blood of the old soldier, had not his eye at the moment lighted
upon that portrait in the shadow of the curtain. That touch of old love
and sorrow moved him in the midst of his resentment almost to tears. He
had to pause before he could speak as calmly as he wished to speak. "I
have never thought it my duty," said Colonel Sutherland, "to interfere
in any man's house: I will not begin in yours--nor would I remain in it
even for a night, but for recollections which neither you nor I can
efface by any measure of hard words. But, for heaven's sake, Robert
Scarsdale, why is all this?--why do you meet me after this extraordinary
fashion?--why do you shut yourself out from human sympathy?--why refuse
yourself the comfort of your own children? As for myself, I am neither
an enemy nor a stranger. Old ties and kindness have never died out of my
recollection through all the sorrows and labours of my life, which have
not been few. Why have they passed out of yours? We are relations--not
antagonists."

"We _were_ relatives," said Mr. Scarsdale, stiffly.

"_Were!_ And my dear sister--your good wife--do you count her, then,
only among the things that _were_?"

"I beg your pardon: a man is generally the best judge of the goodness of
his wife; but there is no question at present of the virtues of the late
Mrs. Scarsdale," said the recluse. "I can see no benefit to result from
discussing past circumstances. You are welcome to my house, such as it
is; but, knowing my position as you do, I think myself quite justified
in requesting your silence on this matter. It was not my will,
certainly, which made you aware of it at first."

Colonel Sutherland stood before his brother-in-law in a flush of unusual
and inexpressible passion. He could not give utterance to the indignant,
mortified, impatient surprise with which he heard these words. But what
can any one say? It is hard for the voice of kindred to praise a poor
woman--even when she is dead--while her husband looks on blankly, and is
the best judge whether his wife has been a good wife or not. So he is,
of course: therefore, be silent, brother of the dead--say nothing about
her--she is judged elsewhere, and beyond human criticism now. But the
old soldier stood listening, with the pang of wonder, almost stronger
than that of anger and indignation, at his heart. He was so much
surprised, that he was speechless. This unexpected sentiment shook him
suddenly in his supposed position, and turned all his previous ideas
into folly. He was not the brother of a wife beloved, the uncle of
children who cherished their mother's memory, but an intruder, presuming
upon a past relationship. A flush of deep mortification came upon his
face: he made a stately, ceremonious bow to his ungracious host--

"In that case--as things are," stammered the Colonel, "I will make no
encroachments upon your hospitality. Pray, don't say anything--it is
unnecessary. I--I shall take care to pay due respect to your desires so
far as your children are concerned. In short, I beg you to understand
that your secret is, and has always been, with me as though I knew it
not; but," said Colonel Sutherland, pausing in his haste, and steadying
his voice, "it was, as you are well enough aware, known to half, at
least, of your former friends, and that by no--no indiscretion on the
part of--my sister--and it is open at this day, or any day, to the most
indifferent stranger who chooses to pay a fee at Doctors' Commons. What
you can mean, in these circumstances, by a precaution so--by such
precautions, I cannot tell. Is it not better your son should learn this
from his father, than from any ill-disposed companion whom the young man
may pick up? But that is certainly not my business. I presume that I
may, without objection on your part, see my niece and nephew sometimes
during the few days I remain in the nearest village? The children must
acknowledge a certain relationship with their mother's brother."

"Oh!" said Mr. Scarsdale, with a slight blush of shame on his cheek, "I
shall be glad to have you remain here."

Glad! the word was out of keeping entirely with his aspect and that of
the scene; it looked like a piece of mockery. Colonel Sutherland bowed
again with still more ceremony.

"It is too late," he said, quietly.

"Your room is prepared--you have been expected," said Scarsdale,
awaking, not only to the reproach of sending a stranger away, which,
distant as he was from the opinions of the world, touched him still, but
to the vexation of being resisted. "My daughter, so far as looks can
express it, has been expecting you eagerly. I beg you to reconsider your
decision--nay, I entreat, I insist that you should remain."

"Too late for that," said the Colonel, with a smile and a bow; "but I
will not detain you from your studies. Susan, I believe, has some
refreshment ready for her old uncle. I will not carry a punctilio of
welcome so far as not to break bread in your house; but I will bid you
now, and finally, good-bye."

So saying, the old soldier made a superb bow, and, without lifting his
eyes again to his churlish host to see how he took it, turned round on
his heel and left the room.

In the hall he encountered Peggy waiting for him, who, familiar in her
anxiety, laid her hand upon his sleeve, and stretched up on tiptoe to
whisper her anxious interrogation into the Colonel's deaf ear. He waved
his hand to her with an assumed carelessness, which he was far from
feeling.

"We should not 'gree, Peggy, if I stayed a day," he said, familiarly,
and with a smile. "You must direct me to the next village, where I can
get a bed and a dinner--for I will not leave the quarter till I know my
sister's bairns."

"But ye'll not forsake them; say you'll never go away till he promises
their rights," cried Peggy, in a whispered shriek.

The Colonel shook his head, and put her aside with his hand.

"If I can do anything for them, I will," he said briefly; and so went
into the dining-room, where Susan waited, trembling for the issue of
this scene: while Peggy, retiring to her kitchen in fierce
disappointment and mortification, threw her apron over her head and wept
a sudden torrent of hot tears; then comforting herself, repeated over
his words, wiped her tears, and carried in the luncheon. She would not
lose faith in her favourite with so short a trial. Daylight, good sense,
common affection did but need to breathe into this morbid house, and all
might yet be right.




CHAPTER VII.


When Peggy re-entered the dining-room, she found poor Susan struggling
to restrain the sudden sobs of her distress and disappointment in
finding that her uncle was not to remain at Marchmain. He had not meant
to tell her at once, and even now he told her cheerfully, and without
offence, as if he had changed his intention for his own convenience
solely. He had just opened the carpet-bag, of which he had been so
careful on the journey, and was taking out a parcel very carefully and
elaborately packed up, which he proceeded at once to uncover. Susan
looked on, a little curious, but not much interested; she had no
conception what it was, or that she had any connection with it; and when
at last it was all unfolded, and spread out before her, she looked on
rather more interested, but no less wondering. What might Uncle Edward
be going to do with those snowy lengths of India muslin, the fragile
foundation of which was scarcely sufficient to bear the wreaths of
embroidery, which Susan had never seen anything like in her life, and
instantly longed, with a girlish instinct, to copy and emulate--pretty
collars, too, and cuffs, feminine articles which the Colonel could have
no possible use for; and wrapped up with these one or two unknown
articles, rich with that wonderful tiny mosaic work which embellishes
the card-cases and blotting-books of people who are fortunate enough to
have friends in India. Susan had a vague idea that one of these was a
card-case; it certainly was like something of her mother's which Peggy
preserved as a relic, and had promised to make over to her young
mistress when she was old enough to pay visits--an impossible age, which
Susan laughed to think of ever attaining at Marchmain. When he had
opened them all out upon the shining uncovered table, which reflected
the spotless whiteness of the muslin, the Colonel looked down at Susan
with a smile, bending his ear towards her, and looking for gratification
and pleasure in a face which was only admiring and puzzled. "Are you
pleased with them?" said Uncle Edward. "I puzzled my old brains to think
what you would like, and there you have the results of my
cogitations--not anything very extraordinary, but bought a good many
thousand miles off for you, when the only recollection I had of you was
that of a baby. I had to count the years very carefully, I assure you,
and was near committing myself, and losing credit for ever by bringing
you a little frock."

"But, uncle, do you mean they are for _me?_" cried Susan, in amazement.

"Eh? Precisely--for you," said the Colonel, who had not quite heard her
question, but understood her look. "There is but one woman in the
family, my dear child: you don't suppose that my boy Ned could wear
muslin, or that Tom knows how to use a fan? But eh?--what's happened?
Have I vexed you without knowing it, for a blundering old blockhead?
What's the matter, Susan? I'll toss them all into the fire rather than
make you cry."

"Oh, uncle, I can't help crying--then, I like to cry!" exclaimed Susan,
finding the old Colonel really concerned, and disposed to carry out his
threat. "To think they should be for _me_--to think you should have
thought of me in India! Do you suppose I could just say, 'Thank you?'
Nobody ever gave me anything all my life before--and oh, uncle, to take
the trouble of _thinking_ of me!"

"If that is a troublesome operation, I have taken a great deal of
trouble about you, one time and another, Susan," said Colonel
Sutherland. "Now, dry your eyes, my love, and tell me if you approve of
my taste. They are nothing extraordinary, you little goose--you will
make me ashamed of my bundle. Why, everybody brings such things from
India, and bring them very often to people they care much less about
than I do about my little niece. If I had been richer, you should have
seen what we can do in the East; but I just managed, you perceive, to
get you one shawl."

Which shawl the Colonel extricated accordingly, as he spoke. Poor Susan,
afraid he might think her foolish, managed to stop her crying, and
gazed--half with dismay, half with admiration--at all the pretty things
before her. What could _she_ do with them? Colonel Sutherland, it was
true, knew that she never was allowed to see anybody, or to make any
friends, but a fact which is alien to nature makes no impression upon a
natural mind. He could not remember or suppose that a young girl had no
possible use for the pretty, simple dress he had brought, and looked on
with a pleased face to see the effect of his gifts, as Susan began to
examine them. Peggy, going backward and forward, saw it was now time
enough for her to interpose, and, with a genuine woman's interest,
plunged into the delightful investigation, which Susan--flushed and
agitated quite out of her wont, and tremulous with many new
sensations--had just concluded, when Horace entered the room.

That room, all its life, had never looked so homelike, and the reason
was not explainable; for, except in the heap of litter at one end of the
table, and the old man eating his luncheon hard by, there was
absolutely no change upon the apartment. That soldier's face,
weatherworn and brown, full of command yet full of tenderness, with
grizzled hair and moustache, and erect soldierly _pose_, was not by any
means a common-place countenance, or one which could have passed unnoted
anywhere; but it was not even that which made the charm. It was the
bright, pleased look which the Colonel, as he sat, lifted upon the girl
before him--the amused, kind, tender smile which went over all his face
like sunshine--the kindly, homely inclination towards her of that deaf
ear--the care he took to hear all she said--the interest and indulgent
regard with which he followed her movements and listened to her words.
There was no criticism in those kind eyes--they were eyes accustomed to
give a genial interpretation of everything--and the light of them
changed the aspect of this dismal room. It did not even look so dark or
so stifling--the very mahogany brightened, and hearty blazes awoke in
the once-smouldering fire. Everything seemed to have become aware,
somehow, that living human love and kindness, indulgence, tenderness
were there.

Yes, indulgence--though, to be sure, it is very bad to spoil our
children; but what would not one give, when one grows old, for that
dear, lost indulgence of our youth, which will never come back to
us--that consciousness that there is one at least who will see
everything we do in the best light, and put the kindest construction
upon our failings, and think us cleverer and better, and fairer and
pleasanter, than we are and can be! Youth cannot thrive at all without
this sunshine; but heaven help us, how it dies and disappears out of the
noon of life! Susan had never once felt it before--the feeling came upon
her, as she met her uncle's eyes, that she had never really lived
before--that she was only awaking to find out what she herself was, and
what were the people around her. Somehow the dawning of a happiness
unthought of brought with it the sudden revelation of miseries which had
not struck her in all her past experience. Fathers, it became visible to
her in a moment, were not all like her father--homes were different from
this home--even Uncle Edward's presents helped that enlightenment. These
pretty things were common to girls of her own age, and in ordinary use
among them. Her uncle was even puzzled that she should look at them as
she did, and think them so beautiful, so wonderful, so much "too fine
for _me_!" And as Susan came to comprehend this, between the pleasure
and the pain, her cheeks flushed, her young limbs trembled, her heart
beat loud with strange emotion. Even that excitement helped the effect
of Uncle Edward's kind face in the room. This very confusion and
commotion was life.

When Horace appeared, wet as Susan had predicted he would be, and sulky
as he always was, the sudden gleam of warmth in the familiar apartment
penetrated even into his sullen heart. Its first result was the natural
one of making him feel more unhappy; but in another moment, and with
reflection, a change came upon Horace. He did not desire or care for the
kindness of his uncle. _He_ was not a domestic creature!--he longed to
escape from home, and was exceedingly indifferent as to what he should
have there, if he could but attain that desirable end. And Colonel
Sutherland appeared a very likely assistant to Horace--as, his deaf
uncle not having heard him enter, he stood for a moment looking at him
before he advanced. The young man, in his hard wisdom, perceived the
simplicity of the old man who sat unconscious before him. As far as he
could comprehend a spirit so different from his own, he read his nature
in the Colonel's face, and took up his part accordingly with cleverness
and dexterity. He advanced quickly to his uncle and held out his hand,
Susan watching him with an unusual anxiety which she could not explain
to herself.

"Uncle!--I need not ask who it is--uncle, welcome!" cried Horace, with a
heartiness unknown to him heretofore, and perhaps more reality in the
expression than he himself could have thought possible.

The Colonel rose with a little stumble of haste, putting his hand to his
ear. For the moment he was perplexed, and thought it a stranger; but
catching the sound of uncle, hailed his nephew with all the affectionate
sincerity of his unsuspicious heart. He shook both his hands as Horace's
hands had never been touched before; he looked in his face, too, as in
Susan's, to trace the lineaments of their mother, and called him "my
dear boy;" and shook his hands again with an effusion of satisfaction
and kindness. For Horace, so far as features went, _was_ somewhat like
his mother, and, with his smile and his smoothed-out brow, looked a very
different person from the Horace of every-day use and wont. "But will he
persevere?" said Susan to herself, with an ache of delight in her heart;
and "How to keep it up?" said Horace within his own saturnine spirit.
The uncle knew nothing of these secret questions--did not suspect for a
moment that the young man who met him so joyfully had changed his
manners for the occasion, and congratulated himself in his simple heart
that both the children had kept their hearts and feelings warm in their
solitude. The old man grew quite radiant and talkative. He who had
intended to leave Marchmain directly, sat still, opening out his honest
heart to the young people like a long absent father. He told them first
and principally about his boys, their cousins, whom they must
know--about the house he had got, which was exactly what he wanted, and
where he only wished he could have Susan to be "mistress and mair!" as
he broke out joyfully in his Scotch--about India, where almost all his
life had been spent, and which, with Edinburgh, and a peep of London,
made up the world to the veteran. And the light had actually begun to
wane in the short afternoon, when it suddenly occurred to Uncle Edward
that he was forgetting himself, and that he must face the blast again to
find his inn. A momentary austerity came into his face as he recollected
this, and, rising hastily, begged of Horace to show him or to tell him
the way to the nearest village. The nearest village worthy the name was
five miles off; there was a miserable little hamlet nearer, with a
miserable little public house, but that Uncle Edward shrugged his
shoulders at.

"Can Susan walk five miles in a good day?" said the Colonel, smiling.
"Then come along, my boy--we'll go there."




CHAPTER VIII.


A walk of five miles on that dismal February afternoon was not a
pleasure excursion; nor was it pleasant to look back upon poor Susan's
face at the window--flushed, tearful, ashamed, mortified, Susan had not
experienced an equal vexation in the whole course of her life. To think
of Uncle Edward having to go away through the damp and twilight five
miles off to find a lodging! Uncle Edward, who had come closer to
Susan's heart in half-an-hour than all the rest of the world in all her
life! When they were out of sight she subsided into the arm-chair and
had a good cry over it, and then went to talk to Peggy, who was actively
furious, relieving herself by incomprehensible ejaculations. Still
somehow, mortified and vexed as she was, there was all the promise of a
new life remaining for Susan. Uncle Edward would return to-morrow; so
long as he stayed he would see them every day--and the idea disturbed
the stagnant atmosphere, and diffused an indescribable cheerfulness
through the house. Even Peggy, though she fumed, was exhilarated by the
thought--perhaps on the whole, it was even better that the Colonel's
tender, honest heart should not be grieved by the sight of the ghost of
family life existing here. So long as he did not see it to make himself
wretched with the view, Uncle Edward's sweet and healthful imagination
could conceive of no such scene as Mr. Scarsdale's dinner, or the
evening hours which followed it. And then he was coming back to-morrow!

So Susan took her presents upstairs, and fell wondering and dreaming
over them, making impossible fancy scenes of cheerful rooms and pleasant
people, and smiles, and flowers, and kindness unknown. Somehow whispers
of all these delightful things seemed to breathe out of that pretty
muslin, with its graceful wreaths of embroidery. The horizon opened to
her awakened girlish fancy, far off, and almost inconceivable, yet with
a vague brightness of possibility--and Susan spent an hour arranging her
new riches in the drawer, which was the only scene they were likely to
enlighten at present, and making herself happy with her novel thoughts.

While in the meantime the Colonel and his nephew trudged onward across
the moor. The rain had ceased, but the sky was low and the air damp--and
evening darkened round the vast blurred circle of the horizon, dropping
down among the hills. The scene was dismal enough for anything: the
exposed path across the moor--the black furze bushes and withered
crackling heather--the slender saplings cowering together here and there
in a little circle, where attempts had been made to naturalize them--and
the great, monotonous, unbroken stretch of desert soil around, inspected
from the lower heights by gaunt clumps of fir-trees, savage and
melancholy anchorites, debarred from the change and variety, the autumn
and the spring of common nature. Colonel Sutherland threw a shivering
glance round him, and drew his cloak close about his throat. We will not
say that even at that moment, when his thoughts were occupied with more
important things, an involuntary patriotic comparison did not occur to
the old soldier, who was native to the rich fields of Lothian, and might
be disposed to wonder complacently whether _this_ were indeed the
sunnier south. He had, however, a more immediate subject of observation
in Horace, who trudged beside him with the stoop and slouch, and heavy
irregular step, of a neglected and moody youth. He was well-looking
enough, and not deficient in any bodily quality, but the lad's
_physique_ had been totally unattended to, and he had never been in
circumstances which could have led himself to perceive his faults of
bearing and carriage. The Colonel's soldierly eye could not help
regarding him with manifest dissatisfaction. We will not take it upon us
to affirm that Colonel Sutherland at the head of his regiment might not
be something of a martinet, or the least thing in the world particular
about stocks and cross-belts. He looked at Horace, and could not help
looking at him as he might have done at an awkward recruit. How he held
his sullen head down against the wind, as if he butted at an invisible
enemy; how he swung his hands in the pockets of his shooting-coat; how
he dragged his heavy feet as if there was a clod at each heel. The
Colonel did not quite understand how it was that his nephew's person
inspired him with a vague distrust, and, somehow, contradicted his
nephew's face; but the fact was that Horace could change the expression
of his countenance when he had sufficient motive, but could not alter
the habits into which neglect, and indolence, and sullen temper had
thrown his outer man. And he himself was entirely unconscious of the
clownish walk and ungracious demeanour which gave the old officer so
much annoyance. Colonel Sutherland respected everybody's _amour propre_.
He could scarcely find it in his heart to wound any one, on the virtuous
principle of doing them good; but, between professional sentiment, and
that family pride which is wounded by being obliged to admit the
imperfections of those it is interested in, he never exercised more
self-denial in his life than that which he showed during this walk, in
restraining an exhortation to his nephew in respect to his bearing and
deportment; while his kind imagination went to work directly, to
contrive expedients, and inducements, and hints for Horace's benefit, to
lead him to perceive his own deficiencies and adopt means to correct
them, without wounding his feelings or his pride.

While Colonel Sutherland occupied himself with these reflections,
Horace, totally unconscious of criticisms upon himself, which would have
stung his self-love deeply, pondered, in his turn, the best means of
bringing his uncle over to the length of helping him, by any means or in
any way, to escape from Marchmain. The most palpable mode of entering on
the subject--that of lamenting his father's want of hospitality--had
been made impracticable by Colonel Sutherland, who laid all the weight
of the arrangement upon his own convenience; and his simplicity and
straightforwardness made a sidelong approach to it equally out of the
question. Horace was compelled, accordingly, to bring in his subject all
at once, and without introduction. Colonel Sutherland, without meaning
it, said something half consciously about the dreary country, and his
nephew seized upon the chance.

"Dreary, indeed!--and nothing else do we see, uncle, from year's end to
year's end!" cried Horace. "Is it not enough to kill a man?--without a
human face to break it, either; and here am I, strong and young,
condemned to this life, and kept from any information--any advice--which
can direct me what to do. Uncle, you are the only friend I have been
able to see with freedom and confidence, and I am almost glad you don't
stay at Marchmain--for there is no freedom there. Tell me, I beg of you,
what can I do?"

"My dear boy!" cried the Colonel, grasping his nephew's hand in sudden
sympathy, and with a little gasp of earnest attention--"you take away
my breath. Solitude has not diminished your energy, at all events. Do?
Why, to be sure, a boy like you can do anything. We must look for an
opening, that is all--but you should have begun before now."

"My father," said Horace, with unconscious bitterness, "has stopped
that. I don't know anything about the world, except this paltry little
world here, of gamekeepers and poachers, and sporting farmers' sons--for
gentlemen, of course, don't associate with me. What are we,
uncle?--nobodies? I can't tell--my father keeps up habits which look
like the relics of a better time--and at the same time I know we're
poor; but _he_ throws no light upon our unhappy circumstances. _He_
keeps me shut up in this horrible house, till I think all sorts of
horrors: that he's a returned convict, or something like that--that our
name's a disgrace. What is it?--of course there must be some cause for
this seclusion--and you must know."

Colonel Sutherland was much embarrassed. He fumbled with his cloak in
the first place to gain time, and then, finding no other resource, fell
back upon the shelter of his deafness.

"I'm a little hard of hearing," said the Colonel. "I partly lost your
last observation--but what's that about the poachers and gamekeepers?
Bad company, Horace!--unfit associates, except in the way of sport, for
any gentleman. I've known lads of good family ruined just by an
inclination that way. Not that they meant ill to begin with; but what's
mere fun at first comes to be liking before long--and a gentleman's son
of course is flattered and courted among them. It's a pernicious thing,
Horace--attend to me!--it's been the ruin of many a man."

"What is ruin, uncle?" shouted Horace, with a wild and bitter smile,
which somehow mingling congenially with the wind and the chill, carried
into the Colonel's mind a singular identification of that landscape and
scene which gained their climax in this moment. He was startled, he
could not explain how. He turned round to look into his nephew's face,
with a sudden consciousness of depths in the heart and in the life of
Horace undecipherable and mysterious to himself.

"My dear boy," he said, with a little tremble in his voice, "ruin is
such a destruction as can be accomplished only by a man himself."

Horace made no answer. His face subsided gradually, out of that
self-revelation, into the assumed good-humour which he had put on for
his uncle's benefit. Colonel Sutherland, however, continued to regard
him with concern and apprehension. The Colonel's mind was not
enlightened up to the pitch of modern times. When his imagination
uncomfortably pictured Horace seated, perhaps, in the alehouse they had
passed, with the gamekeeper or sporting men of the village, it was not
the knowledge of life which the young man might acquire, but the
old-fashioned horror of "bad society," which moved the thoughts of the
uncle, who secretly in his own mind began to attribute something of the
slouching gait and unsatisfactory bearing of his nephew to his
unsuitable companions. He could not give up the subject, but partly in
natural anxiety, and partly to evade the youth's troublesome questions,
recurred to it immediately again.

"I am your oldest relation except your father, Horace," said the
Colonel. "I have some experience in life. You know what the proverb
says: 'A man is known by the company he keeps.'"

"Had he better keep _no_ company?" said Horace; "very possibly; but then
I can't help being young, poor devil that I am. I can't make a woman of
myself, or be a child all my life. I must have something out of my
prison--and you are not the man to blame me, uncle. The fellows you
blame are those who have society in their favour. As for those country
blockheads, whom I see in the woods or in the alehouses, do you think I
care for them? Do _you_ care for a set of dancing dogs or a wandering
monkey? You laugh at them. If you have nothing else to think of, they
amuse you for the moment. I despise the louts!--they are no more than
bears on exhibition to me!"

Once more Colonel Sutherland looked at his young companion. It was not
in his kindly human heart, which despised nobody, to like this manner of
expression; but somehow the force with which it was uttered, and the
implied superiority of tone, had a certain effect on the simple-hearted
old man. He still retained his uneasiness, his want of comprehension;
but he began to change his ideas of Horace, and to think him
intellectual and clever--not a youth dangerously falling into "bad
company," but a man whose talents were lost to the world for want of
"opportunities." He fixed his gaze anxiously upon his nephew, and longed
for the candid eyes which told all Susan's sentiments and emotions; but
that doubtful face said nothing of itself. There might be "talent," but
there was no candour in the countenance of Horace--what the lips might
say, was the only index to what the head conceived or the heart felt.
Colonel Sutherland turned away from him again with a little sigh. He was
interested, his curiosity was awakened, and his paternal anxieties in
full exercise; but somehow under all his heart whispered hesitations and
inarticulate warnings to him. He had no experience in this unknown
development of human nature. His own instincts said as much. But a man
does not always give attention to those instinctive intimations. Colonel
Sutherland was accustomed to believe that he had rather a natural gift
for the guidance of young men--his sympathies with youth were warm--his
heart young--his kindness unbounded. Many a youth ere now, charmed by
the natural benignity and freshness of his character, had opened his
soul to the old Colonel, and given to him that full, youthful confidence
seldom bestowed by halves, which harsher fathers had failed to
gain--with great advantage to themselves; for the old man was wise, as
old men come to be who are not clever, but only humble, candid,
religious, fearing God, and slow to make themselves judges of men. The
habit of counsel, of assistance, of kindly attention, and regard to the
self-revelations of his young companions, was accordingly strong upon
Colonel Sutherland--yet, though he would scarcely acknowledge it to
himself, a certain conviction of being out of his depths, and in a world
altogether new to him--among elements which he was unable to handle--was
present with him now.

"I am glad you have no inclination towards such society," he said, in
his perplexed tone; "but, Horace, my boy, even for sport you must not
continue it. It sticks to a man in spite of himself; and, indeed, the
young fellows now are very different from what they were in my time. I
don't bid you despise your fellow-creatures--there's a long distance
between despising them and preferring their society--a man of your
condition should do neither the one nor the other, as you will learn
when you come to know life."

"What is my condition, uncle?" asked Horace, suddenly, interrupting the
slow and hesitating general sentiments, which were the only things which
the perplexed Colonel could find ready to his hand in this embarrassing
case. It is to be feared that Colonel Sutherland heard this question,
which was asked in a high tone, for his face became gradually flushed
over with a painful heat and colour; but once more he put his hand to
his ear.

"Yes; what are your own inclinations?--that is really the question,
Horace--if we knew that, we could look out for you. There are many
openings now to honourable ambition; but what do you wish yourself for
your manner of life?"

"Uncle," said Horace, with a force which _would_ be heard, "I have no
inclinations, thanks to my manner of life hitherto--I have only one
wish, and that is, to escape from Marchmain. Get me away from that
wretched house. I don't care if I turn a shoe-black or a scavenger--get
me away from here!"

The Colonel once more looked at his nephew, but with less respect--"On
these terms, could you not get yourself away? You are not confined by
locks and bars," said Colonel Sutherland, disapprovingly; "why have you
no inclinations? That dear child yonder, who has nobody in the world to
speak to, has kept her heart as fresh as a May flower."

"Susan?" said Horace, growing red; "you don't compare me with
Susan?--Susan's a girl--she's content--she's very well off, so far as I
can see--she's in her natural vocation. Would you have me put on
petticoats and sit down to patchwork?--As well do that as compare a man
with a girl!"

"Susan," said the Colonel, with a little _hauteur_ and heat which became
him, "is the only woman of the family. You are not aware, I daresay, of
the indulgences and pleasures that are natural to girls of her years. I
don't wonder so much either that you think of yourself first--but why
have you no inclinations?--she has, and you think yourself her superior,
I perceive."

"Don't be displeased, uncle," said Horace, changing his tone, and
suffering only a little impatience, to testify to the fury with which he
heard himself reproved. "You know better than I do, that women are tame
creatures, and content themselves easily in their own sphere, when they
don't know any better. Susan has leisure to form little plans and
fancies, I believe. I have no such thing--the pain of years has brought
me to one point of desperation. I know nothing of the world: I don't
know what I am--my position--my prospects--my birth, are all a mist to
me. My mind is not sufficiently disengaged to form projects; therefore I
say I have no inclinations--the air stifles me--I must get out into the
world, where there is room to breathe!"

"Then, why," said the Colonel, "have you not gone away before?"

Horace was silenced--he fumed with silent rage within himself, wounded
in the tenderest point of his self-love and pride--it was, perhaps, the
only suggestion which could have made him feel a pang of humiliation. It
was one which Susan herself, in her simple and practical intelligence,
had made more than once. Why had he borne and brooded over his
wretchedness? Why had he not gone away?

"Many young men," said Colonel Sutherland, "have left home of their own
accord on a less argument than that of desperation. I don't mean to say
I approve of it--but--there are some things that one could not advise,
which, at the same time, being done, cut a difficulty which might be
hard to solve. I say all this, my dear boy," added the Colonel, moved by
Horace's gloomy face, "to show you that it is foolish to use such strong
expressions: if your _desperation_ had been so great as to deprive you
of all choice or inclination, depend upon it you would have gone away."

And having delivered himself of this kindly bit of logic, totally
inapplicable as it was to the person whom he addressed, and attributing
the silence of his nephew to the natural confusion of a young man
detected in the use of undue heroical expressions, the Colonel was
himself again.

"And this, I suppose, is my resting-place for the night," he said, as a
church-spire and the roofs of a village became dimly visible before them
at the end of the road. "I will remain here three or four days, and
during that time, Horace, you must find out your inclinations, my boy,
and let us discuss them and see what is to be done. You must stay and
dine with me in the first place, and be with me as much as possible
while I am here--that is to say, unless your father makes any positive
claim upon you during the time."

"Positive claim! I wish you had dined with us one day, uncle, to see
what these claims are!" cried Horace, with a laugh of bitterness; but
the Colonel, who had been thinking of something else for the moment,
inclined his ear towards him with a little start and a smile, before
which bitterness fled. Horace could no more comprehend his uncle than
his uncle could understand him. This smile discomforted him
strangely--he could not stand against that kind prompt attention, the
ear so solicitous to catch what he said, and the face so guileless and
benign. The young man was of a crafty intelligence, and could have
detected wiles--but this sunshiny simplicity put him out. It went deep
into the primitive truth, sincerity, and honesty of nature--things which
Horace Scarsdale had small acquaintance with in the secret spring and
fountain of his life.




CHAPTER IX.


That evening was an epoch in the life of Horace. The people in the
little country inn to which he took his uncle were not unacquainted with
the young man. For a year or two past, ever since the bitter
independence of manhood had begun to possess him, he had spent much of
his waste unoccupied time in this and the other humble houses of
entertainment of the district. With a _sensation_ of superiority, which
he owed principally to his natural temper--for there was in reality very
little distinction of breeding or character between himself and the
society he frequented--he held a scornful dictatorial place among the
humbler _convives_ of the villages, and observed and amused himself with
the peculiarities he saw, very much as if he had been a man of the
world, trained to that odious criticism which is dignified by being
called "the study of mankind." The coarse enjoyments of the public-house
company did not tempt him--he threw his violent decisions into the hum
of drowsy talk when it suited him, and at other times looked on, noting,
with contemptuous amusement, the dull jollity of the place. His father's
singular solitude imposed a certain respect upon the imagination of the
district; and between Horace and the country lads around there remained
always that inexplainable, undefinable difference which, independent of
education, wealth, and every tangible advantage, separates those who are
born in different classes of society, especially in rural places. He had
accordingly a strange kind of popularity in the district--not the
popularity of common love and esteem, but an attraction perhaps more
remarkable; his careless rudeness, his bitter humour, the harsh
philosophy which contrasted with his youth and inexperience, gave him a
certain singular hold upon the imagination of his companions. The very
certainty that he did not care a single straw for them attached the
little crowd to his footsteps. Dominant and imperious self-regard, like
all other regnant qualities, has a wonderful influence upon the common
mind. No other person within the immediate knowledge of this rural
community assumed the same tone, or showed the same spirit--and the
vehement and forcible language, more refined than their own, the
utterance of a gentleman, which Horace had acquired involuntarily, the
arrogant sentiments he expressed, the unconcealed consciousness of
superiority which belonged to him, united to impose a certain allegiance
upon the inexperienced minds, which found him unique and singular, the
sole development known to them of a kind of intelligence and a manner
of man widely differing from their own.

But this night everything was changed. The landlady of the inn, amazed
into a flutter of perturbation, appeared herself, at the astounding
information that young Mr. Horry, as he was called, had arrived with a
gentleman. The good woman supposed it must be his mysterious father, and
hastened with all the speed of curiosity to receive them--but lost in
amazement to find "the gentleman" a stranger, who required the best
accommodation of her house for a few days, and desired to dine as soon
as that was practicable--found it only possible to curtsey and retire,
more curious than ever, without being able to show her previous
acquaintance and familiarity with Mr. Horry, who turned his face with an
arrogant blank of unrecognition full upon her, and added to his uncle's
orders a request that some one might be sent to Marchmain immediately
for the carpet-bag.

"Something's agoing to happen," said the landlady, as she returned to
her own domain. "A strange gentleman as wants the best o' everything--an
ould sodger lord with musstaches--egh, lad!--a lord I'll warrant, at the
very least o' him--and I'll lay you a sixpence he's coom to set a'
things straight; for yonder's Mr. Horry, he looks me in the face as
broad as I look at you, and says, says he, 'Send a man to Marchmain for
a carpet-bag immediantly,' as if he never set eyes on me in his born
days afore. Like him! I would ne'er goo starving to his door in hopes o'
meat."

Great preparations ensued for the hasty dinner, which was to be ready in
an hour; but even the landlady's conviction that her guest could not be
less than a lord was not sufficient to work impossibilities. While it
was getting ready, Colonel Sutherland and Horace sat together over the
new kindled fire. The best room of the inn, which did not receive a
guest twice in a year, was a dingy parlour hung with old portraits of
famous horses, winners of the cups of antiquity, with a county map, and
a print of George IV. to vary the embellishments, and two small windows
looking out upon the village street. The Colonel placed himself as close
as possible to the fire, not without dreadful apprehensions of the
rheumatism, which already sent flying twinges into his spare limbs, and
made him wince; and thought with a little natural indignation of his
repelled kindness, and the cold reception which had forced him to seek
this place, and substituted the accommodation of a poor little country
inn for the hospitality he had expected. Silence and these
recollections, and the startling twinges of his rheumatism, changed the
expression of his face almost into sternness, and seemed to develop in
him another phase of character. Horace watched him in the doubtful
light, more and more puzzled. The indulgent, tender kindness and
forbearance of the fatherly old man had disappeared with the animation
of their talk and intercourse--the whole face had a loftier and more
rigid expression. Horace, drawing back his chair out of the firelight,
gazed and pondered with knitted brows. He began to think more elaborate
approaches were necessary, and plans better laid. He had not found it
possible hitherto to get much information from this kind old uncle
touching the family secret, if there was one. Was Colonel Sutherland a
kind old uncle merely? Horace began to suspect he must be something
more, and that the task of persuading him and winning him over to his
own interests might not be so very easy after all.

The Colonel sat long in meditation, as if he were in full consideration
of the whole knotty subject; when he made a little stir in his chair as
if about to speak, a sudden burst of anxiety ran over Horace. "I
wonder," said the Colonel, with the gravest face, "how long it is since
a fire was lighted in this room before. Speak of England, Horace! I
don't believe there is anything so dismal from Berwick to John o' Groats
as that moor of yours, and no attempt at cultivation or improvement, so
far as I can perceive. You should see our high farming in Lothian! I
have not felt the cold so severe since I came home."

Horace had almost laughed aloud in his sudden relief and contempt. These
were the thoughts, so deeply ruminated, which had brought gravity to
Colonel Sutherland's face. The young man, who now less than ever
comprehended the old man, went to stand at the window, not without a
certain satisfaction in being seen there by the evening frequenters of
the place, who were sure to hear of his companion, and of the different
position he occupied for this night at least; and passed another half
hour of waiting before the dinner appeared, in strange calculations, at
once cunning and foolish--the wiles of a subtle mind, and the
inexperience of a young one--thinking with himself how long his uncle's
simplicity could withstand his attacks--how soon he should be able to
worm all the secrets of the family out of him, and how easily he could
work the old man to do what he would. Then, if such a man as Colonel
Sutherland had reached to a respectable position and command, what might
not such a man as Horace Scarsdale do? The young man's spirits rose--he
imagined himself making a stepping-stone of his uncle, to push his way
into the arena--and then----.

Considering the height and imaginative character of this ambition, which
at the outset gave it a certain refinement, it was astonishing,
notwithstanding, to perceive into what almost vulgar elation his spirits
rose during that dinner. It was no great things of a dinner, being too
ambitious by far for the occasion; but it was perhaps the very first
meal in his life, at least since he came to years of self-knowledge,
which Horace had eaten with freedom and pleasure. He thought of
Marchmain, and the scene in the dining-room at that moment, where Peggy,
in the ordinary course of events, would be about removing the cloth and
setting on the table his father's solitary glass and jug of claret, and
smiled to think of Mr. Scarsdale's silent rage at seeing _his_ vacant
place. He was pleased and flattered by the respectful manner of the
landlord who waited on them, and could not refrain from talking rather
big to his uncle, and assuming a confidence and frankness quite unusual
to him, and foreign to his nature, for the advantage of that individual.
He was too young to conceal this first gratification, and betrayed
himself unawares. Simple and unsuspecting though the Colonel was, he
perceived this. However, it was natural, and instead of a hard laugh at
it, Uncle Edward smiled and grew kinder, and loved Horace better and
trusted him the more for his weakness' sake. They seemed growing friends
gradually and surely--the old man believed they were, and rejoiced in
it, and could not have believed, had anybody told him that the cold
passion of self-regard, to the entire exclusion of warmer feelings,
filled his nephew's heart.

When they were left alone, Horace, a little stimulated by the wine he
had taken, commenced his attack with boldness:--

"Uncle," he said, "you _must_ think of me--you must help me. I have
never been able to speak my mind before to a single individual who could
comprehend or assist me. I _must_ know what are our circumstances. It is
needless to say that my father's past life does not affect me. It does
affect me--everything affects me that I am kept in ignorance of. What
are we?--what is he?--why are we here?"

Horace had hit by chance and unawares upon the means really most likely
to attain his end. Colonel Sutherland could not return anything but a
true answer to a plain and straightforward question; and evasion was so
strange to him that he managed it in the clumsiest manner. He retired on
his deafness in the first place--a defence from which Horace drove him
out triumphantly by a repetition of the question in tones that could not
be mistaken. Then he faltered over it a little, with common-places of
hesitation too palpable to deceive anybody.

"Your true circumstances--your father's past life? Your father's past
life has always been virtuous and honourable," said the Colonel. "What
is he? You ought surely to know better than I do, who have not seen him
for fifteen years. He is, if you wish my opinion, a man of very peculiar
temper. Horace, I do not wonder that you find him rather hard to get on
with sometimes, but he _is_ your father; and therefore, my dear boy,
whatever others may do, impatience and a harsh judgment do not become
you."

Horace shook his head.

"This is not what I want to know. You know it is not," he said, with a
rising colour. "Say no, if you will, but don't treat me like a child.
Look here, uncle: I am assured there is a secret--I know it, no matter
how--tell me what it is."

Horace put the whole force of his voice and mind into the question. He
made it not as one who asks, but as one who demands what he has a right
to know, feeling convinced that his gentle relative could not now evade
him, and had no strength to resist; and with this conviction strong upon
him, the young man stared into the Colonel's eyes, with the thought of
overawing him and compelling his answer thus.

Colonel Sutherland looked at him steadily, withdrew his eyes a moment,
looked again, and at last spoke.

"If you think," said the Colonel, coldly, "that by this persistence and
demand you can persuade any man of honour to betray to you a secret with
which another has entrusted him, you show only your ignorance of
gentlemen and want of belief in your fellow-creatures. If there is a
secret in your family circumstances--though, mind you, I do not admit
that there is--can you suppose that I will tell you anything which it is
your father's desire that you should not know?"

Horace shrunk for a moment in mingled rage and amazement from the tone.
It was inconceivable to him that anybody could feel even an instant's
contempt for him; but the feeling was momentary.

"Then he does desire that I should not know it!" he exclaimed, with a
certain triumph--and set his teeth over the admission, as if this at
least was something gained.

"I did not say so," said the Colonel, with some embarrassment. "I said
if--No, Horace, if you wish to investigate into all the secrets of your
family, go to your father, and ask him--he is the proper judge of what
should or should not be told you. At least, if you don't admit that, he
is at least the most proper person to be asked; and till he has refused
to satisfy you, you have no right to apply to any one else. Take my
advice--be honest and straightforward--it is the shortest way and the
clearest: ask himself."

"Ask himself! Do you know the terms we are on, uncle?" said Horace, with
a smile.

"So much the worse for you both--and long enough _that_ has lasted,
surely," said the Colonel. "The past is no man's, the future is every
man's: I say to you again, _that_ has lasted long enough! Ask himself,
and let the mystery and the strife end together. It is the only honest
way to clear your difficulties up."

Once more Horace smiled--a smile of disappointment and anger--baffled
and furious; while the Colonel went on with his honest, simple advice,
exhorting the young man to candour and openness--he might as well have
exhorted him to be Prime Minister--while Horace, for his part, kept
silent, perceiving, once for all, that whether it was from mere
foolishness, or some principle of character unknown to him, his uncle
was impracticable, and that the only way to find anything out from him
was to lie in wait for the unguarded admissions which, in spite of
himself, might fall from his lips.

"After all," said Colonel Sutherland, when he had concluded his good,
honest advice to his own satisfaction, "what has all this to do with it?
You are tired of inactivity and quiet, as a young man ought to be; you
want to set out upon the world. Of course, your father cannot object to
this; and as for me, all that I can do to forward it I will, heartily.
But, Horace, setting out on the world does not mean anything vague, my
lad. It means doing, or aiming at, some special thing--some _one_
special thing, my dear boy. We can't go out to conquer the world
now-a-days--it must be a profession, or business, or a place, or
something; so I'll tell you what to do. Think it well over--what you
said to me about having no inclinations. Sit down by yourself, and find
out if there is not a special turn one way or other in some corner of
your heart, and let us hear what it is. After that the way will be
clear; we must look for an opening for you, and," added Colonel
Sutherland, after a little pause, and speaking with hesitation, "if you
should then--wish for--my services with your father, why then,
Horace--though we are not the best friends in the world--I'll try my
best."

"Thank you," said Horace, with sullenness, which he tried vainly to
repress--"thank you, uncle. I will do as you say."

The conversation then came to an end, Horace fuming over it secretly as
a failure--and the young man had so high an idea of his own powers, that
the thought galled him deeply. Then, after an unsatisfactory interval of
indefinite conversation, which Horace could not keep up, and which the
Colonel--tired, disheartened, and perplexed--sustained but dully, the
young man got up and bade him "good night." Colonel Sutherland went down
to the door of the inn, half with a simple precaution to see him safely
out of the "temptation" of that "low company" which Horace had owned to
seeking, and half by suggestion of that kindness which could not bear to
see any one discouraged. "Think it well over," urged the Colonel once
more, "and expect me to-morrow; and be cheerful, and keep up your heart,
Horace. There's plenty of room for you in the world, and plenty of force
in yourself. Good night, my dear boy--good night."




CHAPTER X.


When Horace Scarsdale left the lights of the village behind him, and
took his way through the black roads towards Marchmain, he carried with
him a burden of thoughts rather different from those which accompanied
him here. Though his was neither a noble nor a sweet development of
youth, still youth was in him, as in others, heroical and absolute. It
is impossible to reduce to description the kind of fortune he had
planned for himself; for, indeed, he had planned nothing, except a
general self-glorification and domination over the world.

His uncle's advice to him, to ascertain how his likings inclined, and
make choice of some profession or employment precise and definite,
humiliated and offended him unawares. His fancies had not condescended
to any such particularity. He had an impression on his mind, how
acquired he could not tell, that his father wronged him, and that it was
only necessary for him to be aware of their true circumstances to set
him at once beyond the common necessities of life. This conviction,
however, he had never betrayed to any one; and Colonel Sutherland's
recommendation, which implied the restraints of labour and something to
do, was not over-palatable to the young man brought up in idleness.

He was too old to begin the study of a profession, and when he thought
of the laborious days and confined existence of men who have their own
way to make in the world, secret rage and mortification took possession
of Horace. Was this all that remained for him?--was this the life which
he must look forward to?--was there nothing better in the future than
this? He had no desire to choose his means of living, his manner of
work--his thoughts eluded the subject when it was presented to him--it
was easier to brood over a mysterious wrong, and dream of sudden
revelations which should change everything in a moment. At the same
time, his intellect was sufficiently clear to show him that contempt was
likely to follow any exhibition of these feelings of his--he himself, as
he reflected on it, fumed at himself with silent disgust.

Then he had failed to influence Colonel Sutherland as he
expected--everything had failed in the absolute fashion--he could no
longer carry matters, even to himself, with the high hand of dominant
youthful unreason and disregard of things and men:--even things that
pleased him took a definite, particular, and limited form, and came
under conditions which made them distasteful. Already he began to
perceive that the language and manner, which did very well for his
alehouse companions, was not practicable in such society as that of his
uncle; and unaware as yet how to acquire a more successful tone, fell
into deep and angry mortification on the subject. He had not impressed
upon Colonel Sutherland a high idea of his spirit, his energy, and his
intellect, as Horace had intended to do; but had only conveyed the idea
of a presumptuous and ignorant youth to the mind of his uncle. He felt
this with a humiliation out of which he drew no humility. It was not so
easy as he supposed, to see through and dominate over even so simple a
character as that of Colonel Sutherland.

But it did not occur to Horace that his uncle's plain simplicity and
truthfulness was, in fact, the only thing in the world which could not
be dominated over by the most splendid superiority of intellect. He
supposed it was only his own ignorance, and inexperience, and want of
address--deficiencies mortifying enough to acknowledge certainly, but
not so mortifying as the entire incapacity either to comprehend or to
influence. He had time enough to think over all these things, as he made
his way through the lonely, dreary country roads, and across the moor.

This day, and this meeting, and the opening of his close heart even so
far, had flashed into life the smouldering fire in the mind of Horace.
He strode on with long, rapid steps, thinking it scarcely possible that
he could contain himself within the miserable hermitage of Marchmain,
even for a night. He went along pondering schemes to surprise the secret
from his uncle, in spite of this first failure; and, intoxicated by the
first realization of freedom, to imagine himself altogether free, his
own master, triumphing over the world. But among these fancies there
mingled neither a desire nor any attempt to ascertain, as Colonel
Sutherland said, "his own inclinations," or to decide upon what he
should do. He said quite truly, when he reported of himself, that he had
no inclinations which concerned labour or a profession, and even in his
own thoughts he evaded that question. He could think closely, when the
matter was to find out, from his uncle's unsuspicious temper, his
father's secret; but not when the thing to determine was the needful
labour of his own life.

Meanwhile, Susan sat silent in her father's presence, longing for the
return of Horace, picturing him to herself seated opposite to her uncle,
free to say what he would, opening his heart under those genial looks,
bringing home kind thoughts and kind messages, sunned and mellowed by
that unsuspected love which had developed all the wonderful
possibilities of a new life to herself. Even Susan could not sit still
to-night--her patchwork had lost its attraction for her--her thoughts
rose too fast, and were too numerous, to make her ordinary quiet
possible. In spite of herself, and even unawares to herself, she was no
longer the noiseless girl who sat hushed for hours, opposite to that
rigid figure with the little reading-desk and open book. To her own
amazement, she caught herself once humming an incipient tune as she sat
over her work; and after a while found it impossible to sit still, and
moved about with an involuntary restlessness, finding little matters to
arrange in all the corners of the room, chairs to place differently, the
curtains to be drawn closer, the fire to be stirred, something to keep
her in motion, and express, by that only means permitted to her, the
unaccustomed stir and commotion in her own heart. And what was even more
remarkable, Mr. Scarsdale himself seemed to have an instinctive
perception of this, and to be somehow moved in his own calm. A close
observer might have perceived that he no longer travelled by mechanical
accuracy from beginning to end of his page--that the leaves were tamed
less regularly, and that his eyes were fixed upon the upper margin of
his book, sometimes for half an hour together, while he watched, without
looking at her, his daughter's movements, and heard the faint rustle of
her hushed motion about the room. He divined the cause, and knew the
emotion in her heart, with a strange and bitter certainty. He was aware
by intuition that all the affection, and confidence, and filial warmth
which he had never sought, had sprung up in an instant to meet the touch
of another who had not the same natural claim as he; and the forlorn man
grew more forlorn by the knowledge, and perhaps even once for an instant
hesitated whether he should not, at this last moment, open his heart to
his child, his wife's daughter, the only woman of the family. Somehow
these words returned to him unawares. Mr. Scarsdale was not of the kind
of man who is much influenced by women. Sympathy was an offence rather
than a pleasure to him--he had none to bestow and he sought none.
Consolations of affection he scarcely distinguished from intrusions of
impertinence, and there was no soil on which tenderness could grow in
his rocky nature. But if he had little affection, he had a perennial
envy in his heart. He could not bear that another man should obtain
anything which seemed by right to belong to himself. The idea that his
wife's brother had already possessed himself of Susan's heart, more than
he, her father, had done during her whole life, galled him bitterly; so
much, that in that moment of indecision, while he held his book in his
hands as though he would have closed it, the impulse had actually come
upon him to put confidence in Susan, and so win her over, once for all,
to his side, and shut out the less legitimate claimant on her
affection.

The only woman of the family! It was _his_ daughter whom Edward
Sutherland made this claim of affection on--it was a piece of _his_
property which the new comer appropriated; and Mr. Scarsdale had almost
been moved out of himself to secure the filial heart which he cared not
for, yet which it galled him to see claimed by any other. But nature
conquered the sudden thought; he set his book once more steadily open
upon his little desk--he made his heart bitter and hard--a forced and
painful smile came upon his lip; within himself he recalled, half
unawares, some of those words of contemptuous sarcasm against women, by
which some men revenge themselves for some woman's misdeeds. But it made
him colder, harder, more forlorn and solitary, in spite of himself. His
son, whom he had always treated as an enemy, was with his
brother-in-law; his daughter, though here in bodily presence, was with
that intruder also in her heart. _He_ was alone, alone--always alone; a
jealous, envious, morbid rage deepened the shade upon his face; the love
was nothing to him--but he gnashed his teeth to see it enjoyed by
another.

When Horace returned--and they could hear his summons at the door, and
Peggy's tardy opening--he did not come into the dining-room, but went
upstairs at once; sending a message to Susan, to her great
disappointment, that he was tired with his walk from Tillington, and was
going to rest. Mr. Scarsdale did not retire till a much later hour than
usual that night; and when he did, made Susan precede him by a few
minutes, that he might see her shut up in her own room, and prevent all
communication with her brother. He persuaded himself that they were in a
conspiracy against him, and roused his temper with the thought; he spoke
more harshly to Susan than he had ever done before in her recollection,
and sent her to her own room in tears. Tears!--miserable woman's play
of pretended suffering!--at least he was beyond the weakness of being
deceived by it; and he smiled bitterly to himself, as he went to his own
comfortless rest, thinking on the smiles which would greet her uncle.
Unjust fate! unnatural nature!--for these smiles were his, and belonged
to him--yet he could not prevent the kind looks of a stranger from
stealing this property away.

And Susan cried herself to sleep, with hopes and happy anticipations
taking the bitterness out of the tears; and Horace sat in his room,
where he had hastily extinguished his candle on hearing approaching
footsteps--as little inclined to see Susan as his father was that he
should; pondering his wiles for overcoming his uncle. Only last night
the house had been undisturbed in its unchanging life; now everything
was commotion, disturbance, new efforts and hopes, a changed aspect of
existence: and all from the advent of that guileless old soldier, who,
waking in the night with his twinges of rheumatism, his fears that his
bed had not been aired, and his deeper perplexity and pain about his
sister's children, mixed these different troubles altogether, with a
hazy mist of oppression and distress in his mind as he turned his head
towards the wall, and sank into a heavy sleep.




CHAPTER XI.


Colonel Sutherland was out of doors early next morning, as was his wont.
The weather had improved, the sun was shining, the fells rose dewy and
fresh through the air and distance, the whole face of the country was
changed. The Colonel strayed along the country road, with his unusual
burden on his mind, yet making such minute, half-conscious observations
of external nature as were usual to him; pausing to examine the hedges,
to pinch a bud upon a branch, and make involuntary comparison between
the progress of the spring at home and here; noting the primrose-tufts
which began to appear in the hedgeside herbage, soft green leaves still
curled up in their downy roll; and making unconscious memorandums in his
mind of the early notes of birds already to be heard among the branches.
Everything was early this year, he thought to himself, as with a calm
and placid pleasure he enjoyed the air, the light, and the cold yet dewy
and sparkling freshness of the morning. In the calm of his age this old
man had recovered the sweet sensations and susceptibilities of
childhood; life with its passions and struggles was over for him, or
seemed so; all was well with his boys; and the many and sharp sorrows of
his manhood had left upon him that feeling of happiness in the mere
freedom from acute and immediate pain, which only those who have
suffered deeply can feel. The sunshine warmed and cheered him to the
heart. It was true that trouble, anxiety, and doubt were in that
innocent and tender soul; a strong desire to help and deliver his young
relatives, with still no perception of the means for doing so; but this
was no urgent distress, enough to break in upon that sacramental morning
hour. There might be difficulty, but everything was hopeful; and the
Colonel wandered along the lonely rural road, where the wet grass
sparkled in the sunshine, and the buds on the hawthorn-hedge basked with
a secret growth and invisible expansion in the tender warmth and light;
and in his age, and the quiet of his soul, was glad as they.

As he approached the corner of an intersecting road, voices came to the
ear of the Colonel, or rather one voice, which seemed familiar to him.
The speaker was addressing some one who made little reply; and Colonel
Sutherland heard, to his great astonishment, a glowing description of
the advantages and pleasures of a soldier's life in India, splendidly
set forth by the odd, familiar accents of this voice, as he approached.
Half amused, half amazed, he listened--the words being, evidently, not
of any private importance, and delivered in a tone too loud for
confidential communications. He thought to himself that it must be some
old soldier beguiling the innocence of some rustic lad, whom want of
employment or youthful disappointment had prompted to try the expedient
of "soldiering," and went forward with a wrinkle on his forehead, but a
smile on his lip--divided between sympathy for the supposed victim, and
a professional reluctance to balk the voluntary recruiter, if the
recruit should chance to be a promising one. But, to his surprise, when
he had gained the corner of the road, instead of a young ploughman or
country bumpkin, his eye fell upon a young man of extremely
prepossessing appearance, with all the look of a gentleman, who listened
with dilated nostrils and eyes fixed upon the distant hills--listened as
a man listens whose thoughts are already too many for him, and who has
but little attention to spare for what is said--but who, nevertheless,
has a serious intention of hearing what is addressed to him. The Colonel
was so much startled by this, that he scarcely observed the other person
present, till an astonished exclamation of his own name, and the sudden
motion of a military obeisance, aroused him. Then the smile returned,
though with a difference, to his lip. The speaker was a sergeant of his
own regiment, a veteran nearly as old as himself, who now stood before
him, between joy and reluctance, eager to make himself known, yet not
perfectly satisfied to be found in this exercise of his vocation; with
confusion in his face, and his mouth full of excuses.

"What, Kennedy!" cried the Colonel; "my good fellow, what brings you
here?"

"It's far enough out of the way, to be sure, Cornel," said the sergeant,
rather sheepishly; "and neyther my oun place, nor like it. Sure it's a
bit of a flirt of a girl's brought me, that's come to be married here."

"Married! What, _you_? You old blockhead!" cried the Colonel, inclining
his deaf ear towards the voice, "what do you want with such nonsense at
your age?"

"Na, Cornel, ne'er a bit of me--the Lord forbid!" said the old soldier;
"but a daughter it is, brought up within five mile of ould Derry, but
seed a lad o' the fells as took her heart; and sure she's all in wan, as
ye may say, the whole stock o' me familly; and according, Cornel, I'm
here."

"And at your old trade, I perceive," said Colonel Sutherland--"hey,
Kennedy?--you will never forget your cockade and bunch of ribbons; but I
rather think you're out a little here."

"Ay, sir, ay--I said as much mysel' wan moment afore. The young master,
Cornel, he's aboove my hand," said the sergeant, promptly; "but youth,
sir, youth will not hearken to a good advice. So I bid to tell him as
he desired; he's all for the cap and the feather, Cornel, and it's not
for an ould sodger to balk a gentleman, in especial as it was
information Mr. Roger sought; and I well rec'klet, Cornel, that ye aye
liked a lad of spirit yoursel'."

"This is a mistake, however," said the young man, hurriedly; "I'm not a
gentleman seeking information. Go on, Kennedy; I want pay and
bread--don't be afraid, sir, there's nobody belonging to me to break
their hearts if I enlist. Let him say out what he has to say."

The Colonel cast kindly eyes upon the young man, and saw his nervous
haste of manner, and the impatient way in which he roused himself out of
his half abstraction to deny the inferences of the sergeant--which,
indeed, were entirely foreign to the address which Kennedy had just been
delivering; and his benevolent heart was interested. "I also am an old
soldier," he said, with his kind stoop forward, and his smile; "perhaps
I am a safer adviser for a young man of your appearance than Kennedy.
Eh? Do you prefer the sergeant? Very well! But you must understand that
the good fellow romances, and that rising from the ranks, even in India,
is not so easy as he would have you suppose. Very true, I have nothing
to do with it; but don't be persuaded to enlist with such an idea. I
wish you good morning, young gentleman. You can come to me, sergeant, at
the inn in an hour or so. I am here only for a few days."

And Colonel Sutherland had turned away, and was once more descending the
road, wondering a little, perhaps, that the young fellow did not eagerly
seek his offered advice on a subject which he knew so much better than
the sergeant, when he heard himself called from behind, and, looking
back, found the youth following. As he came up, the Colonel remarked him
more closely. He was of brown complexion and athletic form, though only
about twenty--already a powerful though so young a man. He was dressed
entirely in black--a somewhat formal suit, which almost suggested the
clerical profession, though, in fact, it meant only mourning, and had a
mingled look in his face of grief and mortification, sincere sorrow, and
a certain affronted, indignant, resentful aspect, which raised a little
curiosity in the mind of the Colonel. He came up with a bold, firm,
straightforward step, which Colonel Sutherland could not help
contrasting unawares with that of Horace, and with the colour varying on
his cheek.

"I ought at least to thank you, sir, for the offer of your advice," he
said hurriedly; then came to a pause; and then, as if vainly seeking for
some explanation of the reason why he rejected it; "I am, however, only
a recruit for the sergeant, not for the Colonel," he added, with sudden
confusion. "It is because of this that I appear churlish and ungrateful
in declining your offer. My dress is a deception. I have no right to be
treated as a gentleman."

"These are strong words," said the Colonel. "I presume, then, that you
have done something by which you forfeit your natural rank?"

A violent colour rushed to the young man's face--"No!--No!--twenty times
No!"--he cried, with a sudden effusion of feeling, half made up of
anger, and half of the grief which lay in wait for him to catch him
unawares; "and will not, if I should starve or die!"

"It seems to me," said Colonel Sutherland, looking round in vain for
Kennedy, who had taken the favourable moment to escape, "that you are in
a very excited condition of mind; if you will take my advice, you will
not do anything in your present state of feeling, and, above all, don't
enlist. Kennedy's story is the common recruiting fable, dressed up to
suit your particular palate. The old fellow cannot forget his old
successes in that way, I suppose. It is as foolish to 'list in haste as
to marry in haste, my young friend. It is a thing much easier to do than
to undo. Keep yourself out of temptation, and consult your friends."

Having said so much, the Colonel gave a slight kindly bow to his
companion, and was about to pass on, but, looking at him again, waited
to see if he had anything to say.

"Is it better to take the plough-stilts than the shilling?" exclaimed
the young man; "you know nothing about me--but you look at my distress
with a kind face. You know the world and life as they really are, and
not as they appear to us here, becalmed on the shores of the sea. I have
no friends to consult, no one to be grieved for me whatever I do. I have
not much wit, and less education; I have only what the brutes
have--strength. What shall I do with it. Is it best to be a ploughman
or a soldier?--I will abide by your decision--which shall it be?"

"Walk down with me to my inn," said Colonel Sutherland, "and tell me who
you are, and how this has happened to you."

The young man turned with an implicit, instantaneous obedience. He made
no preface, no explanation. He had reached to that extreme agitation of
mind in which a listener, interested and friendly, is salvation to the
self-consuming spirit, when that spirit is of the kind which can
disclose itself; as in this case it happened to be.

"My name is Roger Musgrave," he said; "I have been brought up as heir to
my godfather, a man supposed rich. With him I have lived most of my
life--we two. He was more than a father to me: but he is dead, and died
poor. There is nothing left of the supposed inheritance--worse than
that; but that is all that relates to me," he cried, suddenly pausing
with a gasp of restrained grief. "The people here exhaust their kind
feelings to me in reproaches upon him who has left me unprovided for.
False reproaches!--insults to me as much as to him! He is gone, and all
control of me, all love for me, have died in his grave. I have myself to
support, and his honour to reclaim. I ask you how I am to do it
best--must it be as a labourer at home, or as a soldier abroad?"

"But you have given me no reason why your choice should be limited to
these two trades," said Colonel Sutherland; "there are many things
besides which such a young man as yourself can do better than either.
Come, you are very young--you are arbitrary and impatient. The
profession of arms can only carry a man on and forward in time of war.
You are thinking of Napoleon's soldiers, those men who might possibly
carry a marshal's baton in their knapsacks; but you forget that the
first thing required is not the soldiers, but the Napoleon--and things
were never so in the English army, my young friend. Even in times of
war, not one man in a thousand rises from the ranks--no, not even in
India--not in the Company's service. Don't deceive yourself. Don't you
know that even the old women in the village break their hearts when
their sons enlist, and declare that anything would be better? I don't
say _that_. I am a soldier myself; but they are nearer the truth than
you."

"Is it then only the alternative of despair?" cried the young man.

Colonel Sutherland curved his hand over his deaf ear, and begged his
pardon, and had not heard him. The excellent Colonel was at home in his
capacity of adviser: he could understand this lad who came with his
heart on his lips ten times better than he could understand Horace, and
took up his case with lively zeal and interest. He took him to the inn
with himself, and made him sit by while he breakfasted, and grew into
friendship with the young stranger almost against his will. On the
whole, the encounter pleased the Colonel: he made Roger promise to come
to him in the evening, when they could talk over his affairs at leisure,
and warned him with fatherly kindness to do nothing rashly, and to
entertain no further thought of enlistment. Perhaps it was very foolish
of the Colonel to comfort the youth's heart after this rash fashion;
perhaps it was "raising expectations which could never be justified."
The old man never thought of that: he had kindness to give, and good
counsel, and some knowledge of the world. He said to himself that this
was all an old man was good for, and so shook hands with poor Roger
Musgrave as if he had known him all his life, and occupied himself on
the road to Marchmain with contrivances for serving him. It was his
"way"; there are people who have a worse "way" to be met with in this
world.




CHAPTER XII.


Before Colonel Sutherland left the inn on his expedition to Marchmain,
he had another visitor in the sergeant, who took care, however, to make
sure that Musgrave was gone before making his appearance. He was not
unlike the Colonel himself in his outer man; tall, spare, and brown,
with a weather-beaten face and a grizzled moustache, Kennedy had at
least sufficient resemblance to his old Colonel to mark their connection
as comrades in arms. But the sergeant was neither deaf nor to any
remarkable extent benevolent; abstract kindness did not influence him
much: he flattered himself that he "knew what he was about" under all
circumstances, and was somewhat pragmatical and dogmatic on most
matters. His extensive experience and knowledge of the world had made
him the cock of the village for a year or two past, where everybody
believed his big stories, and most people were disposed to indorse his
own opinion of himself. He was from the north of Ireland; a violent
Protestant and Orangeman--tendencies sufficiently innocent in him; but
the place of his birth, mingling a little of the fire and vehemence of
the Milesian with all the obstinacy, dogmatism, and self-opinion of
Scotland, had sufficient influence on his character to be noted. He was
a rigid Presbyterian--one of the pillars of one of those little churches
which, lingering near the border, prove that the national faith of
Scotland has pushed her colonies more effectively into the sister
country than England has been able to do in return; but this did not
prevent Kennedy from making himself the oracle of the village
ale-house, where he might be seen three or four nights a-week,
sometimes in a very lofty and dignified state of haziness, freely
bestowing the most grave advice upon everybody, and disposed to take
rather a melancholy view of the degradation of the times, and of things
in general. But this was the worst that anyone could say against him. He
was fond of his little grandchildren, and was always busy with something
for their amusement; good to his daughter, whom he often helped out of
his own little funds; and in general friendly and serviceable. He
presented himself to his old commander with a little awkwardness, fully
expecting, as it seemed, to be taken to task for his morning's exploits;
and his expectations were not disappointed. Colonel Sutherland was too
much given to advising youth himself to have any patience with the
advice of the sergeant. It was an invasion of his own domain which he
could not forgive.

"I am glad to hear you are so comfortable," said the Colonel, "and that
you manage to live in peace with your son-in-law, which, I confess to
you, I would have thought rather doubtful; for I know you're rather
strong in your opinions--eh! is it your daughter that keeps the peace?"

"Na, Cornel, na," said the sergeant; "I'm no so onexperienced as that;
faothers and moothers are best in their oun place. I have a cot to
mysel', and a' my traps about me--next house to Mary, poor thing!--and
she's kept a' goin' since I've come, and the childer they keep back and
forard; and so far as the husband goes, it never was said, among a'
slanders, that I was ought but a peaceable man--"

"Oh! a very peaceable man," said Colonel Sutherland, with a smile.
"That, to be sure, is the last thing one could think of doubting; but
come, you have your faults, my good fellow--what do you say to me, now,
for such an account as I heard your giving, this morning, to the young
man?"

"Well, Cornel!" exclaimed the culprit, keeping up his boldness, though a
little abashed--

"Well! It does not appear to me to be well at all," said the Colonel;
"how often have I told you, when on recruiting duty, to tell the truth?
You pour a parcel of lies into a poor blockhead's head, and blow up his
pride with thoughts of what's going to happen to him; and you expect,
when he has found out that it's all lies, as he must do, that he will
believe the rest of what you say to him! That's bad enough; but to go
into it _con amore_--I mean for pure love of romancing--when there was
neither necessity nor business in it--I admit to you that's something
that beats me."

"Ay, Cornel, it's easy for the like of you," said Kennedy, "that have
your pensions and commands; but what's a man to say to the poor devils?
Hard service and poor wages, barracks and boiled beef, and sixpence
a-day! Truth's a grand thing for the army, Cornel, but it does not
bring in no recruits; and where's the harm done? If Johnny Raw is
deceived wance in a way, it's soon tooken out on him. At the worst, did
I ever tell a man he could rise to be Cornel but by a steedy life and
doing his duty? Sure, and if he minds himself, he _can_ come to be
sergeant, and that's next best; but the biggest lot of them, Cornel, as
you know as well as me, never try, and get no honour at all, at all, as
may well be proved; for them that strive not, win not on, as I've told
them till I was hoarse myself, many's the day."

"You never wanted an excuse," said the Colonel, shaking his head;
"however, we'll leave the general question; did you ever know a man in
the 100th rise from the ranks?--did you ever hear of a sergeant sent on
a political mission?--and how could you venture to begin the day, you
old sinner, with such a pack of lies?"

"Well, well, Cornel--aisy, sir," said the sergeant; "sure he was a
gentleman, and know'd what was what as well as me!"

Colonel Sutherland laughed in spite of himself at this original excuse,
on seeing which Kennedy recovered his courage, and took a higher tone.

"And if ye'll believe me, the best thing for _him_ yonder is just to
'list, Cornel. If he wance 'lists, friends'll come in and buy his
commission; for sure they are well off and in plenty, Yorkshire
ways--and the disgrace, sir, the disgrace, that's what will make them
draw their purse-strings. I would not desire a prettier man, either for
parade or battle-field. He's a soldier born!"

"They! who are _they_?" said Colonel Sutherland; "he has no friends."

"Maybe, Cornel, maybe--I say little of friends--friendship's neither
here nor there," said the sergeant, waving his hand; "but the faother
and moother I can speak to. Them that heeds not love, heeds shame."

"You are oracular, Sergeant Kennedy," said the Colonel, with a very
little peevishness; "but I tell you the lad told me he had no friends."

"Faother and moother, Cornel, as I say," answered the persistent
sergeant, with a little nod of his dogmatical head.

Colonel Sutherland got up and fell to pacing the room with great
annoyance and agitation. After a little while, being somewhat obstinate
himself, he seized Kennedy by the shoulder and shook him.

"You're deaf!" said the Colonel, with a whimsical, half-angry
transference of his own defect to the other; "you're hard of hearing! I
tell you the lad says he has no friends."

"And I tell you, Cornel, he has faother and moother, if it was my last
word!" said the sergeant once again.

"Your last word!--ay, you will always have the last word," cried Colonel
Sutherland, this time indeed hearing imperfectly; "there must be some
mistake, I suppose. Never mind, we'll inquire into it later. You must
see me again, sergeant--I am going now to my young people. Good morning
to you, my friend--ask for me here to-morrow."

"Are the young gentlemen in these parts, Cornel?" said Kennedy, rising
with a little reluctance; "I said to mysel' the Cornel behooved to have
his own occasions here."

"Not my boys--my niece and nephew, people you never heard of," said the
Colonel, quickly. "Now, my man, good morning--I am pushed for
time--you'll come again to-morrow."

Thus urged, Kennedy had no resource but to obey, which he did, however,
very slowly, running over in his mind immediately all the "gentlemens'
families" of the district, with which he had any acquaintance, in a vain
endeavour to ascertain who could be the niece and nephew of his "old
Cornel." Kennedy, as it happened, had not been at his usual post in the
public room of the little inn on the previous night, and had
consequently no intimation of any dawn of new fortune on Mr. Horry, whom
he knew perfectly well, and at whose hands he had suffered contradiction
enough to give him some interest in the young man's fate. This
information, however, he would have been pretty sure to receive, but
that Colonel Sutherland had already sent for the landlady to give her
his orders for the day.

The Colonel was extremely frugal, almost parsimonious so far as his own
manner of living was concerned, but having set himself to devise some
pleasure for poor Susan, shut up all her life in Marchmain, the
extremest liberality which the circumstances would allow, was not too
much for his inclinations. The only vehicle possessed by the little inn
at Tillington was a double gig, a very homely conveyance, which the
Colonel had already ordered, and in which he proposed to take Susan
"somewhere," bringing her back to lunch with him. The kind old man
entered into the most minute directions about this lunch. He put
elaborate leading questions, in order to ascertain what the cuisine was
capable of, and consulted over puddings and tarts with the zeal of a
connoisseur. A sentimental French _chef_ who would have entered into the
sentiment of the occasion, would have delighted the Colonel. He wanted a
dainty meal of pretty little dishes, sweet and savoury, as much in
honour of Susan, as to please her youthful palate, and endeavoured so
earnestly to impress his wishes upon the homely innkeeper, that the idea
of some secret grandeur belonging to Mr. Horry and his sister impressed
itself more and more deeply upon that good woman's mind. She promised to
do her very best; with the greatest awe and impressment she left the
innocent and too trustful Colonel to study her cookery-book with
devotion, and to conceive impossible triumphs of culinary art. But art,
even in the kitchen, avenges itself upon those who neglect it. Poor Mrs.
Gilsland lost three or four hours of valuable time, and her
temper--which was still more valuable--over trifle which sunk dead into
the bottom of her dish, and cream which would not "whip;" and dratted
the Colonel at the conclusion of it with hearty good will and much
vexation. While the innocent Colonel, secure of having done all that man
could do to procure a satisfactory collation for Susan, drove the
innkeeper's steady old horse across the moorland road, and combated
manfully the vexation which rose stronger and stronger in his mind, as
he recollected the discrepancy between young Musgrave's account of
himself and that given by Kennedy.

The Colonel had a little pride in his own discernment, and could not
bear to be taken in; but besides that, was grieved in his kind old
heart at the thought of finding his new _protegé_ unworthy; and yet his
manner was so sincere, his face so honest and candid! Would that Horace
had as clear a countenance! Colonel Sutherland touched the horse with
his whip, and went forward with a little start, as if he would rather
escape from that last thought, and so dismissed young Musgrave from his
mind as best he could, and began to think with simple pleasure of Susan
and the unusual holiday which he was bringing to her. He had ascertained
that it was possible this fine morning to drive her to the little
country town, where it was market-day, and where the little stir and
bustle of life would be new to her. The idea of the pleasure she would
have exhilarated himself, as he approached nearer to the house. He meant
to buy her some books, and anything else that might amuse her in her
solitude, and smiled to himself, with a tender and simple satisfaction,
as he tried to anticipate her likings and wishes. Thus thinking, and
thus smiling, he came in sight of the solitary house upon which at the
moment the sun shone.

There it stood in its dark reserve, with the windows buried deep in the
wall, sending no responsive glimmer to the light which shone full upon
the blank gable, and slanted along the front of the house. There was no
projecting point to make a break of shadow in the featureless
brightness, nothing but the dull wall and the cold slate-roof; and all
around the black moor, without a tree, intersected by long deep cuttings
full of black water. Colonel Sutherland pulled up in spite of himself,
both in his pace and his thoughts, and went softly over the remaining
way. Could he hope to penetrate when the very sun was baffled? A chill
of disgust, a throb of impatience, the intolerance of a fresh and
upright nature for this unnatural mystery and gloom, possessed him in
spite of himself. He said to himself that it was contemptible, that he
had no patience with it. It needed all the smiles of Susan looking out
from the window to restore him to his pleasanter thoughts, and to throw
the least light of feasibility upon his simple expedients for softening
and healing the harms of this unnatural life.




CHAPTER XIII.


Susan had been at the window for nearly two hours, though it was still
only eleven o'clock. She said to herself that Uncle Edward would not
certainly come before the middle of the day, but still could not leave
the window in case she might possibly lose the first glimpse of him on
the road. When she had satisfied herself, to her great disappointment,
that the homely country vehicle which she saw approaching contained him,
poor Susan nearly cried with vexation. There was not even anybody in the
gig with him to take charge of it. It appeared that he must only mean to
remain a moment, and Susan withdrew from the window in the first shock
of her disappointment, feeling that Uncle Edward had deceived her, and
that there was no longer anything to be depended on in the world.

At that instant Horace, who had no desire to subject himself to the
inquiries of Susan, and had hitherto kept rather out of her way, entered
the room abruptly.

"Here is my uncle!" he exclaimed. "What! you don't care for him to-day,
don't you? He's no novelty now?--that's famous, certainly! But, do you
hear, Susan, I want something of you. While he's here, make him talk all
you can; ask him about my mother; how they used to live when we were
babies; what happened about the time she died; everything you can think
of. I want to hear what he says, and of course all that's very
interesting to you; you want to know."

"Don't _you_ want to know, Horace?" asked Susan, half alarmed by his
tone, and yet half pleased with the idea that he was becoming
interested about their dead mother, and the life which was connected
with her. She looked at him with dubious, uncertain looks; she did not
know what to make of him. She could not comprehend any secondary or evil
motive which he could have, and yet he did not seem to speak quite
honestly, or in good faith.

"To be sure; why else should I bid you ask?" said Horace, throwing a
book down on the table and seating himself by it, as if he had been
pursuing his morning studies there.

And indeed Susan had said the same thing to herself. She ran to the
window again as the wheels began to approach audibly, and could no
longer feel disappointed when she met Uncle Edward's smile, and saw him
uncover his grey head in the sunshine, in his antique affectionate
gallantry. Susan was quite unaccustomed to the common tokens of respect
which belonged to her womanhood. The salutation made her blush, and yet
pleased her wonderfully; she could no longer believe that her uncle was
coming only to call as if they had been strangers. She stood smiling and
waving her hand to him till he was quite near, and then ran to the door.
John Gilsland's mare was the soberest beast in the district--she stood
still as a statue when the Colonel descended, and looked so perfectly
trustworthy, that he did not hesitate to leave her to herself for a few
minutes. He took both Susan's hands in his and kissed her forehead with
a fatherly grace, then drew her arm into his own to lead her back to the
dining-room. His whole manner, with its protecting, tender, indulgent
kindness for her youth, and its chivalrous respect for her womanhood,
had in it the most exquisite sensation of novelty for Susan. She laughed
to herself secretly, yet with tears coming to her eyes--she felt a new
pride, a tender humility in her own heart. She was flattered, and
touched, and stimulated at the same moment. Wonderful was this love,
this new influence, this unknown soul of life; it might have been more
romantic had it dawned upon her through a young man instead of an old
one--a lover rather than an uncle; but in that case the revelation would
have been very different, and perhaps the revolution scarcely so
complete.

"Call Peggy, my dear child," said Uncle Edward, "and put on your bonnet,
I want you to go with me as far as Kenlisle--not too far for a drive
this fine morning; it is cold to be sure, but bright and pleasant; tell
Peggy you must have on your warmest wraps; tell her I want you to see
something else than the moor, for one day at least--tell her--ah, here
she is herself! Peggy, I want my niece to drive with me to-day to
Kenlisle--will there be any objections, do you think?"

"The master never sets eyes on Miss Susan, from ten o'clock in the day
till six at night," said Peggy. "_He_ can scarce complain, and as for
me I give my consent willing. Ay, honey! you may look, with your eyes
dancing in your head--I said new times was coming. Would you keep the
Colonel waiting? and the mare at the door like a douse wife, taking
great notice on the bits of green grass agrowing amidst of the stones.
There, Colonel, she's off like a hare athwart the moor--the poor child!
from a baby, she's ne'er had a holiday before."

And Peggy hastened upstairs after Susan, who, gazing from one to another
for a moment of bewildered and doubtful delight, had at last burst from
the room, seeing that nobody opposed the extraordinary, delightful
suggestion, to get ready for her drive. When the old woman disappeared
following her, the Colonel turned to Horace, who had listened with a
good deal of discomfiture, resentment, and contempt, unable to
comprehend the bad taste which could contrive pleasures for Susan, to
the neglect of himself. It gave Horace a worse opinion of his uncle
than he had yet entertained. He could scarcely help sneering at him, and
calling him an old woman to his face.

"Will you walk over to Tillington and meet us, Horace?" said Colonel
Sutherland, who, for his part, exhilarated by the sight of Susan's
delight and wonder, was now full of smiles and satisfaction; "I have
ordered some luncheon between two and three, which will leave you time
to bring your sister home. You will come?--you look a little pale, my
boy--you have been thinking too much over-night!"

"It is possible--I have not slept since I saw you, uncle," said the
young man.

"Too much--too much," said Colonel Sutherland, resting his hand kindly
upon his nephew's shoulder. "Important as the question is, I am sorry
you lost your sleep--it is only old people who can do that with safety.
And you have come to a good conclusion, Horace?--that is right!
Already, I am sure you feel the pleasure of decision. But I will not ask
you what you have resolved on now. Eh, Susan?--what, not dressed yet,
you fairy?--what is it now?"

"Oh, uncle!--I only wanted to ask, if you won't be angry," cried Susan,
out of breath, "whether I should be too grand if I wore my shawl?"

The old man's face brightened, and expanded all over with the simplest
pleasure.

"Too grand!--you don't drive with me every day, do you?" he said with a
laugh, as he patted her cheek. "No--I should be quite mortified if I did
not see you in your shawl; but make haste--think of the mare, and in a
winter's day remember there is no daylight to lose."

Susan ran off again with flying feet, and the Colonel turned once more
to his nephew. He could not help recognizing then something of the
amazement, contempt, and derision which filled the mind of Horace. Uncle
Edward was a little struck by his look--perhaps, even a little
offended. He paused unconsciously to defend himself.

"You think that very trivial--eh, Horace?" said the Colonel. "Ah, my
boy! one is heroical when one is young--one feels it grand to be
superior, and despise the smaller matters of life; but at my age one
learns that happiness itself is made up of trivial things."

Horace's eyes fell under his uncle's look; he was half ashamed--not of
his sentiments, but of having betrayed them.

"I am sure it is very good of you to take so much trouble for Susan," he
said, with his uncomprehending, half-resentful voice.

Colonel Sutherland supposed Horace to be jealous, and was a little
pained, but yet acknowledged a certain amount of nature in the feeling.
He had no conception of the true state of the case--of the entire
contempt his nephew felt for himself, and the angry and derisive wonder
with which he perceived the importance given to Susan. It was not
jealousy: Horace only could not comprehend how any man in his senses
could resign _his_ conversation and society for that of his
sister--Susan! a girl! who knew nothing, hoped nothing, desired
nothing--a tame, contented woman! He found it hard to restrain himself
under these circumstances, and called his uncle an old fool and an old
trifler in his secret heart. Then Susan came downstairs, smiling and
happy--her India shawl contrasting, perhaps, rather too strongly with
her simple bonnet and dark merino gown, standing before her uncle to be
admired, and turning round that he might see his present in all possible
aspects. What trifling! what folly! what miserable vanity! But it
pleased the two wonderfully, who stood there making a little sun-bright
group of their own, the old man stooping over the girl, with his tender,
indulgent smile, and the girl looking up to him in her unusual flutter
of happy spirits. Perhaps it is true, after all, that common, every-day
happiness--that dear solace of common life, which comes, when it does
come, without asking--is made up of very trivial things; at all events,
it was much more agreeable to look at them than at Horace, who loured
behind them like a dark cloud, and turned away his head in disgust, and
felt that it was all he could do to keep the sneer of scorn from his
lip. In much the same condition he attended them to the door, and saw
them drive away. Susan, wrapped up and covered over with shawls and
cloaks of every description by her uncle's careful hands, and with
Peggy's great black veil, embroidered with great flowers, like gigantic
beetles, fastened over her bonnet; from the midst of all which unusual
coverings the pretty face, smiling and blushing, radiant with pleasure
and gratitude, looked out in its sweet colour and expression, with a
simplicity of happiness quite beyond Horace's frown to stifle or
prevent. Somehow his sister's face disgusted him that day: he stood
looking after them, suffering his sneer to take form and remain, long
after they were out of sight. He rose over them in his own mind with a
contemptuous superiority, yet felt himself humbled and envious at sight
of the happiness with which he had no sympathy, and which he did not
understand. He did not wish to share it--it was something beneath his
level. Yet the very power of being exhilarated by such trifles, and
finding pleasure so independent of reasonable grounds, filled the young
man with a certain envy, and humiliated his pride. Susan's happiness did
not give him a single throb of pleasure, yet it brightened his uncle's
face into quite a kindred light: it was altogether incomprehensible to
Horace. He took refuge in silent contempt and sneers of unacknowledged
mortification, disdaining the pleasure, yet galled in himself not to
comprehend how it was.




CHAPTER XIV.


Meanwhile Colonel Sutherland and his niece drove along the bare and
exposed moorland road with very different sentiments. Susan could not
feel any cold, could not allow herself to suppose that any landscape
more delightful or weather more entirely satisfactory was to be found
anywhere in the world. She pitied the poor people shut up in a close
carriage, whom they passed at a little distance from Marchmain. She
appealed to her uncle if a gig was not of all other kinds of conveyance
the most delightful. She listened to his stories of travel in India,
with all its elephants and camels, and of the still more miraculous
railway at home, with equal admiration and wonder, as things equally
unlikely to come under her own observation, and enjoyed her present
extraordinary felicity all the more from thinking how unlikely it was to
occur again.

Everything concurred to put Susan in the highest spirits--her freedom,
her kind protector, the novelty of her position, the wondering looks
cast at her from the cottages they passed, the involuntary respect
excited by her companion, the air, the sunshine--even the fine shawl,
though it was entirely covered by her other wrappings and nobody could
see it--all contributed towards the full and joyous satisfaction of her
young mind. She put Peggy's great old-fashioned veil, with its big
beetles, up from her face--she was not afraid of the wind, or of taking
cold, or of anything else in the world; and as the horizon gradually
widened, and the road extended out of the immediate vicinity of her
home, Susan's delight increased. She declared the hills went faster
than they did, and kept continually receding, and every new opening of
the landscape increased her pleasure. The Colonel listened to all her
admiring exclamations with a smiling face; he told her of his own
neighbourhood, a fairer and richer country. He spoke of the visit she
must make him shortly, and of all the places he should take her to. The
wind blew cold in their faces, with by no means a balmy or genial
breath; but then their hearts were so fortified with warm affections and
honest happiness, that the cold did not hurt them. Little by little they
fell into more particular conversation. Colonel Sutherland was
interested and concerned about Horace, anxious to know how to help him;
but he was not and could not be confidential with his nephew, whereas
his heart flew open to Susan as at a touch of magic. He could not help
speaking of everything which moved when he had gained her ear, and had
her to himself alone. He had told her all about young Roger Musgrave
before he was aware, and about Kennedy's story, and his own vexation and
annoyance to find that the young stranger had not dealt quite truly by
him.

"But, uncle!--oh, Peggy knows all about him," said Susan; "Peggy did not
know he had any friends till just the other day. Perhaps he did not know
himself--perhaps--I think, Uncle Edward, I would not believe he was
wrong till he told you of it himself."

"But if he is in the wrong, Susan, _will_ he tell me of it himself?"

"Some people would not," said Susan, gravely, "I know that; but yes,
uncle, oh, yes, I am not afraid."

"Perhaps you know him better than I do, my love," said Uncle Edward,
observing with a little curiosity the expression of Susan's face.

"Yes, I think I saw him once," said Susan. Then she added, with a little
laugh--"I was very much frightened--I am afraid it was very wrong of
him--he was actually fighting, uncle."

"Fighting?--it was certainly very wrong," said the Colonel; "but you
laugh, you wicked little fairy--what was it about?"

"It was not so much fighting either," said Susan--"it was _punishing_.
It was gipsies, uncle--what the people here call muggers, you know. One
of them was driving his little cart along the road with a poor wretched
donkey, lashing it like a savage, and his poor wife came trudging after
him, with her baby tied in a shawl on her back--and twice over he gave
_her_ a cut with his whip, to make her go faster. I could have beaten
him myself--the great beast!" cried Susan. "Roger Musgrave was coming
down the road; and, just as he met the muggers, that fellow pushed his
wife out of the way so rudely, that she fell down, poor creature, and
hurt herself. Mr. Roger had been watching them like me--he came up just
then with a spring, and caught the mugger by his collar and his waist
like this; and, before he had time to say a word, tossed him over the
hedge--_right_ over--where he rolled head-over-heels on the grass. You
should have seen his face when he got up! I clapped my hands--I was so
pleased. And Mr. Roger took off his hat to me," said Susan, after a
little pause, with a rising colour, "as you did, uncle, to-day."

"It was very well done, I don't doubt," said Colonel Sutherland; "but,
my dear child, that was not fighting."

"Oh, no--not that!--but I liked it better than what came after," said
Susan. "The mugger scrambled through the hedge, and swore at Mr. Roger;
and _he_ took off his coat in a moment, and told him not to be a coward,
to flog women and beasts, but to come on--and I was very much
frightened; then the mugger's wife, _she_ came forward and swore too,
and it was all very dreadful. I did not want to see them fight, and ran
into a cottage--I rather think they did not fight at all, for the
mugger was frightened too; but, however, that was the only time I ever
saw Roger Musgrave; the people in the cottage told me who he was, and I
liked him for punishing the man."

"I daresay the fellow punished his wife and the donkey all the more,
when they were out of sight," said the Colonel; "but I confess I should
have done it myself. Very well! I will put down in my books--my little
Susan in favour of young Musgrave versus Sergeant Kennedy against. And
so you only saw him that one time? Do you know anybody at all, you poor
child?--have you ever had a companion in your life?"

"Not a companion," said Susan; "but"--and she looked up in her uncle's
face--"_you_ won't be angry, I know, uncle. Peggy goes to the meeting,
and sometimes in the morning, when papa does not go out, I go with
_her_. It is dreary to go to church all alone."

"So it is," said the sympathetic uncle; "and what then?"

"Then," said Susan, blushing a little more, and looking up shyly in his
face--"I am sure I do not know how we got acquainted. We used to look at
each other, and then we nodded, and then, at last, one day we spoke; and
now, sometimes, we meet when we are out walking, uncle--and once I have
been in their house--only once. I did not mean it--I was there before I
knew what I was about."

"But you have not told me yet who this mysterious person is," said the
Colonel, a little disappointed and troubled, if the truth must be told,
at the thought of some young and no doubt perfectly unsuitable lover who
met his little girl in clandestine walks, and whose house even, the
inexperience of Susan had been persuaded into visiting. He said the
words rather coldly, in spite of himself--he was mortified to find the
virginal quiet of her mind already thus disturbed.

"Uncle, are you displeased?" said Susan, with a little fright and
surprise. "Oh, I never thought _you_ would be angry; for even Peggy
said that to be friends with Letty would be for my good. She is the
minister's daughter at the meeting, and the only child; and she has
learned so much, and knows a hundred things that I know nothing of; and,
uncle, sometimes I want somebody to speak to--oh, so much!"

"My dear child, forgive me! I wish you knew a dozen Letties," cried the
repentant Colonel; "that you should have to blush over an innocent
friendship, my poor dear little girl; but your confusion, Susan, made me
think it something very different. Why should you be ashamed of knowing
Letty? I am very glad to hear it, for my part."

Susan did not answer just immediately. She said to herself, with a
little quickening of her breath:--

"I wonder what was the something very different that Uncle Edward
thought of," and a little inclination to laughter seized the little
girl. Who could tell why? She did not know herself, but felt it all the
same.

"Does Horace spend much of his time with you, Susan?" said Uncle Edward;
"does he tell you what he is thinking about? Do you know that your
brother is tired of an idle life, and wants to be employed, and to make
his own way in the world?"

With that question Susan was brought back to her home, and separated as
if by magic in a moment from all her individual involuntary girlish
happinesses; she shrank a little into herself and felt chilled and
contracted, without knowing how. She could not even be so frank as she
would have been a little while ago--Uncle Edward's love had opened the
eyes of the neglected girl, and developed all at once in her heart the
natural instincts of "the only woman in the family." She could not bear
to convey an unfavourable impression of Horace to her uncle; but,
unskilled in her new craft, she betrayed herself even by her reticences
and reserves.

"I know he wants to go away," she said, faltering a little; "and I am
sure you would not be surprised, if you lived with us only for a
day;--for," added Susan, blushing and correcting herself, "it is very
dull at Marchmain, and boys cannot put up with that as we can. Horace
has always felt it a great deal more than I have."

"I am not surprised," said Colonel Sutherland; "if Marchmain was the
happiest home in the world, still the young man must go away--it is in
his nature. He must make his own way in the world."

"Must he, uncle?" said Susan, looking up with a little surprise into his
face.

"I was only sixteen, my love, when I first went to India," said the
Colonel; "the boys, as you call them, must not stay at home all their
lives--they must do something. My Ned will be on his way to India, if
all is well, in a year or two. The sooner a young man gets into his work
the better--and now Horace would set about it too."

"But he cannot do anything, uncle," said Susan, seriously; "what is he
going to do?"

"Has he never told you?" asked Uncle Edward.

The question seemed to imply blame, and Susan was troubled.

"Horace is not like you, uncle," she said, recovering a little boldness;
"he does not tell me things; he knows a great deal more than I do--he
has almost learned German--and he thinks a great deal more. I am afraid
I do not always understand him when he does speak to me. It is my fault;
so he thinks over everything all the more, and I am afraid sometimes
gets angry in his heart, because no one can understand him at
Marchmain!"

Colonel Sutherland shook his head, but did not say anything. He began to
tell Susan what he did when he was a lad.

"There were a great many of us at home, to be sure," said the Colonel;
"but we were all scattered before the youngest was fifteen--the sisters
married, and the brothers making their own career. They are all dead,
Susan, every one--but you have quantities of cousins, my dear, in India
and elsewhere, whom you never heard of, I daresay. Your Uncle William
was puisne Judge of the Saraflat, John was Resident at Cangalore, both
of them very much respected. I was the youngest but one. I could not
bear the thought that all my brothers were independent but myself. I
gave them no peace at home till I got my cadetship. Unless one has the
good fortune to get an appointment, it is quite as hard work getting on
in India as at home, my dear; and all our influence had been used up for
my elder brothers, and exhausted before it came to my turn. I was but a
subaltern when I married, Susan. Your aunt was--ah, I can't describe
her, my love. I am very happy on the whole and contented, but sometimes
I think on what might have been, and make myself wretched, which is
very sinful, considering how much I have to thank God for. Yes, Susan, I
was a rich man once. I had wife and daughters, and my house full. We had
not very much money, but we were very happy; and now, my dear child, you
are the only woman of the family--that is, _here_."

Susan could not have spoken a word to save her life--she sobbed silently
under her heap of warm wrappings, looking with a wistful, youthful
sympathy into the grave face beside her. The Colonel shed no tears;--he
guided his horse with the same quiet caution as before, turning the
animal aside from a sudden obstacle in the way, with a steady
promptitude, which showed his perfect attention to what he was about,
even in the midst of these recollections; yet he was not looking at the
road, nor at her, nor at anything; but had his eyes fixed on the
far-away horizon, which yet he did not see. Susan sat beside him in
silence, wondering with youthful awe and reverence over the
indescribable yearning, with which some instinct told her this brave old
heart longed for the heaven which held his departed; but she could not
say anything--she would have felt it sacrilege.

However, they shortly approached the town, which recalled Colonel
Sutherland from his graver thoughts. It was a comfortable country town,
pleasantly placed at the opening of a valley, with the gray fells
ranging themselves on either side, and the great gray tower of the old
Abbey church reigning over the little crowd of houses. The market-place
was still busy and bright, though the more serious merchandize of the
morning was over; cosy country-women, in cloth pelisses, made promenades
round the open square, where the best shops in the town displayed their
riches, to see "how things were wore," and make stray purchase of a
kerchief or ribbon; and still the notable housewives of the town bought
vegetables, and rabbits, and country eggs, and chickens, from the
remaining stalls in the market-place. And still heaps of dark-green
vegetables--winter greens and savoys, purple flowers of broccoli, and
tiny red lines of carrots, illustrated some boards, close to the white
eggs and yellow butter, the hapless decapitated poultry, and butter-milk
pails of the others. Susan and her uncle walked through the throng,
attracting no small degree of observation; for there were not many such
cavaliers as Colonel Sutherland in Kenlisle, and very few such shawls as
that one which, relieved of all her other wraps, Susan displayed upon
her shoulders with no small degree of pride. The scene was quite
extraordinary in its animation to her eyes. She looked at the ruddy
winter apples and crisp greens with the most perfect interest. She
longed, with a natural housewifely instinct, to make purchases herself,
to the confusion and amazement of Peggy. She could scarcely conceal her
unbecoming curiosity about the booths of toys and sweetmeats, the cases
of coarse ornaments, brooches, and rings, and ear-rings, which Susan
could not believe to be paltry and worthless. The glamour of her
ignorance brightened everything; and when her eyes, as she looked up
unconsciously, fell upon the gray mass of the Abbey tower withdrawn into
a street which led off from this busy space, Susan felt awed and ashamed
to think of her own vanity and extreme regard for "the things of this
world." But she could not school herself into righteous indifference;
above all, when Uncle Edward, indifferent to her morals, took her into
shop after shop, buying a little parcel of books in one place, some
pretty ribbons in another, a cap for Peggy, which captivated the old man
in a window; and, last of all, patterns and materials for work of
various kinds, canvas and Berlin wool, and an embroidery-frame. This
last purchase raised Susan into a paradisiacal condition, for which it
is to be hoped nobody will despise her. She was not very intellectual,
it is true--it might very well happen that she preferred her needlework
to her book sometimes. She saw herself rendered completely independent,
as she supposed, of _ennui_ and domestic weariness by that ecstatic
parcel. She longed to take it in her arms, and run all the way home with
it, that Peggy might see, and half regretted for a moment the luncheon
at Tillington, which, however, would give her still another hour or two
of her uncle's company. Then Susan looked at that uncle with a great
compunction, thinking of what he had told her; but Colonel Sutherland
was happy in her happiness, delighted to see her so delighted, and
entered with fresh, natural pleasure into the scene for his own part. It
was quite a work of art to pack the gig with all the parcels, and wrap
Susan up again into all her cloaks. Then they went off at a great pace
to Tillington. So far it had been a most successful day.




CHAPTER XV.


Horace had been waiting some time in the little inn before Colonel
Sutherland and Susan arrived. This had not much improved the young man's
temper; but the result of his cogitations on the way here, and while he
waited, had been, that it was necessary to be no longer critical, but
that he must assume the virtue which he had not, and secure his uncle's
assistance in his own way. Horace had settled at last to his own
satisfaction upon his version of his uncle's character. He concluded the
Colonel to be a well-meaning, superficial old man, most at home among
women and children, finding pleasure in trifles, strongly prejudiced in
favour of some old-fashioned virtues, which he recommended not so much
from conviction as from custom. Industry and honesty, and
straightforwardness, a homespun and sober interpretation of all human
laws--Horace decided that his uncle lauded and urged these virtues on
others just as he might recommend cod-liver oil or Morison's pills, and
that he was unable to comprehend anything higher than that old code of
respectability. But granting this, it was all the more wise to humour
and yield to the old man, and permit him to maunder on in his own way.
Horace resolved to profess himself ready and anxious for employment, the
choice of which he meant dutifully to leave to his uncle; and having
thus settled summarily the more important issue, set himself with all
his might to observe and entrap the unsuspicious Colonel in his
confidential and unguarded talk. It suited him a great deal better to do
this, than to consider honestly how he should provide for his own life,
and establish his individual position in the world; and it was
significant of his character that he dismissed the former question at
once, but lingered with inclination and zeal upon the crafts of the
other, laying his ambuscade with all the cunning and precaution
possible.

He sat by the fire in the inn parlour, while the maid and mistress
bustled in and out laying the cloth and preparing for the Colonel's
arrival. Mrs. Gilsland having recovered her temper, and remembering the
embellishments of her master's table, in the days when she professed
herself a cook, had been at pains to gather a handful of laurustinus,
with dim, pinky, half-opened blossoms, to adorn the table, upon which
sparkled the best glass and whitest linen of the establishment. The
worthy woman would fain have insinuated herself into the confidence of
Horace as he sat by the fire, and wanted only the very smallest
encouragement to break forth in praises of the Colonel, and to hint her
fear that they would not see much of the young gentleman at Tillington
now that "his grand friends had turned up at last, and he was nigh coom
to his fortune." But Horace did not give the slightest opening to any
such familiarity. He kept possession of the room with an insolent
unconsciousness of the landlady's presence and her hesitating glances at
him, which enraged and yet awed her. It was Mr. Horry's "way," and this
arrogance imposed upon the village people even while it offended them;
but it was very different from "the Cornel." Mrs. Gilsland, who had been
much disappointed at first to learn that her guest was no lord, and had
not the shadow of a title, was by this time entirely captivated by the
old man, and zealous to serve him; but still she turned to Mr. Horry
with the interest which attaches to mystery. He took no more notice of
her than if she had been a piece of furniture. She was angry but
reverential--there was "a power o' thought" in the young man.

When the gig arrived with the two travellers, Horace hastened to the
do

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