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The House on the Moor, v. 2/3

by Mrs. Oliphant · English · Gutenberg #45817 · 361,691 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The House on the Moor, v. 2/3

Author: Mrs. Oliphant


        
Release date: May 29, 2014 [eBook #45817]
                Most recently updated: November 28, 2024

Language: English

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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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produced from scanned images of public domain material
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                        THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR.

                                  BY

                             THE AUTHOR OF
                  "MARGARET MAITLAND," "ADAM GRAEME,"
                        "THE LAIRD OF NORLAW,"
                               &c., &c.

                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                               VOL. II.

                                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.




                        THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR.




CHAPTER I.


Sam returned victorious, with an Army List, and the Rector's
compliments, who would call upon Colonel Sutherland presently, in time
to wake up the excellent Colonel, who was a little amazed, and a little
amused at himself, to be made aware of that unusual indulgence. Sam had
his own word of advice and warning against the deceitful blandishments
of the "Ould Hunderd," with which he went away, flattered and ashamed,
but by no means cured of his passion for "sodgering." To the questions
of his mother, the hopeful young man only responded, that "the Cornel
said th' army was a noble perfession," and appended thereto a vow to
"break the head of that thundering 'Ould Hunderd'" at the first
opportunity, neither of which conclusions was satisfactory to Mrs.
Gilsland. The Colonel had scarcely put on his spectacles, and begun to
turn over the leaves of the professional beadroll, when the proprietor
of the same made his appearance, very cordial and anxious that the
Colonel should dine at the Rectory, where the mother and sisters of "my
boy in India" were already preparing themselves with a hundred questions
to ask the old Indian officer. Colonel Sutherland, however, had already
tasted quite enough of the damp, out-of-doors air for one day. He made
the most of his threatening rheumatism by way of apology. He was
fatigued with a long drive, and taking leave of friends. The Rector was
politely curious; he had no doubt that he had the pleasure of knowing
Colonel Sutherland's friends?

"I think not," said the Colonel, decidedly; "my brother-in-law is a
recluse, and, I fear, keeps his family in the same retirement; besides,
it is five miles off."

"Five miles is nothing in the country," said the courteous and
persistent Rector.

"My relations live at Marchmain," said Colonel Sutherland, who had still
the "Army List" in his hand--"I want to find out if the Sir John
Armitage of this neighbourhood is an old friend of mine--Captain
Armitage of the 59th--do you happen to know?"

"The very same," said the Rector; "he succeeded six or seven years ago,
but he has not been at the Park for a year back. Bad health, I believe,
an unsettled mind--he has never taken kindly to his new position; he
thinks it is his duty to marry, and is extremely nervous about it. I
thought it proper to pay him a good deal of attention when he was here.
Poor man, his anxiety about the young ladies of the neighbourhood, and
his terror of them, is something ludicrous to see."

"You are so fortunate as to have daughters of your own," said the
Colonel, without perceiving the inference, which the other, possibly
from a little disagreeable consciousness, applied instantly.

"My daughters were very young at that time," said the Rector,
quickly--"almost children; besides, there are many points in which,
though I think it right to show him attention, I do not approve of Sir
John. His opinions are not what could be desired, and the father of
daughters requires to be very careful whom he commits them to, as
perhaps you are aware, Colonel Sutherland."

Colonel Sutherland bowed very gravely; the appeal touched on griefs too
profound to be exposed to the compassion of a stranger. "He was a very
good fellow when I knew him," said the Colonel; "I hear he was on terms
of very intimate friendship with a Mr. Musgrave--he who died lately--is
that true?"

"Ah, Mr. Musgrave?--yes, I knew him very well; an unfortunate, imprudent
man, lavish and foolish," said the Rector. "He had a very good fortune
to begin with, but lived with the most entire recklessness, like a man
of three times his means. He brought up a young man, a sort of distant
relative, as his heir. Poor man, when the affairs were examined it
turned out that the heir had nothing but debt to enter upon; a very sad
business altogether. Ah, yes, to be sure, Sir John, now that I
recollect, had been to school with him, or something--there _was_ a
friendship between them."

"And does no one in the neighbourhood feel disposed to do anything for
the young man?" asked the Colonel.

"For--Roger? Well, it is a very difficult question," said the bland
Rector; "men with families of their own are so circumscribed in that
way. There are no very wealthy men in our neighbourhood; and really, no
one has felt warranted in incurring so great a responsibility. Sir John,
indeed, might have done something for him; but then he is abroad, and of
course no private individual likes to step forward, and perhaps excite
expectations which could never be realized; besides, he has, no doubt,
relatives of his own."

"And so, I presume, there is an end of him, poor fellow," said the
Colonel, with the least outbreak of impatience; "is there anything known
against the young man?"

"Nothing in the world," said the Rector, readily; "we all received him
with pleasure, and found him really an acquisition; a young man not of
much education, to be sure, but perfectly unobjectionable in a moral
point of view. I remember urging strongly upon the late Squire the
propriety of sending Roger to Cambridge, when my own boy went there, for
we had no suspicion then of his unfortunate circumstances. He would not,
sir; he was an unreasonable, old-fashioned person--what you call a John
Bull sort of man. He said his Nimrod had no occasion to be a student.
Poor man!--he would have acknowledged the wisdom of my counsels had he
been living now."

"Is the young man, then, a Nimrod?" asked Colonel Sutherland.

"I understand--for of course such exploits are a little out of my way,"
said the gracious Rector--"that he is one of the best shots in the
country; and I know from my boy, who was fond of athletic sports, that
he excels in most of them. So much the worse for him now. It is a very
sad thing, and one unfortunately too common, to see young men brought
up to no other habits than those of a country gentleman, and then
launched upon life with the sentiment of the unjust steward, 'To dig I
know not, and to beg I am ashamed.'"

There was a little pause after this solemn and somewhat professional
utterance, the Colonel not perceiving exactly how to answer this calm
regret and sympathy, which never conceived the idea of helping, by a
little finger, the misfortune it deplored. After a little silence, the
Rector added, "You were acquainted with Mr. Musgrave, perhaps?--you feel
an interest in the young man?"

"I do, certainly--though I had no acquaintance whatever with his former
circumstances; he has been thrown accidentally in my way since I came
here," said Colonel Sutherland.

"Let us never say anything is done accidentally," said the Rector,
rising to take his leave with the most ingratiating smile--for he was
low church, and evangelical in theology, however he might be in his
actions; "everything has a purpose, my dear sir. Let us hope that it is
_providentially_ for poor Roger that he has been thrown in your way."

So saying, with many regrets that he should not have the pleasure of
entertaining the stranger at the Rectory, the excellent incumbent of
Tillington left him. The Colonel shrugged his shoulders when he was
gone. The authoritative, insinuating professional manner with which his
reverence corrected the expression of the old Christian stranger, who,
coming "accidentally" to a knowledge of Roger's trouble, was after all
the only neighbour whom the poor youth found in his extremity, made the
Colonel both smile and sigh. "Right enough to correct me," said to
himself the Scotch soldier, whose ideas of Providence wanted no
enlargement by such advice; but once more the Colonel shrugged his
shoulders, and remembered involuntarily the priest and the Levite who
passed on the other side. He could not comprehend this entire want of
all neighbourly and kindly feeling among the inhabitants of the same
locality. The old man had been so long absent from home, and was so much
accustomed to attribute the want of human kindness, which of course he
had seen many times in his life, to the deteriorating effect of a
strange country, and the entire want of home influences, that it amazed
him now to perceive how even the primitive bosom of an English rural
village held sentiments of self-regard as cold and unneighbourly as
anything he had met with in the faraway world to which he was
accustomed. Why could not this Rector, the friend and consoler of his
parish by right of his office, a man who (undeniable inducement to all
tenderness in the Colonel's tender heart) had children of his own--why
did not _he_ take the matter in hand, and appeal to Sir John Armitage,
if the baronet alone was to be expected to do anything on Roger's
behalf? The Colonel shook his head over it, and took refuge in his
dinner. No repetition of instances would make the generous old man adopt
or believe in this as the way of the world; he had only stumbled
unfortunately upon cold-hearted individuals. Heaven forbid that _he_
should put such a stigma on his brethren and his kind!




CHAPTER II.


He had scarcely finished his dinner, when young Musgrave came to him,
full of excitement and emotion, with a letter in his hand. The Colonel
received him with all the more cordiality, that he had not yet quite
lost the impression of the Rector's visit. The young man had evidently
something to tell, and that something as evidently was of a nature to
move him much.

"You are the only individual who has shown any interest in me," cried
poor Roger; "I could not rest till I had come to tell you: I am not so
entirely alone as I supposed I was. Look here, sir, a letter from my
mother--my dear mother, whom I have never been able to forget, whom I
have never ceased to love. I have done her injustice, Colonel; though
she has only written it for my eyes, I bring it to you, because to you I
have accused her unjustly. My mother has neither forgotten nor forsaken
me!"

And with honest tears in his eyes, the young man thrust his letter into
the Colonel's hands, half reluctant, it is true, to show his mother's
expressions of love, but eager, above all, that she should be done full
justice to, and acquitted of all unkindness. The Colonel took the letter
with grave sympathy. It was not by way of conquering Roger's heart
entirely that he put on his spectacles with so much serious attention,
and applied himself to the hurried and half-coherent letter as if it
were something of the gravest importance. He did naturally, and
spontaneously from his own heart, this, which was the most exquisite
compliment to the young man; and the Colonel's glasses grew dim as he
read. It was the letter of a weak, loving woman, with too little
strength of character to assert for herself any right of protecting or
succouring her first-born, who was alien and strange to her husband and
his family. One could almost see the gentle, broken-spirited woman
over-ridden even by her own children, uncertain of her own mind, in weak
health, and with nerves which everything affected, as one glanced over
those hurried lines, which seemed to be written in absolute fear of
discovery. There was little in them but the mother's yearning for her
boy--her dear boy, her first-born, her own Roger, whom she prayed for on
her knees every day, and thought of every hour. There was neither wisdom
nor reason in the epistle--the poor woman had nothing to advise, nothing
to offer. A cold observer might have thrown the whole away as
affectionate nonsense, and desired to know what benefit that could be to
the young man in his troubles. The Colonel knew better. "Therewithal the
water stood in his eyes." He knew, without a word from Roger, how this
tender touch had stanched the wounds of the young man's heart.

The only thing which he did not understand was a blurred and hasty
postscript, to the effect that the enclosed was _her own_, and that her
dear boy need have no hesitation in using it. This Musgrave explained to
him by holding up, as he received back the letter, a twenty-pound note.

"And my mother enclosed this, sir," he said, looking up with an honest
eagerness which twenty twenty-pound notes could not have produced--the
poor lad was so proud to be able to show this evidence of his mother's
concern for him. "I know she must have saved it up--spared it from her
own necessities for me; I know she must, for she knows very well I would
never receive an alms from _him_," cried poor Roger. "I--I daresay you
think it's not very much to talk about, Colonel, but I could not rest
till you had seen that I was wrong. To think I should have done her such
injustice!--and you perceive, sir, that I can indeed take a week or
two's leisure before I decide upon my future _now_."

"I am very glad of it," said the Colonel; "and still more glad that you
have your mother's letter to comfort you. Take a lesson by it my boy,
and never think you're forsaken. If we could know exactly our
neighbour's circumstances, and see into their hearts, we would be slow
to judge them, let alone dear friends. 'Can a mother forget her child,
that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?' Ah! my
young friend, God knows better than we do the nature he has made. Here
are two things come at once--your heart is comforted, and you are
content to wait?"

Roger hung his head for a moment at the last proposition; he felt a
little ashamed of giving in to the dawn of expectation which his last
interview with Colonel Sutherland had excited in him in spite of
himself; but the Colonel's unlooked-for kindness, and the affection of
his mother, had warmed the young man's heart, and put him once more on
good terms with the world. He began to believe in friendship and
kindness, and to think that, after all, matters were not hopeless with
him; but still his high spirit revolted from the idea of waiting till an
application for aid had been made on his behalf, and doing nothing on
his own account till that had been granted or refused.

"I can wait, and think it all over again for a few days," he said, with
a little hesitation, "though indeed there is little to think of; for the
case is not at all changed; but because you wish it, Colonel--you who
have been so kind to me. I would be a poor fellow indeed, if I could not
wait for a time for your pleasure."

"Very well," said Colonel Sutherland, with a smile; "we will let it
stand on these grounds--it will please me. I have made a discovery also
to-day. I find that your Sir John Armitage is an old friend of mine. I
shall be very glad to seek him up for my own sake; they tell me he is
invalid, and unsettled; but that should not make him less cordial to his
fellow-creatures. We have been under fire together, and under canvas. He
is an older acquaintance of mine than of yours. It will be odd if two
old soldiers, when they lay their heads together, can do nothing to help
on a young one. I have a little influence myself, and my own boy is
secure. Some day you two may stand by each other when we old fellows are
gone. I daresay, if you were together, you would not be long of making
friends with my Ned. He is an honest fellow, though his father says it,
and I think never gave me an hour's pain."

"But what can I say? I who have no claim whatever on your kindness, why
are you so good to me?" cried Roger, astonished; "thanking you is folly;
I have no words for it; it is beyond thanks; why are you so generous to
me?"

"Tut, boy, nonsense!--I have sons of my own," said Colonel Sutherland;
"and what is the good of an old man in this world? By-the-bye, tell
me--have you ever sought or admitted the friendship of your neighbours
since your grief? There are various families hereabout, I understand;
your Rector for example--I am afraid you must have repulsed that good
man in your first trouble--eh?--remember I am hard of hearing; you were
too melancholy, too miserable for sympathy, and you have taken it into
your head since that they had ceased to care for you?"

"I was thankful for all the sympathy I got; I trusted everybody then,"
said Roger, simply; "but--it does not matter," he said, after a little
hesitation; "I found out the difference afterwards; no--it was not me."

"But the Rector--he has children, a son--was not he very friendly?"
asked the Colonel, with persistence; he wanted to ascertain, as closely
as he could, what was the real state of the case.

"Ah, Willy!"--said Roger; he paused a little, and grew red, and shook
his head with a slight, involuntary motion, as if to shake off some
disagreeable thoughts. "We were very good friends once," he said--"pah!
why should I care--you will not think worse of me, Colonel Sutherland? I
had rather not think of Willy. It is the greatest folly in the world,
but I cannot help it; when I think of meeting him, perhaps, in my
changed circumstances--I who used to be almost, if there was any
difference, superior to him--I feel it painful; I don't like the idea;
this is the plain truth. I had rather not go to India for the risk;
forgive me! I had rather you knew the worst of me."

"If that is the worst I am glad to know it," said the Colonel. "It is a
very natural feeling; to have been without it, would have proved you a
different person from what I supposed. Now, tell me again; shall you
stay here? you are still in your late friend's house--what is to be done
with it?--who does it belong to?--and during this little interval shall
you stay here?"

"The Grange is _mine_," said Roger, with a little pride; then he
continued, with a slightly bitter smile--"next week everything is to be
sold--_everything_--if they leave a wooden stool for poor old Sally in
the kitchen, I will be grateful to them; but they cannot sell the
Grange. It is entailed--_I_ cannot sell it. Poor, dear old nest, it is
the last wreck of all that ever belonged to the Musgraves; everything
but that is gone already; yes, though it is empty and desolate I shall
stay, till I leave all, in my own house."

"Then you are heir, not only of love, but at law," said the Colonel,
gravely.

Somehow that changed the aspect of affairs a little. Useless though it
was, that old house, empty and desolate, it gave still an indisputable
point of inheritance and ancestry, upon which the young outcast could
set his foot. It seemed more and more impossible to the Colonel, whose
mind was not free of romantic prejudices, and upon whose imagination
this circumstance made a great impression, that the young man should be
left to his own forlorn devices; and he grew more and more angry at the
neighbouring people, who could suffer not only "a worthy youth" to enter
the world under circumstances so unfriendly, but could also permit the
total extinction of an old family, whom such a young man, once aided to
begin, might well resuscitate. However, he wisely kept these thoughts to
himself. He exacted a promise from Roger to do nothing without letting
him know, and to wait until he should be able to obtain an answer from
Sir John Armitage; but, above all, to keep him advised of where he was,
and what he was doing--a promise which the youth gave with a slight
reluctance. Then a cordial farewell passed between them. They parted
like old friends--the young man with grateful affection, the old man
with interest and kindness quite fatherly. They had never met till
three days ago, yet however long they lived, neither could ever cease
now to feel the warmest interest in the other. In the meantime, the
Colonel put up this matter of Roger Musgrave in the bundle with his most
particular concerns, and gave himself, with the most earnest gravity, to
his voluntary task of aiding and helping this stranger, nothing doubting
to succeed in it; while Roger, on the other hand, went home to his
solitary Grange, not knowing well what to make of it, struggling against
the renewed hopes of his mind, fortifying himself against renewed
disappointment by recalling his brief but sharp experience of the
friendship of the world, and wondering whether he did right to trust, as
he could not help trusting, the sincerity of his new friend. The young
man paced in front of his house, among the dark trees, revolving over
and over these questions which were of so much importance to him, and
stimulated in all his hopes, without being aware of it, by that letter
of his mother's, which he prized so much; and Colonel Sutherland sending
out for paper, pens, and ink, and receiving in answer a dusty inkstand,
a rusted steel pen, and two sheets of post paper highly glazed and with
gilt edges, wiped his spectacles, lighted his low bedroom candle, that
the light might suit his eyes, and sat down to write.




CHAPTER III.


Colonel Sutherland was not very much addicted to correspondence: he
wrote kind, wise, fatherly letters to his boys, but, except on extreme
occasions, he wrote to nobody else, and was not easily moved to the
exercise even in case of his oldest friends. It was therefore with a
little importance that he opened out his gilt-edged paper before him,
and smoothed the crumple, which Sam Gilsland's hand, not used to such
delicate burdens, had left in the sheet, and, beginning with a most
particular date, "Tillington Arms, 15th February, 184--" made a pause,
after having achieved that, to think what he should say. We need not
linger over all the Colonel's cogitations and pains of production. Here
is at last, in the best language he could think of, the most wise and
careful statement of his case which he found it possible to make:

     "My dear Armitage,--I congratulate you very cordially upon the
     accession of rank and fortune which I have just learned has fallen
     upon you. Living, as you know I used to do, very much engaged with
     my own duties, and hearing scarcely any news except what occurred
     in our own branch of the service, I had never heard of this till
     to-day, when I suddenly found my old comrade in the Sir John
     Armitage of a district quite unknown to me, but with which I have
     managed to establish a connection rather surprising to myself, by
     dint of a few days residence here. I came home six months ago,
     after more than thirty years' service, exclusive of leave and
     former absence from duty, and had the happiness to find my boys
     well and hearty, and making progress to my entire satisfaction.
     Ned, you will be pleased to hear, is already provided for, and goes
     _out_ the summer after next, to enter upon active life, with, I
     trust, if the boy works as he promises to do, an appointment in
     the Engineers. My other boy, I think, will very likely take to the
     Church, and be the solace of my old age. He makes very good promise
     for it, at least now. These, you will be sorry to know, are all
     that God has been pleased to spare me out of my flock.

     "You will think it odd, perhaps, that I should hasten to tell you
     this the very moment of hearing your whereabouts and discovering
     your identity; but, to tell the truth, I have another reason more
     urgent, which, in point of fact, made me aware that you now
     belonged to this neighbourhood. I have accidentally" (here Colonel
     Sutherland paused, looked at the word, remembered the Rector's
     reproof, and made a half movement of his pen to draw it through;
     but, stopping himself, he smiled and shook his head, and went on
     without changing the expression) "met a young man called Roger
     Musgrave in the village, a very fine young fellow, to the best of
     my judgment. I understand that you were intimately acquainted with
     his godfather, whom the people here call Squire Musgrave, of the
     Grange. _He_ died lately--when it was found that all he had was
     insufficient to meet his debts, and that this poor youth, whom I
     don't doubt you remember, was left entirely unprovided for. I found
     the boy in conference with a romancing old rogue of a sergeant of
     my own regiment, who was filling his head with all kinds of
     ridiculous accounts of a soldier's life in India. You may suppose I
     made short work of the sergeant, but found the young man, on
     entering into conversation with him, entirely bent upon enlisting.
     He had evidently been treated very shabbily by your gentry here;
     and, having no money, and being too proud to seek help from any
     one, the lad had made up his mind that the only thing left him to
     do, was to go for a soldier, and never be heard of more. By dint of
     questioning, I discovered that _you_ were his relative's (I don't
     know what is the degree of kindred--the boy calls him his
     godfather) closest friend, and made up my mind at once, believing
     you to be a stranger, to take upon myself the task of making an
     appeal to you, to prevent this sacrifice. To-day I have discovered
     who you are, which you may suppose does not diminish my inclination
     to claim your assistance for this young fellow, who has captivated
     me, and gained my warmest interest. I have some little influence
     myself, which, now that my boy is provided for, I have no personal
     occasion to use. Don't you think you and I together could get him a
     pair of colours without any great difficulty? You know him better
     than I do, and I am sure you are not the man to leave a youth of
     good blood and high spirit to throw himself into the ranks in the
     romantic and vain hope of rising from them. I cannot profess to
     regret that so few chances of promotion are open to the private
     soldier, though I remember you have your own views on this subject;
     but I am most reluctant to see a youth, who would be a credit to
     the profession, throw himself away.

     "I write this without the least idea where it will find you; but
     earnestly trust you will lose no time in answering. I need scarcely
     tell you, who I daresay have not forgotten the time when you were
     twenty, that the boy is very impatient, and quite likely to do
     something rash out of his own head, if he supposes himself
     neglected. Address to me at Milnehill, Inveresk, North Britain,
     where at all times you will find my solitary quarters, and a warm
     welcome, should you think of straying so far north. My dear
     Armitage, yours very faithfully,

"EDWARD SUTHERLAND,
"Late Colonel, 100th B.N.I."



Having finished, read, and re-read this important epistle, the Colonel
put it up, and writing in large characters, deeply underscored, _To be
forwarded immediately_, put it beside him to be sent by express to
Armitage Park. Then the old soldier's countenance relaxed. He laid his
other sheet of paper lightly before him and dipped his pen in the ink
with a smile. This time he was going to write to his boy.

"I have had no small vexation, Ned, since I came here," wrote the
Colonel to his son; "you shall hear a circumstantial account of it.
First, I was dismayed at the sight of the house--a melancholy place on
the edge of the moor, without a scrap of garden or enclosure of any
kind, and not a house within sight; fancy your poor pretty cousin Susan,
at seventeen, shut up in such a prison, with never a face but her
father's and brother's to cheer the dear child in her solitude! You have
always heard that your uncle Scarsdale was a man of very peculiar
character, and you will remember that I told you the very remarkable
circumstances in which your cousin Horace stands. This, my dear boy, if
you should happen to have any intercourse with Horace, you must do your
best to forget. By some unaccountable perversion of mind, which I can
excuse, perhaps, in a man of his character, but certainly cannot
explain, your uncle has carefully concealed everything from his son
which can throw the least light upon his position; and as he has at the
same time refused all special training and education to the lad, and
never encouraged or directed him to make any provision for his future
life, you may imagine what an unsatisfactory state everything is in at
Marchmain. First of all, you know, Ned, I am delighted with Susan.
Please God, some day we'll have her at Milnehill, and let her see that
there is something in life worth living for. It would make my old heart
light to see her pleasant face about the house, and yet, Ned, sometimes
I can scarcely look at her without tears. Heaven knows it should be our
duty as well as our pleasure to do everything we can to brighten the
life of this dear, pure-hearted little girl, who is the only woman in
the family now.

"But, to begin at the beginning, I got a very strange account of the
family from the man who drove me to Marchmain; then I was startled by
the sight of the house; then, though greatly re-assured by the
appearance of Susan, I was overcast again by seeing the cloud that came
over her at the mention of her father. He never appeared to receive me,
but sent for me to his study, where he made the request that I would
keep his secret from his children in the most absolute terms, not
without reproaches against me, and against--God forgive him!--my poor
sister, because I knew it, which I confess rather exasperated me. I
resolved at once not to stay in the house, nor to see him again, and
accordingly came down here to this little inn--very poor
quarters--where I have been for three days. Horace accompanied me here,
and on the way broke out into rather extravagant protestations of his
wish to leave home, and bitter complaints against his father. You may
suppose I was confused enough, longing to let the poor lad know the
secret which could have explained all to him, and hindered by my
promise. I detest mystery--always abjure it, Ned, as you value my
approbation; nothing can be honest that has to be concealed. This
miserable, mistaken idea of your uncle's has gone far, I am afraid, to
ruin the moral nature of his son. There is a shocking unnatural enmity
between the two, which cuts me to the heart every time I think of it. Of
course, Horace has no clue whatever to the secret of his father's
conduct. He thinks it springs out of mere caprice and cruelty, and
naturally fumes against it. This is all very dismal to look at, though I
suppose, by dint of usage, it does not seem so unnatural to them as it
does to a stranger. Horace himself, I am sorry to say, does not quite
satisfy me; with such an upbringing, poor fellow, who can wonder at it?
He is very clever, but much occupied with himself, and does not seem to
have the honest, spontaneous wishes and ambition of a young man. There
is a look of craft about him which grieves me; and I fear he has got
into indifferent company, according to his own avowal, and declares to
me he despises them, which, in my opinion, does not mend the matter.
Altogether, I am very much puzzled in my own mind about him; he is very
unlike the young men I have been accustomed to meet with--and that with
my experience, in thirty years of active life, is a good deal to say.

"However, with my advice, he has been led to conclude that he will adopt
the law as a profession, and is anxious to be put in the way of it
immediately, and do what he can to qualify himself for making his own
bread in an honourable way. Can you believe it possible, my dear boy,
that his father, on my appeal to him, absolutely refused either to help
your cousin in his most laudable wish, or to explain to him why he did
not? Oh, Ned, Ned, how miserable we can make ourselves when we get
leave to do our own will! The man is wretched--you can read it in every
line of his face; but he will not yield to open his heart to his boy, to
receive him into his confidence, to make a friend of his only son. This
miserable lucre--and I am sure in his better days, when your poor aunt
was alive, nobody imagined that Scarsdale had set his heart much upon
it--has turned his whole nature into gall. God forgive the miserable old
man that left this curse behind him!--though, indeed, that is a useless
wish, as he has been dead for fifteen years, and his fate determined
long ago.

"So you perceive, on the whole, I have had a good deal on my hands since
I came here. Now that nothing can be done with his father, I mean to
make an appeal on behalf of your cousin to one of the trustees. To tell
you the truth, Ned, I am almost afraid now of the secret being made
known to Horace. Your uncle has so forgotten that word, 'Fathers,
provoke not your children to wrath,' that it absolutely alarms me when I
think what may be the consequences if Horace hears it suddenly from any
lips but his father's. So, if you should chance to come in contact with
your cousin, my dear boy, see that you forget it, Ned. Let never an
_appearance_ of knowledge be perceived in you--to be sure, this of
itself is a kind of deceit, but it is lawful. If Scarsdale himself could
be moved to disclose the whole to his son, a better state of affairs
might be brought about--otherwise, I am alarmed to think of any
discovery, more than I can say.

"Not content with this business, I have taken in hand, like an old fool
as I am, another young fellow, whom I have fallen in with here; a fine,
sincere, hearty lad, whom I hope to hear of one day as your
brother-in-arms. I have just been writing on his behalf to old Armitage,
of the 59th, whom you remember, I daresay, when you were a child, and
who knows this young fellow, of whom I'll tell you more hereafter.
To-morrow I go home (D.V.), and will post this in Edinburgh, as I pass
through, that you may know I have had a safe journey. I had a letter
from Tom the day before I left. The rogue has got five or six prizes at
the examination; but of course he has told you all about that before
now.

"God bless you, my dear boy; never forget the Gospel grace, and all we
owe to it--nor your love and duty to our Father in Heaven.

"E. SUTHERLAND."

       *       *       *       *       *

After finishing this paternal letter, the Colonel leaned his head upon
his hands for a little in silent cogitation. He was rather tired of his
epistolary labours, and could not help thinking with a secret sigh of
the carpet-bag, which had still to be packed up-stairs, and of the
chilly journey which he had to undertake early next morning. Had he not
better put off his other letter till he got home to Milnehill? "There is
no time like the present," said the Colonel, with a sigh, and he rung
the bell and commissioned Mrs. Gilsland to procure him another sheet of
that famous gilt-edged paper. Having obtained it, and fortified himself
meanwhile with a cup of tea, which the landlady brought at the same
time, the persevering Colonel thus indited his third epistle:--

     "SIR,--It is a long time since I met you at the house of my
     brother-in-law in London, and it is very possible that you may have
     forgotten even the name of the writer of this letter. I am the
     brother of the late Mrs. Robert Scarsdale--late Colonel in command
     of the 100th Regiment, B. N. I., in the Honourable Company's
     service, and since retiring from active service have resided at
     Milnehill, Inveresk, North Britain, where any answer you may think
     proper to give to this communication will find me. I write to you
     now on behalf of my nephew, Horace Scarsdale. His father, to my
     great grief, has kept him entirely ignorant of his very peculiar
     and painful circumstances; and, at the same time, with a feeling
     sufficiently natural, but much to be deplored, declines to aid him
     in studying the profession which he has chosen, being that of the
     law. Under these circumstances, which, as his nearest relative, I
     have become aware of, I feel that my only resource is to apply to
     you. Mr. Robert Scarsdale, as you are aware, is still a man in the
     prime of life, and, so far as I know, in excellent health. To keep
     the young man without occupation, waiting for the demise of a
     vigorous man of fifty, would, even if my nephew were aware of all
     the circumstances, be something at once revolting to all natural
     feeling, and highly injurious to himself. I venture to ask you,
     then, whether you are justified in advancing to him, or, if you
     prefer it, to me, under security for his use, a sufficient sum to
     enable him to enter on the study of his profession? The matter is
     so important, that I make no apologies for stating it thus briefly.
     This would be of more importance than twice the amount can be when
     his youth is gone, and the best part of his life wasted. I beg you,
     for the young man's sake, to take the matter into your serious
     consideration, as trustee under the unhappy arrangement which has
     done so much harm to this family. I will be happy to enter into
     further details, or make any explanation in my power, on hearing
     from you; and trusting that your sympathy may be so far moved by my
     story as to dispose you to the assistance of my unfortunate nephew,
     of whose talents I have formed a very high opinion--I have the
     honour to remain, your faithful servant,

"EDWARD SUTHERLAND."



This done, the Colonel put his letters together and retired into his
arm-chair, with a satisfied conscience; as he sat there silent by the
fire, the old man carried his pleadings to a higher tribunal. How could
he have kept his heart so young all these years, except by the close and
constant resort he made to that wonderful Friend, whom every man who
seeks Him must come to like a little child?




CHAPTER IV.


Within a week after Colonel Sutherland's departure from Tillington a
little flight of letters arrived from him--one to Susan, full only of
her uncle's heart, and all the kind devices he could think of to amuse
and give her pleasure; and a more business-like communication to Horace,
who, during these seven days, had felt Marchmain more and more
unendurable, and did not behave himself so as to increase anybody's
comfort in the house. "I have appealed on your behalf to a person who
ought to feel an interest in you," wrote the Colonel--"and as soon as I
hear from him I will let you know immediately whether he can help me to
put you in a satisfactory position. If not, my dear boy, we must try
what my own means can do; and, in that case, I should propose that you
come here to me, where it might be possible enough for a vigorous young
man like yourself to pursue your studies in Edinburgh, and at the same
time live with me at Milnehill. All this we can arrange by-and-bye. At
present there is no resource but to wait, which I must advise you to do,
my dear Horace, with as much cheerfulness as possible, for your own, and
for all our sakes."

Horace put up this letter with a smile. There was one thing in it which
should certainly have made the advice contained here palatable. The
Colonel, remembering himself that very likely his nephew was kept
without money, enclosed to him, with the merest statement that he did
so, a five-pound note--the sight of which did bring a momentary
pleasure, mingled with mortification, to the young man's face. But his
bitter, ungenerous pride, made the kindness an offence, while it was a
service. He never dreamed of rejecting it, but wiped off all necessity
for gratitude by feeling the present an affront. It was a strange
alchemy which Horace exercised; he made the most precious things into
dross, putting them into the fire of his contemptuous philosophy. "Was
it to please me my uncle did this, or was it to please himself?" he
said, with that smile in which no pleasure was: and so made it out,
instead of a natural act of kindness, to be a selfish piece of personal
gratification on the part of Colonel Sutherland, who very likely had
pleased himself mightily by this little exhibition of liberality and
apparent goodness, at Horace's expense. With this miserable ingenuity
Horace defended himself from all the influences of kindness, and stood
coldly and bitterly superior to the devices which he supposed himself to
have found out. Having thrust the note into his pocket with this
satisfactory clearance of everything like thanks from his own mind, he
turned to the letter itself, which was not at all agreeable to him. He
had no more idea of waiting for the decision of the anonymous individual
to whom his uncle had appealed, than he had of proceeding to Edinburgh,
and living under the eye and inspection of Colonel Sutherland. He had
unbounded confidence in himself, in his own abilities and skill in using
them; he was not disposed to wait upon anybody's pleasure, or to be
diverted from his own purpose, because some one else was labouring for
his benefit in another fashion. He smiled as he read his uncle's letter,
and thought upon his own scheme; but it never occurred to him to tell
the Colonel that his pains were unnecessary, that he himself saw another
way, and had resolved upon his own course. That was not Horace's way; he
preferred to know of these exertions being made for him, and secretly to
forestall, and make them useless, by acting for himself. Then it
appeared to him as if he should recover his natural superiority to his
uncle, and demonstrate triumphantly that he was not a person to be
insulted with favours and kindnesses, or from whom thanks and gratitude
were to be expected. With these sentiments he put up the letter in his
pocket, and looked with disdainful amusement at Susan, who was still in
the full delight of her excitement over hers; and went out, as was his
wont, to ripen his own plans in his mind, and, secure in the possession
of the Colonel's bank-note, to determine on his own independent
movements, and decide when he should leave home.

Emotions somewhat like those of Horace, yet as different as their
natures, were roused in the mind of young Roger Musgrave by a
communication very similar. To him, afraid of startling the sensitive
young man, the Colonel wrote with the greatest delicacy and tenderness.
He told him that he had applied to Sir John Armitage for the aid of his
influence, and had already put all his own in motion; that he had very
little doubt speedily to see his young friend bear Her Majesty's
commission, and that all he had to beg of him was a little patience and
confidence in his very sincere friend. Roger did not pause for a moment
to suggest to himself that Colonel Sutherland was exercising a natural
taste for patronage and affairs in thus befriending him. The young man
started up in the solitary library of the Grange, where he sat that day
for the last time, his cheeks crimson with excitement, and his eyes full
of tears. He was confounded, troubled, touched to the heart by the
friendship shown to him; and yet, as he thought over it alone in the
silent house, felt it overmuch for him, and could scarcely bear it.
Should he take advantage of this wonderful goodness, the busy devil
whispered in his ear? Was it right to impose his misfortunes--which,
after all, were not so bad as many others in the world--as a claim upon
the tender compassion of the Colonel? Was it generous to accept services
which, perhaps, another had more need of? He could not remain quiet, and
resist this temptation; he rushed out, like Horace Scarsdale, into the
bare woods, where the wind was roaring, and through the dark plantation
of fir-trees, with all its world of slender columns, and the dark flat
canopy of branches overhead, which resounded to the level sweep of the
gale; and where, by-and-bye, the things around took his practical and
simple eye, and won his heart out of the tumult of thoughts which he was
not constituted to withstand, and which were very likely, in his
unwonted solitude, to drive him into some irresistible but
unpremeditated rashness, and make him break his promise before he was
aware. Then he returned home, fatigued and exhausted, lost himself
willingly, and of purpose, in an old romance, borrowed from the village
library, and so kept out of the dangerous power of thought, till it was
time to sleep. After that his imagination played strange freaks with
Roger. We cannot tell anybody what his dreams were about; for though
they seemed to himself wonderfully significant and vivid, he was
mortified to find that he could not recall them in the morning so
distinctly as he hoped. For he was not a poetical hero, but only a young
man of very vigorous health and simple intelligence, whom grief and
downfall, and melancholy change of circumstances, had influenced deeply,
without making any permanent derangement, either of his mind or his
digestion.

He had no need of dreams to increase the real pain of his position next
morning. It was the day of the sale; a kind of simple heroical devotion
to the memory of his godfather, an idea of being on the spot to repel
any slight which might be thrown on his character, impelled him to be
present in or near the house during the whole day. Very likely he was
very wrong to expose himself to the trial, but in his youthful, excited
feeling, he thought it his duty, and that was enough for Roger. The
bland Rector, who came with his wife to buy some favourite china
ornaments, which the lady had contemplated with longing eyes in the
Squire's time, extended a passing hand to Roger, and recommended him,
scarcely stopping to give the advice, not to stay. Some young men,
warmer hearted, surrounded him with attempts, the best they knew, to
divert him from the sight of what was going on, and scandalized the
grave people by their jokes and laughter. The humbler persons present
addressed Roger with broad, well-meaning condolences: "Ah, if th' ould
squire had but known!" one and another said to him with audible sighs of
sympathy. The poor youth's eyes grew red, and his cheeks pale; he
assumed, in spite of himself, a defiant look: he stood on the watch for
something he could resent. The trial was too much for his warm blood and
inexperienced heart; and when the great lady of the neighbourhood
passed out to her carriage, as the sale drew towards a close, and saw
him near the gate with his colourless face and agitated look, she
scarcely bowed to poor Roger, and declared, almost in his hearing, that
the young man had been drinking, and that it showed the most lamentable
want of feeling on his part to be present at such a scene.

Poor Roger! perhaps it was very foolish of him to expose himself
unnecessarily to all this pain. When the night came, and the silence,
doubly silent after all that din, he went through the rooms, where the
moon shone in through all the bare, uncurtained windows; where the straw
littered the floor; and where the furniture was no longer part of the
place, but stood in heaps, as this one and that one had bought it, ready
to be carried away to-morrow; with his heart breaking, as he thought. In
a few hours the desolation of the Grange would be complete, although,
indeed, emptiness itself would be less desolate than the present aspect
of the familiar place. Once more he read over the Colonel's letter,
with all its good cheer and hopefulness. Only to have patience! Could he
have patience?--was it possible that he could wait here, listless and
inactive, while the good Colonel laboured for him?--and once more all
his doubts and questions returned upon the young man. Should he accept
so great a favour?--was he right to stand by and allow so much to be
done for him, he who was a stranger to his benefactor? He buried his
face in his hands, leaning on the table, which was the only thing in the
apartment which had not been removed out of its usual place. Here
exhaustion, and emotion, and grief surprised the forlorn lad into sleep.
Presently he threw himself back, with the unconscious movement of a
sleeper, upon his chair. The moon brightened and rose in the sky, and
shone fuller and fuller into the room. The neglected candle burned to
the socket and went out; the white radiance streamed in, in two broad
bars of light, through the bare windows, making everything painfully
clear within its range, and leaving a ghostly twilight and corners of
profound shadow in the rest of the apartment. There he lay in the midst
of his desolated household sanctuary, with the heaps of packed-up
furniture round him, and the candle trembling and dying in the socket,
and the white light just missing his white face--the last of the
Musgraves, the heir of emptiness!--yet in his trouble and grief keeping
the privilege of his years, and sleeping sweet the sleep of his youth.




CHAPTER V.


While the two young men responded thus to Colonel Sutherland's
communications, Susan took her letter to her heart, and found unbounded
comfort in it. All had not disappeared with Uncle Edward. Here was a
perennial expectation, a constant thread of hope henceforward to run
through her life. Never before had Susan known the altogether modern and
nineteenth-century excitement of looking for the postman. It gave quite
a new interest to the day--any day that unknown functionary might come
again to refresh her soul with this novel delight. She could see him
come across the moor, that celestial messenger! Not a Cupid, honest
fellow; but bearing with him all the love that brightened Susan's
firmament. She thought it would be quite impossible to be dull or
listless now: even to be disappointed was something which would give a
point and character to the day; and all was very different from the dead
blank of her former life, in which she had no expectation, no
disappointment, nothing to look for, and for entertainment to her youth
only her patchwork and Peggy's talk, enjoyed by intervals. Her whole
existence was changed. Uncle Edward's bundle of books, which had not
captivated Susan at first sight, she found, after looking into them, to
be more attractive even than her new embroidery frame. They were all
novels--a kind of composition totally unknown to Susan. She had been
very little attracted by literature hitherto; in the first place,
because to obtain a book was a serious matter, necessitating a visit to
her father's study, and a formal request for the undesirable volume,
which had no charm for a young imagination when it came. But now Susan
read with devotion, and amazement, and delight, each more vivid than the
other. She entered into the fortunes of her heroes and heroines with a
perfect interest, which would have won any story-teller's heart. She sat
up almost all night, in breathless engrossment, with one which ended
unhappily, and cried herself to sleep, almost frozen, with great
indignation and grief at the last, to find that things would not mend.
There, too, she found enlightenment upon many things. She learned, after
its modern fashion, the perennial fable of the knight who delivers his
lady-love. She found out how it is possible for a heroine to come
through every trouble under heaven, to a paradise of love, and wealth,
and happiness; and Susan's spirits rose, in spite of herself, into that
heaven of imagination. Sometime or other nature and youth must come even
to Marchmain; sometime it would be Susan's turn; sooner or later there
would be some one in the world to whom she too would be the first and
dearest. This inalienable privilege of womankind came to every Laura and
Lucy in her novels, happily or unhappily; and the novels were not so far
wrong either--so it does, to be sure, in life; but Susan did not take
into her consideration the sad chance that liberation might be offered
to the bewitched princess only by the wrong knight. The wrong knight
only came in as a rival to make some complications in the story, as
Susan read it; and somehow the girl adopted the tale by intuition, and
fell into a vague delight of innocent dreams. Pursuing these at her
needlework, after all her novels were exhausted, was almost as good as
another romance; and this tale spun itself on inexhaustibly, a story
without an end.

This spring in Susan's fresh heart developed itself unawares in her
actions and life. She went about the house with a more sprightly step;
she caught up Peggy's snatches of song, and kept humming and murmuring
them, without knowing it. Sometimes her hands fell idle on her lap, as
her new thoughts rose. Often she went out upon solitary rambles, with
this pleasant companionship in her heart. It would not be right to say
she was bolder, for the contrary was the case--she was shyer, more ready
to shrink from any person whom she met; but somehow found a vague,
delightful expectation, which gave a charm to everything diffused over
her life.

A few days after she received Uncle Edward's letter, Susan had the good
fortune to meet her friend Letty, her sole acquaintance--her secret
intercourse with whom she had tremblingly revealed to the Colonel. Letty
was delicate, and had not been permitted to be out of doors during the
bad weather. She was a tall, meagre girl, who had outgrown her strength,
and whose sallow cheeks, and prominent light gray eyes, made the
greatest contrast possible to Susan's blooming health and simple beauty.
Letty was supposed to have received a wonderful education: she could
play on the piano, and draw, and speak French--achievements which, in
Peggy's opinion, made her a most desirable companion for poor Susan, who
was ignorant of all these fine things. Besides her accomplishments,
Letty was very sentimental, and wrote verses, and took rather a pathetic
view of things in general. Her great misfortune was that in her own
person she had nothing to complain of. She was the only child of her
parents, who petted and humoured her, as old people are apt to do to
the child of their old age, and who were correspondingly proud of her
acquirements. Consequently, to her own great disgust, she did very much
as she liked, and was contradicted by nobody. She threw herself, with
all the greater fervour of sympathy, into the circumstances of her
friend, not without a little envy of Susan's trials, and splendid
imaginations, had she been in the same position, of what she should have
done. After this long separation she flew upon Susan, throwing her long
arms round her friend's neck with enthusiasm. Then the two, with arms
interlaced, strayed along by the side of the high hedgerow in the
winterly sunshine--the young buds opening out on the branches against
which they brushed in passing, and the young grass rustling under their
feet. There was not a single passenger on the road as far as they could
see. They were free to exchange their friendly confidence, without the
least fear of interruption.

"Oh! Susan, I have wanted so to see you! I have been so melancholy shut
up at home," cried Letty; "and when I wanted to come out, mamma would
not let me. I do not mind being ill. Why should not I die young like my
cousin Mary? I think it must be very sweet to die young, when everybody
will be sorry for you--oh, Susan, don't you?"

"I--don't--know," said poor Susan, who thought this was a great sign of
Letty's superiority, and scarcely liked to confess her own
worldlymindedness. "No; I should think it rather hard to die if I had a
great many people who loved me like you."

"Ah, people may love one--but then, perhaps, they don't understand one,"
said Letty. "Mamma would not let me go to the Sabbath school, because
she thought I might take cold! Ah, Susan, do you think that is an excuse
that will do at the Judgment?--perhaps I might have said something to
one of the children which she never would have forgotten all her
life--and to think of the opportunity being lost, for fear I might take
cold! I am sometimes afraid," said Letty, with a deep mysterious sigh,
"that God will think it necessary, for poor papa and mamma's sake, that
I should die very early; for I am so frightened that they are making an
idol of me. We ought not to love anyone so very much, you know."

"I think I would not mind how much anyone loved me," said Susan, with a
little boldness; "the more the better, I think; for indeed I am sure,
Letty, that the Bible never says anywhere that it is sinful to be very,
_very_ fond of one's friends."

"We must never make idols of them," said Letty; "and when I see how
mamma takes care of me, I tremble for her. I should not mind it at all
myself, but she would be so lonely if I were to die."

"Oh, Letty, for pity's sake, do not speak of it!" cried Susan.

"Why shouldn't I speak of it? I feel quite sure that people who feel
like me never live long," said Letty. "I am going to write my will in
poetry, Susan--I did one verse the other night. I think it is rather a
nice idea--it is about putting flowers on my grave."

"Oh, Letty, do be quiet!--for your mamma's sake!" cried Susan, in terror
and dismay, holding fast by her friend's arm, as if afraid to see her
vanish into the impalpable air.

Letty was not at all inclined, having made so great an impression, to
give up the subject, and was about to resume it in a still more pathetic
tone, when Susan, stimulated by her own livelier meditations, made an
animated diversion.

"My Uncle Edward has been here!" said Susan; "he is the very kindest,
dearest old man you ever saw. I did not think there was anybody like him
in the world. He took me to Kenlisle one day in a gig, and bought me
books, and I don't know how many things. Oh, Letty, such delightful
books!--one is the 'Heiress;' I have just finished it; about a young
lady that had a great deal of money left her, and did not know of it,
and was brought up quite poor, and a gentleman fell in love with her,
and they went through _such_ troubles; and at last they were--but oh, I
forgot, I ought not to tell you the end. You don't know how nice it is
to get frightened over and over again, and think something dreadful must
happen, and yet everything comes all right in the end. I wish, I am
sure--oh, Letty, do you think you could come, just come once, to
Marchmain?"

"Yes, if you wish me, Susan," said Letty, with a little demureness.

"Wish you! Oh, if I could only have my own will! Would your mamma be
pleased?" cried Susan; "and would you promise not to be frightened if
you saw papa?"

"Frightened!" exclaimed Letty, repeating the word in her turn. "But if I
saw him, it would perhaps be my duty to speak to him, Susan--for very
likely if some one spoke to him _properly_, about being good to you, and
about what people say, he would be kinder, I should like very much to
see him--perhaps I might be the means of doing him good."

Susan was lost in unspeakable dismay. "Oh, Letty, what _are_ you
thinking of?--you don't know papa!" she said with a smothered voice; her
desire to show Letty all her treasures fading before her terror at the
thought of anybody attempting to "do good" to her terrible father.
Unconsciously she quickened her pace, and hurried her companion farther
from Marchmain. The idea terrified her out of her discretion. She forgot
everything else in that dreadful thought. Lost in her apprehensions,
she hurried her companion on towards Letty's own house, where she
resolved to deposit her safely out of harm's way, telling meanwhile in
elaborate detail the plot of another of her novels. Letty, who had no
intention of making an immediate onslaught upon Mr. Scarsdale, turned
the matter over in her mind, and thought it was "quite a duty," if she
should see him, to remonstrate with her friend's unnatural father. The
thought captivated Letty. As for the consequences, instead of being
frightened, she would be pleased to be denounced and upbraided. That
would be the persecution which she could not possibly find out in any
other form in her life, and for which she longed as the seal of her
Christianity. Notwithstanding, she inclined her ear to hear of the
novel, and was not unmoved by Susan's promise to send it to her. They
parted at a little distance from the little manse, which was Letty's
home. "And remember, Susan," said Letty, kissing her affectionately,
"that whenever you choose to send for me, I shall come."

Susan turned home again alone, with the sensation of having escaped
from a great danger. She was quite sick with apprehensions. No wonder
her father debarred her from society, when the issue was that a girl of
her own age should take it upon her, without warrant from any one, to
argue the question of his conduct with papa. She made haste to reach
Marchmain, with an odd fear that Letty might possibly take another fancy
and get there before her; and what with the fright and the ridiculous
thought, Susan, half laughing and half crying, began to run to the
defence of her home and her father. Who could the poor child trust if
Letty failed her? When she came in sight of Marchmain, Susan stayed her
steps; she did not want to betray her panic to any one there, though
indeed nobody but herself ever looked out of these gloomy windows. There
was some one, a rare event in that road, passing before the house. He
went slowly along in front of Marchmain, looking at it. Susan looked at
it too, with curiosity, wondering what could interest any stranger in
her cheerless home. The sun shone once more on the gable as Colonel
Sutherland had seen it, besetting the bare walls round and round, and
printing off its naked outline against the moor, which stretched round
it on every side. Familiar as she was with the house, Susan's heart sank
as her attention fell involuntarily upon the strange nakedness and
neglect which its unenclosed condition seemed to show. A bit of cottage
paling, a yard of grassplot, the merest attempt at flowers, even a
little paved yard, would have made a difference. No such thing was
there; the doorstep descended upon the wayside herbage; around, the
black whins and withered heather came close up to the walls. Here was no
gracious life, active and affectionate, to beguile into verdure the
stubborn yet persuadable soil. Nobody cared--that was the sentiment of
the place: its unloveliness was of the merest unimportance to those who
found a shelter within its walls. Who was this looking at it? When he
had once passed the house, he turned back again, made a little pause,
and then sauntered along the front of it once more, advancing to meet
Susan, who felt a little alarmed at so unusual an exhibition of
interest. One of the little clumps of seedling trees in the moss
interposed between them before they met. Coming out of its shadow at the
same instant, they encountered each other suddenly, and without
preparation. Susan half stopped, started, made a suppressed exclamation,
for which she could have killed herself, and blushed over all her face.
The young man was no less startled; he too grew crimson with a guilty
and conscious colour; and as Susan hastened past him, stepped aside out
of her way, and took off his hat, without attempting to say a word. Both
not only recognized each other, but perceived, with a wondering
sensation, something akin to pleasure, that they _were_ mutually
recognized. Both hurried off the scene precipitately, without looking
behind them, and both somehow discovered that this sudden meeting had
given a different direction to their several thoughts. Strange,
unexplainable consequence of a natural accident!--why should not these
two have met on a public road as well as any other two in the district?
Yet somehow this sudden encounter had a certain extraordinary
supernatural aspect to them both.

This person whom Susan was so unaccountably startled to see, was, of
course, Roger Musgrave, walking here, as he walked everywhere within ten
miles, because the poor fellow could not endure himself, and did not
venture to battle with his own thoughts, and kept himself out-of-doors
and in motion as a kind of safeguard. The only wonderful thing of the
whole was that while Susan, without running, reached Marchmain with an
incredible silent speed, and got in with her pulse high and her eyes
shining, and the most profound amazement in her mind, Roger scarcely
ever drew breath, on his part, till he had reached his own deserted
house, though that was five miles off. Why they should have used such
prodigious pains to get as far distant as possible from each other, in
the shortest conceivable time, remains until this hour the mystery of
that day.




CHAPTER VI.


That day was an important one to Roger Musgrave. To live in that Grange,
a great, empty, deserted house, where every desolate apartment echoed to
his footstep as if he were a dozen men, and which contained through all
its ample rooms nothing but a rude table and chair in the library, where
he took his solitary food, a truckle bed where he slept, and some homely
implements for poor old Sally in the kitchen, which the unfortunate
young man had redeemed out of his mother's twenty pounds--became at last
and once for all impossible to him. That day, setting out for the only
refuge of his idleness, a long walk, it had occurred to him to turn his
steps in the direction of Marchmain, more from a passing caprice than a
serious intention. His kind old Colonel had been there--and there was
the Colonel's niece, the pretty frank little girl, who had clapped her
hands at his boyish exploit a year ago. The gratified vanity of that
moment, his former curiosity to see Susan again, and her friendly
mention of him to her uncle, warmed the young man into more earnestness
as he approached the house. Seeing no one, and amazed at its utter
solitude and sadness, he had turned away disappointed, when their
meeting took place. Then, as we have already said, the young man hurried
home. When he arrived there he kept walking up and down the empty
library, till the old house rung again, and old Sally believed the young
squire was "a-gooin' out of his mind." But he was not doing any such
thing; he was only repeating to himself that it was impossible!--impossible!
that it was against nature, and a discredit to his own character; that
he could no longer wait for what other people were doing for him;
that this very day he must leave the Grange. What his meeting with
Susan had to do with hastening this resolution it is quite impossible
to tell; he did not know himself; but the conclusion was beyond
disputing. He felt a feverish restlessness possess him--he could
not remain even another night, though the morning certainly would
have seemed a wiser time for setting out upon his journey. He pushed
aside the chop which old Sally, with much care and all the skill her
old hands retained, had prepared for him, and began to write. He
wrote to his mother, who had recovered all her original place in his
affections, a short cheerful note, to say that he was going to London,
and would write to her from thence. Then he indited less easily a
letter to the Colonel, in which, with all the eloquence he possessed,
he represented the impossibility of remaining where he was. He
described, with natural pathos, the empty house, the desecrated home,
the listless life of idleness he was leading. He said, with youthful
inconsequence, strong in the feeling of the moment, that, thrown back
upon himself as he had been all these lonely days, he no longer cared
for rank, nor desired to keep up a pretence of superior station,
which he could not support. "In what am I better than a private
soldier?" he wrote, with all the swell and impulse of his full young
heart: "worse, in so far that I am neither trained to my weapons, nor
used to obedience--better in nothing but an empty name!" And with all
that facile philosophy with which young men comfort the bitterness of
their disappointments, the lad wrought himself up to a heroical pitch,
by asking himself and the Colonel why he should not serve his country
as well in the ranks as among their commanders. Why, indeed? The fever
of his excitement mounted into his brain. When he finished his letter
he was in all the fervour of that self-sacrificing sentiment which
is so dear to youth. He went upstairs and packed his clean linen--a
goodly store, all unlike the equipment of a private soldier--with some
few other necessaries, into a travelling-bag. Then he went down to the
great deserted kitchen, where poor old Sally sat "like a crow in the
mist" by the chimney corner, her morsel of attenuated fire gleaming
faintly across the cold floor. Sally got up and curtseyed when the
young master entered. She was a little old woman, bent and feeble,
but she had lived there almost all her life, and it would have broken
Sally's heart to be sent away from the Grange. She stood before him
with her withered hands crossed upon her white apron, wondering in
her dim thoughts whether there might be something to complain of in
the dinner she had prepared. Behind her spread all the hospitable
provisions of the rich man's kitchen, the arrangements which spoke of
liberal entertainment, assembly of guests above and crowd of servants
below; all black, cold, and desolate, unlighted save by the early
wintry twilight from the windows and the superannuated glimmer of
Sally's fire; and the emptiness and vacancy went with a chill and an
ache to Roger's heart.

"Sally," said the young man, courageously, "I shall not give you any
more trouble for a long time. You must keep the house as well as you
can, and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Don't make the old
place a show for strangers, now that it's desolate. See, Sally, here's
for your present needs, and when I am settled I will send you more."

"I allays said it," said the old woman, "ye can ask Betty Gilsland. I
said, says I, 'the young maister, take my word, 'll no bide here.' Ay,
ay, ay, I allays said it--and you see it's coomed true."

Saying these words, Sally went off into a feeble little outburst of
tears, and repeated her affirmation a third time, holding the money he
had given her in her hand as if she did not know what to do with it. At
last her ideas, such as they were, collected themselves. She made
another curtsey.

"And where are you a-gooing, maister?" she said, looking earnestly into
his face.

"To make my fortune, Sally," said the young man, with a smile which
trembled between boldness and tears.

"And Amen--and grit may the fortin' be!" cried the old woman. "Have ye
eaten your dinner?"

This was too much for the young man; he burst into a hysterical laugh,
grasped her withered hand, shook it rapidly, and hurried away. The poor
old body toiled up the stairs after him, to make sure that "the sneck
was in the door--for them young things are that careless!" said poor
old Sally; then she went back again to her kitchen, and looked at the
money, and, after an interval, perceiving what had happened, fell
a-sobbing and crying in her solitude, and praying "the Lord bless him!"
and "the Lord be gude to him!" as she rocked herself in her wooden
chair. He who, out of all that poverty and sadness, and stupor of old
age, heard these ejaculations, is no respecter of persons, and it was
not without a true benediction that Roger Musgrave left his home.

When he was out upon the high road he turned back to look at the Grange.
The evening was dark and favoured him. The day had been mild, and early
spring quickened and rustled among those trees, warming to the very tips
of their branches with that invisible and silent life which should
shortly make them green. There they stood clustering in mutual defence
against the night wind, with the high-pitched gable-roof of the old
house looking out from among them, and the black belt of firs behind
filling up the breaks in their softer outline. By-and-bye, as Roger
lingered in that last wistful look, he could see a small, unsteady light
wandering from window to window. It was poor old Sally shutting the
shutters, murmuring to herself that it was always so when the family
were from home. There was something in the action symbolical and
significant to Roger; it was the shutting up of the old house, the
closing of the old refuge, the audible and visible sentence forbidding
the return which up to that moment had been possible: he turned away
with tears in his eyes, slung his travelling-bag over his strong
shoulders, and setting his face to the wind, sped away through the dark
country roads to the little new-built railway town, with its inns and
labourers' cottages. It was quite dark when he got there; the lights
dazzled him, and the noise of the coffee-room into which he went filled
him with disgust in his exalted and excited state of feeling. Strangely
enough as it appeared to him, a recruiting party had possession of the
inn; a swaggering sergeant with parti-coloured ribbons went and came
between the coffee-room and the bar, where a batch of recruits were
drowning their regrets and compunctions in oceans of beer. Roger went
out, with a strange mixture of disgust and curiosity, to look at them.
He could not observe, and criticize, and despise as Horace Scarsdale
could have done; he found no amusement in the coarse self-reproach of
one, the sullen obstinacy of another, the reckless gaiety with which a
third put off his repentance till to-morrow. The din of their pretended
enjoyment was pathetic and melancholy to Roger; but, amid all, he could
not help the thought which occurred to him again and again--"Am I to be
the comrade of these unfortunate blockheads?--are these my
brothers-in-arms?"

And then, quick as thought, another picture presented itself to him. He
thought of the Colonel, with his kind solicitous face, his stoop of
attention, and the smile which lighted up his fatherly eyes when he
spoke of his boy, whom he should hope to see Roger's brother-in-arms.
For the moment he saw before him, not the flaring lights and clumsy
figures of this rude company, but the dim inn-parlour, with its poor
candles, and the benign old stranger with his paternal smile. The young
man could not bear it. He said to himself sternly, "This must not be!"
and dismissed the contrast which distracted him from his mind with a
violent effort. Then he made his way into the half-lighted
railway-station, where everything lay dark and silent, a stray porter
making ghostly appearance across the rails, and an abysm of darkness on
either side, out of which, and into which, now and then plunged the
red-eyed ogre of a passing train. In answer to his inquiries, he found
that the night-train to London stopped here to take up passengers in the
middle of the night. He made a homely supper in the inn, and then came
outside, to the station, to wait for it. There he paced up and down,
watching the coming and going of short trains here and there, the
hurried clambering up, and the more leisurely descent of rural
passengers, upon whom the light fell coldly as they went and came. The
roar and rustle with which some one-eyed monster, heard long before
seen, came plunging and snorting out of the darkness, and all the
rapid, shifting, phantasmagoria, of that new fashion of the picturesque
which belongs to modern times. The wind blew chill from the open
country, with a shrill and piercing concentration of cold through the
narrow bar of the little station. By-and-bye the lights diminished, the
noises stilled, nobody was left in the place but himself, a drowsy clerk
in the little office, and some porters sleeping on the benches. Roger,
for his part, could not sleep; he kept in motion, marching up and down
the short, resounding, wooden platform, urged by the midnight cold, and
by his thoughts, until his weary vigil was concluded by the arrival of
his train. Then he, too, plunged like everybody else into darkness, into
the mysterious midnight road, with dark London throbbing and shouting at
the end; into life and his fate.




CHAPTER VII.


On the same day, and in a manner not very dissimilar, Horace Scarsdale
left his home.

If that could be called home which had been for years a prison to the
young man. With a secret feeling of exultation, he collected everything
belonging to him into a trunk, which he confided, without much
explanation, into the hands of Peggy. "When I send for this give it to
my messenger," said Horace. Peggy was prudent, and nodded in assent,
without asking any question. She had divined for some time that he meant
to go away, and Peggy, who thought it the best thing he could do,
prepared to remain in ignorance, and to have no information to give her
master in case he should think of questioning her. Susan had not yet
returned from her walk; there was no one in the house but Mr. Scarsdale,
shut up as usual in his study, and Peggy looking out anxiously, but
stealthily; unwilling to be seen, or suspected of watching her young
master, when Horace left the house. He, too, carried a little bag--and
he, too, when he had got half-way across the moor, turned round to look
at the house in which the greater part of his life had been spent.
Looking back, no tender images softened in the mind of Horace the harsh
and angular outline of those unsheltered walls; he had no associations
to make sweet to him the dwelling of his youth. He drew a long, deep
breath of satisfaction. He had escaped, and he was young, and life was
bright before him. As he stood there, too far off to be called back,
with his bag lying at his feet among the brown heather, he could see
Peggy steal out to the corner of the house and look up and down the road
to see which way he had gone, with her hand over her eyes, to shield
them from the sun: and then another lighter figure came quickly, with an
agitated speed, to the door, and stood there in the sunshine, without
looking round her at all, waiting for admittance. Horace contracted his
eyebrows over his short-sighted eyes, and smiled to recognize his
sister--smiled, but not with affection or pleasure. Perhaps it
heightened for the moment his own sense of liberation to see that poor
little bird going back to her cage; perhaps he imagined her
consternation and alarm and amazement on finding him gone. When Peggy
had gone in from her corner, and Susan had disappeared into the house,
Horace took up his bag and pursued his way. He was not going any great
distance; his destination, for this time at least, was only Kenlisle,
where he arrived in the afternoon, after a long walk, made pleasant by
the sense of freedom, which increased as step by step he increased the
distance between himself and Marchmain.

Horace had not frequented the rural alehouses and listened to the rural
talk for nothing. He knew, as far as popular report could tell him, all
about the leading people of the district: he knew, what seldom comes to
the ears of their equals, except in snatches, what their servants said
about them, and all the details and explications which popular gossip
gave of every occurrence important enough to catch the public eye. All
this, long before he thought of making use of it, Horace noted and
remembered by instinct; it amused him to hear of the follies and vices
of other people; it amused him to distinguish, in the popular criticism
upon them, how much of the righteous indignation was envy, and a vain
desire to emulate the pleasant sins which were out of that disapproving
public's reach. By this means he knew a great deal more about the social
economy of the district than anybody who knew his manner of life would
have supposed possible. He had heard, for example, numberless allusions
made to a notable attorney, or solicitor, as he called himself, in
Kenlisle, who managed everybody's affairs, and knew the secrets of the
whole county. It was he to whom Horace intended addressing himself; a
romantic idea, one would have supposed; for he was a prosperous man, and
was not very likely to prefer a penniless individual in young
Scarsdale's position to a rich townsman's son, with premiums and
connections. However, the young man was strong in the most undaunted
self-confidence--an idea of failure never crossed his mind. He made as
careful a _toilette_ as he could at the inn, had himself brushed with
great care, and, pausing no longer than was absolutely necessary for
these operations, proceeded at once to the solicitor's office. Here
Horace presented himself, by no means in the humble guise of a man who
seeks employment. Business hours were nearly over--the young men in Mr.
Pouncet's office had clustered round one desk, the occupant of which was
performing some piece of amateur jugglery, to the immense admiration of
his colleagues. These accomplished young men dispersed in haste at the
appearance of a stranger. Mr. Pouncet was known to be disengaged, and
Horace asked for him with a confidence and authority which imposed even
upon the managing clerk. After a very little delay he was ushered into
the attorney's sanctuary, where Mr. Pouncet himself, business being
over, read the papers in his elbow-chair. Mr. Pouncet had none of
Colonel Sutherland's objections to Horace's stooping shoulders. He
bowed, and invited him to take a chair, without the least unfavourable
comment on the appearance of his visitor. Then the lawyer laid down his
paper, took off his spectacles, and assumed the proper look of
professional attention. Horace saw he had made a favourable beginning,
and rose in courage as he began to speak.

"I have come to consult you about some matters of much importance to
me," he said. "I am forced to adopt a profession, though I ought to have
no need for any such thing. I have determined to adopt yours, Mr.
Pouncet. I have a long explanation to make before you can understand the
case--have you time to hear me?"

"Certainly," said the lawyer, but not with effusion; for the preface was
not very encouraging to his hopes of a new client.

"My father lives not very far off, at Marchmain, on the borders of
Lanwoth Moor," said Horace, and made a pause at the end of these words.

A look of increased curiosity rewarded him. "Ah, Mr. Scarsdale? I
remember to have heard the name," said the attorney, taking up his pen,
playing with it, and at last, as if half by inadvertence, making a note
upon a sheet of paper.

"He lives a life of mystery and seclusion," said Horace; "he has some
secret which he guards from me; he says it is unnecessary for me to
support myself, and yet his own establishment is poor. What am I to
do?--life is insupportable at Marchmain. My uncle wishes me to proceed
to London, to read for the bar. I confess my ambition does not direct me
towards the bar. I see no necessity for losing my best years in labour
which, when I discover all, will most likely be useless to me. Here is
what I want to do: I wish to remain near; I wish to attain sufficient
legal knowledge to be able to follow this mystery out. Such is my case
plainly; what ought I to do?"

Mr. Pouncet gave a single, sharp glance at Horace, then resumed his
scribbling on his paper, drawing fantastic lines and flourishes, and
devoting a greater amount of attention to these than to his answer.
"Really, I find it difficult to advise," he said, in a tone which meant
plainly that he perceived his client had something more to say. "Take
your uncle's advice."

"No," said Horace; "you will receive me into your office."

"I--I am much obliged, it would be an honour; but my office is already
full," said Mr. Pouncet, with a little quiet sarcasm; "I have more
clerks than I know what to do with."

"Yes, these fellows there," said Horace--"I can see it; but I am of very
different mettle; you will find a place for me; wait a little, you will
soon see your advantage in it."

"You have a very good opinion of yourself, my young friend," said the
lawyer, laughing dryly, with a little amazement, and a little anger.

"I have," said Horace, laconically; "I know what I can do. Look here--I
am not what I have been brought up to appear; there is something in my
future which my father envies and grudges me; I know it!--and it must
be worth his while; he's not a man to waste his ill-temper without a
good cause; very likely there's an appeal to the law before me, when I
know what this secret is. You can see what stuff I am made of. I don't
want to go to London, to waste time and cultivate a profession; the
chances are I shall never require it--give me a place here!"

"Your request is both startling and unreasonable," said Mr. Pouncet,
putting down his pen, and looking his visitor full in the face. "I have
reason to complain of a direct imposition you have practised upon me.
You come as a client, and then you ask for employment; it is absurd. I
have young men in my office of most excellent connections--each of them
has paid me a premium; and you think the eccentricity of your demand
will drive me into accepting you, whom I never saw before; the thing is
quite absurd."

"I beg your pardon," said Horace, coolly; "I am not asking for
employment--I am your client, seeking your advice; here is your fee. I
ask you, whether this is not what you would advise me, as the best thing
I could do. As for premium, I don't care for that. If I am not worth
half-a-dozen of these lads, to any man who knows how to employ me, it is
a very odd thing to me. Now, understand me, sir: I have left home--I
wish to conclude what I am to do at once; if not in your office, in some
other; can you find a place for me here?"

The lawyer took a pinch of snuff, rose up, went to the window, came
back, and after a variety of other restless movements sat down again.
During this interval he turned over all that Horace had said, and
something more: he made a hurried run over the highly-condensed summary
of law reports in his brain, in a vain hunt after the name of Scarsdale.
"Most probably a will case," he said to himself. Then he turned once
more his eyes on Horace. The young man met that inspection without
wavering. What the inquisitor found in that face was certainly not
candour and openness of expression; he looked not with a human, but a
professional eye. Perhaps it occurred to him that his visitor's boast
was something more than a brag, and that one such unscrupulous and
acute assistant in his office would be worth much more to him than his
articled clerks, who teased the life out of his unfortunate manager, and
even puzzled himself. Then, "to do him this favour would be to bind him
to me in the commonest gratitude," was the inarticulate reflection which
passed through the mind of the attorney; forgetting entirely, as the
most sagacious men forget, that the qualities which would make Horace a
useful servant were not such as consist with sentiments like gratitude.
On the whole, the young man's assurance, coupled with the known mystery
that surrounded Marchmain, and the popular report of some great law-suit
in which Mr. Scarsdale had once been concerned, imposed upon the lawyer.
He kept repeating in his mind, Scarsdale versus ---- Scarsdale
against ----, but could not find any name which would satisfy him for the
other party to the suit. After some indifferent questions, he dismissed
Horace, promising him an answer next day, with which the young man left
him, calmly triumphant--and, as it appeared, with reason. Mr. Pouncet
could not resist the bait of a probable struggle at law, and all the
_éclat_ of a prolonged and important suit. He determined over and over
again that Horace had a clever face, and might be of the greatest use to
him. He found that he had for some time wanted some one who should be
entirely devoted to himself--ready to pick up any information, to make
any observation, to do whatever he wanted. He concluded at last that
this was the very person; and when Horace came in next day he found
himself engaged. The following morning he took his place among the
others in the office. Thus he too had entered upon his life.




CHAPTER VIII.


"Eyeh, man! and that's a' the geed ye've done? If I had but had the
sense to ging mysel'! Where's my son? Black be the day ye coom across
this door, ye bletherin' Ould Hunderd! Where's my Sam? Eyeh, my purty
boy, that was aye handy to a' things, and ne'er a crooked word in his
mouth but when you crossed him, and a temper like an angel? Where's my
Sam? Do you mean to tell me you've gane and you've coomed, John
Gilsland, and brought nae guid news in your hand?"

"The devil's i' the woman!" cried honest John. "Could I lay the lad on
the front o' the mare, and bring him hame like a sack o' corn? He's
sorry enough and sick enough by this time, if that's a consolation; but
do you think it was me to face the sodger officers, and say he bud not
to list?--and him _had_ listed, if I preached till the morn. Na, wife,
he's fast and sure--as fast as the Ould Hunderd himsel'. If ye'll take
my advice, the best thing you can do is to put up his bundle and make
him commforable. He's brewed, and so must he drink. It's for better, for
warse, like the marriage state itsel'."

"And grand I would be taking _your_ advice!" said the landlady, more
from habit than anger; "and a grand joodge you would mak' o' what a
mother'll do for her son! Eyeh, away! I've nae pleasure in man nor
woman. Oh, my Sammy! and after all the pains the Colonel took to speak a
word to the lad himsel'; and after all his schooling and what was done
for him; and a new waistcoat and buttons I bought him mysel' but a week
agoo; and everything he could set his face to to make him commforable.
Oh! Sammy, Sammy! what will ye say when your mother's grey hairs is
brought to the grave in sorrow along o' you? I'll tear the een out o'
that murderin' Ould Hunderd if he come near this door!--I will! if he
was the best customer in twenty mile. What do I care for his dribble of
drink and his deceiving tongue? If it hadn't been for him, I would ne'er
have lost my Sammy, the best lad, though I say it as shouldn't, and the
cleverest, ye could set your eyes on. I could have trusted him with
every key in the house, I could; and the modestest lad! Praise him to
his face, and he would colour up like a girl. If I had but had the sense
to ging and speak to the offisher mysel'!"

"Eyeh, woman, if ye but had!" said John, "ye would have knowed better;
yon'er he is fast enough, and no a penny less than thirty pound'll buy
him off, and ye know best yoursel' if ye can spare that off of the
business in such bad times; but there's mair as bad off as you. And I
can tell you I saw greater folk nor our Sam look wistful at the ribbons.
As I sat down by the chimney side, who should come in but Mr. Roger, him
that should be the young Squire by rights, if the ould wan had done
fairly by him. He stood i' the door, as I might be dooing, and gave a
look athwart the place. If he warn't envying of the lads as could 'list,
and no more said, never trust my word again. I'll bet a shilling he was
in twenty minds to take the bounty himsel'. Though he is a gentleman,
he's a deal worse off nor our Sam; he'll goo hanging about in London,
till the great folk doo somat for him. He durstent set for'ard bold, and
into the ranks wi' him. I'm more grieveder like, in a general way, for
the sort of him nor our lad. Dry thy een, wife, and set on a great wash,
and take it out on th' wench; it'll do thee good, and thoo canst do nae
benefit to Sam."

Mrs. Gilsland, though she contradicted her husband as usual, found some
wisdom in his advice, and, after doing something elaborately the reverse
for a time, adopted it, to the discomfiture of her poor
maid-of-all-work, who might not have appreciated her master's counsel
had she been aware of it. A good scold did the landlady good; she sought
out poor Sam's wardrobe, collected a little heap of articles to be
washed and mended for him, and managed, by this means, to get through
the day with tolerable comfort, though interrupted by many gossiping
visits of condolence, in all of which she renewed and expatiated upon
her grief. When the evening arrived, Mrs. Gilsland was in considerable
force, with red eyes, and face a little swollen, but strong in all her
natural eloquence and courage, lying in wait for the arrival of the
unsuspecting "Ould Hunderd," who had not yet been informed, so far as
she was aware of, what had taken place. Before he made his appearance,
however, there arrived the carrier from Kenlisle, who made a diversion
in her excitement. He brought a note from Horace Scarsdale to John
Gilsland, enclosing an open one, addressed to Peggy at Marchmain, and
requested her to send his trunk with the bearer; a communication which
very much roused the curiosity of both husband and wife. While they were
considering this billet, Sergeant Kennedy came in as usual, and got his
place, and his pipe, in the public room, without calling forth any
demonstration of hostilities. When she became aware of his presence,
Mrs. Gilsland rushed into the apartment, with the note still in her
hand.

"Eyeh, gude forgive me if I'm like to swear!" cried the indignant
mother, "you're here, ye ould deceiver! You're here to beguile other
folks's sons, and dare to look me in the face as if ye had ne'er done
mischief in your days. Where's my Sam? Where's my lad, that never had an
ill thought intill his head till he came to speech of you? Well did the
Cornel say ye wur an ould humbug! Where's my son?"

"Husht! husht!" said the Sergeant, soothingly--"I have heard on't
already in the town. I always said he was a lad of spirit--he'll make a
good souldhier, and some day ye'll be proud enough to see him in his
uniform. Husht, would you have the onlearned believe he had 'listed in
drink, or because of ill-doing? You're an oncommon discreet woman when
ye like. Think of the poor lad's credit, then, and hould your peace.
Would you make the foulks think he 'listed like a ne'er-do-well? Husht,
if any person says so of Sam Gilsland to me, Sergeant Kennedy, o' the
Ould Hunderd, I'll knock him down."

This sudden new aspect of the subject took away the good woman's breath;
she was not prepared for so skilful a defence, since, to blame her son
in blaming Kennedy, was the last thing she could have thought of. After
a few moments she recovered herself, but not the full advantage she had
started with.

"I said you was a deceiver, and it's proved upon me," said Mrs.
Gilsland; "and you think you can take me in with your lyin' tongue as
well as my boy! How dare ye speak of drink or ill-doing and my Sam?--a
steadier lad was never born; he's no' like you, you ould sponge that you
are, soaking in whatever's gooing in the way of liquor. He's no as
long-tongued nor as acquaint with ill; and but for coming across of you
when the lad knowed no better, and taking a' your stories for Gospel,
he'd ha' been here this day. And you sit and lift up your face to me in
my own house, you do! Ye ould storyteller!--ye cruel deceiver!--ye
onnat'ral ould man! You a feyther yoursel' and make other foulks's house
desolate! But what need I speak?--there's wan there forenenst ye, that
cares little more nor you do, for all the lad I'm naming is his son as
well as mine!"

This sudden attack took the unfortunate John entirely by surprise; he
recoiled a step or two, with an exclamation of amazement and injury. He
had been standing calmly by, enjoying the unusual pleasure of listening
to his wife's eloquence as a spectator, and rather rejoicing in the
castigation of the sergeant. This assault took away his breath--nor was
it allowed to remain a single blow. Before anyone could speak, an old
cracked, high-pitched voice made itself heard from the door of the
apartment, where, shivering with cold, and anger, and age, with an old
checked shawl thrown over her cap, old Sally from the Grange shook her
withered and trembling hand at the unhappy John.

"It's you that's a-spreading tales against the young maister--it's you!"
she cried, in her shrill accents; "and it's you, Betty Gilsland, that's
puttin' him up to it; you that's eaten the Squire's bread, and married
on his present, and thrived wi' his coostom. Fie upon me for a silly
ould fool, that thought there was such a thing as thankfulness to the
fore in this world! Eh, man! to think ye should have come coorting to
the Grange kitchen, many's the day, and eaten your commforable supper
wi' the rest on us, and yet have the heart to turn again Mr. Roger, like
the gentry themsels! I would not have believed it if half the sheer had
ta'en their Bible oath--no, not for nothing but hearing on it mysel'.
What ill did he ever doo you, that you should raise a story on Mr.
Roger? Oh, fie, fie, fie, for shame!"

The husband and wife looked at each other in mutual amazement at this
unexpected charge, while Kennedy pricked up his ears and recovered his
former boldness. He did not doubt now to come out of the affair with
flying colours; for though John Gilsland's reflections on the looks of
Roger when he encountered him the previous night had been overheard and
carried rapidly to the interested ears of Sally, the sergeant was still
unaware both of Roger's purpose and his departure. He inclined his ear
with great attention to Sally's complaint; he cocked his cap upon one
side of his head, and assumed the part of moderator with a masterly
promptitude; he called her in, waving his hand to her, and set a stool
for her near the fire.

"It's mortial cowld," said the sergeant, "here's a drop of beer for you,
ould Sally. Them good foulks there, take my word, had no ill maening to
Mr. Roger. We'll al' hear the rights on it. Many's the talk I've had
with him, and many's the good advice I gave the young man. Onexperienced
lads they're al'ways the better of a good advice. Take a drop of beer."

Sally made a nervous, frightened curtsey, warmed her icy fingers at the
fire, and took the beer in her hand, with her respects to the sergeant;
but before she could drink it Mrs. Gilsland arrested her with a sudden
exclamation.

"Sally! touch you none on it--it's pisoned--it's Judas--it's a-betraying
on you!" cried the landlady; "if there's harm come to your young
gentleman, who should it be but him there? He's seduced away my innocent
lad. He's led Sam astray, and putten it into his head to 'list and goo
for a souldhier. He's nothing but lies and deceits from end to end on
him. If there's harm to the young Squire, you take my word, it's _him_!"

"Lord have a care of us!" cried Sally, emphasizing her exclamation by a
violent start, and dropping the glass from her hands; "pisoned!--eh, the
cannibal! the murderin' villain!--and what harm did I ever do to him, a
puir old body like me?"

Upon which text the excellent Mrs. Gilsland made a renewed onslaught
upon the sergeant, referring directly or indirectly to his influence all
the accidents of the country side. If he was in some way to blame for
the failed crops and the potato disease, he was evidently first cause
that Mr. Roger had left the Grange, and her boy had gone away; both were
entirely under the influence of the all-conquering sergeant. John
Gilsland stood by a little nervous, but secretly enjoying the attack
which old Sally, easily diverted from her indignation against himself,
and turning her arms upon "th' Ould Hunderd," aided with all her feeble
forces. The other spectators encouraged the combatants with vociferous
plaudits. As for the sergeant, he gave his cap a fiercer cock, crossed
his arms upon his breast, sat back upright as a post in his chair, and
puffed mighty volumes of smoke from his pipe. It was impossible to move
him. When at last, in sheer exasperation and rage, the women found
nothing more to say, Kennedy took the pipe from his mouth, thrust his
chair farther back, and made his exculpatory address:--

"If you will listen to me," said the sergeant, stretching forth his
arms, and laying down the plan of his discourse with the fingers of one
hand upon the palm of the other, "I'll make you my answer under three
heads: There's, firstly, Sam Gilsland--and there's, secondly, Mr.
Roger--and there's, thirdly, the Cornel. As ye cannot onderstand the
first till ye've heard the last, I advise ye to have patience. Then, in
the first place, Sam--he's a very fine lad, clean, well-made, a good
figure, a good spirit, fond to be out o' dours, and to see the world.
I'll say, before a hunder faothers and maothers, it's a disgrace to
keep a man like that serving beer. He behooved to serve his country, did
a lad like that; thinks I to mysel', there's a figure for a uniform; if
the drill-sergeant had his will o' him, there's hands would be clever at
their weapons! Was it my fault that his Maker had made him straight and
strong? He heard me speak of the service, sure; I'm a man of experience;
I see no good reason to hide my light away from the world; and natur' up
and spoke. I knowed no more of his going away nor the babe unborn."

The wily sergeant saw with the corner of his eye that Sam's mother,
overcome by this eloquence, had fallen to crying--he knew the day was
won.

"_And_ I ask ye a'," said the sergeant, "when a man that's served his
country sets foot among ye, with the Queen's coat on his back, and a
medal on his breast, do ye turn your backs upon him? Is he not as great
a man as the Duke till his furlough's done; _and_ I ask _you_,"
continued Kennedy, turning boldly round upon his principal accuser,
"when the boy comes to end his life in aise and comfort, with a pension
to keep him snug, and never to move his hand but when he pleases--would
ye rather he was looking after the farmers' horses, good weather and bad
weather, and serving beer?"

Mrs. Gilsland was overcome; flattering fancies stole over her mind;
splendid visions of a figure in uniform, with honours and rewards heaped
upon him by the public gratitude, which should call her mother; she put
up her apron to her eyes and sobbed. The sergeant was victorious.

"And as for Mr. Roger, I am not the man to meddle with them that are
aboon my hand--I gave him my advice, like any other speerited young
man," said the sergeant; "I tould him my mind of the service. I tould
him there was glory and fame to be found in the profession of arms. He
was very well inclined to lead me on, was Mr. Roger; he asked about this
one and he asked me about the t'other one, and I gave the young
gentleman what information I could. And then, ye see, al' at once, out
of my knowledge, comes up the Cornel. I cannot purtend to say what
business he had here. There was some story about a nevvy of his, Mr.
Horry, that ye al' knowe. I've no very great faith in Mr. Horry, for my
own account. My belief is--for he never spared pains or trouble for his
men, as I can well say--my belief is, if ye ask me, that the Cornel
heard there was some promising lads here, and came to take a look at
them himself. That's just my fixed opinion, if ye ask me. So there's Sam
away, and Mr. Roger away, and I'll lay any man here a hunder pounds
we'll hear tell of the Cornel again."

"Eyeh, man! d'ye think it's true?" cried Mrs. Gilsland. "I asked the
Cornel to speak to my Sam mysel'. Eyeh, sergeant! it's an awfu'
misfortune--but it's a great honour! Do ye think it would be _that_ that
brought the Cornel here?"

John Gilsland was more sceptical than his wife; but, at the same time,
he was more favourable. "Here's Mr. Horry gone his gate also," said
John--"I'm strong o' the mind to take the cart mysel', and goo round by
Marchmain the morn for his trunk as he bids, and see if I can see owght
o' the ould man."

"Thoo'st aye right ready for a ploy," said his wife, "a deal better than
honest work. Eyeh, but it's true--Mr. Horry has gane as well--three
young men of them out of this wan place! Blees me! its awful like as if
the Cornel was at the bottom o't, after all."

"Ay, ay--you'll come into my opinion. I seed him three times mysel'. The
Cornel was aye an affable gentleman, and spoke his mind free; I knows
what I knows," said the sergeant--"he had his own occasions here."

"Come you with me, Sally, and you shall have a cup o' tea to comfort
your heart," said Mrs. Gilsland. "Eyeh, woman, I'm heartbroken; but I'm
glad!--three on them, and his own nevvy! That Mr. Horry is a rael queer
lad--he takes no more notice of a body nor if they were the dust beneath
his feet; but dreedful clever, there's no doubt. I'll make John goo
himsel' to Marchmain as he said--maybe there's some news. Keep a good
heart about the young Squire, Sally. I would not say but them three
they're all together, and the Cornel with them; and they're rael well
off, if _he's_ there, that's for certain; such a man!"




CHAPTER IX.


The next day John Gilsland and his cart took their leisurely way across
the moor, carrying with them the note which Horace had addressed to
Peggy at Marchmain.

Horace had now been gone two days. The afternoon of the day on which he
left home Peggy confided her suspicions on this subject to Susan, who
was struck with alarm and terror, quite out of proportion to the event.
Where had he gone?--what would he do?--and what, oh! what would papa
say? Susan sat by herself in the dining-room, vainly trying to work; and
now that there was so little likelihood of hearing his footstep,
watching for it with the most breathless eagerness. Evening came, and
the dreaded hour of dinner; exactly at six o'clock Mr. Scarsdale took
his seat at the head of the table. Horace's chair was placed as usual,
and stood empty by the side. Mr. Scarsdale gave one glance at the empty
seat, as he took his own, but said nothing. Susan could not help
remembering the only former time when that place was vacant, the day so
happy and so miserable, when Uncle Edward first came to Marchmain. As on
that occasion, his father took no notice of the absence of Horace; the
dinner was eaten in silence, Susan swallowing a sob with every morsel
which she ate, and trembling as she had trembled before her father ever
since the interview in which he forbade her correspondence with her
uncle, and she refused to obey him. That scene had never departed from
her mind--her own guilty feeling had never subsided. Bearing on her
conscience her first real personal offence against her father, it was
impossible for Susan now to have any confidence even in their accustomed
stillness. She felt a continual insecurity when he was present--at any
moment he might address to her these commands and reproaches again.

But the evening passed as usual, without any interruption; once more Mr.
Scarsdale sat motionless at the table, as he had done every evening in
Susan's remembrance, with his book set up on the little reading-desk,
and the crystal jug with his claret, reflecting itself in the shining
table. And there sat Susan opposite him, somehow afraid to-night to
bring out her embroidery-frame, or to employ herself with any of the
pretty things which Uncle Edward had bought for her--taking once more,
with timidity, and half afraid that he would notice even that, her
neglected patchwork, out of her large, old work-bag. Susan had been
trimming up for her own use, with great enjoyment of the task, with
linings of blue silk, and scraps of ribbon found in one of Peggy's
miscellaneous hoards, an old, round work-basket, which she had found in
the upper room where the apples were kept. But she did not venture to
put that ornamental article, so simply significant as it was of the
rising tide of her young feminine life, upon the table. She bent over
her neglected patchwork, smoothing it out and laying the pieces
together, but somehow finding it entirely impossible to fix her
attention upon them. She could not help watching her father, shaking
with terror when, in putting down her scissors, or her cotton, she
disturbed the profound stillness; she could not help listening intently
for those sounds outside which betokened to her accustomed ear the
approach of Horace. She longed, and yet she feared to see her brother
come back again; she could not believe he had really gone away; she
wondered, till her head ached, where he could be; and could not bring
herself to realize anything more cheerful about him than an aimless
wandering through that dreary moor, or through the cold cheerless dark
streets described in some of her novels, which two things the poor child
connected together with an unreasonable ignorance. Then came the dismal
tea-making. The night went on--it grew late, but still Mr. Scarsdale
kept his seat. Midnight, dark, cold, solitary night, with the fire going
out, the candles burned to the sockets, and Peggy, as all was still,
supposed to be in bed. Then Mr. Scarsdale closed his book. "It is quite
time you should have gone to rest," he said. "Why do you start?--is
there anything astonishing in what I say? Good night!"

Susan got up instantly, stumbled towards the side-table, got her candle,
and lighted it with a trembling hand. She went out of the room so
quickly, and in such evident trepidation, that the sight of her terror
struck another arrow into her father's mind. He looked after her with a
pale, dreadful smile. "She is afraid of me!" said the forlorn man. He
said the words aloud, and Susan came back trembling to the door, to ask
if he called her. His "No!" drove her to her room with hurried steps,
and limbs which could scarcely carry her. Susan was so terrified that
she could not rest; she put her candle in her room, and came out to look
over the rail of the little gallery from which the bed-chambers opened.
There, standing in the dark, after a little interval, she saw her father
come out of the dining-room, with his candle in his hand, and go to the
door, which he barred and bolted, with a precaution Susan had never
known to be taken before. Then she heard him securing the shutters of
the windows. With an infallible instinct of alarm and terror, she knew
that it was against the return of Horace that all these precautions were
taken. She stole into her room, closed the door noiselessly, and looked
out. Black in its unbroken midnight of gloom lay the moor, a waste of
desolate darkness on every side, rain falling, masses of black clouds
sweeping over the sky, a shrill gleam of the windy horizon far away,
shining over the top of the distant hills. And Horace, if he should be
near, if he should still be coming home, remorselessly shut out! Susan
sat up half the night, listening with a nervous terror to all the
mysterious sounds which creep and creak in the absolute silence of the
dead hours of night. Horace was most comfortably asleep in a comfortable
room in the "George," at Kenlisle, while his poor sister sat wrapped in
a big shawl, trying to keep awake, thinking she heard his footsteps
approaching the house, and waiting only to be certain before she should
steal down-stairs in the dark to open the door. Poor Susan fell fast
asleep at last, and slept till long after her usual time; then she was
roused by Peggy to just such another day. Mr. Scarsdale still did not
say a word, though his glance at the empty chair was more sharp and
eager. And so things continued till the forenoon of the third day, when
John Gilsland stopped his cart at the door; and, calling for Peggy in
his loud, hearty voice, which could be heard over all the house,
informed the entire family of Marchmain that he had come for Mr. Horry's
box.

Susan was with Peggy in the kitchen, solacing her anxieties by a
discussion of where her brother could be, and what he was most likely to
be doing. This summons made her jump, as she stood listlessly by the
window. Peggy, without saying a word, made a stride to the side door,
and went round to the corner of the house to confront this incautious
messenger. Susan, trembling and afraid to join her, sprang up upon the
wooden chair, and peeped out of the window. There she saw Peggy in the
act of assaulting the unfortunate John, shaking him by the shoulder,
and demanding to know if _that_ was the way to deliver a message at a
gentleman's house. John scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders:
he was too much accustomed to ill-usage from women to feel much
resentment; he only looked sheepish, and, patting the mare on the
shoulder, came round with Peggy to the side door. There she introduced
him on tiptoe, taking elaborate precautions of quietness, which were all
intended to impose upon John, and silence his heavy feet and country
clogs to the greatest degree of silence possible.

"It's not so heavy but what a man like you can carry it down on your
shoulder," said Peggy; "and if ye make a bump on the road, Gude forgive
ye, for I'll no, nor the master, if he's disturbed in his study. I would
not advise you to rouse up _him_. Whisht then!--if you have any regard
for your own peace, hold your tongue! In the very stairs, and the study
no furder off nor yon door! If ye cannot be quiet, it's as much as your
ears are worth!"

Thus warned, John went creaking on his tiptoes upstairs, and was
introduced to Mr. Horace's room, where the furniture had been specially
arranged, and where the good order and trim array of everything made no
small impression on his simplicity. John got downstairs again in safety,
jealously watched by Peggy, who stamped her foot at him from the foot of
the stairs, and produced the "bump" which she had deprecated by her
super-caution. However, the business was performed in safety, the cart
was drawn up to the side door, and Horace's goods safely deposited in
it--Mr. Scarsdale, up to this moment, taking no notice of the
proceeding. Then John returned into the kitchen, to have a little chat
with Peggy, who was nothing loth. Peggy did all the marketing for the
family, and though perfectly impenetrable and deaf to all questions
about her master, was rather popular in the neighbouring villages, as a
housekeeper and purveyor, who was not sparing in her provisions for her
master's table, was like to be. John stood, with his hat in one hand and
a glass of beer of Peggy's own brewing in the other, describing to Mr.
Scarsdale's factotum the events of the previous days--Th' young squire
gone out of the Grange, no one knew where; his own son listed, and gone
for a soldier; and Mr. Horry--ah! Mr. Horry was deep, he never let on of
_his_ secrets: he supposed the family knew where the young gentleman
was.

Susan kept in the kitchen, hovering about the window, very anxious, but
afraid, to ask questions, and listening to this volunteer gossip with
all her ears. Peggy answered very brusquely to the inferred question of
Horace's messenger.

"You may depend the family doesn't need to ask you," said Peggy. "Mak'
haste, man, about your ain business--no wonder the wife has little
patience if this is how you put off your time. How will ye send on the
box?--that's all I'm wanting to hear."

"Oh, just by the carrier--to the 'George' at Kenlisle--it's none so far
away either," said John; "if the family wanted word sent particular, I
could goo a' the way mysel.'"

As he made this offer he threw an inquisitive glance at Susan, whose
restless attention he had skill enough to perceive. Peggy's answer was
a violent shake of her head, as she went on with her work. John resumed.

"Our wife, she thinks it's a very strange thing that these three should
be away at the same moment, as you may say. Not to compare our Sam to
the young gentlemen, but you see Sam had a word himself with the Cornel.
As for the young squire, he was coming and going the whole time, and Mr.
Horry, he's nevvy to th' ould gentleman, as far as I can hear. It's a
rael coorious thing--they all had speech o' the Cornel, and all started
off on the same day. Maybe you and the young lady you ken a deal better
nor that--but ye'll allow it's an awfu' coorious thing."

While John, pausing, looked for an answer, in calm security of having
said something which could not fail to make an impression; while Peggy,
with her back to him, vigorously washed her dishes, clattering one upon
another with emphasis, which, however, did not drown his voice, and was
not intended to do so; and while Susan stood timidly with her work in
her hand, startled with this new piece of intelligence, and looking
towards the stranger with a face full of wonder, a sudden sound startled
the vigilant ear of Peggy. But she had scarcely time to put down the
dinner-plate in her hand, and to wave her towel at John Gilsland,
commanding imperatively a hasty retreat, when the door of the kitchen
suddenly flew open, and Mr. Scarsdale himself, pale, erect, and
passionate, his dressing-gown flying wide around him with "the wind of
his going," his thin lips set together, and an expression of restrained
and silent fury in his face, came abruptly into the room.

John recoiled a step in amazement and awe; then, emboldened by
curiosity, kept his place, and made his bow to the master. Mr. Scarsdale
stamped his foot on the floor in lack of words, and pointed to the door
with a violent gesture; and before he knew what he was about, Peggy
rushed against John, thrust him out before her, and closed and bolted
the door after him. The amazed and sheepish look with which he rubbed
his shoulders, and gazed at the inhospitable door from which he had been
so summarily expelled, would have been worth a comic actor's while to
see. The honest fellow stood outside, looking first at the house and
then at his mare, with a ludicrous astonishment. "The devil's in the
woman!" said John. That was a proposition not unfamiliar to him. Then in
his blank bewilderment he marched gravely round the house, spying in at
the vacant windows. Everything was empty except that kitchen, in which
the pale spectre in the dressing-gown might be murdering the women for
anything John knew. What should he do? After various pauses of troubled
cogitations, John decided that discretion was the better part of valour,
and chirruped to his mare. The two went off together, much discomfited,
and the landlord of the "Tillington Arms" had full occupation for the
rest of the road in amending the circumstances according to his fancy,
and bringing himself into sufficient dignity and importance in the tale
to make it meet for the ears of his wife.

When John Gilsland was disposed of, Mr. Scarsdale addressed himself to
his daughter and his servant.

"I understand," he said, without speaking directly to either, "from his
absence at table, and from the articles which I have just now seen taken
out of the house, that Mr. Horace Scarsdale has chosen to leave
Marchmain; I say nothing against that--he is perfectly welcome to choose
his own residence; but I desire you to understand, both of you, that on
no pretence whatever must this young man return into my house--not even
for a visit; he has placed himself among those strangers whom I decline
to admit. I make no complaint," added the recluse, coldly, "that my
family conspire against me, and that messages are received, and my
property sent away, without my knowledge."

"Master," said Peggy, while Susan stood trembling before her father, her
work fallen from her hands, and her womanish fright and anguish falling
into tears. "Master," exclaimed his old servant, who was not afraid of
him, "you're no to leave that reproach on me. I've conspired against
none of you, if it was my last word! Your son's gone, as he should have
gone a dozen years ago, if ye had been wise, or ta'en my advice. He's
gone, and God's blessing and grit speed be with him! I never was more
glad of nothing in my born days; and for his things in his box!--I
knowed you a lad and a man, and a better man nor you are this day; but
did I ever even it to you to keep back another man's, if it was a
servant's claithes?"

"Be silent!" cried Mr. Scarsdale, putting his hand to his ears; "you
conspire, you whisper, you hide in corners; there is not a soul in the
world whom I can trust; but I beg you to understand, in respect to
Horace Scarsdale, that I am master here, and that he shall not return to
this house. He may say he wishes to see his sister--he does not care a
straw for his sister! Do you comprehend me?--he is never again to enter
here!"

Neither at first said a word, but Peggy advanced before her master and
dropped him a grave curtsey. "You're master here," said Peggy; "never a
word against your will, as has been proved for fifteen years, could wild
horses get out of me. I've served you faithful, and I will. Bear your
ain blame before heaven, and the Lord forgive you, master. It's my hope
he'll never seek to enter these darksome doors again."

Thus concluded the startling episode of Horace Scarsdale's departure
from his father's house. Deeply wounded, in spite of herself, by her
father's plain and cold statement that Horace did not care a straw for
his sister, Susan went back to her now unbroken solitude. Perhaps it was
true, but it was not the less cruel to say it; and now that he was gone
Susan's heart clung to her brother. She tried to remember that he had
been sometimes kind to her; it was hard to collect instances, and yet
Horace, too, like other people, had been moved by caprice sometimes in
his life, and _had_ done things once or twice contrary to the tenor of
his character. And her whole nature revolted against the unnatural
prohibition which debarred his return. There she sat, poor child, in
that dreary room, certain now that no voice but her father's should ever
break its silence--that nobody but he should ever sit opposite to her at
table; and if her heart sank within her, as she tried in vain to occupy
herself with her needlework, it was not wonderful. She thought of
Horace, and Roger Musgrave, and Sam Gilsland, with a sigh--she wondered
whether John was right; and with almost a pang of jealousy wondered
still more that her uncle should take pains to liberate these three,
while yet he did not try to do anything for _her_. She could not
work--she tried her novels, but she had read them all, and in them all
there was not one situation so forlorn and hopeless as her own. Poor
Susan threw herself on her knees, with her face against the prickly
hair-cloth of the elbow-chair--not to pray, but to bewail herself,
utterly disheartened, angry and hopeless! Her temper was roused; she was
cross and bitter, and full of unkindly thoughts; she felt as if she
herself loved nobody, as nobody loved her. By-and-bye, when a sense of
her attitude struck her, with its appearance of devotion, and the
strangely contrary feelings of her mind, she sprang to her feet in a
passion of sobs and tears, feeling more guilty and miserable than she
could have explained. After a long time--for there were elements of
stubbornness and obstinacy in Susan's nature--she subdued herself, and
went upon her knees in earnest. When she was there the second time,
thoughts came upon her of Uncle Edward's tender blessing, of his family
in heaven, and of the confidence, so calm and certain, with which the
old man looked thither. The poor child scarcely knew how to pray out of
her wont; but her very yearning for some compassionate ear to pour her
troubles into gave her heart expression--and in the act was both comfort
and hope.




CHAPTER X.


While Colonel Sutherland's plans for everybody's benefit were thus being
rendered useless, the Colonel himself, unaware of these untoward
circumstances, waited anxiously for answers to those letters which he
had written at Tillington. Morning after morning the good man sighed
over a post which brought him only his _Times_, and the letters of his
boys. The dining-room at Milnehill, which was breakfast-room and
library, and everything to the Colonel, was as unlike as possible to
that of Marchmain. One side of it was lined with bookcases, full of the
collections of the Colonel's life. There were two large windows,
commanding a wonderful view. A Turkey carpet, warm and soft, a low
fireplace polished and shining, a great easy-chair, drawn close to the
cosy round table, with its cosy crimson drapery falling down round it,
just appearing beneath the folds of the snow-white tablecloth. Here the
Colonel took his place in the morning, rubbing his chilled fingers, and
pleased, in his solitude and the freshness of his heart, by the look of
comfort around him. Here he took his solitary breakfast, and looked over
his _Times_, and wondered why there were still no answers to his
letters. It was not wonderful in the case of Sir John Armitage, who
might be at the other end of the world for anything that was known of
him; but why there should be ten days' delay in having a letter from
London, the Colonel did not know.

One morning, however, two epistles in unknown hands were brought him; he
took the one which bore the London postmark. This is how it ran:--

     "DEAR SIR,--Your favour of the 15th came duly to hand, though I
     confess that I was startled by its contents. My connection with
     the Scarsdale estate is not what you imagine. I have no control
     over the money whatever, nor power to draw upon it until the proper
     period; therefore, of course, I must decline, as you will perceive
     it is entirely impossible for me to accede to your request. My
     position is sufficiently uncomfortable at present without further
     complications.

     "You are, perhaps, aware that the trustees were chosen from among
     young men, for the express reason that they might be expected to
     survive until the time stipulated. As I have just said, I find my
     position sufficiently disagreeable already, and should be very
     sorry to embarrass it further with any unjustifiable proceedings.
     Your relation has the eye of a lynx, and keeps it constantly upon
     us. As for the young man, I cannot but think his father is quite
     right in keeping him ignorant. In such circumstances as his, with
     the least inclination towards gaiety, and knowing his own position,
     he would assuredly fall into the hands of the Jews. As for putting
     him in a profession, I am bound to say with Mr. Scarsdale, that I
     consider it unnecessary; but as I am unable to render any
     assistance, I refrain from advice which might not be so acceptable
     as I could wish."

The Colonel read this over and over again, with concern and attention.
After he had fully satisfied himself of its meaning, and discovered that
there was not even an inference of help from one end to the other, he
folded it up again, and threw it into the fire. "Better leave no chance
of its ever coming into Horace's hands," he said, as he accomplished
this discreet destruction. He was annoyed and vexed with a renewal of
the feeling which had moved him on his interview with Mr. Scarsdale,
though without the profound regret and compassion which he then
experienced; but he was scarcely disappointed. He held his other letter
in his hand, and entered into a little rapid mental calculation before
he broke the seal, considering how it would be possible, out of his own
means, to make the necessary provision for his nephew's
studies--"Unnecessary for him to have a profession? Is it necessary for
the boy to be ruined body and soul?" cried the Colonel, unconsciously
aloud--"because he has the luck to be descended from a diabolical
old----." Here Colonel Sutherland made a pause, restrained himself,
shook his head, and said, with a sigh, thinking certainly of his
brother-in-law, and perhaps a little of his nephew, "Ah! there's
mischief in the blood!"

His other letter was that one which poor Roger Musgrave had written amid
all the echoes of his empty house. This agitated and excited the Colonel
much more than the other had done. His spectacles grew dim while he was
reading it--he gave utterance to various exclamations at the different
points of the letter. He said, "Very true!" "Very natural!" "Poor
fellow!" "Exactly as I should have felt myself!"--and showed other
demonstrations of interest in his restless movements and neglect of his
half-finished breakfast. The conclusion, however, threw him into evident
distress; he got up and walked about the room, stopping unconsciously to
take up a piece of useless paper on one of the tables and tear it into
little pieces. Anxiety and doubt became the prevailing expression of his
face. Here in a moment were all his plans for Roger deranged and broken
to pieces; and yet it was so natural, so characteristic, on the whole so
right and honest, that he could not say a word against it. But it did
not grieve him the less on that account. Roger was going to London, that
was the sole clue to him; and he had no reply from Sir John Armitage--no
response to his own appeal from the influential personages whom he
believed himself to have influence with.

"He'll be a private soldier by this time; most likely a Guardsman," said
the Colonel, and his imagination conjured up the splendid figures under
the arches at the Horse Guards with a positive pang, as he thought of
Roger Musgrave's ingenuous face turned, crimson and shame-faced, towards
the crowd. What could the Colonel do?--nothing but fill his mind with
anxious and uncomfortable reflections concerning the life and fortune,
and, besides these, the manners and morals, of his young _protegé_--and
wait.

The house of Milnehill stood upon the sunny brae of Inveresk, at no
great distance from the square barn-church, ornamented by a pepperbox
steeple, with which the taste of our grandfathers has crowned that
lovely little eminence. The garden on one side was surrounded by an old
wall, mossed and gray, above which you could see nothing but the
towering branches of the chestnuts, which in the early summer built fair
their milky pinnacles of blossom over this homely enclosure. The garden
sloped under these guardian shadows open and bright towards the sea,
though at the distance of at least two miles from the immediate
coast--and the wall on the lower side was low enough to permit a full
view from the windows of that beautiful panorama: the little town of
Musselburgh, with its fishing suburb lying snug below; the quiet pier
stretching its gray line of masonry into the sea; the solitary
fishing-boat hovering by; the wide sweep of bay beyond, with the Bass in
the distance lying like a turtle or tortoise upon the water, and all the
low, far, withdrawing ranges of the hills of Fife. The house was of two
stories, homely and rural, with one pretty bright room on either side of
the little hall, which was filled with Indian ornaments, as was also
Colonel Sutherland's drawing-room, which the Colonel did not enter once
in a month. Behind and on the upper story there was abundant room for a
family--though the rooms upstairs were low, and shaded by the eaves. The
house altogether was old-fashioned, and much behind its neighbours.
Smooth polished stone, square-topped windows, palladian fronts, and
Italian villas have strayed into Inveresk as to other quarters of the
world. But Milnehill remained red-tiled and picturesque, with eaves in
which the swallows built, and lattice windows which opened wide to the
sweet air and sunshine, and smoke curling peacefully through the
branches over the red ribs of the tiled roof. The Colonel had some
family associations with the place--perhaps, in his heart, for he was no
artist, the old soldier was a little ashamed of his tiles, and thought
the smooth "elevation" next to him, turning its windows to the dusty
road, and looking as if it had strayed out from the town for a walk and
been somehow arrested there, was a much superior looking place to his
nest among the trees. But Milnehill, the Colonel was fond of saying, was
very comfortable, and he liked the view; and, indeed, not to consult the
Colonel, the fact was, Milnehill was the cosiest, honestest little
country house within a dozen miles.

If Susan could but see that paradise of comfort and kindness!--she who
knew no interior but Marchmain. When the Colonel had read his paper he
put up his glasses, put on his great-coat, took his hat and his cane,
and went out through his garden, pausing to see the progress of the
crocuses, and to calculate in his own mind when his earliest tulip would
bloom--to take his daily walk. Though his mind was engaged, he had all
that freshness and minuteness of external observation which some old men
keep to the end of their days: he saw, with a real sensation of
pleasure, the first big bud upon his favourite chestnut begin to shake
out its folded leaves; he noted the earliest tender shoot of a green
sheath starting through the sheltered soil, in that sweet nook where
his lilies of the valley waited for the spring; and so opened his garden
gate and went out into the sunshine of the high-road, to see the light
shining upon Arthur's seat, and the smoke floating over Edinburgh, and
the country between quivering over with an indescribable sentiment of
renewal and life. There was not very much variety in the Colonel's
walks--this day, without any particular intention, he turned his steps
towards the sea.




CHAPTER XI.


THE Colonel took his leisurely way, with his hat a little on the back of
his head, and his cane in his hand, along the dusty high-road towards
Edinburgh. Most of the people who met him on the way knew the old
soldier: he got salutations respectful and familiar on all sides; he had
something to say to half at least of the people on the road; and at the
doors, as he passed along in the fresh sunshine, which gladdened the air
without much warming it. Through the breaks in the houses were to be
seen glimpses of the broad sands, with the sea breaking upon them in its
long rush and roll, ringing through the air like a cannon-shot, though
there was nothing beyond a fresh breeze to impel its course. The
Colonel, born in this neighbourhood, and carrying its well-remembered
sights and sounds in his heart, during all his years of exile, rejoiced
in the boom of the Firth with that mixture of familiarity and novelty
which makes all the special features of his native locality so
delightful to a man who has been absent from it for years. He went
along, stopping now and then to speak to some one, recognizing every
turn on the road, and curious if he met a face which he had not seen
before; happy in his fresh outward eye, his youthful heart, and the
natural friendliness and universal interest which covered the sunny
surface of this Christian soul. Do not think that what lay below was
less profound or less sincere; but for that happy, natural temperament,
that involuntary observation of external things, the Colonel would have
been a bereaved, solitary, heartbroken man--would he have been better,
or more worthy of the love and respect which followed him everywhere?

As he approached the little town of Portobello, the Colonel diverged
from his road, and went to make inquiries of kindness for an old
friend. It was a prim suburban house, with its little plot of grass and
evergreens before the door, at which he entered, on the urgent
invitation of the maid, who, with perhaps less apparent deference than
such a maid would have had on the other side of the border, smiled over
all her fresh face her own welcome to "the Cornel," and took upon
herself to assure him that "the mistress was all her lane, and had been
baith the day and yesterday, and would be so thankful to see him." On
this representation the Colonel entered. This, too, it was easy to
gather from _a priori_ evidence, was an Indian house. Indian curiosities
ornamented the hall and staircase, by which the Colonel proceeded to the
drawing-room, a little faded in colour but very comfortable, where an
old lady, wrapped in a large old Indian shawl, of which the colours,
like the colours of the room, were rather the worse of years, sat in an
easy chair, with a soft footstool, and cushions for her shoulders, the
bell within her reach, and a little table with her book and her work
close by her side. Her hair was snow-white, but her cheeks as fresh in
complexion through their wrinkles as the cheeks of her rosy maid; and
her close cap, with its soft white blond and white ribbons, came round
her kind old face with a warm and homely simplicity, increasing the
natural expression, which was that which we call by instinct motherly.
Yet mother as she certainly must have been, she was alone, with nothing
near to bear witness of family love or ties, save a half-open letter,
written on impalpable pink Indian-letter paper, which lay on her little
table. The old lady held out her hand to her visitor without rising from
her chair. "Is that you, Edward? I am very glad to see you," she said,
with a look of real pleasure. The Colonel drew a chair to the other side
of the table, and sat down opposite to her. Then they asked each other
about their health, and the Colonel confided his private pangs of
rheumatism to the attentive ear of his ancient friend. They were old
friends, "close connections," as they said themselves--old people--had
lived much the same kind of life, with the difference of man and woman;
knew each other's affairs and each other's friends; and had lived for
years on those terms of affectionate amity which by-and-by perhaps will
be impracticable, and not to be hoped for, between a man and his
deceased wife's sister. Such was the relationship between Colonel
Sutherland and Mrs. Melrose: they had all the confidence of brother and
sister in each other, with perhaps even a touch of more animated
kindness, because their friendship had a little of choice in it, as well
as of nature.

"You look _fashed_," said the old lady. "I can see there's some trouble
going on behind your smile. What's the matter? Nothing wrong, I hope,
with the boys?"

"No, thank heaven!" said the Colonel; "if I had not meddled with other
boys, who are less within my control. I have two vexatious letters this
morning--one from that trustee I told you I had written to about my
nephew: he will not do anything for him."

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Melrose, with a little nod of her head.
"Take my advice another time, Edward: never you put any dependence on
these business men; what do they care for a young man's heart or
spirit, when it's interest and compound interest that's in the
question? I saw a great deal of them when I was young. My uncle that we
were sent home to was a merchant, you remember: we used to spend our
holidays there. I was very near marrying in that way myself, if I had
had my own will at seventeen. They're very good fathers and husbands,
and the like of that; but put a question of what's good for a man, and
what's good for his money, before them, and they aye put the last first.
Yes, yes, I had very little hopes from that; but you, you see, you're
one of the sanguine kind--you are a man that never will learn."

"So it appears," said the Colonel; "and now, as though that were not
enough, here's that hot-headed young Musgrave I told you of--he about
whom I wrote to old Armitage, of the Fifty-ninth, and to Sir George--a
famous young fellow!--a boy you'd make a pet of, as sure as life; here's
a letter from _him_, informing me that he can't impose upon my goodness,
and all that sort of thing, and that he's off to London. I have no doubt
in my own mind," said the Colonel, solemnly, "that at this moment the
lad's on horseback under the arch at the Horse-Guards, with a crowd
staring at him. You may laugh, but it's a very melancholy reflection; a
man of birth and manners; the last of an old family; it is extremely
vexatious to me."

"And why should the folk stare at him?--is he such a paladin?" asked the
old lady, with her merry laugh.

"He is a handsome fellow," said the Colonel, "and carries himself like a
gentleman--which is more than can be said of everybody," he added, with
a vexed recollection of Horace; "however, these are all _my_ affairs. Is
that a letter from Charlie? I certainly begin to forget the time for the
mail."

"You'll find it out by-and-bye, when Ned is gone," said Mrs. Melrose;
"but look you here, Uncle Edward--here's a sight for you--do ye think
that's like Charlie's hand?"

The Colonel made haste to get his spectacles from his pocket, and put
them on with a little nervousness.

"Eh?--what?--it's a lady's hand," he cried, peering at the pink epistle,
which the old lady held out to him triumphantly at arms length. "Who is
it? Eh? What's this? Fanny--no--Annie Melrose? Who on earth is Annie
Melrose? Do you mean to tell me the boy's married before he has been out
a year?"

"Indeed, and I am very sorry to say it is quite true," said the old
lady, shaking her head with a demure and proper regret, which was quite
belied by the bright expression in her eyes; "and really the two young
fools, they seem so happy, that I have not the heart to blame him; for,
after all, he's my only one, Edward, and I know who _she_ is--she's
Charlie's Colonel's daughter--you may recollect her; but I doubt if she
was out before you came home. It's a very short acquaintance, to be
sure, but she was at school here, and used to come and spend the day
with me. Her mother and I were great friends at Bintra when my poor
General was in command there. The father was just a subaltern then, and
no so very discreet either; and she was fighting among her young family,
poor thing! I took a notion in my head that she was like one of my
friends at home, and grew very fond of her. That time when Charlie was
ill, when he was five years old, just before we sent him home, when I
wanted poor Mary to go to the hills with me, and she could not--you
remember?--I took Mrs. Oswald and her youngest, who was very delicate
just then. To be sure, it was only a baby, poor bit thing, but the two
bairns had but one ayah between them, and lived for a month or two like
brother and sister. They were too young to remember anything about it;
but I always think there's a providence in these things. And so the
short and the long of it is, Charlie's married, and here's a penitent
letter from him, and a loving one from _her_; and if you believe me,
when I got them first, what with Charlie's pretence to be very sorry for
doing the rash act, as the newspapers say, out of my knowledge, when it
was just as clear as possible the boy was out of his wits with
happiness; and what with her pretty bit kindly letter, poor thing! I
laughed with pleasure till I cried, and cried till I laughed again. And
you may look as grave as you like, Uncle Edward--it was what you did
yourself, my man, and what your son will do after you; and you'll no
persuade me to make myself wretched because my only son is happy, and
has made himself a home."

Here some tears rolled quietly into the corners of the old lady's eyes,
and were wiped off with a small, withered, lively hand.

"For you know, Edward," she added, softly, "though I am not the person
to say much about that kind of thing, or to deny that there's quite as
many bad women as bad men, still, you know, Edward, it wants one of us
really to make a home."

"Ay, Elizabeth, I know," said the Colonel, with a suppressed and quiet
sigh. Then there was a momentary pause; but these two old people had
both come through life and its battles; both knew losses severe enough
to be beyond talking of; and over both beneficent age, consciously
approaching the invisible borders of another world, had spread his
patience and calm. The stream of talk was renewed again with a very
little interval.

"But I want to know," said Mrs. Melrose, "what you are going to do about
your nephew--is he coming here?"

"I proposed he should; I don't know--very likely he may prefer London;
indeed, it is rather difficult to decide for Horace; he has a great
opinion of his own judgment," said the Colonel. "However, things are
less complicated now; there is only himself to think of, since it
appears whatever is to be done for him I must do."

"Mind the boys in the first place, who have the best right, Edward,"
said the prudent old lady; "and mind, too, that I have a penny in the
corner of my purse if you should be put to that; and then about your
niece--is there any word of her coming to Milnehill?"

"I fear it," said the Colonel, shaking his head; "but, by-the-bye, that
reminds me--if I could persuade her father to let Susan come, will _you_
come to Milnehill, Elizabeth, and take charge of my little girl?"

"For why?" said Mrs. Melrose; "do you think you are not a safe enough
guardian for your niece at your age?--or that the young creature wants
an old wife to be spying over her for propriety's sake? Nonsense!--and
beside, Edward, if all's true the papers say, I'll want somebody to take
care of me, a delicate young person that I am, when I go to your house.
You do not suppose I would have gone to see you if I had thought you any
less than a brother all this time? But look at the fellow's impudence,
venturing to say, in the very Parliament itself, that the like of us are
no relations, and might court and marry like strangers. I would just
like to have a woman's Parliament for once in a way, to settle _them_,
the filthy fellows!--if they got out of it with a hair upon their heads
I can tell you it would be no fault of mine."

"You were always a politician, Elizabeth," said the Colonel, rising with
a smile.

"Very true. I had to read up all the news by every mail to let my poor
General know what he would be interested in," said the old lady; "little
wonder if I came to like it myself; and speaking of that, Edward, go
you your ways home and send me the _Times_. You would have brought it
with you if you had been a thoughtful man."

"Wait a wee," said the Colonel, in his kindly Scotch. "I had very near
forgot it with your news; here it is, safe in my pocket all this
time--and never deliver your judgment, Elizabeth, after this, till
you're sure the pannel is duly convicted. Here it is!"

So saying, the Colonel put down the paper, and took his leave of his
sister-in-law. As he went downstairs her elder servant, who seemed to be
on the watch, came out of the kitchen, followed by the pretty maid, to
arrest the Colonel, and ask if he knew Mr. Charlie was married. "And the
mistress is as pleased!" said that respectable functionary, "and
pretends to be angry, and laughs wi' her heart grit--and him only
three-and-twenty, and her eighteen! Cornel! did ye ever hear the like a'
your days?"

"Oh, yes, I've heard the like," said Colonel Sutherland, smiling; "and
as it was sure to happen some time, Janet, do you not think it's as
well soon as syne?"

"Weel, Cornel, that's true," said Janet, going out with grave perplexity
to open the little garden gate for him. Janet was more shocked in her
propriety than her mistress, and did not find it nearly so easy to
reconcile herself to the strange event.

Then the Colonel proceeded homeward in the same leisurely fashion. The
day had overcast, the breeze had freshened, the sea rushed with a louder
fling upon the sand, and made a sharper report at the height of each
successive wave. Rain was coming on, and Colonel Sutherland quickened
his footsteps. When he had reached as far as the wayside village of
Joppa (Joppie in the vernacular), it was necessary to take shelter till
the shower was over. While he stood waiting, with his deaf ear attentive
to the entreaty of the good woman at whose porch he stood, to come in
and rest, a post-chaise went rapidly past. Glancing out from it, with
the momentary glance of a wayfarer, appeared a face which the Colonel
recognized without being able to tell who it was; a yellow face,
querulous but kindly--a fastidious, inquisitive pair of eyes. Beside the
driver on the box was a man with a cockade on his hat, with whose face,
too, the Colonel found himself strangely familiar. Who could it be? He
watched the vehicle till it was out of sight, persuading himself that it
had taken the road to Inveresk, and followed it as soon as the rain was
over, without knowing who his visitors might be, but in the fullest
expectation of finding somebody arrived before him at Milnehill.




CHAPTER XII.


"Somebody has arrived!--who is it?" asked the Colonel of his factotum,
who opened to him the garden-door--that door in the wall which admitted
you suddenly into all the verdure of the garden of Milnehill.

"Cornel, you're a warlock!" exclaimed the man, with amazement. "This
very moment, sir, two carpet-bags and a portmanteau. I reckon they're
meaning to stay."

"They--who are they?--is there more than one?" asked the Colonel; "make
haste! do you see you keep me in the wet, blocking up the door?"

"The rain's off," said Patchey, dogmatically; "I'm meaning to say
there's wan gentleman, and his man, of course--his man. That's maybe no
interesting to you, Cornel--but it is to me."

"You provoking old rascal!--who is it?" said the Colonel.

Patchey scratched his head. "If you'll believe me, Cornel, I cannot
think upon the name. It's no Arnot--no, that's not it; nor Titchfield
neither. I ken him as weel as I ken mysel', Cornel--dash me if ever I
thought of asking him his name! Arnold--na--tuts! he was in the Queen's
service, this gentleman, up Burmah ways, when there was warm work gaun
on; but, bless me, what whimsy's ta'en the Cornel by the head noo?"

This last exclamation followed the Colonel's abrupt disappearance along
the garden-path, leaving Patchey amazed and wonderstricken, with his
hand upon the door. Colonel Sutherland had heard enough to inspire him
with a new hope in respect to his visitor. To be sure, he recognized
him!--to be sure, it could be no other person! He made haste into his
cozy dining-room, casting a hurried glance as he passed at the
carpet-bags and portmanteau, which still encumbered the hall. The
dining-room was in confusion, much unlike its usual state; great-coats,
and cravats, and wrappings of every kind lay scattered on the chairs;
while in his own easy chair by the fire the stranger sat pouring out his
tea, and with all the materials for a comfortable breakfast round him.
Certainly he had lost no time.

"Armitage!--it is you, then?" cried the Colonel, hastening up to him
with the heartiest welcome.

"Ah! yes, it is me--how d'ye do, Sutherland?--delighted to see you
again. Here I am in full possession, like an old campaigner," said the
stranger, somewhat languidly; "puts one in mind of Kitmudgharee,
eh?--the happiest time of my life!"

"And yet I am very glad to hear you have advanced in fortune and the
world since then," said Colonel Sutherland, drawing a chair to the other
side of the table; "and how is your health? They tell me you have become
an invalid of late days--how is that? you used to be the most vigorous
of us all. India?--liver affected?--how is it?"

"Humph!" said Sir John, shaking his head; "can't tell--come to my
fortune--some people say that's it. Nothing to do but please a man's
self is what I call hard lines, Sutherland; and duties of property, and
all that. Never had any bad health till I got rich. Here's a nice kind
of existence for a man come to my time of life--not married and not
intending to marry. Here's a set of men that hunt half the year and
shoot the other half--ought to keep friends with 'em--only society in
the country, except my Lord Duke, and he's stuck-up. Then, when I'm at
home, there's a confounded lawyer with his new leases and his raised
rents, and 'Sir John,' 'Sir John,' till I'm sick of my own name. Then
there's a fellow of a chaplain pegs into me about an heir. What the
deuce do I want with an heir? Says the estates go into another family
after me--swears it's a sin to let the name of Armitage die out of the
country. What's the consequence?--I can't look a woman in the face
without thinking she wants to marry me, or I want to marry her, or
something; and the end of the whole concern was, Sutherland, that I ran
away--bolted, that's the fact, and got your letter in Paris, where I
was bored to death. Thought I couldn't do better than come to you
express--and, by George! I haven't enjoyed my breakfast like this for
ten years!"

"Very well--here you shall do as you like, and hear not a word of leases
or heirs," said Colonel Sutherland, laughing. "We'll have it all our own
way at Milnehill--ladies never come here."

"Ah! very sorry," said the new comer, glancing up vaguely, as if to see
how far it was safe to go in reference to the past; then returning to
his breakfast, proceeded with the perfect inconsequence of a man--not
selfish, but occupied with himself, and saying whatever came uppermost.
"Very odd thing--the very day I got your letter something came into my
head: There's old Sutherland, thought I, got a couple of nice
daughters--honest girls--mother a very pretty woman--no doubt they take
after her. Then came your letter: 'pon my life, it brought the tears to
my eyes!"

This downright stroke the Colonel bore with sufficient fortitude. He
held his breath for a moment, and said nothing--then hastened to
interest himself in the progress of the stranger's breakfast, which was
going on in the most satisfactory manner. Never guest did more honour to
hospitality. He repeated that he could fancy himself once more in the
Kitmudgharee station, but for the blazing fire, and the Frith haddocks,
which were perfection; and repeated over again, with emphasis, "The
happiest time of my life!"

"Before then I was a young fellow of ambition," said Sir John, "waiting
to get on in society, and all that sort of rubbish. If this confounded
fortune had come then, there would have been some comfort in it. Never
felt myself a man till I went to India--always kept trying to find out
what this one and the other thought of me. Got clear of all that rubbish
among your bungalows. Ah! these were the days! But I say, Sutherland,
guess how I came here?"

"In a postchaise; I saw you, but could not remember for my life who you
were," said the Colonel.

"Eh? Ah! couldn't remember me?--humph!" said Sir John, with momentary
mortification; "odd that--I should have known you anywhere. Postchaise
from the boat--detestable boat!--rocks like a tub, and smells like an
oilshop--came down from London by sea. And, now that I think of it, do
you know, I'm mighty sorry about poor Musgrave; a fox-hunter, you
know--nothing but a fox-hunter; but a very good fellow--gave me a
helping hand myself, when I was young and stood in need of one--what
have you made of the poor boy?"

"I am sorry to say he has made something of himself which I don't like,"
said the Colonel. "Poor fellow! he was too high-spirited, and impatient,
and proud, to wait for our influence, and what we should do for him:
he's gone off to London, I fear, to enlist. He's a famous young
fellow--I grudge the lad putting on a private soldier's uniform even for
a day."

"I don't--best thing he could do," said Sir John. "If the service was as
it ought to be, that fellow would rise like a shell. If I had sons I'd
put them in the ranks, every one, and push 'em, sir--for an example, if
nothing else--sons, ah!" Here Sir John shrugged his shoulders slightly,
shrank back into his chair, and, in dismal contemplation of that
distressing subject, made an end of his breakfast. "However," he said,
after a pause of thought, devoted to his own engrossing affairs, "I'll
give in to the popular opinion of course here, as I always do. We'll
look the fellow up, Sutherland: he shall have his commission; I've got
no claims upon me, at present, at least. Musgrave's boy shall not go to
the bad if I can help it. I suppose, after all, it's not likely to help
a young man's morals to throw him loose on London, out of his own class
into a barrack room, eh?--where he don't care a straw for the public
opinion, and where the fellows get drunk, eh? Where do you suppose now
he'll go?"

"He's six foot one, if he's an inch," said the Colonel, meditatively;
"of course into the Guards."

"Guards!--ah! lots of fellows there that have seen better days," said
Sir John--"wild fellows, that break their mothers' hearts, and bring
gray hairs to the grave, and so on. Regent's Park--nursery-maids--wont
do that; he's fit to marry any girl he might take a fancy to, sir, and
make it impossible for any man to help him--for a fellow who marries
beneath him," said Sir John, falling into the favourite channel of his
own thoughts, "is lost--you can do no more for him. To be sure! I never
thought of that, odd enough, till this moment; raise a _man_ from the
ranks, all very well--but I defy you to raise his wife; that must be
looked to directly, Sutherland--_don't_ you know where he is?"

In answer to this question, the Colonel placed before his old comrade
Roger's letter. Colonel Sutherland was not at all afraid of the
nursery-maids or of young Musgrave's foolish falling in love. The
Colonel, who had loved and been married at the natural season, wore no
false spectacles to throw this hue upon everything, as did the unhappy
old bachelor, hunted to death by his problematical heir, and able to
think of nothing else. Certainly lads of twenty are not to be guaranteed
against such accidents; but Roger, the Colonel felt very certain, was by
no means possessed by that hyperbolical fiend who directed the thoughts
of the unfortunate baronet to "nothing but ladies." Sir John read the
letter with a little emotion, which he was evidently ashamed of; he held
it in his hand for some little time after he had finished reading it, in
order that he might be able to look perfectly unsympathetic and
unconcerned. Then he put it down and got up hastily.

"With your permission, Sutherland, I'll have an hour's rest," he said.
"I tumbled in here--what with the cold and feeling desperately hungry;
nothing like sea-sickness for giving a man an appetite afterwards--without
 ever asking for my apartment. Thank you for your hospitality, old
fellow--you see I mean to take advantage of it--and we'll talk this
all over after dinner. I say, what a famous snug place you've got!
There's another grievance of that said Armitage Hall, which the
fellows there would have you believe a paradise. Not a room in the
house that does not want half a dozen people about to make it look
inhabited; not a chance for a snug chat like what we've just had.
Suppose a mite of a fellow like me crouching by a fire that could
roast me, shut in by a screen in a room that would hold half the
county!--ugh! the thought is enough. Here we are!--famous!--there's a
fire!--I'll bet you sixpence my man lighted that fire. He has a genius
for that sort of thing. I'll tell him to communicate his secret to
your people here."

"I suspect," said the Colonel, with a smile, but a momentary pique, "the
fabric was built by the maid; but I hope you'll find the place
comfortable. Take care you don't injure your night's rest by resting
through the day--dinner at six--nobody but ourselves. You will find me
downstairs whenever you please, but don't think you're in the least
degree called upon to make your appearance before dinner."

Then the Colonel went downstairs and stepped into a little side-room, in
which he sometimes indulged himself with a modest cigar, while the
dining-room was being cleared of all the litter brought by his visitor.
Colonel Sutherland was an orderly man by nature; he did not like to see
the coats and rugs and mufflers lying about on his chairs, and smiled
to himself with a little perplexity over that guest, who was so
singularly unlike himself. He was not quite certain as yet how they
should "get on," though very confident in Sir John's good meaning and
his own good temper. Presently Patchey came to consult him about the
dinner, and to state that the cook would gladly have an audience of her
master, which, with a little reluctance, the Colonel accorded. An
arrival so sudden, and of so important a person, was no small event at
Milnehill.




CHAPTER XIII.


For this first day, it must be allowed, the Colonel did not particularly
enjoy the stranger in his house. The establishment of Milnehill
consisted of two maids and Patchey, who had been Colonel Sutherland's
factotum and personal manager for twenty years. Patchey's name was Paget
as it happened, and he was supposed to have noble blood in his veins, as
he boasted on certain extreme occasions; but it was only on very grand
festivals, and as a name of state, that his noble patronymic was
produced, and for the most part he was well content with Patchey, which
consisted better with his fortunes. Patchey was Irish by birth, though
Scotch to extremity in everything else; but that accident perhaps helped
him to rather more blunders than might have been expected from his
discreet years and sober mind. At the present moment Patchey was
considerably elated by the arrival of his old acquaintance, Sir John's
man, who required more entertainment than his master, and made demands
upon Patchey's time as host which somewhat interfered with his duties.
This travelled gentleman made no less an impression upon the maids, who
were also considerably distracted from their proper and necessary
occupations, in spite of the anxiety of Betsy, the cook, to produce a
creditable dinner in honour of Sir John. These combined causes made
great infringement upon the Colonel's quiet comfort during the day. His
biscuit and little bottle of Edinburgh ale did not make their appearance
till nearly an hour after the proper time. He had to ring three times
for something he wanted; and Patchey himself, the soberest of men,
shared, by way of encouraging his _confrère_, in so many little bottles
of the said Edinburgh, that he appeared at last in a confused condition
of wisdom, which excited to the utmost the wrath of the Colonel. The
explosion of unwonted indignation which came upon Patchey's astonished
head sobered him effectually, and the house recovered its equilibrium,
especially when Sir John's man was summoned to his master, and the maids
awoke to an uncomprehending dread of "the Cornel in a passion," which
frightful picture Patchey presented to them in colours sufficiently
terrible. Afterwards things went on smoothly enough. An unexceptionable
dinner made its appearance, with such a curry as would have won the
heart and warmed the palate of any old Indian; and Patchey, if he looked
a little wiser and more solemn than usual, was all the more rigid in the
proprieties, and behaved himself with a dignity worthy of the grand
butler at Armitage Park. Sir John, who had not been seen since
breakfast, appeared wonderfully refreshed and rejuvenated at the
dinner-table. The leading fancy which inspired him at the present
moment, though it frightened him, and though he feigned to fly from it,
had nevertheless its influence upon his toilette, as well as on more
important things. He was about fifty, middle-sized, yellow-complexioned,
but, save for a little querulousness of expression, by no means like
an invalid. Neither did the shade of Parisian fashion in his dress
increase his pretensions to ill health, though it added a certain
odd, indefinable something of the ridiculous to his appearance, which
Colonel Sutherland could not make out, yet could not help observing.
Of this, however, nobody could be more profoundly unaware than Sir
John, though no one would have been quicker to perceive the same thing
in another. He took his seat at the cosy round table with a sigh of
satisfaction, and looked round upon all the comforts of the room; the
fire sparkling and manageable and not too large, the crimson curtains
drawn, the bright lamp, the well-spread table, and Patchey's solemn
face at the sideboard. "Happy man!--_you_ have not been thrust into
a gloomy desert of an Armitage Park, and congratulated on your good
fortune--_you_ can make yourself as cosy as you will!" said Sir John,
who for the moment commiserated himself most sincerely, and thought
with a positive shudder of those ghostly rooms from which he had fled,
to such cold comfort as could be found in a Parisian _appartement_,
shining with white marble and white muslin, stucco and gold.

"I suppose you could make yourself snug, too, if you preferred it, eh?"
said the Colonel, across the table. "I don't think _I_ should have
quarrelled with Armitage Park, for the sake of my Ned and Tom."

And as he said these words he put his hand to his ear, and bent across
the table for his companion's answer; for the Colonel was not without a
spice of mischief in his nature, and rather enjoyed the silent hitch of
the unfortunate baronet's shoulder, the pucker on his brow, and the
"pshaw!" of disgust which burst from his lips. However, the dinner
mollified Sir John--that Indo-British dinner, with its one
yellow-complexioned dish, and its general tone, slight but _prononcée_,
of oriental fervor. Had not Betsy been cook to General Mulligatawny, and
lived three years with Mrs. Melrose? Paris was nothing to her--Sir John
proclaimed his enthusiastic approbation aloud.

When the important meal was over, and the two gentlemen sat by the fire
over their wine, they had a long dinner-talk about Scott of the 27th and
Wood of the 40th--and that fine fellow Simeon, who was forming the troop
of Irregulars, you know--and poor Peter, who lost his majority by that
ugly accident, and only recovered to see his juniors passed before
him--and Hodgson, who came home on sick leave--and Roberts, who had got
cadetships for all his five sons. When that highly interesting and
satisfactory talk flagged with the removal of the cloth, and the
departure of the servants, Colonel Sutherland began to grow a little
anxious about his _protegé_. Poor Roger, though Sir John might be very
willing to befriend him, evidently occupied a very small place in the
baronet's memory. The Colonel cracked some nuts very slowly, and fell
into silence. His visitor lost in the depths of that easy chair--the
Colonel's own chair--which the selfish little man, in the most entire
disregard of prescriptive rights, had unfeelingly appropriated, looked
round him with perfect comfort and satisfaction. In the momentary
silence, the crackle of the fire, the deliberate crack, crack of
Colonel Sutherland's nutcrackers, the faint sound of the breeze outside,
combined to heighten the tranquillity, ease, and uninterrupted comfort
of the scene. "By George!" cried Sir John, suddenly starting up with an
action so impetuous that he almost upset his wine, and caused the
Colonel to stop short in his occupation, holding out his nutcracker in
one hand, putting the other to his ear, and looking with a startled
glance over the top of his spectacles.

"This time last night I was tossing on your detestable German ocean,
wishing you and your house far enough, and as sick as--as--as an
unfortunate traveller could be. I think this a very agreeable contrast.
Though you do throw your boys in my teeth, old fellow, here's prosperity
and happiness to Milnehill!"

"And a very hearty welcome to my old comrade," said the Colonel,
stretching out his kind hand.

Settling down after this little effusion, cost the English temper of the
guest a few minutes silence. Then he resumed upon the business of the
night:--

"Now, Sutherland, about this boy. I think that was a very proper letter
of his, do you know; I like him the better for having written it: I
should have done the same thing in his place. The young fellow of course
has done something to bring us into mud and bother by this time; of
course he has--what's the good of making a bolt if nothing comes of it?
I incline with you to think he's gone into the Guards."

"By-the-bye," said the Colonel, "I've been thinking that over. I'm not
so sure of that by this time: a man who hopes to rise from the ranks
would find _that_, I fear, about the most unkindly soil he could try.
Musgrave, of course, wants to see service--the Guards very rarely leave
London. After all, I incline to change my opinion: a marching regiment
would be better for him with his views."

"What a fellow you are!" cried the baronet, "you bring a man round to
your views, and then cast him off and declare a contrary opinion. Now
I'm all for the Guards and the Regent's Park barracks. He's a handsome
fellow enough, I suppose, and I know he's not very clever. Of course,
he's taken in by the superior corps, and high reputation, and all that
sort of thing. I'll bet you something he's a Guardsman. Now, what's to
be done? If you want me to start for town directly and hunt him up, I
say thank you, my excellent friend, I am exceedingly comfortable here;
travelling bad for my health--beginning of March the worst season in the
year--and so on, to any extent you please. But I don't want the boy to
slip through our fingers, mind you. What's to be done? Don't you think
he'll write again?"

"Very doubtful," said Colonel Sutherland.

"Doubtful?--doubtful's something," said Sir John. "It can do no harm, so
far as I can perceive, to wait and see. Let's be quiet for a little, and
keep on the look-out. Of course, had I known what had happened I might
have stayed in town," he added, with a slightly injured air, "and
settled that concern before I came on here. But, of course, as I did not
know--"

"I did not know either; nobody knew--he only left home the day before
yesterday," interrupted the Colonel.

"To be sure; and yet it would have been very convenient could I have
been informed of it while in town," proceeded the baronet, still in a
tone of injury; "really at this time of the year--and I don't see there
can be any damage done by waiting to see if he writes again."

"Only that he might enter a regiment going to India, or Canada, or
Australia, and might write on the eve of the voyage, as is most likely,
and be lost beyond remedy," said the Colonel, anxiously.

Sir John scratched his head. "That would be a bore," he admitted; "at
all events, let's wait--we'll say a week; a recruit can't be off to the
end of the world in that time. Then there's a little leisure to think;
and I say, Sutherland, keep your interest for your own occasions, old
fellow--you may want it yet for one of those everlasting boys of yours.
I've a strong confidence Tom will take you in, and go for a soldier like
the rest of his race. What would you make the boy a parson for? A Scotch
parson too!--whom nobody can be of the least benefit to. Wait a
little--he'll change his mind, that fellow will, or he's not the boy I
took him for. Let's join the--hum--I forgot--no ladies to join," he
muttered, in as low a tone as he could drop his voice to so suddenly.
"Play chess still, Sutherland?--let's try a game."




CHAPTER XIV.


Sir John Armitage found Milnehill an exceedingly agreeable habitation.
He fell into the routine of the Colonel's habits as a man long
accustomed to a life and duties similar to those of his host only could
have done. Day by day he recovered of his querulousness and invalidism.
He even forgot the dreaded heir who had driven him from his new
inheritance, and began to be able to speak on ordinary subjects without
much allusion to the dreadful subject of marriage, and his own
perplexities in respect to it. Then Sir John, when once delivered from
himself, was a little of a humorist, and enjoyed the peculiarities of
the society in which he found himself. Numberless old Indian officers,
members of the Civil service, families who, without being of that
origin, had two or three sons in our oriental empire, and people more or
less connected with India, were to be found in the neighbourhood.
Indeed, with the mixture of a clergyman or two, a resident landed
proprietor, linked to the community by means of a son in the B.N.I., or
a daughter married in Calcutta, and one or two stray lawyers from
Edinburgh--this formed the whole of Colonel Sutherland's society, and no
small part of the general society of the neighbourhood.

These excellent people, to the greater part of whom the world consisted
of India and Edinburgh, whose associations were all connected either
with the kindly and limited circle of home, or with the _bizarre_ and
extraordinary life of the East, and to whom the rest of the world came
in by the way, a sort of unconsidered blank of distance between the two
points of interest, were as original and agreeable a community as one
could wish to meet with; experienced, for years of travel, of
intercourse with primitive people, and of universal command and
authority, had given a certain decision and authority to their
judgment; yet so singularly simple in respect to this European world and
its centres of civilisation, and so innocent of all public sentiment
other than the dominant Anglo-Saxon instinct of sway and rule over an
inferior race, that their views on general subjects had a freshness and
novelty which, if sometimes a little amusing, was always racy and
original. Knowing very little, except in words, of the races who contest
with us the supremacy of the modern world; of those powers so equally
balanced whose slightest move on either side sets all the kingdoms of
Christendom astir, and threatens contests bigger and more ominous than
any conquering campaign of the East; this community was good-humouredly
contemptuous of the incomprehensible ignorance of those dwellers at home
who knew no difference between Tamul and Hindostani, who innocently
imagined that a man at Agra, being in the same country with his brother
at Madras, might have a chance of meeting with him some day, or who
could not be made to comprehend the difference between a Dhobi and a
man of high caste. These strange ignorances they laughed at among
themselves with a pleasant feeling of superiority, and contested Indian
appointments and the new regulations of the Company with far greater
interest than the state of Europe could excite them into. One and
another had charge of a little troop of children, "sent home" for their
education. Somebody was always returning, somebody always "going out."
There was great talk, especially among the ladies, of outfits and their
comparative cheapness, and of the respective advantages and
disadvantages in travelling overland or by the Cape. Sir John, who was
Indian enough to find himself much at home in this society, was at the
same time man of the world enough to be amused by its characteristics.
He found it more entertaining to listen to a lady's troubles in a
journey to the hills, to the adventures of the dàkh, or the misbehaviour
of the Syces, than he had found it in recent days to bewail the
afflictions of a continental tour, the impositions of the inns, and the
failure of the cooks. Palanquins and howdahs were unquestionably more
picturesque than travelling carriages and _vetturini_, and the Dakh
Bungalow ten times more original than the _Hôtel d'Angleterre_ or the
_Römische Kaiser_. Sir John, for the moment, found himself so famously
entertained, that he showed no inclination whatever to abridge his stay
at Milnehill.

He liked his host, he liked the society, he liked the quarters; the
dinners were good, the curry superlative, the house extremely cosy. Then
the freedom of the bachelor life, free from any disagreeable claim of
duties, suited the baronet exactly. His room was exactly the size he
preferred, his fire always burned cheerfully, the Colonel left him to
himself with perfect good breeding and discreet kindness, forcing his
inclinations in nothing. General Mulligatawny, whose "policy" touched
one side of the humble enclosure of Milnehill, had two unmarried ladies
at present resident in his house, in whom the baronet felt a certain
interest, both bound for India, and consequently not to be seen or
treated with after a certain date, which greatly increased their
attractions. One of them, the General's grand-daughter, a pretty girl of
eighteen, to whom Sir John seriously, but secretly, inclined, and who,
he rather more than suspected, was pretty certain to laugh in his face
at any avowal of his incipient sentiment; the other, a handsome woman of
thirty, youngest of all the said General's dozen children, "going out"
to keep house for a brother, who had already got through two wives, and
preferred a little interregnum before looking for another. This latter
lady, Sir John felt with a little terror, was what people call
"extremely suitable," and the very person for him. Consequently, he
conceived a great dread of her, mingled with a little anxiety to look
well in her presence. With these attractions to the neighbourhood, is it
wonderful that Sir John showed little inclination to leave Milnehill?

The week passed, and another week followed it. There was still no news
from Roger Musgrave, and the Colonel grew at once impatient and anxious.
These feelings, struggling with his punctilious and old-fashioned
hospitality, made him exceedingly uncomfortable. He could no longer
enjoy the presence of his guest, while at the same time it was against
all his traditions of friendliness to suggest anything to him which
should shorten his stay, or make him feel himself unwelcome. The
Colonel, to whom all the varied sentiments of life had come in their due
season, could not see the baronet's perplexities and pre-occupations in
presence of womankind without secret amusement and wonder; and Sir
John's regards, divided between Miss Mulligatawny and her niece,
surprised his host into occasional accesses of private laughter; but
this by no means sufficed to divert the Colonel, as it diverted his
visitor, from the important object which had originally brought him
here. Colonel Sutherland never entered his cosy dining-room in the
morning without the dread of finding a letter from Roger, telling of
some step which was irrevocable, and carried him quite out of their
reach. He went to rest with that thought in the evening, and took it up
on waking the next day: he began to be quite restless and full of
discomfort; he even meditated setting out by himself to London to find
the young man: he wrote to various old friends in town, begging them to
make inquiries. Then he repeated to himself, "Make inquiries! look for a
needle in a bundle of hay!" Yet, nevertheless, sent off his letters. On
the whole, nothing had so agitated and disturbed the Colonel for years.
He pictured to himself the lingering hope of being yet sought after and
aided, which would dwell in the youth's mind unawares: he imagined the
hope sickening, the expectation failing: he thought of the bitter
enlightenment, which has ceased to believe in words and promises,
growing round the boy: he felt his own word losing its meaning, and his
own earnest desire frustrated. Then, unable to keep silence, in spite of
his reticence as host, he spoke to Sir John on the subject. Sir John
made light of his troubles: "My dear fellow, what can they do with a
batch of new recruits in a week--three weeks, is it? Very well, then,
three weeks; what do you suppose could be done in that time? Besides,
have you any certainty that troops are being sent abroad at all? I
don't know of any; and for the Queen's service, you know, I ought to be
almost a better authority than yourself. No, no, have patience--we'll
hear from the boy presently, I have not the slightest doubt of it. Give
him up?--no, not a bit! but a little knocking about will do him
good--always does young men good! If you look so very serious, I shall
believe you want to get rid of me."

This last address was unanswerable. The Colonel closed his lips with a
sigh. As for his own influence, from which he at one time hoped a good
deal, he found it conclude in a courteous letter and a ready promise.
The Colonel was extremely discomfited and discouraged; for the first
time in his life he repented of kindness. Had he, after all, "raised
expectations which could never be realized?" The matter gave him a great
deal more pain than Sir John could have thought possible. _He_, with all
the carelessness of a man who has commonly found the world go well with
him, put this affair aside lightly. Why should anything happen to
disconcert their plans? As soon as the boy should turn up he was ready
and eager to help him. He had no apprehension of any romantic
_contretemps_, such as the Colonel feared; such things only occurred in
very rare cases. What harm could it do to wait?

Thus still another week passed on. A month after hearing from Roger,
Colonel Sutherland found another letter on his breakfast table; it was
dated "Ship 'Prince Regent,' in the Downs, March 21st." With a gasp of
excitement the Colonel ran his eyes over it, and then thrust it into the
hand of Sir John, who was calmly eating his breakfast. The baronet
started, read it over, jumped from his seat, and called for his man in a
voice of thunder. Then he flew to a writing-table which stood in one
corner, wrote something hurriedly in gigantic characters, shouting aloud
at the end of every word for "Summers! Summers!" Summers made his
appearance hastily, amazed and fluttered by the imperative demand.

"Fly!--horseback, railway, anything that's quickest--telegraph-office,
Edinburgh! To be sent this instant; return directly; here's your money;
I tell you, fly!" cried the excited baronet.

Summers made an astonished bow, looked at the paper, and demanded where?
His master took him by the shoulders and thrust him out of the door,
following him through the rain along the garden, and shouting,
"Telegraph-office, Edinburgh!" in his ear, with sundry stimulating
expletives. Then Sir John returned much more slowly. He found the
Colonel marching about the room, very grave, and very much excited.

"It's not your fault, old fellow," said the baronet, hastily "bolting,"
to use his own expression, the remainder of his breakfast; "here's the
man that's to blame; come down upon _me_, it'll do you good. I don't
give this up yet. How's the wind? Dead south-west for a miracle--can't
go a step down the Channel in a sou'-wester! Come along--put up your
traps, brighten your grave face, and let's be off by the first train!"

"We'll be too late!" said the Colonel, whose mortification and distress
were great.

"Not a bit of it," said Sir John. "Telegraph reaches the ship in
half-an-hour--'Young man, Roger Musgrave, enlisted among the troops on
board the "Prince Regent," to be detained. To the officer in command.'
We shall be there by noon to-morrow all right. Why do you suppose now
that Fortune should make up her mind to spite us? Why shouldn't the wind
stay for twenty-four hours in that quarter, and all be well?"

"Why, indeed?" said the Colonel, with a sigh; "why should not everything
serve our caprice when we lose the true opportunity, and then make a
fictitious one?--but they don't, Armitage. I shall never forgive myself;
however, while there is still a hope let us go."

For the Colonel's fears had been literally fulfilled. Roger had enlisted
in a regiment about to sail for the Cape, where there was at present
raging one of the many Caffre wars. He wrote to take leave of his
friend, believing well to be out of reach before any late succour could
reach him. A certain shade of proud and forlorn melancholy was in his
farewell. The young man felt to his heart a pang which he would not
confess--he had been taken at his word.




CHAPTER XV.


By the same evening train--for they were too late for any other--which
had carried the Colonel not very long before to that little rural world
which included Tillington and Marchmain, Horace Scarsdale and Roger
Musgrave, the two gentlemen that night rushed to London. As they went
their darksome way in the dimly-lighted carriage, which, as it chanced,
they occupied alone, each leaned back into a corner, occupied with his
own thoughts. Sir John, totally refusing to accept the uncomfortable
chance of being too late, looked out at every station with an anxious
eye upon the wind, and cried, "Hurrah for the sou'-wester!" as they
dashed into London in the cheery spring morning which brightened the
grimy face of even that overgrown enchantress. Colonel Sutherland said
nothing; his interest in the wind was very limited; he had made up his
mind to misfortune, and blamed himself deeply. The old man understood,
as by a revelation, the mind of the youth who had addressed to him that
letter. The feeling of secret disappointment, without anything to
complain of, the forlorn success of his experiment, the perfect
acquiescence which everybody seemed to have given to his self-disposal;
while, at the same time, it was quite true that he had put himself out
of everybody's way, and "that nobody was to blame," as people say, all
shone through his melancholy leave-taking. If they did succeed in
finding him, would he return? the Colonel asked himself. If they came to
the rescue at last, after he had made his plunge, and had borne the
bitterest part of it, would he consent to be bought off, and owe his
improved rank to Sir John's tardy benevolence? The message itself--was
that judicious?--might not its only effect be to leave a certain stigma
upon the character of the young soldier? Thus one subject of reflection
only more painful than another had quick succession in the Colonel's
thoughts. He vowed to himself he should never again wait for the
co-operation of another in anything which was necessary to be done; and
so only shook his head as Sir John hurra'd for the "sou'-wester," and,
looking behind him as he descended from the carriage, shook his head
still more, and felt the cold whisper of another wind rising upon his
cheek. Sir John perceived it also, and grew pale. "It is only a
current--there are always currents of wind under these archways," he
explained, hurriedly. Then they drove across London in a cab to the
Dover railway, snatched a hasty breakfast of boiling coffee and cold
beef, for which they had not above ten minutes time, and so rushed on
again to make sure of poor Roger's fate. Even Roger's uncertain fate,
however, and all his self-reproach on this occasion, could not hinder
the Colonel's eyes to brighten as they whirled past almost in sight of
Addiscombe, and saw some distant figures in the Cadet's uniform on a
distant road. Could one of them perhaps be Ned?--and the Colonel
thought of seeing his boy to-morrow with a cheerful warmth at his heart,
which, in spite of himself, made him more hopeful--thinking of Ned he
could still believe to find the wind unchanged, the ship unsailed, the
young man's mind unembittered. As the miles and the moments passed, as
the green country sloped upward into grassy hills, and showed here and
there its little precipice of chalk, the Colonel's courage rose. Not
from any reason; he was a man to be above reasons sometimes, this tender
old soldier; the comfort and the courage came, an inexplicable genial
breath from the neighbourhood of his boy.

While, in the meantime, a result perfectly contrary was produced on Sir
John: he shuffled about in his seat with an incontrollable impatience;
he gazed out of the window; he closed his eyes with disgust when he
turned from that; he could have got out and pushed behind like the
Frenchman, so eager was his anxiety. The express train was too slow for
him--the wind had changed!

The wind had changed! When they came in sight of the sea these stormy
straits were specked with ships liberated from their prison, with white
wings spread, and impatient feet, making their way out to the ocean.
Cold and shrill, with its whistle of ungracious breath, the gale hissed
with them through the narrow tunnels; pennons fluttering to the
west--bowsprits pointed seaward, clouds flying on the same cold track,
and as much as these an increase of cold, an acrid contradiction of the
sunshine, bewrayed the east wind which drove invalids to their chambers,
but carried ships down channel. Often before had Sir John Armitage
anathematized the east wind--perhaps he never cursed it in his heart
till now, as he watched with envious impatience a large vessel covered
with sail making her way out of the Downs. "That's her for a wager!"
said Sir John to himself; "the very thing they'd send troops in--a
round, shapeless, horrid old hulk, warranted the worst sailer on the
station. To be sure!--there she goes, bobbing like an apple in a
posset--ugh, you ugly old beast!--couldn't you have waited another
day?"

"Eh?--you were speaking--what's the matter, Armitage?" said the Colonel,
roused by the sound.

"Nothing," said Sir John. To tell the truth, he did not feel himself
quite the hero of the position at this moment; he did not care to
disclose his fears until hope was proved vain; perhaps, after all, that
was not the "Prince Regent"--perhaps the officers were still not aboard,
or some happy accident had prevented her from taking the earliest
advantage of the change of wind. The baronet dragged his companion along
with him to the "Ship" before he would suffer him to ask any questions.
There the obsequious attendants who received the strangers were startled
by the impatient outcry and gesture, almost wild, of the excited
baronet. "The 'Prince Regent,' lying in the Downs, with troops on board
for the Cape--who can tell me if she has sailed?" This inquiry was
somewhat startling to the innkeeper and his vassals. "We can send and
see," suggested timidly one of the waiters, "directly, sir." Sir John
rushed out again, and started off almost at a run towards the pier.
"Sailed two hours ago," said a "seafaring" individual, of questionable
looks, who stood on the steps of the hotel smoking his cigar. "Hallo
there! sailed two hours ago, I tell you--d'ye think you can make up to
her, hey? I'd back you against the precious old tub if you're in that
mind--but she's got the start, look you, by two hours--all sail and a
fresh wind!"

Sir John came back much discomfited and crestfallen. He could not make
up his mind to the disappointment. It was quite intolerable to him. He
consulted everybody round as to the chances of overtaking the ship--was
he likely to do so if he hired a steamer? The nautical bystander took up
this idea with great zeal; but before Sir John committed himself a
better informed waiter volunteered the information that there were still
some officers to join the vessel at Portsmouth, and that she might be
overtaken there. The Colonel shook his head. To him the chances of
success seemed so small, that the further journey was scarcely worth the
while, and some hours would still elapse before there was a train. Sir
John however, still sanguine, found out with a telescope the vessel,
which he still held to be the "Prince Regent," exhausted himself in
contemptuous criticisms on her build and sailing qualities, and declared
that they were certain to be at Portsmouth hours before the unwieldy
transport. The Colonel said nothing; he paced about the room with
serious looks and a grieved heart, sometimes pausing to look wistfully
out from the windows; a week earlier and Roger might have been saved--a
day earlier and they could still have seen him, have tried the last
chance for his deliverance, and made him aware of their real intentions
and regard for his welfare. The Colonel could not forgive himself. For
perhaps the first time in his life he judged his companion unfairly,
felt disgusted at Sir John's exclamation of self-encouragement, and
secretly blamed as levity his eager special pleadings and arguments with
himself. Presently they started again for Portsmouth, fatigue and
vexation together proving almost too much for Colonel Sutherland, who
was the elder by several years, and the most seriously affected in the
present instance. As for Sir John, he still kept himself up by
expectations: of course, they must reach Portsmouth in time--of course,
there could be no difficulties in the way of buying Roger off--he would
return with them, get his commission, and then follow his
pseudo-comrades, if he had still a hankering after the smell of powder.
He was thus flattering himself, when they reached the busy seaport. Sir
John, for once forgetful alike of dinner, rest, and toilette, with
yesterday's beard, and no better provision for the fatigues of the day
than a couple of biscuits, rushed at once into the hubbub of the port.
Some time was occupied in these inquiries; he ran from place to place,
the Colonel marching gravely by his side, putting his hand to his
anxious ear when any one addressed them, listening with his solicitous
stoop forward to every word of every answer. But it was again in
vain--the "Prince Regent" had only signaled in passing, and had neither
paused nor taken in any officers at Portsmouth: by this time, heavy
transport as she was, the vessel was at sea.

Heavily and in silence the two travellers sought an hotel, marched up
the stairs side by side, without saying a word to each other, and threw
themselves, with a simultaneous groan of fatigue and disappointment,
into chairs. This last performance elicited a short, hard laugh from the
baronet, now thoroughly out of sorts. "I've been a confounded fool!"
cried Sir John--"I'll never forgive myself. Why the deuce don't you come
down upon me, Sutherland?--I'm an ass--I'm an idiot--I deserve to be
turned out of decent society! Hang me, if I did not mean to be a father
to that boy!"

The real sincerity and penitence of his tone woke once more all the
kindly feelings of the Colonel. "It cannot be helped now," he said with
a sigh; "by this time it's providence: and I don't doubt it'll turn out
for the best."

"Ah, it is easy for you to speak," said Sir John, who perhaps did not
quite understand his companion's simple, practical reference to a
disposition beyond the power of man; "you are not to blame: to think,
with my confounded trifling, I should have let Musgrave's boy throw
himself away!"

This led the Colonel to soothe his friend, and take the guilt upon
himself, a proceeding which the baronet, after a few minutes, did not
object to. After a while his spirits rose. He began to be reminded of a
vigorous appetite, and to recover the exhaustion of fatigue. With a
little assumption of languor on his own part, and a tender regard for
the necessities of the Colonel, Sir John took upon himself at last to
order dinner. Then the travellers separated, to make their most needful
ablutions. When they met again at dinner Sir John was himself again.

"After all, Sutherland," he said, "nothing can be more absurd than to
disturb ourselves about this, though it is very vexatious. 'Twill do the
boy good, after all--nothing I should have liked better at his age; and
won't harm his prospects a bit--everybody likes adventurous young men.
Here's a health and a famous voyage to the young fellow. I'll take care
there's a welcome waiting for him when he lands--for of course every
ship that sails the passage will outstrip the transport. To be sure,
he's melancholy enough now, I believe. Do him good--teach him to be
careful how he runs away from his friends another time. What's the good
of breaking our hearts over it?--he'd be just as sea-sick if he were
Colonel; and I warrant the 'Prince Regent' gives him quite enough to
think of for eight days. What can't be cured, you know--here's good luck
to him!--the end of his voyage will make up for it all."

The Colonel drank his luckless _protegé's_ health very gravely: he
thought of him all night, travelling with the forlorn lad over the
darksome sea; and sent better things than wishes after him--remembering
his name, in every break of his sleep through that long night, before
God, who saw the boy; and so, unseen, unaided, and ignorant of the
disappointed efforts which had toiled after him, and of the one tender
heart which ached over its failure, and was his bedesman, nothing else
being possible, the young adventurer went away deeper into the world and
his life, further into the night and the distance, and the black paths
of the sea.




CHAPTER XVI.


The two gentlemen returned next day to Dover, to make inquiries after
the fate of Sir John's telegraphic despatch, which, it appeared, had
been delivered without doing any good. Roger had enlisted in a regiment
of rifles: he was a famous shot, young, strong, and active--by no means
such a recruit as a commanding officer concerned for the credit of his
regiment would relinquish readily; and, so far as the travellers could
ascertain, no notice had been taken of their communication. Then they
went back to London, where Sir John, feeling himself considerably
discomfited, hurried to the Horse Guards, to see what could be done at
last for his unfortunate _protegé_. Having ascertained, with
difficulty, the regiment in which Roger had enlisted, he discovered,
with no difficulty at all, that this regiment was quite complete in its
number, and that at present there were no vacancies among the officers.
At present! The chances were that a few months of a Caffre war might
show some difference in those full lists; but a man could not purchase a
prospective commission on this grim possibility. The only thing Sir John
could do in the circumstances he did. There was no lack of kindness at
the bottom of his heart: he wrote a kind letter to Roger, enclosing a
bank-bill for a considerable amount, confessing his mortification at the
consequences of his own delay, and ordering the young man, with an
imperative cordiality which he felt quite justified in using, and which
Roger was not likely to resist, to use the money and come home
directly--at least, whether he came home or not, he was not to serve the
campaign in the ranks. "If he comes home, he's not the boy I took him
for," said Sir John; but he dispatched his letter, and with it a note to
the major who led the detachment, and with whom he had some slight
acquaintance. Having done this, the baronet's conscience was clear: he
did what he could to persuade Colonel Sutherland to remain for some time
in town; he himself, after what had happened, having no particular
inclination to return to Milnehill. When he found the Colonel was not to
be persuaded, Sir John remained by himself, finding refuge, alike from
Armitage Park and the grave looks of his friend, in the London season.
He had been long out of the gay world. After a week or two in town, he
gradually warmed to its fascinations, and forgot all about his failure
very speedily, in a modest amount of fashionable dissipation and the
comforts of his club.

The Colonel stayed only to spend a day with Ned, and hastened home; and
as everything there went fair and softly, and nothing else within the
limits of this history requires immediate attention, let us spare a
moment to glance after poor Roger, forlorn and alone among his comrades
upon the monotonous sea.

Among his comrades, and yet alone--more alone than the young man had
been during all his life. He had never supposed--he had no means of
imagining--the humiliations of this new life. He could gulp the inferior
rank, the mortifications of his humble position--he could manage to
salute as superiors, totally above him and out of his sphere, the young
officers who a year ago would have be

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