THEtwo 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 unfortunateprotegé. 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 someslight 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 beenduring 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 been too happy to accompany him into the preserves of the Grange, or sit by his side at his godfather’s hospitable table. These things he could bear; what Roger could not bear was the perpetual society from which he could not free himself—the constant presence of his “mates,” and entire lack of anything like privacy in this existence, of which he had not conceived half the pangs. If he had been able to seek the meanest possible retirement of his own, he could have borne all other grievances cheerfully—but this was impossible; and the life of which every hour sleeping or waking was spent in the rude companionship of men of a class much inferior and a breeding totally different from his own, grew bitter to the young man. He became unnaturally grave and self-absorbed.He attended to the minutest details of his duty with the most scrupulous and rigid care: but the sunshine and the glow of youth died away from him—life spread around him full of vulgar circumstances, unceasing noise, unceasing mirth, a perpetual accompaniment which made his heart sick. He did everything he could to recall his courage—he tried to flatter his imagination with pictures of future distinction; but Roger had not the imagination of a poet; his fancy was not strong enough to carry him out of the midst of the reality which vexed his soul; the pictures grew languid, the hopes feeble. His whole nature retreated within itself, and had to summon its uttermost forces to bear the trial. An experience which he had never looked for deepened his thoughts, and gave a painful development to his mind. His nearest approach to solitude was when he leaned over the side of the ship, and lost the talk of his comrades in the sweep of the waves. Then many a melancholy fancy possessed poor Roger: sometimes he could fancy he saw the face of his godfathergazing at him with a melancholy compunction; and the loyal heart rose, and his own looks did their best to brighten, as if even the departed spirit should not blame itself while he had power to say No. Sometimes it was the good Colonel who looked out of Roger’s imagination, with a kind and grieved reproach, “Why did you not wait a little?—could you not trustme?”
Sometimes for an instant the face he had seen upon that moorland road beside Marchmain—the young face troubled and blushing, which knew and recognized him, in spite of itself, flashed for a moment before Roger’s dreaming eyes; and then he turned away from the water and the heavens with a quick sigh, and turned back to the little world which made its passage over that sea—the noisy world between those wooden bulwarks, lounging here and there, playing cards, sleeping in the sun, jesting, quarrelling, talking unprofitable talk, and laughing loud laughter. This washisworld, where Roger had to live.
At the same time an incident occurred to trouble him. A detachment of a regimentof infantry shared the comforts of the same transport; and one day, shortly after they sailed, Roger was startled to meet Sam Gilsland, who for his part came to an amazed stand before him, and sheepishly put up his hand to his forehead in respectful salutation. Nothing could persuade Sam that “th’ young Squire” was, like himself, in the ranks. A hurried conversation ensued, in which Roger made strenuous endeavours to knock the fact into the thick head of his countryman; and Sam went away with a confused idea that he was not to touch his cap any more to this unexpected shipmate, or to address the rifleman as Mr. Roger, or to speak of him as the young Squire. This incident at once grieved Roger and comforted him. Somehow there was a certain consolation in the idea that one individual, at least, in that little community knew what and who he really was. But the annoyance overbalanced the comfort. Sam after this could not come in contact with his former patron but with a ludicrous and embarrassing consciousness, which would have made Roger laugh if it had not pained him; the simple lout felt himselfalarmingly on his good behaviour whenever he suspected Roger’s neighbourhood, and made a hundred furtive errands and clumsy attempts to do something for him, which at once disturbed his mind and touched his heart. He was by no means a bad fellow, this Sam—a certain gleam of chivalrous sentiment warmed his opaque spirit at sight of the sad equality with himself to which, in appearance, never in reality, the young Squire was reduced. The honest clown felt a certain mortification and downfall in his own person to think that Roger in his crowded cabin was cleaning his own accoutrements like “a common man!” Sam made stealthy private expeditions into the rifleman’s quarters to do it for him, moved by an indescribable mixture of compassion and respect, and those tender home-associations which never had been so warm in the simple fellow’s heart as now, and could not comprehend the burst of mortified gratification—the mixture of pain and pleasure, wrath and gratitude, with which Roger sent him away. After that he had to content himself with touching his cap stealthily whenhe could have a chance unseen, to the young Squire, and confiding, when he had the opportunity, his own private troubles to him, not without a secret conviction that Mr. Roger, by-and-bye, if not immediately, would be able to right and avenge his humble follower. Sometimes Roger was disposed to think Sam’s presence an augmentation of his own downfall, but in reality there was a certain solace in it unawares.
All this time, however, a third person, totally unsuspected by the unfortunate youth, observed him narrowly and closely, losing nothing, not even the clownish services which Sam would fain have rendered to the young rifleman. The Major was one of the most unsentimental of men. Abstract benevolence would never have suggested to him any special interest whatever in a recruit of superior rank. “His own fault, of course—best thing the fellow could do,” would have been the only comment likely to fall from the lips of the Major; and no indulgence had any chance to drop from his hands upon the head of the unhappy volunteer who had been “wild,” or“gay,” or “unsteady,” and who had lost himself in the ranks.
But from the day of their embarkation the face of Roger had caught his eye. A puzzling consciousness of knowing these ingenuous features troubled him; he felt certain that he had seen them, and seen them under very different circumstances, somewhere. Then came the telegraphic message of Sir John Armitage, which, abrupt and unauthorized as it was, made the Major wroth. He tore it through and sent the fragments overboard in the first flush of his indignation. After a while, however, he repented of his wrath. He had scarcely noted the name in his hurried glance upon the paper—he forgot it in the flush of passion with which he tossed the presumptuous missive overboard; but as soon as he came to himself an uneasy idea that it concerned the young man whom he began to note, troubled the Major. The thought riveted his attention more and more upon the melancholy and grave young rifleman, who seemed to spend all his leisure time leaning over the bulwark watching the waves sweep by the vessel’s side. Gradually, andunawares to himself, the Major grew more and more interested in this solitary soldier; his interest grew into a pursuit; he could no longer help observing him, and so strongly had the idea entered his mind, that to find it mistaken would have been a personal mortification and disparagement of his own wisdom. Then the Major, in his quick, quarter-deck promenade, was witness to the amazed recognition of Sam Gilsland, and of various other private encounters between the two young men, in which Sam’s furtive salutation of respect spoke more than words to the sharp eye of the old soldier. How to act upon his suspicions was, however, a more difficult matter than how to pursue them; and if he was right, what then? Sons of gentlemen before now had dropped clandestinely into the green coats of the Rifle Brigade, about whom the Major had given himself no manner of trouble; and he scarcely liked to acknowledge to himself how much that unregarded message lay on his conscience, or how glad he would have been now to have paid a little more attention to it.
However, the time slipped on, and thevoyage progressed, while the commanding officer busied himself with these fancies, finding himself strangely unable to dissociate the melancholy young private soldier in his green coat from a certain radiant young huntsman “in pink,” whom his fancy perpetually conjured up before him as the hero of some north-country field, but whom he could not identify by name. The Major even tried the unjustifiable expedient of discovering Roger in some neglect of duty, that he might have a plausible motive for calling him into his judicial presence. But not the most sudden and unlooked-for appearance of his commanding officer could betray the young rifleman into forgetfulness of the necessary salute, and in every other particular his duty was done rigidly and minutely, beyond the chance of censure. This circumstance itself piqued the Major’s curiosity further. Then his interest was aided by the interest of others. Somebody discovered the “superior education” (poor fellow! he himself, in sincere humility, was ready to protest he had none) of the young man, and suggested his employmentapart in those regimental matters which required clerking. Strange occupation for the old Squire’s Nimrod! Recognizing that he was not what he seemed, the first impulse of assistance thrust the young huntsman—the child of moor, and fell, and open country—into a little office, and put a pen into the fingers which were much better acquainted with gun and bridle. This odd conclusion of modern philosophy contented the projectors of it mightily, and by no means discontented Roger, who, sick at the heart of his humiliated life, was glad of anything which separated him from his comrades, and gave him at least his own society, if not that of anybody higher; though he knew very well, if no one else did, that hisrôleof rifleman was much more natural and congenial to him than therôleof clerk, of which he knew nothing whatever.
The fact, however, which everybody knows perfectly well, yet few people acknowledge, that all the nameless somethings which distinguish between the lower and the higher—and build most real and palpable, though indescribable, barriers between class and class, do byno means necessarily include education, was not a fact taken into account by the good-natured subaltern who interested himself in Roger’s behalf, while the Major only watched him. So the young man, whose penmanship was not perfection, sat by himself over the regimental business, puzzling his honest brains with accounts which were sometimes overmuch for his arithmetic, yet encouraged by the consciousness that even this irksome business, totally unsuitable for him as it was, was a step of progress. And the Major now and then appearing across his orbit, tempted him with wily questions, to which Roger was impenetrable; and Sam Gilsland, with a grin of satisfaction, tugged his forelock and whispered his conviction that Master Roger would ne’er stand in the ranks when they came to land—which conclusion, however, and the hopes of his subaltern patron to get permanent employment for him of this same description when they reached the end of the journey, were anything but satisfactory to Roger. It began to be rather hard for the young man to keep on the proper respectfulterms with this honest subaltern, whom yet he did not choose to confide in. “No!” exclaimed Roger, “I am fit for a soldier, not for a clerk;” and a flush of his old sanguine conviction, that on the field and in actual warfare there must still be paths to distinction, swept across his face and spirit for the moment. The next minute he was once more puzzling over his papers, with his head bent low and his frame thrilling, his emotion and enthusiasm all suppressed; though they would have made a wonderful impression on the young officer who patronized and took care of him, and who was convinced that Musgrave was not a common fellow, and had a story if he would tell it. This, however, was the very last thing in the world which Roger, totally hopeless now of any deliverance, and too proud to accept the pity of men who were no more than his equals, had any mind to do.
Their arrival at the Cape, however, made a wonderful difference in the prospects of the young rifleman. Sir John Armitage’s letter, put into his hands before they landed (for the baronet was correct in his suppositionthat the “Prince Regent” was of course the slowest sailer on the seas), threw him into a sudden agitation of pride, gratitude, shame, consolation, and perplexity, which it is impossible to describe; in the midst of which paroxysm of mingled emotions he was summoned to the presence of the Major. The Major received him with outstretched hand. “Thought I knew you all along,” said that unagitated functionary; “could not for the life of me recollect where—made up my mind it was a peculiar case—eh?—Sit down and let me hear at once what you mean to do.”
“What I mean to do?” asked Roger, in amazement.
“To be sure—you’ve had your letters, I suppose? This here is a delusion,” said the Major, tapping upon the coarse sleeve of the young man’s uniform; “found it out, haven’t you?—knew it myself all along; meant to interfere when we came to land, whether or no, and inquire about your friends. Here’s old Armitage spared me the trouble; recollect as well as possible the meet with the Tillington hounds—your uncle’s, eh?—and the old boywas extravagant, and left you unprovided for? Never mind! a young fellow of pluck like you can always make his way. Now, here is the question—Are you going home? What are you going to do?”
These questions were easy to ask, but impossible to answer. Roger had scarcely read with comprehension Sir John’s letter, and his mind was in the utmost agitation, divided between his old ideas of entire independence and the uneasy consciousness, of all that his experience had taught him. He scarcely knew how he excused himself from immediate answer, and managed to conclude his audience with the Major. The rest of the day he spent in the most troubled and unsatisfactory deliberations; but a little later, delayed by some accident, a letter from Colonel Sutherland came into his hands. That letter persuaded and soothed the young man like an actual presence; he yielded to its fatherly representations. That voice of honour, simple and absolute, which could not advise any man against his honour—Roger could scarcely explain to himself how it was that his agitationcalmed, his heart healed, his hopes rose with all the rebound and elastic force of youth; he no longer felt it necessary to reject the kindness offered him, or to thrust off from himself, as bitter bonds, those kindly ties of obligation to which it was impossible to attach any mean or sordid condition. Why should he be too proud to be aided? But he had no mind to go home and lose that chance of distinction and good service which would be his best thanks to his friends. A few days after, Roger Musgrave had rejoined his regiment as a volunteer, money in his purse, a light heart in his breast, and everybody’s favour and goodwill attending him. He who was the best shot within twenty miles of Tillington was not far behind at Cape Town; and there we leave him for his first enterprise of arms.
INthe meantime the life of Horace Scarsdale had made progress, according to his own plan, in his new sphere. His uncle, at first annoyed and disturbed by the summary settlement which the young man had made for himself, was perhaps, after all, rather pleased than otherwise to be thus freed from the charge of arranging for one whom he understood so little; and no opposition of friends hindered his establishment in the office of Mr. Pouncet, where the lawyer, half out of admiration for the abilities which speedily developed themselves in his new clerk, and half in tender regard for the suit which he possibly might have to conduct for him, was very gracious to Horace. Everything promised well for thenew comer: his prodigious knowledge of the private affairs of everybody in the county, their weaknesses and follies—knowledge acquired, as we have said, from the outdoor servants and humble country tradesmen in the village alehouses, but of which Horace was skilful enough to veil the origin—amazed his employer, who found these gleanings of unexpected knowledge wonderfully useful to him, and could not comprehend how they had been gained. The young man had now an income, small in reality, but to him competent and satisfactory, and sweetened by the consciousness of freedom and of knowing it was all his own. He was eminently cold-blooded, and “superior to impulse”—a man who could calculate everything, and settle his manner of life with an uncompromising firmness; but he was not a stoic. He stepped into all the dissipations of the little country town—stepped, but did not plunge—with an unlovely force, whichcouldcommand itself, and did not. He was not “led away,” either by society, or youthful spirits, or by that empire of the senses which sometimes overcomes veryyoung men. What he did which was wrong he did with full will and purpose, gratifying his senses without obeying them. He carried his cool head and steady nerves through all the scenes of excitement and debauchery of which Kenlisle was capable—and it had its hidden centre of shame and vice, like every other town—sometimes as an observer, often as a partaker; but he was never “carried away”—never forgot himself—never, by any chance, either in pleasure, or frolic, or vice more piquant than either, ceased to hold himself, Horace Scarsdale, closer and dearer than either sin or pleasure. He was the kind of man to be vicious in contradistinction to being a victim or a slave of vice. He was the man to pass triumphantly through hundreds more innocent than himself, strong in the unspeakable superiority of being able to stop when he found it necessary, and of having at all times that self-control and self-dominion which belongs to cold blood and a thoroughly selfish spirit. Secure in this potent ascendancy of self-regard, Horace could do many things which would have destroyed the reputation ofa less cool or more impressionable man. Yet his entry into independent life, and those pleasures hitherto unknown to him—mean and miserable as were the dissipations of the little country town—occupied Horace, though not to the exclusion of his own interests, enough to make him slower than he had intended to be, in his searches after his father’s secret. True, there was no case of ScarsdaleversusScarsdale, orversusany other person, in any of the law reports he could reach, any more than there was in Mr. Pouncet’s brain; and he knew no means at the present moment of entering on his inquiry, and had obtained no clue whatever as to the manner of this secret, or which was the way of finding it out. But he did not chafe under this, as in other circumstances he might have done: for the present he was sufficiently occupied, and not at all discontented with his life.
At the same time, in spite of the deportment which displeased the Colonel, there were some traces of breeding, unconsciously to himself, in the speech and manner of Horace,which gained him acceptance among the people around him. He was not refined nor cultivated, nor accustomed to society; but though his sentiments might be vulgar enough, he himself was not so. His very rudeness was not the rudeness of a Kenlisle townsman; he was ignorant of that extraordinary junction of rural vanity and urban importance, which goes towards the making of the fashionable class of such a place. His father, whom Horace would not have imitated consciously on any account whatever, and who certainly bestowed no pains on his instruction, had notwithstanding known in his day a society and breeding much superior to anything in the little north-country town, and the atmosphere lingered still about Mr. Scarsdale, an imperceptible influence which had affected his son unawares. Then his very position, outcast from society as he had been brought up, gave him a certain superiority over the limited people to whom a local “circle” was the world, and an introduction to some certain house the highest point of ambition. Horace laughed aloud among his newassociates at the idea of society in Kenlisle, and smiled to the same import with a silent contempt which was extremely superior and imposing in Mrs. Pouncet’s drawing-room, to which he was speedily admitted, in right of his mysterious “prospects.”
By dint of this contempt for the community in general, which everybody of course understood to bear exception for themselves, and of the singular and mysterious circumstances of his family, which began to be remembered and talked of; by his own arrogant philosophy, which imposed upon the inexperienced youths about him, and the subtle talents to which his employer bore witness, he grew rapidly into an object of interest and curiosity in the little town. No one could tell what sudden eminence he might spring into, upon some sudden discovery; nobody knew anything of him—no one was admitted to his confidence; he was the inscrutable personage of the place, and left the fullest ground for fancy, which, in the form of gossip, occupied itself mightily about the singular young man. All this involuntary homage was incenseto Horace; he sneered at it, yet it pleased him. He was elated to find himself a person of importance, though he despised the community which honoured him; and between the honours of the little Kenlisle society, the pleasures deep down below the surface, which gave a black side to the humanity of even that secluded place, and the new sense of freedom, solitude, and self-government in this new life—the whole put together effaced from his mind for the time all that eagerness for his father’s secret which had preyed upon him when his life was idle and unoccupied, and when he sat by that father’s table every day. He had no responsibilities, no “ties,” and no heart to feel the want of affection. He abandoned himself, so far as he could abandon that self which was the only thing he never forgot, to all his new enjoyments. He was still young, absolute, and highflying, though his youth was neither innocent nor lovely; he forgot his deeply-laid projects for the moment, and stood still on his way, contenting himself with an importance, a mysterious superiority, a license of pleasure unknown to him before.
He was not an experienced schemer, bent upon the success of his plans, and deaf to the voices of the charmers. He was young, and, according to his fashion, he stood still and forgot his object in the pastimes of his youth.
THISstate of things went on for a longer time than Horace himself was aware of. He had no correspondence with Marchmain, nor indeed with any one. For though he wrote once to Colonel Sutherland, he had no present motive sufficient to keep up a correspondence with his uncle; and nearly a year had passed over his head before he recollected this unrecorded passage of time. At the end of this period, however, business brought a visitor to Kenlisle, and to Mr. Pouncet’s office, who was destined to have a most serious part in Horace Scarsdale’s future life.
This was Mr. Julius Stenhouse, the principal solicitor of an important county town in Yorkshire—a man who had been bred inMr. Pouncet’s office, had suddenly, to everybody’s amazement, become his partner, and who, as suddenly, a few years after had left Kenlisle for his present residence. These events had all happened before Horace had any cognizance of the news of the district, and were consequently unknown to him until Mr. Stenhouse appeared. The stranger was a man of about fifty, with what people called an “extremely open manner,” and a frank wide smile, which betrayed two rows of the soundest teeth in the world, and gave a favourable impression to most people who had the honour of making Mr. Stenhouse’s acquaintance. This prepossession, however, as might be ascertained on inquiry, was not apt to last—everybody liked, at first sight, the candid lawyer; but he had few friends. Unlike the usual wont of a country town, nobody appeared anxious to claim the recognition of the new arrival. Far from being overwhelmed with hospitality, Mr. Pouncet had so much difficulty in making up a tolerable number of people to meet him at the one little dinner-party given in his honour,that Horace Scarsdale, for the first time, though he had long assisted at Mrs. Pouncet’s “evenings,” had the distinguished honour of an invitation.
Before this time, however, various circumstances had concurred to attract the attention of Horace towards Mr. Stenhouse. The extreme difference between his manners and his reputation, the mixture of repugnance and respect with which Mr. Pouncet treated him, the great reluctance which he showed to enter upon any private business with his visitor, and the mystery of the former partnership which had existed between them, roused the young man’s curiosity. Altogether, these new circumstances brought Horace to himself; he remembered that he was still only in an inferior position, with no avenue open as yet to fortune or importance. Running over everything in his mind, he perceived that he stood farther than ever from his father’s secret, and that no other means of advancing himself had as yet appeared; and with a certain instinctive and sympathetic attraction, his thoughts turned to Mr. Stenhouse. He bestowed hisbest attention upon him on every opportunity—he sought all the information he could procure about him, and about the connection subsisting between him and Mr. Pouncet. It appeared they were joint-proprietors of some coal-mines in the neighbourhood. What might a couple of attorneys have to do with coal-pits? Horace scented a mystery afar off, with an instinctive gratification. Did the mystery lie here?—and what was its importance, could it be found out?
Without knowing anything whatever on the subject, except the sole fact that Pouncet and Stenhouse were partners in this valuable piece of property, Horace set out very early one spring morning to inspect the ground, and see if anything could be discovered on the subject. It was, as it happened, the morning of the day on which he was to dine at Mr. Pouncet’s. Horace had been late, very late, the previous night. This early walk was of two uses—it restored his unsusceptible nerves to the iron condition which was natural to them, and it gave him a chance of finding out in his old fashion anything that there mightbe to find out. Horace neither knew the extent nor the value of the land possessed by Messrs. Pouncet and Stenhouse: he knew they drew very considerable revenues from it, but did not know how they had acquired it, nor from whom. He pushed briskly along the long country road, winding downwards to a lower level than that of Kenlisle, where once more the hawthorn hedges were greening, and the primrose-tufts unfolding at their feet.
The country looked cheerful and fresh in the early morning, with its few clumps of early trees here and there, in the tender glory of their buds, diversifying the deeper green of the fields. The smoke rose from the cottages, and the labouring men came trudging out from their doors, greeting one another as they passed with remarks upon the weather. By-and-by he came in sight of the village, with its irregular line of thatched and red-tiled houses, with the one blue-slated roof rising over them, which marked the place where an enterprising publican had swung his “Red Lion,” in well-justified dependence upon the “pitmen’s drouth.” Beyond, several tallshafts here and there scattered over the country gave note of the presence of the pits and their necessary machinery. Horace slackened his pace, and went sauntering through the village, keeping a wary eye around him. He had not gone very far when he perceived an old man limping out of a miserable little house near the end of the village, with a poor little cripple of a boy limping after him, in the direction of the coal-fields. Their lamps and the implements they carried pointed out clearly enough their occupation; and a certain dissatisfied, discontented look in the old man’s face made him a likely subject for Horace, who quickened his steps immediately to overtake the wayfarers. It required no great exercise of speed. The querulous, complaining jog with which the old man and his shadow went unsteadily across the sunshine, told its own tale—the very miner’s lamp, swinging from his finger by its iron ring, swung disconsolately, and with a grumble and crack, complaining audibly of the labour, which, to say the truth, was sufficiently unsuitable for the two who trudged alongtogether, the crippled childhood and tottering age, to whose weakness belonged a milder fate. The old man’s face was contracted and small with age—the nose and chin drawn together, the cheeks still ruddy from a life of health, puckered up with wrinkles, and the very skull apparently diminished in size from the efforts of time. On he went, with his feeble limbs and stooping shoulders, the “Davy” suspended from his bony old fingers, and a complaint in every footstep, with his shadow all bent and crumpled up, an extraordinary spectrum moving before him along the sunny road. Horace, who gave him the usual rural salutation of “A fine morning,” received only a half-articulate groan in reply. The old pitman was not thinking of the fine morning, the sweet air, or the sunshine; but only of his own troubles and weaknesses, and himself.
“To them as has the strength it’s fine and fine enow,” he mumbled at last; “but an ould man as should be in his commforable bed—eugh-eugh! Needcessity’s sore upon the ould and frail.”
“How is it that you have to get to work so early?—you’re not a new hand,” said Horace, with the rough and plain-spoken curiosity which often does instead of sympathy.
“A new hand!” groaned his querulous interlocutor; “an I was as I hev been, my young spark, I’d gie you a lesson would larn you better than to speak light to an ould man. I’ve bin about the pit, dash her, since ever the first day she was begoud, and mought have broke my neck like the rest if it hadn’t a bin for good loock, and God A’mighty—eyeh, eyeh! I was about the very ground, I was, when the first word was giv there was coal there; but I’ll never believe there was ought let on o’ that to the ould Squire.”
“Eh!—the pits here are not old pits then, aren’t they?” said Horace; “who was it found the coal? I daresay the landlord made it worth his while.”
“The Lord make me quat of a parcel o’ vain lads, that ken no more nor as many coodies!” cried the old man; “haven’t I as good as told you my belief?—and will ye pretendye ken better than me, that was born on his very land?”
“That’s a bad cough of yours,” said Horace, who had good practice in the means of extending information; “what do you say to a dram this sharp morning, to warm you before you go underground?”
“Eyeh, eyeh, lad, we’re owre near the border,” said the old pitman, shaking his head; “if ever there was a deevil incarnate on this earth it’s the whiskey, and makes nought but wickedness and misery, as I can see; but to them as knows how to guide themselves,” he added, slowly, “it’s a comfort now and again, specially of a morning, when a man has the asthmatics, and finds the cowld on his stomach. If you’re sure you’re able to afford it, sir, I’ve no objection, but I would not advise a brisk lad like you, d’ye hear, to partake yoursel’. Ye haven’t the discretion to stop at the right time at your years, nor no needcessity, as I see. Robbie, I’m a-gooin’ on a bit with the gentleman—see you play none on the road, nor put off your time, and say I’m coming. Eugh, eugh! as if it wasn’t a shame and a disgraceto them as has the blame, to see the likes of me upon the road!”
“At your time of life they ought to take better care of you,” said Horace; “see, here’s a seat for you, and you shall have your dram. Why don’t your sons look to it, eh, and keep you at home? It doesn’t take very much, I daresay, to keep the pot boiling; why don’t you tell them their duty, or speak to the parson? You are surely old enough to rest at your age!”
“Eugh, eugh! I haven’t got no sons,” said the old man, with a cough which ran into a chorus of half-sobs, half-chokes. “The last on ’em was lost i’ the pit, two year come Michaelmas, and left little to his ould father but that bit of a cripple lad, poor child, that will never make his own salt. It’s the masters, dash them! as I complain on. There they bees, making their money out on it, as grand as lords; and the like of huz as does it a’ left to break our ould bones, and waste our ould breath for a bit of bread, after serving of them for a matter of twenty year. Eyeh, eyeh, lad, it’s them, dash them! If it had been the ouldSquire, or ony o’ the country gentlemen, an ould servant mought hev a chance. No that I’m saying muckle for them, more nor the rest o’ the world—awl men is for their own interest in them days; but as for mercy or bowels, ay, or justice nouther, it’s ill looking for the like of them things in a couple o’ ’torneys, that are born and bred for cheating and spoliation. I never had no houps of them mysel’—they’ll sooner tak’ the bit o’ bread out atween an ould body’s teeth, than support the agit and the orphant—ay, though it was their own wark and profit, dash them! that took the bread from Robbie and me.”
“Ah!” said Horace, “that’s hard; so the pits here don’t belong to the Armitage property, nor any of the great landlords? But what have a couple of attorneys to do with them—they manage the property for somebody, I suppose?”
“My respects to you, sir,” said the old pitman, smacking his thin lips over the fiery spirit, which he swallowed undiluted; “and here’s wishing us awl more health and better days; but I wouldn’t advise you, a young lad,to have ony on’t. There’s guid ale here, very guid ale, far better for a young man of a morning. You may weel ask what has the like o’ them to do concerning sich things; and there’s few can tell like me, though I say it as shouldn’t. I was a likely man mysel’ in them days—a cotter on the ould Squire’s land, and serving at Tinwood Farm, and had my own kailyard, and awl things commforable. It’s like, if you knaw this country, you’ve heard speak of the ould Squire?”
“To be sure—old Musgrave, of the Grange,” cried Horace, with a certain malice and spite, of which he himself was scarcely aware; for Roger Musgrave’s honest simplicity, which he scorned, yet felt galled and disconcerted by, had often humiliated and enraged the son of the recluse, who could take no equality with the young relative of the fox-hunting Squire. He listened more eagerly as this name came in—not with a benevolent interest, certainly; but the mystery grew more and more promising as it touched upon the history of a ruined man.
“About twenty year ago, I would say, asnear as moight be, there was a couple o’ young chaps comed about here, for their holiday, as I aye thought to mysel’. The wan o’ them was uncommon outspoken in his manner, wan of them lads that’s friends with every stranger at the first word, with a muckle mouth and teeth—dash em!—that would crunch a man’s bones like a cannibal. T’other he was some kind of a student, aye fiddling about the grass and the rocks, and them kind o’ nonsense pastimes. I heard the haill business with my ain ears, so it’s no mystery to me. I was ploughing i’ the lang park belonging to Tinwood then, with the two o’ them somegate about the ploughtail, having their own cracks, with now and again a word to me—when all of a suddent the student, he stops, and he says out loud, ‘There’s coal here!’ I paid little attention till I saw them baith get earnest and red in the face, and down on their knees aprying into something I had turned up with my plough; and then I might have clean forgot it—for what was I heeding, coal or no coal?—when the t’other man, the lad with the muckle mouth, he came forrard, and sayshe, ‘Here’s my friend and me, we’ve made a wager about this land, but we’ll ne’er be able to settle it unless awl’s quiet, and you never let on that you’ve heard what he said. He’s awl wrong, and he’ll have to give in, and I’ll be the winner, as you’ll see; but hold you your peace, neighbour, and here’s a gold guinea to you for your pains.’ Lord preserve us, I never airned a goold guinea as easy in my life! I wush there was mair on them coming a poor body’s way. I held my whisht, and the lads gaed their way; but eugh, eugh! eh, man, if I had but knawn! I would ne’er have been tramping this day o’er the very grund I ploughed, to work in that pit, dash her! and me aughty years of age and mair.”
“How, then, did it happen?” cried Horace, eagerly.
“But I’ll hev to be agooin,” said the pitman, lifting himself up with reluctance and difficulty—“the timekeeper yonder, he’s a pertickler man, and has nae consideration for an old body’s infirmities: though I’m wonderful comforted with the speerits, I’ll no deny. Eyeh! eyeh! the old Squire, he wasa grand man, he was, as lang’s he had it, and threw his siller about like water, and was aye needing, aye needing, like them sort o’ men. Afore mony days, if ye’ll believe me, there was word of his own agent, that was Maister Pouncet, the ’torney in Kenlisle, buying some land of him, awl to serve the Squire, as the fowks said; but when I heard it was this land, ‘Ho, ho!’ says I to mysel’, ‘there’s more nor clear daylight in this job,’ says I. So I held my whisht, and waited to see; and sure enow, before long came down surveyors and engineers, and I know not all what, and the same lad, with the muckle mouth, that was now made partner to Mr. Pouncet; and that was the start o’ the pit, dash her! that’s cost me twenty years o’ my life and twa bonnie sons; and them’s the masters, blast them! that take their goold out o’t year after year, and wunna spare a penny-piece for the aged and frail. Eyeh, that’s them!—but it’s my belief I’ll see something happen to that lad with the muckle mouth before I die.”
“And what did your old Squire say, eh,when the land was found so rich?” said Horace; “did he try to break the bargain, and take it back again?”
“Him!” cried the decrepid old labourer, now once more halting along in the fresh sunshine, with his shadow creeping before him, and his “Davy” creaking from his bony finger—“him! a man that knawed neither care nor prudence awl his born days; and to go again his own ’torney that had done for him since ever he came to his fortin’,—not him! He said it was confoonded lucky for Pouncet, and laughed it off, as I hev heard say, and thought shame to let see how little siller he got for that land. He never had no time, nor siller nouther, to goo into lawsuits, and his own agent, as I tell you; besides that he was a simple man, was the Squire, and believed in luck more nor in cheating. Eyeh! eyeh! but I blamed aye the chield with the muckle mouth. He was the deevil that put harm into the t’other lawyer’s head; for wan man may be mair wicked nor anither, even amang ’torneys. It wasn’t lang after till he left this country.Eh, lad, yon man’s the deevil for cunning. I wouldna trust him with his own soul if he could cheat that—dash them a’! I mought have keeped on my kailyard, and seen my lads at the tail of the plough, if, instead of his pits and his vile siller, them fields had still been part o’ Tinwood Farm!”
And the poor old man relapsed out of the indignation and excitement into which the questions of Horace, his own recollections, and, above all, his “dram,” had roused him, into the same querulous discontented murmurs over his own condition which had first attracted the notice of his young companion. Horace sauntered by him with a certain scornful humour to the mouth of the pit—untouched by his misfortunes, only smiling at the miserable skeleton, with his boasted wisdom, his scrap of important unused knowledge, and his decrepid want and feebleness.Heset his foot upon this new information with the confidence of a man who sees his way clear, and with a strange, half-devilish smile looked after the poor old patriarch, who had known it for twenty years and made nothingof it. The idea amused him, and the contrast: for pity was not in Horace Scarsdale’s heart.
AShe started on his rapid walk back to Kenlisle at a very brisk pace, for the distance was between four and five miles, and business hours were approaching, Horace put together rapidly the information he had obtained. Perhaps a mind of different calibre might have rejected the pitman’s inference, and benevolently trusted, with the defrauded Squire, that Pouncet and his partner were only “confoonded looky” in their land speculation—such things have happened ere now honestly enough. Horace, however, was not the man to have any doubt on such a subject. His mind glanced, with a realization of the truth, quick and certain as the insight of genius, along the whole course of the affair, which appearedto him so clear and evident. How cautious, slow Mr. Pouncet, in most matters a man of the usual integrity, had been pounced upon by the sudden demon which appeared by his side in the shape of his clever clerk: how his mind had been dazzled by all the sophisms that naturally suggested themselves on this subject: how he had been persuaded that it was a perfectly legitimate proceeding to buy from the needy Squire these lands which at present to all the rest of the world were only worth so little, and which concealed, with all the cunning of nature, the secret of their own wealth. The Squire wanted the money, and was disposed to sell this portion of his estate to any bidder; and even if he were aware of the new discovery, hadheeither money or energy to avail himself of it? Horace knew, as if by intuition, all the arguments that must have been used, and could almost fancy he saw the triumphant tempter reaping the early harvest of his knavery, and stepping into a share of his victim’s business, and of the new purchase which was made in their joint names. These coal-pitswere now a richer and more profitable property than the whole of Mr. Pouncet’s business, satisfactory as his “connection” was; but Horace was very well able to explain to himself how it was that the career of Mr. Stenhouse at Kenlisle had been very brief, how all Mr. Pouncet’s influence had been exerted to further the views of his partner elsewhere, and how it happened that the stranger’s reception showed so much ceremonious regard and so little cordiality. With a certain sense of envy and emulation, the young man regarded this new comer, who held another man, repugnant and unwilling, fast in his gripe, and had him in his power. It ischacun a son goutin matters of ambition as well as in other matters. There was something intoxicating to the mind of Horace in this species of superiority. To have command secretly, by some undisclosable means, of another individual’s will and actions: to domineer secretly over his victim by a spell which he dared neither resist nor acknowledge; this was something more than a mere means of advancement; independent of all results, there was a fascinationindescribable in the very sensation of this power.
And it was this power which he himself had acquired over these two men, so totally unlike each other, who would see him to-day, unsuspicious of his enlightenment, and this evening meet him at the social table, which already won such influence, put under a painful constraint. Horace exulted as he thought of it, and brushed past the early Kenlisle wayfarers with such a colour on his cheek, and a step so brisk and energetic, that not one of them believed the tales to his disadvantage, and furtive hints of having been seen in unnameable places, which began to be dropped about the little gossiping town. He had only time to make a hurried toilette, deferring to that more important necessity, the breakfast, which he had no leisure to take, and to hasten to “the office,” where he sat punctual and composed at his desk, for full two hours before his companion of the previous night appeared, nervous and miserable, at his post, with an aching head and trembling fingers. Horace glanced across with cool contempt at thismiserableas he entered. He was conscious that he himself, in his iron force of youth and selfishness, looked rather better and more self-controlled than usual under the inspiration of his new knowledge, and he looked at his weaker compeer with a half-amused, contemptuous smile. This very smile and disdain had their effect on the little circle of spectators, who all observed it with an involuntary respect, and forgot to think what might be the heart and disposition of this lofty comrade of theirs, in admiring homage to the coolness of his insolence and the strength of his head.
Meanwhile, thoughts at which they would have stood aghast mingled in the busy brain of Horace with the drier matters of daily work which passed through his hands. Upon which of these two men who were in his power should he exercise that unlooked-for empire? Should he frighten Mr. Pouncet out of his wits by disclosing to him his new discovery? He was certainly the most likely person to be frightened with ease; but this did not suit the ideas of Horace. He was tired of Kenlisle,and found no advantage in a residence there, and he felt in Mr. Stenhouse a kindred spirit with whom he could work, and under whom his fortune was secure. Thus the virtuous young man reasoned as he sat at his desk, the bland object of his thoughts passing him occasionally with smiles upon that wide mouth which the old pitman remembered so well. It might not be possible for Horace to refrain from waving his whip over the head of his present employer, but it was the stranger upon whom for his own advancement he fixed his eyes. Mr. Stenhouse was a man much more able to understand his gifts, and give them their due influence, than Mr. Pouncet would ever be; and in the excitement and exaltation of his present mood Horace thrust from his mind more consciously than ever before that anxiety about his father’s secret which had moved him to so much eagerness ere he began to have affairs and prospects of his own. He became contemptuous of it in his youthful self-importance and sense of power. He was dazzled to see how his own cool head and unimpressionable spirit, the undeviatingiron confidence of his supreme self-love, had imposed upon his comrades in the town—if comrades they could be called, who won no confidence and received no friendship from him; and he was elated with the new power he had gained, and ready to believe himself one of those conquerors of fortune before whose promptitude and skill and unfailing acuteness every obstacle gives way.
In this mood he filled his place in Mr. Pouncet’s office during that day, meditating the means by which he should open proceedings in the evening. Mr. Pouncet, meanwhile, as it happened, by way of diverting his conversation with his former partner from matters more intimate and less manageable, had been pointing out to his notice the singular qualities of Horace, his remarkable position and subtle cleverness. Perhaps Mr. Pouncet would not have been very sorry to transfer his clever clerk to hands which could manage him better; at all events, it was a subject ready and convenient, which staved off the troublesome business explanations which had to be made between them. Mr. Pouncet hadcommitted himself once in his life, and betrayed his client; but he was a strictly moral man notwithstanding, and disapproved deeply of the craft of his tempter, even though he did not hesitate to avail himself of the profits of the mutual deceit. Twenty years had passed since the purchase of that “most valuable property,” but still the attorney, whose greatest failure of integrity this was, remained shy of the man who had led him into it, reluctant to receive his periodical visits, and most reluctant to enter into any discussion with him of their mutual interest. So Mr. Pouncet talked against time when necessity shut him uptête-à-têtewith Mr. Stenhouse, and told the stranger all about Horace; while Horace outside, all his head buzzing with thoughts on the same subject, pondered how to display his occult knowledge safely, and to open the first parallels of his siege. For which purpose the young man made his careful toilette in preparation for Mr. Pouncet’s dinner-table, where the attorney’s important wife, and even Mr. Pouncet himself, received the young clerk with great affability,as people receive a guest who is much honoured by their hospitality. How he laughed at them in his heart!
HORACElaughed at the condescension of his hosts, but not with the laugh of sweet temper or brisk momentary youthful indignation. There was revenge in his disdain. It fired his inclination to exhibit the power he had acquired, and make the most of it. The party was few in number, and not of very elevated pretensions; a few ladies of the county town, in sober but bright-coloured silk and satin, such as was thought becoming to their matronly years, who had plenty of talk among themselves, but were shy of interfering with the conversation of “the gentlemen”; and a few gentlemen, the best of their class in Kenlisle, but still only Kenlisle townsmen, and not county magnates. Even thevicar was not asked to Mr. Pouncet’s on this occasion; the show was very inconsiderable—a fact which Horace made out with little difficulty, and which Mr. Stenhouse’s sharp eyes were not likely to be slow of perceiving. Nothing, however, affected the unchangeable blandness of that wide-smiling mouth. Before the dinner was over, Horace, by dint of close observation, became aware that therewasa little bye-play going on between the hosts and their principal guest, and that Mr. Stenhouse’s inquiries about one after another of the more important people of the neighbourhood, and his smiling amazement to hear that so many of them were absent, and so many had previous engagements, had an extremely confusing effect upon poor Mrs. Pouncet, who did not know how to shape her answers, and looked at her husband again and again, with an appeal for assistance, which he was very slow to respond to. Horace, however, permitted Mrs. Pouncet and her accompanying train to leave the room before he beganhissport; and it was only when the gentlemen had closed round the table, and when, afterthe first brisk hum of talk, a little lull ensued, that the young man, who had hitherto been very modest, and behaved himself, as Mr. Pouncet said, with great propriety, suffered the first puff of smoke to disclose itself from his masked battery, and opened his siege.
“Did you see in yesterday’sTimesa lawcase of a very interesting kind, sir?” said this ingenuous neophyte, addressing Mr. Pouncet—“MountjoyversusMortlock, tried in theNisi Prius. Did it happen to strike you? I should like extremely to know what your opinion was.”
“I was very busy last night. I am ashamed to say I get most of my public news at second hand. What was it, Scarsdale? Speak out, my good fellow; I daresay your own opinion on the subject would be as shrewd, if not as experienced, as mine; a very clever young man—rising lad!” said Mr. Pouncet, with an aside to his next neighbour, by way of explaining his own graciousness. “Let us hear what it was.”
Mr. Stenhouse said nothing, but Horace saw that he paused in the act of peeling anorange, and fixed upon himself a broad, full smiling stare; a look in which the entire eyes, mouth, face of the gazer seemed to take part—a look which anybody would have said conveyed the very soul of openness and candour, but which Horace somehow did not much care to encounter. Mr. Stenhouse looked at him steadily, as if with a smiling consideration of what he might happen to mean, glanced aside with a slight malicious air of humour at Mr. Pouncet, gave a slight laugh, and went on peeling his orange. The whole pantomime tended somehow to diminish the young schemer’s confidence in his own power, which naturally led him to proceed rather more vehemently and significantly than he had intended with what he had to say.
“The case was this,” said Horace, with somewhat too marked a tone—“Mortlock was a solicitor and agent among others to a Sir Roger Mountjoy, a country baronet. Sir Roger was very careless about his affairs, and left them very much in his agent’s hands; and, besides, was embarrassed in his circumstances, and in great need of ready money. Mortlocksomehow obtained private information concerning a portion of his client’s land which more than tripled its value. After which he persuaded the baronet to sell it to him at a very low price, on pretence that it was comparatively worthless, and that he made the purchase out of complacency to meet the pressing needs of his patron. Immediately after the sale a public discovery was made of a valuable vein of lead, which Mortlock immediately set about working, and made a fortune out of. A dozen years after, when the baronet was dead, his heirs brought an action against the solicitor, maintaining that the sale was null and void, and demanding compensation. Only the counsel for the plaintiff has been heard as yet. What do you think they will make of such a plea?”
Mr. Pouncet set down upon the table the glass he was about raising to his lips, and spilt a few drops of his wine. He was taken by surprise; but the momentary shock of such an appeal, made to him in the presence of Stenhouse, and underhiseye as it was, did not overwhelm the old lawyer as Horace,in the self-importance of his youth, imagined it would. His complexion was too gray and unvarying to show much change of colour for anything, and the only real evidence of his emotion were these two or three drops of spilt wine. But he cleared his throat before he answered, and spoke after a pause in a very much less condescending and encouraging tone.
“It depends altogether on what the pleais,” said Mr. Pouncet; “the story looks vastly well, but what is the plea? Canyoumake it out, Stenhouse? Of course, when a man acquires a property fairly at its fair value, no matter what is found out afterwards, an honest bargain cannot be invalidated by our laws. I suppose it must be a breach of trust, or something of the sort. You are very young in our profession, my friend Scarsdale, or you would have known that you have stated no plea.”
“The plea is, of course, that the solicitor was bound to his client’s interest, and had no right to make use of private information for his own advantage—and they’ll win it. There,my young friend, I give you my opinion without asking,” said Stenhouse; “purchases made by an agent for his needy client are always suspicious, sure to create a prejudice to start with, and against the honour of the profession, Mr. Pouncet? Attorneys can’t afford to risk a great deal—we don’t stand too high in the public estimation as it is. It’s a very interesting case, I do not wonder it attracted your attention. The baronet was a gouty, old spendthrift, perfectly careless of money matters—the solicitor, a sharp fellow, with an eye to his own interests; which,” continued Mr. Stenhouse, with his frank laugh, and a humorous roll of his eye towards his former partner, “is a thing permissible, and to be commended in every profession but our own.”
A general laugh followed this proposition. “You manage to feather your nests pretty well, notwithstanding; better than most of those other people who are encouraged to look after their own interests, and do not pretend to nurse their neighbour’s,” said one of the guests.
“Accident, my dear sir, accident!” saidStenhouse, laughing; “to be truly and sublimely disinterested, a man must be an attorney. It is the model profession of Christianity. Here you must see innumerable personal chances slip past you, at all times, without a sigh. Why?—because you are the guardian of other men’s chances, perpetually on the watch to assist your client, and forgetting that such a person as yourself is in the world, save for that purpose. That is our code of morals, eh, Pouncet? But it is high, certainly—a severe strain for ordinary minds; and as every man may follow the common laws of nature, save an attorney, it follows that an attorney, when he is caught tripping, has more odium and more punishment than any other man. Mr. Pouncet, you agree, don’t you, with all I say.”
And Mr. Stenhouse, once more with his broad laugh of self-mockery and extreme frankness, directed everybody’s attention to his old partner, who by no means relished the conversation. Mr. Pouncet’s glass remained still untasted before him on the table—he himself was fidgety and uneasy—the onlyanswer he made was a spasmodic attention to his guests, to encourage the passing of the bottle, and a sudden proposition immediately after to join the ladies. Not one individual at his table had the slightest sympathy with the old lawyer—every man chuckled aside at the idea that all these arrows were “in to old Pouncet;” not that he was generally disliked or unpopular, but sublime disinterestedness was so oddly uncharacteristic of the man, and unlike the ordinary idea of his profession, that everybody was tickled with the thought. Next to Mr. Pouncet, however, the person most disconcerted of the party was Horace, whose “power” and menace were entirely thrust aside by the jokes of the stranger. The young man went in sulkily, last of the party, to Mrs. Pouncet’s drawing-room, dimly and angrily suspecting some wheel within wheel in the crafty machinery which he had supposed his own rash hand sufficient to stop. Perhaps Mr. Pouncet, after all, was the principal criminal, and Stenhouse only an accomplice—certainly appearances were stronger against the serious and cautious man, evidently annoyedand put out by this conversation, as he was, than against the bold and outspoken one, who showed no timidity upon the subject. But Horace’s ideas were disturbed, and his calculations put out. He had no knowledge of the character of Stenhouse, when he exulted in the vain idea of having him “in his power.” If things were really as he suspected, this was not an easy man to get into anybody’s power; and Horace began to inquire within himself whether it would not be better to have a solemn statement made by the old pitman, to send for authority from Roger Musgrave, the old Squire’s heir-at-law, and to come out on his own account in the grand character of redresser of injuries and defender of rights. That at least, stimulated by the influence of Mountjoy versus Mortlock, was in Horace’s power.
While the young man hung about the corners of the drawing-room, turning over Mrs. Pouncet’s stock of meagre Albums and superannuated Annuals, and pondering over his future proceedings, Mr. Stenhouse came up to him with his usual frankness. He wasready to talk on any subject, this open-minded and candid lawyer, and spoke upon all with the tone of a man who is afraid of none.
“Well, Mr. Scarsdale! so you are interested in this Mountjoy and Mortlock business,” said his new acquaintance—“a curious case in every way, if they can prove it. Want of legal wisdom, however, plays the very devil with these odd cases—it may be perfectly clear to all rational belief, and yet almost impossible to prove it. Perhaps something of the kind has fallen under your own observation—eh?”
“I have,” said Horace, a little stiffly, “become suddenly acquainted with a case of a very similar kind.”
“Aha, I thought so—I daresay there’s plenty,” said Stenhouse. “Capital cases for rising young barristers that want to show in the papers and get themselves known. Famous things for young fellows, indeed, in general—that is to say,” he added, more slowly, “if the heir happens to be anybody, or to have friends or money sufficient to seethe thing out. In that case it does not matter much whether he loses or wins. Thinking perhaps of striking off from my friend Pouncet and establishing yourself, eh? Could not do better than start with such an affair in hand.”
“I should be glad of more experience first,” said Horace; “and, to tell the truth, I don’t care for beginning by betraying old friends. Mr. Pouncet has behaved very liberally by me, receiving me when I had very little qualification.”
“Pouncet!” cried Mr. Stenhouse—“you don’t mean to say that Pouncet has been burning his fingers in any such equivocal concerns. Come, come, my young friend, we must be cautious about this. Mr. Pouncet is a most respectable man.”
“Mr. Stenhouse,” said Horace, “I was, as it happens, at Tinwood this morning—perhaps you know Tinwood?”
“A little,” said the other, with his most engaging smile.
“There I met, partly by chance,” said Horace, feeling himself provoked into excitementby the perfect coolness of his antagonist, “an old man, who gave me an entire history of the first finding of the coal.”
“Ah, it was a very simple business. I was there myself, with a scientific friend of mine; a blind fellow, blind as a mole to everything that concerns himself—feeling about the world in spectacles, and as useless for ordinary purposes as if he had moved in a glass case,” said Mr. Stenhouse; “extraordinary, is it not? It was he who found the first traces of that coal.”
“And found them,” said Horace, pointedly, “before the land was purchased by Mr. Pouncet and yourself from Squire Musgrave of the Grange.”
“Ah, we had better say as little as possible about that in the present company. Pouncet mightn’t like it—it might look ugly enough for Pouncet if there was much talk on the subject,” said Mr. Stenhouse, sympathetically glancing towards his old partner, and subduing his own smile in friendly deprecation of a danger in which he seemed to feel no share.
“And how might it look for you?” said Horace, with his rough and coarse boldness.
Mr. Stenhouse laughed, and turned round upon him with the most candid face in the world.
“My dear fellow, Squire Musgrave was no client of mine!” said the good-humoured lawyer. “The utmost punctilio of professional honour could not bindmeto take care of his interests. I was a young fellow like yourself, with my fortune to make. You put it very cleverly, I confess, and it might look ugly enough for Pouncet; but, my excellent young friend, it is nothing in the world to me.”
“Yet you were Mr. Pouncet’s partner,” said Horace, with a certain sulky virulence, annoyed at the small success of his grand coup.
“After, my dear sir, after!” cried Mr. Stenhouse, with another of hiséclats de rire.
Horace made a pause, but returned to the charge with dogged obstinacy.
“I know Roger Musgrave,” he said, “and I know friends who will stand by him aslong as there is the slightest hope——”
“Ah, very well, as you please, it is not my concern; and it is quite likely you might make a good thing out of Pouncet,” said Mr. Stenhouse. “By-the-bye, now I think of it, come and breakfast with me to-morrow, when we can speak freely. I have no particular reason to be grateful to him, but Pouncet and I are very old friends. Come to the ‘George’ at eight o’clock, will you? I’d like to inquire into this a little more, for old Pouncet’s sake.”
So they parted, with some hope on Horace’s side, but no very great gratification in respect to his hoped-for “power.”