ITwas with a slightly accelerated pulse that Horace went next morning to the “George” to keep his appointment. He seemed to have put his own fortune on the cast, and temper and ambition alike forbade his drawing back. Either he must secure Stenhouse as an ally and coadjutor, bound to him by secret ties of interest, or else he must establish his own career upon the charitable and Christian work of restoring to Roger Musgrave such remnants of his inheritance as it might be possible to rescue from the hands of Pouncet and Stenhouse. This last alternative was not captivating to Horace. It was not in his nature, had he been the instrument of such a restoration, to do it otherwise thangrudgingly. He was too young as yet to have added any great powers of dissimulation to his other good qualities, and his own disposition sided much more with the clever operator who served his own interests by means of some unsuspecting simpleton, than with the simpleton who permitted himself to be so cheated. Accordingly, his thoughts were very reluctant to undertake that side of the question—still, it was his alternative, and as such he meant to use it.
Mr. Stenhouse entertained his young visitor sumptuously, and exerted all his powers to captivate him. He, too, was ignorant of the person he had to deal with, and did not suspect how entirely uninfluenceable by such friendly cajoleries was the young bear of Marchmain, who had scarcely heart enough to be flattered by them, and had acuteness sufficient to perceive the policy. He began, at length, cautiously enough, upon the subject of their last night’s conversation—cautiously, though with all his usual apparent candour and openness of tone.
“Let us have a little talk now about thisbusiness, this hold which you think you have got over poor old Pouncet,” said Mr. Stenhouse. “Do you know, my dear fellow, Pouncet has been established here some thirty years, and the people believe in him; do you think they will take your word, at your age, against so old an authority? I advise you to think of it a little, my friend, before you begin.”
“My word has very little to do with it,” said Horace; “of course, I know nothing of the transaction except by evidence, which has satisfied my own mind; and Squire Musgrave was quite as well known, while he lived, as Mr. Pouncet. Besides, it is your own opinion that the public verdict is always against the attorney; and then,” said Horace, with a slight irrepressible sneer at his own words, “we have all the story in our favour, and the sympathy which everybody feels for a disinherited heir.”
“But then, your disinherited heir has not a penny in his purse, nor the means of raising one—a private in a marching regiment,” said Stenhouse, with a laugh; “you yourself are one or two-and-twenty at the outside, havespent a year in Mr. Pouncet’s office, and do not assert yourself, so far as I am aware, to have any command of capital. How are you to do it?—your father, eh?—your father has a place in the country, and perhaps influence—you mean to seek support by his means?”
“My father,” said Horace, rudely enough, “has no influence—and, if he had, would never use it for me; my father is my greatest enemy, or takes me for his, which is the same thing.”
“That is very extraordinary,” said Stenhouse, with a sudden appearance of interest; “takes you for his enemy?—how is that?—there is surely some mystery here.”
“I don’t see that it matters at all to what we were speaking of,” said Horace. “Look here, Mr. Stenhouse, I’ll speak plainly: Pouncet and you are in the same boat—if you don’t actually lose money by having this brought to a trial, you’ll lose reputation—I know you will. I know well enough the thing was your doing. I don’t pretend to be very clever,” continued Horace; “but I think I know a man when I see him. It was you who found out the secret about that land—it was you who put the affair into Pouncet’s head—it was you who managed it all along—the success of the undertaking belongs to you, and you know it. Now, look here—perhaps there’s no legal hold upon you; but you are a flourishing man, with people who believe in you, as much as some other people believe in Mr. Pouncet. If this matter should come to a trial, how would your reputation come out of it? I ask you boldly, because you know better than I do the whole affair.”
“And am not afraid of it, I assure you, my dear fellow; go on as briskly as you please, so far as I am concerned,” said Stenhouse; “but though I don’t care for this, I care foryou. You have a natural genius for this kind of work, not often to be met with. Pouncet would not understand it, but I do. I’ll tell you what, Scarsdale—you can’t do me any harm, but it is quite likely you might do me service. Another man most probably would send you off with a defiance, but I am not so liable to offence as most people; I never found it pay, somehow. You can’t do me any harm, as I tell you; but you are bold andcapable, and might be extremely useful to me: whilst I for my share could probably advance your prospects. Pouncet was telling me something about you yesterday, but I did not hope to have so clear a specimen of your powers. I want a confidential man in my own office. What do you say to leaving Pouncet and transferring your services to me?”
“I should have perhaps a few questions to ask, in the first place,” said Horace, who, elated with this sudden success, the first fruits of his “power,” though his antagonist concealed it so skilfully, was by no means disinclined to be insolent; “about remuneration and prospects, and how I should be employed; for I do not hold myself a common clerk, to be hired by any man who pleases,” added the young man, with something of the rude arrogance that was in him. It was a new phase of his character to his observant new friend.
“So I understand,” he said gravely, but with a twinkle of sarcasm in his eye, which disconcerted Horace. “I shall be glad to hear the facts of your own private concernfrom yourself, and you may reckon on my best advice. As for the terms of your engagement, if you enter upon one with me, these, of course, you must consider on your own account, without suffering me to influence you. I shall look aftermyinterests, to be sure,” added Mr. Stenhouse, with that charming candour of his, “and you must attend to yours; and if you make up your mind afterwards to attack Pouncet on behalf of your friend Musgrave,” he continued, with a pleasant smile, “why, well and good—you must follow your fancy. In the meanwhile, I have no doubt I can employ you to good account, and give you more insight into business than Pouncet could. Time for the office—eh? I thought so. Well, you must consider my proposal; no hurry about it—and let me know how you have decided; I’ll mention it to Pouncet, that there may be no difficulty there. Good morning, my young friend; you have a famous spirit, and want nothing but practice; and there is no saying what light you and I together may succeed in throwing on your own affairs.”
Thus dismissed, Horace had no resource but to take his hat, and shake the smooth hand of Mr. Stenhouse, which grasped his with so much apparent cordiality. The young man went to his business with a strange mixture of sensations: humiliated, because he had suffered a seeming conquest, and his antagonist had clearly borne away the victory, so far as appearances were concerned; and flattered and excited at the same time by the substantial proof he had just received that his threat had not been in vain. Advancement greater and more immediate than to be made the “confidential man” of a solicitor in excellent practice, after one brief year of apprenticeship in Mr. Pouncet’s office, he could not have hoped for; and his ambition was not of that great and vague kind which is always startled by the pettiness of reality. Then that last hint gave a certain glow of eagerness to his excited mind: light upon his own affairs!—light upon that mystery which shrouded the recluse of Marchmain, and made his only son his enemy and opponent! Horace had managed to content himself with inevitablework, and even to excite himself into the ambition of making a fortune and his own way in the world; but that was a mere necessity, to which his arrogance bowed itself against its will; and the thought of leaping into sudden fortune, and the bitter long-fostered enmity against his father which continually suggested to his mind something which that father kept him out of, remained as fresh as ever in his spirit when they were appealed to. These thoughts came freshly upon him as he hastened to his daily occupation, and again began to revive the dreams of Marchmain. Twice he had succeeded in his private essays towards self-advancement. After an hour or two’s reflection, with returning confidence he exulted to see his present and his future employer equally in his power, and made himself an easy victory in his own mind over the plausibilities of Mr. Stenhouse. Why should he not succeed as well in “his own affairs,” and with equal pains overcome as easily the defences of his father?—and what if Stenhouse had actually some light to throw upon these concerns? Horace revelled withinhimself with a secret arrogance and self-esteem as he pondered. What if it remained to him, in as short a time as he had taken to achieve these other successes, to dress himself in the grander spoils of imagination from which his father’s enmity or interest kept him at present shut out.
HORACEdid not require to reflect much over the offer of Mr. Stenhouse; but, a singular enough preliminary, went out once more that evening to Tinwood, and again saw his old pitman, from whose lips he took down in writing the statement which he had previously heard. The man was old and might die, and though Horace dared not make the deposition authoritative by having the sanction of a magistrate, and thus letting daylight in upon the whole transaction, he received the statement, and had it signed and witnessed, as a possible groundwork of future proceedings—a strong moral, if not legal, evidence. With this document in his pocket-book, he saw Mr. Stenhouse, accepted his proposal, and consentedto his arrangements; then had an interview with Mr. Pouncet, more agreeable to his temper than anything he could extract from the more practised man of the world, to whom he had now engaged himself; the Kenlisle lawyer, it is true, was most deeply “in his power.” Mr. Pouncet was very serious, uneasy, and constrained, disapproving, but checking the expressions of his disapproval by a certain anxious politeness, most refreshing and consolatory to his departing clerk.
Horace could not for his life have behaved himself generously or modestly in such circumstances. He took full use of his advantage, and was as arrogant and insolent as a man could be, quietly, who suddenly finds himself in a position to domineer over an older man who has employed and condescended to him. That half-hour was sweet to Horace. Mr. Pouncet’s secret flush of rage; his visible determination to restrain himself; his forced politeness, and uneasy, unnatural deference to the studied rudeness of the young bear before him, were so many distinct expressions of homage dear to the youngvictor’s soul.Hecould strip the respectability off that grave, uneasy figure;hecould hold up the man who had betrayed his trust to the odium of the world, and force out of his stores the riches he had gained so unjustly. Did he ever dream of doing it, or of suffering any one else to do it, honestly, as a piece of justice? Not he: but it delighted him to see the conscious culprit quail, and to recognize his own “power.”
However, before setting out for his new sphere, a less comprehensible motive determined the young man to pay a parting visit to Marchmain. Perhaps he himself could not have explained why. Not, certainly, to see his sister; for Susan had no great place or influence in her brother’s thoughts. To see his father, much more likely; for steady opposition and enmity is almost asexigeantas affection, and loves to contemplate and study its object with a clear and bitter curiosity, more particular and observing even than love. He reached Marchmain on a spring afternoon, when even Lanwoth Moor owned the influence of the season; when solitary specks ofgold were bursting on the whin-bushes, and purple stalks of heather-bells rose from the brown underground. Under that sunshine and genial spring stir the very house looked less desolate. The moor, spreading far around and behind, was sweetened and softened by the light and shadow of those changeful northern heavens; the sunshine brightened the windows with a certain wistful, outward warmth, as if the very light was cognizant of the blank within, and would have penetrated if it could. The low hills which bounded the horizon had greened and softened like everything else; and even the wistful clump of firs, which stood watching on the windy height nearest to the house, were edged and fringed with a lighter growth, touching the tips of their grim branches into a mute compliment of unison with the sweet movement of the year. Perhaps the most human token of all was a row of two or three homely flower-pots, outside the dining-room window of Marchmain: that was a timid evidence of the spring sentiment in Susan’s solitary young heart, and it was something in such a desert place. Horaceobserved it as something new, with a little ridicule in his smile. Perhaps his father, now that he was gone, had changed the manner of his sway over Susan: perhaps it was only he, the son, who was obnoxious to Mr. Scarsdale, and had to be put down. Horace was not jealous, nor troubled with any affectionate envy; he smiled with superiority and contempt. He, a man not to be trifled with, was quite indifferent how any one might choose to behave to such a trifle as a girl.
But Susan, it appeared, was out, when Horace, going round by the back of the house, startled Peggy out of her wits by his sudden appearance; and, what was more, his father was out, an unexampled incident. The old woman screamed aloud when she saw who her visitor was, and put out both her hands with an involuntary movement to send him away.
“The Lord help us all!—they’ll come to blows if they meet!” cried Peggy, in her first impulse of terror. Then she put out her vigorous hand and dragged Horace in, as impatiently as she had motioned him away. “You misfortunate lad! what’s brought yehere?” said Peggy; “them that gangs away of their own will should stay away. Bless and preserve us! do ye think I dare to receive you here?”
She had not only received him, however, but fastened the kitchen-door carefully after him as she spoke. The very look of that kitchen, with Peggy’s careful preparations going on for her master’s fastidious meal—preparations so strangely at variance in their dainty nicety with the homely character and frugal expenditure of the house—brought all his old thoughts back to Horace as with a flash of magic. He had begun to forget how his father lived, and the singularity of all his habits. His old bitter, sullen curiosity overpowered him as he stood once more under this roof. Who was this extraordinary man, who preserved in a retirement so rude and unrefined these forlorn habits of another life? The dainty arrangements of the table, the skilful and learned expedients of Peggy’s cookery; the one formal luxurious meal for which Mr. Scarsdale every day made a formal toilette; the silent man with his claret-jug and eveningdress, in that homeliest of country parlours, flashed before him like a sudden picture. Who was he?—and what had driven him here?
“So my father’s out,” said Horace; “why should not I come to see you, Peggy? Has he forbidden it? He can shut his own door upon me, it is true; but neither he nor any man in the world can prevent me if I will from coming here.”
“Hush, sir! hold your peace!—the master says he’ll have none of you here again, and I’m no the woman to disobey the master!” said Peggy. “And what do you mean by staying away a year and never letting us hear word of you, Mr. Horry? Is Miss Susan nobody?—nor me?—wan would think your love was so great for your father, that you never thought of no person in the world but him!”
“So it is—perhaps,” said Horace, with a momentary smile; “and he’s out, is he?—what ishedoing out in daylight and sunshine? Gone to walk with his pretty daughter, Peggy, like a good papa? Ah! I supposethese amiable little amusements would have begun sooner if I had but been wise enough to take myself away.”
“To walk with Miss Susan?—alas!” cried Peggy; “but ye allways had a bitter tongue as well as himsel’. Na, he’s out of a suddent at his own will, or rather at the good will of Providence, Mr. Horry, to prevent a meeting and unseemly words atween a father and son. What would ye have, young man?—and where have ye been?—and what are you doing? But come in here, for pity’s sake, if ye’ll no go away, and let me hear all your news, and I’ll keep a watch at the back window against the master’s coming in.”
“My news is nothing, except that I am about to leave Kenlisle,” said Horace, impatiently; “but, for heaven’s sake, Peggy, who is this father of mine?Youknow, though nobody else knows—who is he? what does he do here? why does he hate me? why can’t you tell me, and make an end of these mysteries? I’m a man now, and not a child; and here is your chance while we’re by ourselves—tell me, for heaven’s sake.”
“You’re very ready with your ‘heaven’s sake,’ Mr. Horry,” said Peggy, severely; “do ye no think another word might stand better? Heaven has but little to do with it all. The Lord help us! Who is he? ’Deed and he’s a man, none so vartuous as he ought to be. And what does he here? Live as it pleases him, the Lord forgive him! without heeding God nor man—that’s all about it. And as for hating of you, how much love is there lost, Mr. Horry? Do you think I could kep it on the point o’ my finger? You never were wan to waste your kindness. How much of it, think you, gos tohim?”
“It is well I can equal him in something,” said Horace, with a careless but bitter tone. “However, Peggy, you’ll tell nothing, as I might have known. I suppose I may wait to see Susan; there’s nothing against that, is there? So, with your permission, I’ll go and wait for her. Don’t be afraid—only to the dining-room.”
“The Lord preserve me!—and if he comes in!” cried Peggy, half addressing herself, and half appealing to her unwelcome visitor.
“Let him come in. I am in my father’s house,” cried Horace, with that cold, hopeless smile. Peggy knew it of old, and had seen it on other faces. She put out her hand with a fierce impatience, shaking it in his face.
“Oh, man! go away, and make me rid of ye! Go where ye please; if ever mortal man has a devil incarnate in him, it’s when ye see that smile!”
Smiling still, Horace went coolly away to the dining-room, as he said; and Peggy, at her wit’s end, as she was, found no better way of averting the evil she dreaded than by fastening the doors, so that they could not be opened from without, and clambering upstairs to watch at the elevated window of the storeroom, from whence she could see her master’s approach. Horace had never felt himself so entirely in command of the house. He paused at the door of the dull apartment in which he had spent so many hours and years, and where Susan’s needlework, more ornamental now than of old, made a little unaccustomed brightness on the dark mirror of the uncovered table; but no sympathy for his young sister, shut up herehopelessly during her early bloom of life, warmed his heart, or even entered his thoughts. He thought of himself—how he used to waste and curse the days in this miserable solitude, and what a change had passed upon his life since then. Listening, in the extreme silence, he heard Peggy go upstairs to her watch. He smiled at that, too, but accepted the safeguard; and, without any more hesitation, turned round, and went across the hall to his father’s room.
The study; that dreaded, dismal, apartment;—with its dull bookcases set at right-angles, the hard elbow-chair standing stiffly before the table, the big volume laid open upon the desk, the stifling red curtains drooping over the window; his heart beat, in spite of himself, as he entered; he could scarcely believe his father was not there, somehow watching him, reading his very thoughts. With a sudden “Pshaw!” of self-contempt and temerity, he hastened forward to the table. There was no lock upon the little sloping desk which sustained the volume Mr. Scarsdale had been reading. Without hoping to find anything,but with a vague thrill of curiosity and eagerness, Horace lifted the book, and opened the desk. It was full of miscellaneous papers—Peggy’s household bills, and other things entirely unimportant; but among these lay some folds of blotting-paper. He opened them with a trembling hand; the first thing he saw there was a letter, which fell out, and which Horace grasped at, half-consciously, and thrust into his pocket; another fold concealed, apparently, the answer to it, half written, and hurriedly concluded. The young man ran his eyes over it with burning curiosity. It was addressed to Colonel Sutherland, and chiefly concerned an invitation from her uncle to Susan, which Mr. Scarsdale peremptorily declined. Then his own name caught his eye; the last paragraph abruptly broken off, as if the writer had thrown down his pen in impatience, and could continue no longer. These words, which conveyed so little information to him, burned themselves, notwithstanding, upon Horace’s memory with all the vehement interest of unnatural hate:—
“As for my son, I do not choose to answer to any man for my sentiments and actions in respect to him. I held all natural ties as abrogated between us from the period you mention, when, as you say, he seems to have ceased to appear to me as my child, and I have only viewed him as a rival, unjustly preferred to me. I do not object to adopt your words; they are sufficiently correct; but I will suffer no question on the subject; let the blame be upon the head of the true culprit. As to the will——”
Here the letter ended, with a dash and blot, as if the pen had fallen from the writer’s fingers; it was this, evidently, which had driven him forth in wild impatience, stung by his subject. Horace read, and re-read the sentence, devouring it with his eyes of enmity. Then he restored it rudely to its place, put back the book, and left the room. He thought he had discovered something in the first flush of his excitement. It did not seem possible that he could have looked thus directly into his father’s thoughts without discovering something. He no longer cared torisk a meeting with him. In the tumult of his imaginary enlightenment he called to Peggy, hastily, that he was going away, and went out, as he entered, by the back door. Nobody was visible on the moor; the whole waste lay barren before him, under the slanting light of the setting sun. He put up the collar of his coat, set his hat over his eyes, and plunged along the narrow path among the gorse and heather, to Tillington, thinking still in his excited mind, and feeling in his tingling frame, that he had found out something; and knew more of the secret of his life than he had ever known before; deluded by his eagerness and enmity, and the excitement caused in him by the first stealthy investigation it had ever been in his power to make.
THElittle inn at Tillington, to which Horace betook himself for his night’s lodging, had suffered little change from the day when he conducted his uncle there. Sam, it is true, was fighting the Caffres in Africa, far enough distant; but his mother had recovered her bustling good spirits, and his father his philosophy, and even Sergeant Kennedy, great and pompous as of old, dominated over the little sanded parlour, and fired the village lads with martial tales, unabashed, under Mrs. Gilsland’s very eye. It was not to the sanded parlour, however, that Horace now betook himself. He was no longer the sullen country lad, whole idler and half gentleman, whose deportment had distressed Colonel Sutherland; and his oldgamekeeper acquaintances and alehouse gossips scarcely knew him, in his changed dress and altered manner. He was the nephew of “the Cornel,” a name which Mrs. Gilsland and Sergeant Kennedy had made important in the village, and he was flourishing in the world and likely to come to higher fortune, circumstances which mightily changed the tide of public opinion towards him. Mrs. Gilsland received the young man with her best curtsey, and with profuse salutations. She opened the door of “the best room” for him, and suggested a fire as the evenings were still cold, and offered a duck for his supper, “or dinner, I was meaning,” added the landlady, as Horace shrugged his shoulders at the chilly aspect of the room, and tossed his great-coat on a chair with lordly pretension and incivility. The good woman was daunted in spite of her indignation. “The Cornel,” it is true, had shown no such scorn of her humble parlour, and she was not disposed to overestimate the comforts of Marchmain. Still, there is something imposing to the vulgar imagination in this manner of insolence. Theroom had never before looked so mean to its mistress. She stopped herself in her unencouraged talk, and began to displace the faded paper ornaments in the fireplace, which concealed a fire laid ready for lighting, and kindled the wood herself with a somewhat unsteady hand. “It’s just as it was when the Cornel was here, and he was very well pleased with everything,” she said, half to herself. Horace took no notice of the implied apology and defence.
“Send me candles, please, and I’ll see about dinner later,” he said, loftily; “lights in the meanwhile, and immediately; never mind the fire—I want lights, and at once!”
Mrs. Gilsland withdrew, awed, but deeply wrathful. “I would like to know how many servants he had to wait upon him at Marchmain!” she exclaimed to herself as she left the room—“with his candles, and lights, and his immediantely! Immediantely, quotha! Eh me, the difference of men! Would the Cornel, or young Mr. Roger, order a person that gate? I would just say no!—but the like of an upstart like him!”
However, the candles did come immediately, in Mrs. Gilsland’s best candlesticks, and in elaborate frills of white paper; and the duck was killed, as a great gabble in the yard gave immediate notice, and all the preparations which she could make set on foot instantly for her fastidious guest. Clean linen, snowy and well-aired, was spread upon the bed which “the Cornel” had once occupied; and greater commotion than even the advent of the Cornel himself would have caused diffused itself through the house. Meanwhile Horace addressed himself at his leisure to his immediate business. He had come thus far without being able to perceive that he had gained nothing by his inroad into his father’s privacy. He was still possessed by the excitement of the act. All the way, while he walked as if for a race, he had been going over these unfatherly words, and they moved him to an unreasoning and unusual amount of emotion, rather more than a personal encounter would have done—confirming all his own sentiments, and adding to them a certain bitterness; but in the haste and fervor of his thoughts hestill imagined himself to have acquired something, and now took out the letter which he had seized and crumpled into his pocket, only in the idea that it might supplement and confirm his visionary information. It was, as he supposed, from Colonel Sutherland, and chiefly occupied with that earnest invitation to Susan which her father had declined. What concerned himself was brief enough, and was to the following effect:—
“You will probably say that I have very little right to address you on subjects so intimate and personal. I merely throw myself upon your indulgence, pleading our old acquaintance and connection. I have no right whatever to say a word, and I trust you will pardon all the more kindly what I do say on this account. Your son Horace is a very peculiar and remarkable young man. That miserable circumstance that happened when he was a child seems to have had an effect upon the boy unawares, little as he knows of it. And you, my dear Scarsdale, have you forgotten that this boy is your own child, and not a rival unjustly preferred to you? I acknowledgethe wicked and desperate injustice of the whole proceeding, but Horace was not to blame. Would it not have been better, I appeal to you, to make an open effort to overthrow this iniquitous will, than to suffer it to produce results so deplorable? Hear me, I beseech you: receive the boy into your confidence before it is too late. It is your only means of really defeating and forestalling the evil objects of that posthumous punishment and vengeance. Suffer me to speak. I have no interest in it, save that of natural affection; let your own heart plead with me, as I am sure it will, if you permit it. Let him know his singular and unhappy fortune, and I am grievously mistaken in human nature if the attempt does not prove to you how little you need to apprehend from the temper and disposition of your son.”
Horace read this over with an interest only more intense than the contempt which it produced in him. “The old twaddler!” he exclaimed to himself, in the first impulse of his disdain. That feeling moved him, even before curiosity. He could not take time to thinkwhat it was which his father was urged to reveal to him, in his scorn of the anticipated result, the natural affection, the generous response, which his innocent old uncle believed in. Then he put the letter back into his pocket, and set his mind to consider what information he had really gained. What was it? Some vague intimation about a will, which Mr. Scarsdale had better have tried to set aside: some mysterious hint at posthumous punishment and vengeance, and his own singular and unhappy fortune; and on his father’s side a declaration of dislike and enmity, but nothing more. That was what he had discovered—this was the information which had sent him in nervous haste out of Marchmain, and quickened his solitary walk over the moor—and this was all. He ground his teeth together when he perceived it, with savage disappointment and rage. He had been deceived—he, so boldly confident in his own powers, had allowed himself to be blinded and circumvented by his own excitement and childish commotion of feeling. For a moment he had enjoyed such command of his father’s houseas a midnight thief might have gained, and had sacrificed all the results of that precious instant by a piece of involuntary self-deceit and ridiculous weakness, an indulgence absurd and contemptible. His feelings were not enviable as he sat in Mrs. Gilsland’s dark little parlour, with the two faint candles burning, and the damp wood hissing in the grate. He might have borne to be deceived, but it was hard to consent to the humiliating idea of having deceived himself. However, he could make nothing better of it, and grinding his teeth did no harm to anybody, and certainly could do little service to himself. So he swallowed his mortification as he best could, put Colonel Sutherland’s letter in his pocket-book, and addressed himself with what content he might to Mrs. Gilsland’s duck. He was not without appetite, in spite of his disappointment. Then he sauntered into the public room, and opened his heart so far as to bestow a pint or two of ale upon his old acquaintances. Even thisdivertissement, however, did not withdraw his thoughts from his own affairs—he lounged at the door of the sanded parlour,doing a little grandeur and superiority as he loved to do, but turning over his secret strain of thought without intermission, notwithstanding. A will!—then there was a will which concerned himself, and lay at the bottom of all these hints and mysteries. Wills are accessible to curious eyes in this country, in spite of all the safeguards which the most jealous care can take. The young man started when that idea interposed the flicker of its taper into the darkness. He raised his head again and renewed his courage: after all, his invasion of his father’s private sanctuary had not been entirely in vain. There was comfort to his self-esteem, as well as a definite direction to his efforts, in the thought.
MR. SCARSDALEhad left his room and the house in a sudden flush of impatience beyond bearing, as his son had imagined. The very idea of the will to which Colonel Sutherland referred plainly in his letter was maddening to the solitary man. He could not bear the name, much less any discussion of this fatal document; and when he found himself constrained to mention it in his own person, a violent and angry petulance overpowered him; he dashed his pen to the ground, threw his paper into the desk, and rushed out of doors into the spring air, which had no softening effect upon him. Half consciously to himself, he had lived with more freedom since the departure of his son, and felt himselfrelieved of a certain clog upon his movements; and it was not now so extraordinary an event as Horace had supposed that he should be out of doors in daylight and sunshine. Mr. Scarsdale had strayed deep into the moor in an opposite direction to Tillington, with thoughts even more bitter than those of Horace—thoughts which the well-meant intervention of the Colonel only raised to a passionate virulence. He, too, like his son, scorned, with a deep contempt, the tender simplicity of the old soldier, which neither of them comprehended; and coming back over that desolate waste of moorland to see his own desolate house standing out solitary and wistful in the bosom of the wilderness, Mr. Scarsdale realized, with a bitter superiority, the kind of house which was likely to call his brother-in-law master—the house full of warmth and kindliness, at which he sneered dismally, with the disgust of an evil spirit. The very desire which her uncle showed to have Susan with him increased the scorn of Susan’s father. What did he want the girl for? To make an old man’s pet of her,and amuse himself with the fondness of dotage? Thus the recluse returned to his house to conclude his letter, and to intimate, in words few and strong, as befitted his present temper, his desire to receive no further “favours” in correspondence from Colonel Sutherland. He went in unsuspicious, where there seemed nothing to suspect, seeing, as he passed, Susan seated near the window with her work on her knee, and her wistful young eyes gazing across the moor. She had come in from her walk and her stolen interview with the one sole companion whom she ever had any intercourse with. She was leaning her head upon the pretty hand, which had dimpled into womanly roundness and softness, thinking over some stray thoughts put into her mind by the romantic Letty, and dispersing, with her own honest womanly good sense, the boarding-school absurdities of the half-educated girl whom Susan so devoutly believed to be her own superior; and perhaps wondering a little wistfully, as girls will, when, if ever, her fate and fortune would come to her over that blank of moorland. Shewas not discontented, little as she had to content her; she was only a domestic woman—a household creature; word of flattery or voice of compliment had never sounded in her ears all her life. She could still brighten her dull firmament not a little with a new pattern for her muslin work, or a new story privately borrowed from Letty, though perhaps only out of the Sunday School library, and nothing remarkable in point of literature; but still wandering ideas will float into minds of nineteen, and eyes that have grown weary even over a new pattern might be pardoned if they searched the horizon with a little wistfulness, and wondered if nobody ever would appear again on the purple blank of Lanwoth Moor.
Susan, at least, was thinking so secretly to herself when her father entered, running over in her own mind the few, very few, people she had ever known. She did not count the turnpikeman and his wife and children upon the road, nor the chance cottager whom she knew by sight. But who were the others? The Rector, and Letty’s father, the poor Presbyterianminister, the first of whom she had heard preach, and the latter had spoken to her when she gave him a chance, which was seldom; Letty herself, who was older now, and had ideas of lovers, and made Susan, a little to her own confusion, shame, and amusement, her chosen confidante; Uncle Edward, dearest of friends, whom, alas, it was like enough she might never see again; and, yes—among so few it was impossible to omit him—Mr. Roger, who had thrown the gipsy’s husband over the hedge, and had taken off his hat to her, and who was lost in the distant world and unknown mists of life. Which of them had Susan a chance of seeing across that moor? Nobody, poor child; not even the postman, the one messenger of brightness to her life; for it was too late for that emissary; but she sat at the window, with her work in one hand, leaning her head upon the other; perhaps dreaming of some figure which it would have lightened her heart to see, appearing in the evening light on the road across the moor.
She was still seated thus, and the light was failing, giving an excuse for her sweet wistfulidleness and half melancholy mood of thought, when Mr. Scarsdale suddenly flung open the door, and appeared, as he had once appeared to his daughter before, swift and sudden as a wind, white with passion, and lost in a fiery, silent excitement, which terrified and shocked her. He came close up to her, with a long, noiseless stride, and grasped her arm furiously: but for that grasp the man might have been a ghost, with his shadowy, attenuated form, his long open dressing-gown streaming behind him, his noiseless step, and face of speechless passion. Not entirely speechless either, though he might as well have been so for any meaning which she could comprehend in the words which fell hissing and sharp on Susan’s ears.
“Where is it?” he cried, shaking her whole frame with the fury of his grasp—“where is it?—what have you done with it? Restore it instantly, dishonourable fool! Do you think it is anything to you?”
“What, papa?” cried Susan, trembling, and drawing back unawares with a shrinkingof terror. It was a strange interruption of her innocent girlish dreams.
“What!” he cried, holding her tighter—“what! Do you dare to ask me? Restore it at once, or I shall be tempted to something beyond reason. Child! idiot! do you think you can cheat me?”
Susan stood still in his hold, shaken by it, and trembling from head to foot—but she shrank no more. “I have never cheated you in all my life,” she said, raising her honest blue eyes to his face—that face which scowled over hers with a devilish force of passion; was it possible that there could be kindred or connection between the two?
He looked at her with a baffled rage, incomprehensible to Susan. “There is neither man nor woman in the world, nor child either, who does not lie to me and deceive me!” said Mr. Scarsdale. “Do you suppose I do not know—do you think I have no eyes to see you smile over that old fool’s fondling letters? Give it up this moment, or I swear to you I will cast you out of my house, and leave youto find your way to him as you can! Give it up at once, I say!”
“Do you mean Uncle Edward’s letter, papa?” asked Susan. “I will get it this moment, if you will let me go; all of them, if you please.”
But instead of letting her go, he grasped her pained arm more fiercely.
“You know what letter I mean,” he said; “that letter which only a fool could have written, and which I was a fool to think of answering. What would you call the child who takes advantage of her father’s absence to go into his room and rob him of it? Was it for love of the writer?—was it for your miserable brother’s information?—or is it a common amusement, which I have only found out because this was done too soon? Thief! have you nothing to say?”
Susan drew herself out of her father’s grasp with a boldness and force altogether unprecedented in her, and grew red over brow, neck, and face.
“I am no thief—I will not be called so!” she said, in sudden provocation; then fallingas suddenly out of that unusual self-assertion, she continued, trembling, “Papa, I have never entered your room; I never went into it in my life except when you were there; I never robbed you; I know nothing even of what you mean.”
Her father looked at her closely, with a smile of disbelief and a fixed offensive stare, which she could not tolerate. He did not attempt to lay hands upon her, but stood only looking at her with eyes which were incapable of perceiving truth or honesty, and saw only fraud and falseness. “Where is the letter?” he said. Those sincere young eyes, which everybody else in the world would have trusted, conveyed no security to him.
Susan turned away from him, with a sudden outbreak of tears—tears of mortified and passionate impatience. He was her father, in spite of the small tenderness he showed her, and had a certain hold upon her habit of domestic affection. She felt the injustice keenly enough, and she felt still more keenly that his eyes were intolerable, and that she could not bear them.
“I have no letter save those my uncle has sent me,” she said, indignantly, when she had overcome her emotion; “they are all here in this box—I have no other. I can only repeat the same thing, papa, if you should ask me a hundred times—I have no letter but these.”
And Susan opened the pretty inlaid box, with its key hanging to it by a bit of ribbon, which Uncle Edward had brought her, and which she had appropriated, with a fanciful girlish affection, to hold his letters—opened it hastily and threw out the little store upon the table with trembling hands. Some trifling circumstance, perhaps the mere odour of the sandal-wood which lined the box, recalling some subtle association to him, produced a start and flush of angry colour on Mr. Scarsdale’s face. He thrust the little casket away with some muttered words which Susan could not hear, but, even in spite of that touch of nature, turned over with a cold suspicion the letters which it had contained. Nothing like what he sought was there, of course; but he was not convinced. No one else was in thehouse, or had been here—so far as his knowledge went—save Peggy; even Susan did not know of her brother’s hurried visit, and Peggy was beyond suspicion, even to Mr. Scarsdale;—his daughter, and she only, could be to blame.
“I know,” he said, coldly, when he had scattered the good Colonel’s letters over the table, throwing them scornfully from him, “that my desk has been opened and my papers stolen. You are clever in hiding, like all women; but such an artifice cannot deceive me, when my loss is so evident. Take this detestable thing away! the smell is suffocating,” he cried, with an interjection of rage, and once more pushing violently from him the pretty box with its pungent odour. “But stay, understand me first; it is late, and you are young; I will not turn you out upon the moor to-night, little as you deserve my consideration; but if this letter is not restored to me before to-morrow, nothing in the world will prevent me expelling you from this house—do you hear? I will have no thief under my roof. I perceive you are ready to cry,like all your kind. Crying is a very good weapon with some people, but I assure you it has no effect whatever on me.”
Susan could not have answered for her life. She stood still, gazing at him with her eyes dilated, a convulsive effort of pride keeping in her tears, but a sob bursting in spite of her, from her suffocating breast. There she still stood after he had left the room, speechless, labouring to contain herself, even after the necessity for that effort was over. But when she dropped at length into a chair, and yielded to the hysterical passion of tears and sobbing which overpowered her, beneath all her shame, mortification, and terror, a guilty gleam of joy which frightened her shot through poor Susan’s heart. She thought it guilty, poor child. She was dismayed to feel that sudden pang of hope and comfort breaking the sense of this calamity. To be expelled from her father’s house, cast out upon the moor and upon the world, with the stigma upon her of having robbed and deceived him! She repeated over to herself that accumulation of horrors, to extinguish this furtive and unpermissibleglow of secret hope, and cried bitterly over her own wickedness when she found it inextinguishable; but even with that secret and unsanctioned solace, the thought was miserable enough to her youth and ignorance. To be turned away like a bad servant; to be called a thief; to be driven from her father’s house; Heaven preserve her! a young girl alone and penniless—what could she do?
INthis stupefied condition of mind, stunned by the change which seemed about to happen, yet moved now and then by a strange intolerance and passionate inclination to resist and protest, Peggy found her young mistress when she came to spread the table for that hateful dinner, the thought of which made Susan’s heart ache. The poor girl still sat listlessly by the table on which her letters, the treasures of her affectionate disposition, were still carelessly scattered, and where the pretty box stood open and empty, as Mr. Scarsdale had thrust it away from him. Susan was by no means above a fit of crying, and had her disappointments and vexations like another, little as there seemed to wish or hopefor within her limited firmament; but this listless attitude of despair was new to Peggy, who was somehow frightened to see it. What had happened? Had she expected a letter, and falling into a fit of passion not to receive any, had she thrown out recklessly on the table that cherished correspondence, the comfort of her life? But fits of passion were very unlike Susan. Peggy had come upstairs early, that she might have some private, confidential talk, and inform her of her brother’s hurried visit; but she paused in anxiety and compassion before entering upon that subject. “Hinny, what ails you?” asked Peggy, with the kindly, local term of caressing, laying her hand softly on Susan’s shoulder. The girl started, gazed in her face, and then suddenly recollecting this one, long, faithful friend, whom she must lose, hid her face upon Peggy’s shoulder, and burst again into passionate tears.
“What is it then, hinny?—aye trouble, and nought but trouble. Bless us all, has the master been upon ye again? And what did ye know, poor innocent?” cried Peggy, caressingthe young head that leaned upon her; “has he found it out, for all the watch I made? Hauld up your head, and let me hear—it was none of your blame.”
“Found out what?” cried Susan, grasping her suddenly by the hand.
“No great comfort if a person mun speak the truth—just that Mr. Horry was here when you were out. Yes, Miss Susan,” said Peggy, “I ought to have told ye sooner, but what good? He came for no end as I could see, and departed the same. Aye the owld man—a bitter thought in his heart, and an ill word in his mouth. Eh, the Lord forgive us! To thinkweshould have the bringing up of childer!—that can make sure of nothing to give them but our own shortcomin’s! He said he was leaving Kenlisle, but no another word, and was out of the house before I could come down to ask him wherefore he was goin’, and where.”
“Horace!” cried Susan, who had followed this speech breathlessly, with an interest almost too eager for intelligence, and whose face had reddened with a painful insight, as itcame to an end. “Horace! Has Horace been here?”
She clasped her hands together with such an anxious entreaty not to be answered, that Peggy paused involuntarily. “Peggy,” said Susan, under her breath, “don’t tell papa—for pity’s sake, don’t tell papa! He will do nothing worse to me than he has threatened. I am only a girl—he would not strike me nor fight me. But Horace! Peggy, for mercy’s sake, if you love me or any of us, let him believe that I did it. Let him never know that Horace has been here.”
“There’s something happened! Let me hear what it is,” said Peggy, almost as anxiously, “and then I’ll know what is behoving and needful. Eh, Miss Susan, you’re ignorant and innocent yoursel’, you moughtn’t understand him. Letmehear what he said.”
“He said nothing,” said Susan, shaking her head mournfully, with a sadness very unlike Peggy’s expectation, “but that I had stolen away a letter from his room while he was out. Oh, Peggy, I am so very, very thankful that I had not seen you, and did not know Horacehad been here! And he said if I did not give it back to him to-morrow, he would turn me away. Turn me away, Peggy, out of doors upon the moor, to go anywhere, or do anything I pleased! I, who never was farther than Tillington except once with Uncle Edward! I, who know nobody, and have no money, and no friends! To send me away from Marchmain, and from—fromyou, who care for me. Oh, Peggy, what shall I do?”
Peggy stood irresolute for a moment, wringing her hands. “The Lord help us all! If the devil has a man bound hand and foot, what canIdo?” cried the faithful servant. “God preserve us! That’s what it’s come to. Eh, mistress, mistress! Did I think what I would have to put up with when I gave you my word? Let me go, Miss Susan. I’ve know’d him thirty year, and he’s know’d me. I’ll speak to him mysel’.”
But Susan hung round her with a clasp which would not be loosed, entreating, with a voice scarcely audible, which, notwithstanding, went to poor Peggy’s heart. “He will thinkyouknow—you will tell him—he will find itout!” cried Susan; “and, Peggy, they will kill each other. Peggy, Peggy! think! father and son! Let him believe it was me; he will not killme, and I am ready to go away.”
“Poor lamb!” said Peggy, smoothing down the pretty fair braids of hair on Susan’s young head, which had once more drooped forward on her own compassionate shoulder. “But it’s no’ her; I’m no thinking of her, bless her! It’s him. God forgive him! He had but one chance, as any mortal could see. He had his childer, his daughter—an innocent that had no share in’t, and was wronged as well as himsel’. And now the Lord help us! he’ll bereave himsel’, and send his one hope away. I’m no’ thinking of you, hinny,” said Peggy, tenderly, while a few slow tears began to fall, gleaming and large, on Susan’s hair—“nor of me—one heart-break, more or less, is little matter to an owld woman; and if I wasna like to sink with fret and trouble, I would see it was best for you; but, oh, weary on the man himsel’! What’s to become ofhim? There’s no more houp, as I can see, no more!”
Susan, sobbing upon Peggy’s breast, naturally felt, in the youthful petulance of that sudden calamity, that it was herself who ought to be sorrowed for, and not her father. She raised herself a little, wiping her eyes, with a flush of momentary independence and involuntary self-assertion. For once in her life the forlorn pride and excess of unappreciated suffering, so dear to very young people, came in a flood of desolate luxury to Susan’s heart. She thought of herself, lonely and friendless upon the moor, cast out from her home, and ignorant where to turn, with nobody in the world so much as thinking of her, or sparing a tear for her sorrow. Peggy mourning for Mr. Scarsdale—for her father, he who dwelt secure and supreme at home, and cast out his woman-child upon the world. Horace, for whose sin she was to suffer, gone away without caring to see her, without even saying where he had gone; and Susan in her youth and desolation all alone and friendless! The picture was sad enough in reality; and Susan lifted herhead with momentary pride from Peggy’s breast, tears of self-lamentation flowing out of her eyes, and proud mortification and loneliness in her heart; not even Peggy felt forher.
“And I—what amIto do?” she said, half to herself, turning her wistful weeping eyes upon that moor which was the world to her at this moment, and no bad emblem of the world at any time to the friendless and solitary. It was true that Susan’s heart had palpitated with one sudden flush of joy at the thought, beyond that moor and yon horizon, of reaching Uncle Edward, and the home of her dreams; but Uncle Edward was far off, and she had no means of reaching him. What was she to do?—wander on day and night, like a lady of romance, seeking her love, with nothing on her lips but “Uncle Edward” and “Milnehill”?—or lose herself and die upon those wistful far extending roads, out of reach of love or human charity? Anything sad enough would have pleased Susan’s imagination at the present moment. She could see no brighter side to the picture. Nobody inthe world cared for or sympathized with her strange dismal circumstances, and the only home she had ever known in the world was about to close its remorseless doors upon her. Darkness fell upon the moor, and the spring breezes blew chilly over it, but from that darkness and those breezes she might have no roof to shelter her after to-night.
From these fancies she was strangely enough interrupted. Peggy, absorbed in her own thoughts, and almost forgetting the young victim of this day’s misfortunes, had not disturbed her hitherto. Peggy’s own mind was wandering back through a painful blank of years and hopeless human perversity; but the sure touch of habit recalled her to herself more certainly than Susan’s silent tears, or the melancholy thought of losing Susan, which, though she said little about it, lay heavy at her heart. The growing darkness startled her suddenly—“Gude preserve me!—and he must have his dinner, whether or no,” said Peggy, darting forward to gather up the letters and restore them to their box. Not a moment too soon, for Mr. Scarsdale’s study-door creakedimmediately afterwards, and his step was audible going upstairs to dress. Susan took the box out of Peggy’s hands with youthful petulance, and left the room, carrying it solemnly, and proudly restraining her tears. Nobody should be offended again with the sight of Uncle Edward’s present. Nobody should find herself in the way after this melancholy night; and the dinner, that dismal ceremonial—the dinner which Peggy could not forget, though Susan’s heart was breaking—she had that trial, too, to get through and overcome. To meet her father’s eye and sit in his presence all the miserable evening; to eat or pretend to eat for the last time at his table; and to do this all alone and unsupported, the poor desolate child feeling a certain guilt in her heart which she had not known when he spoke to her first—the secret consciousness, not to be revealed for her life, that if she had not taken the letter she knew who had done so; and that secretly, like a robber, Horace had been here.
THEdinner passed as these formal lonely dinners had passed for years at Marchmain. There was no perceptible shade of difference in the manner of Mr. Scarsdale, who addressed to his daughter polite questions about the dishes she preferred, as he had been used to do to Horace, driving his son wild; and himself sat upright and stiff at the head of the table, dining, as usual, without any symptoms of the passion which he had exhibited to Susan. He was deeply angry, it is true, still, but he was entirely without alarm, believing, as a matter of course, that Susan must have taken his letter, and contemptuously receiving that instance of dishonourable conduct merely as a visible specimen of the womanish meannessand cunning which belonged to such creatures, and which, perhaps, was scarcely to be considered guilt. He believed she would return it to him that evening. He did not believe she had boldness enough to retain any copy for Horace, and he knew that to herself it would disclose nothing; therefore, he showed no more passion, was no more repulsive than he always was, and scarcely deigned to turn his eyes more than usual upon his unfortunate child.
Shesat there at table, with the light shining on her, answering him in humble monosyllables when he spoke—for Susan’s heroics had failed long ere now—receiving humbly what he sent to her, but unable to eat a morsel, her heart almost choking her as it beat against her breast. It was not now the desolate moor, nor the forlorn idea of being thrust out homeless upon it to wander where she would, that oppressed Susan. It was the terror of being put to further question, of her father once more addressing her, as he was sure to do, about the theft, of which she no longer felt herself quite innocent. She couldscarcely restrain her start and thrill of terror when he turned his head towards her; her frame trembled throughout with desperate apprehensions; she feared herself, and her own ignorance of all the arts of concealment; she feared to say something or do something which would betray Horace; and she feared her father—that bitter tone of passion, that terrible incredulity of truth. The poor girl sat still, rigidly, upon her chair, with a feeling that this was her only safeguard, and that she must infallibly drop down upon the floor if she tried to move. When Peggy removed the cloth, and placed Mr. Scarsdale’s little reading-desk, his glass and decanter, upon the table, Susan still sat there in spite of many a secret touch and pull from her humble and anxious friend. Peggy was alarmed, but durst not say anything to call the attention of her master; and at last brought Susan’s work to her, and thrust it into the poor child’s trembling fingers, with a look and movement of anxious appeal. Susan took the work mechanically, and applied herself to it without knowing what she did; and thus the eveningwent on with a thrilling, audible silence, of which, dreary and long though she had felt these nights many a time before, she had never been sensible till now. The long, gleaming, polished table, with the two candles reflecting themselves in its surface in two lines of light; the solemn figure of Mr. Scarsdale in his formal evening dress, seated upright at the head, turning with mechanical, automaton regularity the leaves of his book; the dead blank of the surrounding walls, no longer diversified even by a flicker of firelight; and Susan, almost as rigid and motionless as her father, afraid to breathe, lest it should call his attention to her; her ears tingling to the dreadful silence, and her heart fainting at thought of the words which some time this evening were sure to break it. Looking upon this evening scene, it was strange to believe that Susan Scarsdale could tremble at the idea of being thrust out of this cold and gloomy refuge, or find no comfort in the thought of trying rather the strange world and the solitary moor, which, unknown as they were, were still crossed by paths which led to human homes.
But she thought neither of the world nor the moor at the present moment. She would have been glad if she had been sufficiently courageous to fly out into the darkness and lose herself for ever rather than meet this impending interview; but it was not in her to escape or run away. Susan’s mind was the womanly development of that steady British temper which cannot deliver itself by violence, but must wait orderly and dutiful for the natural accomplishment of its destinies. She sat trembling but still, afraid of what she had to bear, doubtless, but incapable of running away.
The long night passed in this pause and silence, without a word said on either side. The tea came in, and was made and swallowed without any interruption of the blank. And still Susan’s fingers moved at the work which she could scarcely see, and her father turned over the pages of his book. He perceived beyond doubt, as he sat mechanically reading to the bottom of every page, with that dull, steady attention which had neither life nor interest in it, the state of extreme emotion,excitement, and desperate self-restraint in which his young daughter sat before him; but pity found no entrance into his heart. He permitted her to remain so, sitting late and beyond the usual hour of retiring, with a kind of diabolical patience on his own part, which checked the words a dozen times on his lips. He was satisfied to see the entire power he had over her, and at the present moment had no thought of his threat, or of carrying it out. Perhaps even to him the room would have been more desolate, the dismal evening longer, had there been no young figure there, humbly ministering to him when occasion was, keeping respectful silence, bearing, without a complaint or effort to enliven them, these tedious, miserable hours; but he had no objection to see her suffer. At length, when the chill of almost midnight began to creep into that room where they had ceased to have any fire, Mr. Scarsdale’s own physical sensations moved him. He closed his book, and as he closed it, saw Susan shiver in the climax of her agonies of anticipation. She should not be balked this time, and at last he spoke.
“I presume, Susan,” he said, with a little solemnity, “that you have made up your mind.”
“Papa?” said Susan, with a gasp of inquiry. Made up her mind to what? He so seldom addressed her by her name that some forlorn hope of his heart relenting towards her entered her head. Perhaps some lingering touch of compunction had taken him at the thought of sending her away.
“Must I speak plainer?” he said. “I presume you have decided what you are going to do. Are you ready to restore my letter, or to leave my house? Which? You understand the alternative well enough, and you know that I am not to be trifled with—have you the letter here?”
“Oh, papa!” cried Susan, clasping her hands, “I have not the letter here nor anywhere! I never had it! I never saw it! Oh, papa, did I ever tell you a lie, that you will not believe me now? And how can I give it back when I never took it?—when I do not know what it is? Will you not believe me? I am speaking the truth.”
“Where is my letter?” cried Mr. Scarsdale once more, growing white with passion.
Susan sat looking at him, trembling, unable to speak; her lips moved, but he could not hear what she said. She could hardly hear herself say under her breath, “I cannot tell! I do not know!” Her terror had taken breath and voice away from her. How could she answer such a question?—she did not know—and yet she did know. Oh, Horace! She could have been so much bolder, so much stronger, if she had never known of his coming there.
“You are obdurate, then, and determined!” cried the father. “You think, perhaps, your brother will take up your cause and protect you. Fool! do you suppose he cares for you more than for an instrument; or your meddling uncle, who has made perpetual mischief since his prying visit here. Think! I give you one opportunity more: will you restore me that letter—once for all, yes or no?”
Susan staggered up to her feet, hysterical and overwhelmed.
“You may turn me away out of the house!” she cried; “youmaydo it, for you have the power—you may kill me, if you please; but you cannot make me give back what I never saw and never touched in my life!”
Mr. Scarsdale looked at her intently, as if thinking that his eyes, fiery and burning, could overcome her if nothing else would. “In that case,” he said, with cold passion, “this is our last meeting—the last occasion on which I shall have anything to say to you. I am now alone, and shall remain so while I live. Be good enough to give Peggy directions where your wardrobe is to be sent. In consideration of your youth, I give you the shelter of my roof to-night; but I trust I shall not need to encounter another such interview. Good-bye—I wish you better fortune in your future life than you have had here.”
Susan held up her hands, overpowered, in spite of herself, by the position in which she stood.
“Father, where can I go?” she cried,with a wild appeal. He looked at her once more, fixedly and firmly.
“You know that much better than I can tell you. Good-bye,” he said; and so left the room, with those long, silent, passionate steps, the light he carried gleaming upon his passionate face. Susan sank down where he had left her, alone and desolate. It was all over now!
SUSANcould not tell how long the interval was till Peggy came softly stealing into the room, in her big night-cap, and with a shawl over her shoulders. Peggy had waited till she heard Mr. Scarsdale sweep upstairs; she could see him out of her kitchen, where she sat in the dark, silent and watchful as her own great cat, with her eyes turned towards the closed door of the dining-room; and as soon as she supposed it safe, she made haste to the succour of his poor daughter. Susan was sitting in despair, where she had sat all the evening, pale, stupefied, and silent—not sufficiently alive to outward circumstances to notice Peggy’s entrance; overpowered by her own personal misfortune scarcely morethan she was shocked in her sense of right, and ashamed to be obliged to expose her father’s cruelty and injustice. A new horror on this point had seized her; she was not of that disposition which is pleased to appear in the character of victim or sacrifice; she would have suffered anything sooner than disclose the grim ghost of her own house to the public eye; notwithstanding this was what she must do, in spite of herself. When Horace left his home it was not an unnatural proceeding, nor was his father to be supposed greatly in the wrong; but she, a girl, what would any one think of a man who expelled her from his unfatherly doors? Her heart ached as this new thought fell with afflicting and sudden distinctness upon it, and she had now no more time to weep or bemoan herself. This night only was all the interval of thought or preparation to be permitted her. Already, indeed, in the chill of that deep darkness the day had begun which was to see her cast forth and banished; and already her mind sickened and grew feeble to think that she could not take a step upon the roadwithout revealing to some one how hardly she had been treated; and that her own very solitude, helplessness, and necessity were all so many mute accusations against the father who had no pity on her womanhood or her youth.
Notwithstanding, Susan was recovering command of herself, and felt that she had no time for trifling; and when she felt Peggy’s hand on her shoulder, and heard the whisper of kindness in her ear, she did not “give way,” as Peggy expected. She looked up with her exhausted face, almost worn out, yet at the same time reviving, full of what it was necessary to do.
“I am to go away,” she said, slowly, with a quiver of her lip—“to-morrow—early—that he may never see me again. I am to tell you where to send my things, and to go away, Peggy, to-morrow.”
“Weel, hinny, and it’s well for you!” cried Peggy, herself bursting out into a fit of tears and sobbing. “Oh, Miss Susan, what am I that I should complain and grumble?—but it’s all that heartbreaking face, my darlinglamb! What should I lament for? Nothing in this world but selfishness, and because I’m an old fool. The Lord forgive us!—it’s a deal better for you!”
“Oh! hush, Peggy—don’t speak!” said Susan—“and don’t cry—I can’t bear it! There is very, very little time now to think of anything; and you must tell me—there is nobody else in the world to tell me—what I am to do.”
“Nobody else in the world? Oh, hinny-sweet!” cried poor Peggy. “There’s a whole worldfull of love and kindness for you and the likes of you. There’s your uncle—bless him!—that would keep the very wind off your cheek; and many a wan ye never saw nor heard tell o’, will be striving which to be kindest. Say no such words to me—I know a deal better than that. I’m no’ afraid for you,” cried Peggy, with a fresh burst of sobbing—“no’ a morsel, and I’ll no pretend. I’m real even down heartbroken for the master and mysel’!”
Susan could not answer, and did not try; she was but little disposed to lament for herfather at the present moment, or to think him capable of feeling her loss. She put her hand on Peggy’s, and pressed it, half in fondness, half with an entreaty to be silent, which the faithful servant did not disregard. Peggy took Susan’s round soft hand between her own hard ones, and held it close, and looked at her with sorrowful, fond eyes. She saw the young life and resolution, the sweet serious sense and judgment, coming back to Susan’s face, and Peggy was heroic enough to forget herself, for the forlorn young creature’s sake.
“Ay, it’s just so,” said Peggy—“I knowed it from her birth. She’ll never make a work if she can help it, but she’ll never break down and fail. Miss Susan, there’s one thing first and foremost you mun do, and you munna say no to me, for I know best. You must go this moment to your bed——”
“To bed! Do you thinkIcould sleep, Peggy?” cried Susan, with involuntary youthful contempt.
“Ay, hinny—ye’ll sleep, and ye’ll wake fresh, and start early. You wouldn’t think it, maybe, but I know better,” said Peggy.“You munna say no to me, the last night. Eyeh, my lamb! you’re young, and your eyes are heavy with the sleep and the tears. I’ll wake ye brave and early, but you mun take first your nat’ral rest.”
“It is impossible. I do not know what to do—I have everything to ask you about. Oh, Peggy, don’t bid me!” said Susan, crying; “and I have no money, and nobody to direct me, and I don’t know how to get there!”
“Whisht! Youth can sleep at all seasons; but it’s given to the aged to watch, and it doesna injurethem,” said Peggy, solemnly. “Go to your bed, my lamb, and say your prayers, and the Lord’ll send sleep to his beloved; and as for me, I’ll turn all things over in my mind, and do up your bundle: you mun carry your own bundle, hinny, a bit of the road—there’s no help; and rouse you with the break of day, and hev your cup of tea ready. Eh! the Lord bless you, darling! you’re a-going forth to love and kindness, and a life fit for the likes of you. Am I sorry? No, no, no, if ye ask me a hunderd times—save and excepting for mysel’.”
“Oh, Peggy,you’llmiss me!” cried Susan, throwing herself into the arms of her faithful friend.
“Ay; maybe I will,” said Peggy, slowly; “I wouldn’t say—it’s moor nor likely. Miss Susan, go to your bed this moment; ye’ll maybe never have the chance of doing Peggy’s bidding again.”
Moved by this adjuration, Susan obeyed, though very unwillingly; and smiling sadly at the very idea of sleep, laid herself down for the last time on her own bed, “to please Peggy.” But Peggy knew better than her young mistress. Through those deep, chill hours of night, while Peggy, in the same room, looked over all the different articles of her wardrobe, selecting the dress in which she should travel, carefully packing the others, and putting up the light necessary articles which must be carried with her, Susan slept soft and deep, with the sleep of youth and profound exhaustion. She had been tried beyond her strength, and nature would not be defrauded. When Peggy’s task was over she sat down by the bedside, a strange figure inher great muslin nightcap, and with her big shawl wrapping her close against the cold of the night. Peggy was too old to sleep in such circumstances; she sat wiping her eyes silently, though not weeping, as far as any sound went, thinking of more things than Susan wist of; of Susan’s mother, who had succumbed so many years ago under the hard pressure of life; of the unhappy man in the next room, who was consuming himself, as he had consumed everything lovely and pleasant in his existence, by the vehemence and bitterness of his passions; and of yet another man who was dead, an elder Scarsdale, whose malevolent will worked mischief and misery, after he had ceased to have any individual action of his own. Susan would have thought it strange and hard if she had known that she herself, the darling of Peggy’s heart, came in only at the end of this long musing upon others; and that even her brother, with his hard and ungenerous spirit, had a larger share in the sorrowful cogitations of the old family servant than she herself had. Susan was only a sufferer—she was young, she had friends whowould love her. Peggy would “miss” her sorely and heavily, but it was well for Susan. She had nothing to do with that long line of perversity, and cruelty, and guilt which ran in the Scarsdale blood.
The dawn was breaking gray and faint when Peggy woke her young mistress. Susan sprang up instantly, unable to believe that the night was really over. Peggy had made everything ready for her, even to the unnecessary breakfast and comforting cup of tea down-stairs, set before a cosy fire, and the girl dressed herself with a silent rapidity of excitement, listening to the directions which Peggy, not very learned herself, gave to her inexperience. Peggy, out of the heart of some secret treasure of her own, which she kept ready in case of necessity, and had done for many a year, with a prevision of some such want as the present, had taken an old five-pound note, which, stuffed into an old fashioned purse, she put into Susan’s hands, as soon as her rapid toilette was completed.
“They’ll no ask more nor that, Miss Susan,” said Peggy; “they tell me they’reno as dear as postchays, them railroads. Now, hinny, I’ll tell you what you’ll do—you’ll take across the moor to Tillington, to John Gilsland’s, at the public; it’s a long walk, but it cannot be helped, and it’s early morning, and no a person will say an uncivil word to you. You’ll tell him to get out his gig and take you immediate to the railroad, and you’ll no pay him. Maybe he might impose upon you, though he’s a decent man, if it wasna his wife; and maybe they might ask moor nor we think for at the railroad, and put ye about. Ye can tell him to come to us for his payment, and so I’ll hear how ye got that far. Then, Miss Susan, ye’ll make him take out a ticket for you—that’s the manner of the thing—as near till the Cornel’s as possible—you knaw the names of the places better nor me; and then, my darling lamb, you’ll buy some biscuits and things, and take grit care of yoursel’; and you’ll come to Edinburgh, so far as I can mind, first; and then you’ll ask after the road to your uncle’s. I canna believe, not me, that there’s a man on the whole road as is fit to be oncivil to you. And you’ll tell JohnGilsland to take your ticket for the best place; and look about you, hinny, till you see some decent woman-person a-goin’ the same road, and keep besideher. Miss Susan, my dear lamb, you’ll have to think for yoursel’, and no be frightened. Eh, if I could but go and take care of ye! but the Lord bless us, hinny, we munna leavehim, poor forlorn gentleman, all by himself.”