FORGETTINGtotally for the time all lesser projects, and suffering Mr. Pouncet and old Adam, Roger Musgrave and his lost property, to fall behind him into complete oblivion, though it was the Kenlisle lawyer’s sovereigns which paid his fare to London, Horace set out to seek his fortune. He had never been so confident in his expectations; and if any one had informed him during that journey of the suspicions which his uncle and Susan discussed slightly and pondered deeply, the doubts of his own honour and uprightness which both entertained, and the inquiries which were likely to be set on foot to satisfy them, he would have laughed his laugh of supreme disdain, spurning that past transaction as too insignificantto help or harm him. Adam Brodie, and the “power” over Mr. Pouncet and Mr. Stenhouse which his story gave, had been sufficiently important to Horace a short time before; but the young man was in an elevated and dizzy state of mind. He was going to find out an unknown fairy fortune; the crock of gold was almost visible; he did not feel sure that he should return to Harliflax in less than a coach-and-six, with an old-fashioned braggadocio of triumph; and what were all the previous schemes and expedients of his humble fortune to the exultant heir who was coming to his kingdom? By dint of constant thought on the subject and intense desire, he had succeeded in convincing himself that this kingdom only awaited discovery, and was just about to fall into his full possession. A hundred Adam Brodies could not harm Horace, and what was Mr. Pouncet and his secret to him?
In this condition of mind, though growing somewhat anxious as the moment of certainty approached, Horace, in strong but restrained excitement, pale with the fire that burned in his veins and withdrew the blood from hischeek, hastened from the City tavern, where he had found a lodging, round the quiet side of St. Paul’s, to that strange old den of fortune, where tragic family secrets by the thousand lie recorded, and where the domestic history of a whole nation accumulates in silence. He disappeared beneath the archway, anxious yet confident; the blaze of his triumph ready to burst forth, his thoughts rushing forward in spite of him to the splendours which lay almost within reach, to his marriage with Amelia, to all the pleasures and domination of sudden wealth. An hour or two afterwards he came out again a different man. He had found his fortune—but it was passion, and not triumph, that burned in his downcast eyes. His face was no longer pale, but red with a sullen flush of impotent resentment and hatred. He went through the crowd elbowing his way like a man who had a quarrel with all the world; he went straight across the crowded streets, and pushed his way among waggons and omnibuses with a certain fierce defiance of accident, and impulse of opposition. When he got to his tavern, the first thing he didwas to call a cab, into which he flung his little carpet-bag, as if that homely conveniency had done him mortal injury, and in a voice of passion desired to be driven instantly to the railway. Alas! that was no coach-and-six, either morally or visibly, in which Horace returned to Harliflax, and to the clerk’s life in Mr. Stenhouse’s office, which this morning he regarded with lordly and lofty disdain. He sat back, an image of silent and self-consuming rage, in his corner of the second-class railway carriage; rage which dried up every comfortable sensation out of his mind; rage at himself, who had been thus deceived; at the dead man who had left him, in the first place, this bitter vexation and disappointment, and at the living man, who lived to thwart him, and keep him out of his rightful possessions. Not a remorseful thought of the lifelong wrong which had soured his father’s spirit and destroyed his life occurred to the congenial temper of his father’s son. A true Scarsdale, Horace proved his legitimacy by the unmixed self-regard which plunged him into that sudden passion. From his own pointof view he took up the expressions of his father’s letter. They were rivals to the death. That event, long ago accomplished, which Horace knew for the first time to-day, had abrogated the bonds of nature between them at the very beginning of the son’s life; and already a horrible impatience of the father’s existence stole unawares over the mind of the young man. That lonely, miserable, misanthrope’s life which the recluse endured at Marchmain kept the heir out of his inheritance—kept the youth from his will—the bridegroom from his bride; and Horace set his teeth, thinking of it. In that chain of resentful and selfish cogitations one idea followed another too rapidly to be checked. Horace could not help it, and was scarcely aware at first how the thought, vexatious and galling, stole into his mind, that Mr. Scarsdale was still in the fulness of his days, and might live to thwart him for many a long year. The red colour flushed deeper to his face, and his hand clenched involuntarily as the idea occurred to him. Day after day, and year after year, till his own youth had died out of hisveins; till Amelia Stenhouse was out of his reach, and life and wealth had lost half their charms; that unlovely existence might linger on at Marchmain, and keep him out of his inheritance. What sudden rush of breathless suggestion, not daring to breathe in shape of words or definite expressions, flooded his mind for one violent moment after that we will not venture to say; but the next instant Horace wiped his wet forehead, on which great drops of moisture hung, and threw open the window to draw breath, and hide himself from himself. When he looked in again, he had made a violent effort, and turned his mind into another channel. Crime or madness—heaven knows which—lay the way he had been going, and the first glance had sickened him with mortal terror. He turned away from the dread unwilling thought with the first conscious effort against evil which he had ever made. The evil was monstrous, and appalled him: he was not bad enough to cogitatethat, even in his most secret thoughts.
But here stood the facts, certain and unchangeable. Fortune, as dazzling as he hadever hoped for, lay within Horace’s sight, his lawful inheritance; but between him and that glorious vision stood the black figure of the disinherited—his father, through whose lineal hands the family wealth ought to have flowed. What did he live for—that unhappy, solitary man?—what was the good of an existence which dragged its melancholy days out after such a fashion? Horace understood now what was the meaning of “posthumous punishment and vengeance,” and what bitter effect the disappointed man had given to his father’s cruel will; but the heir was not sorry for the hermit of Marchmain. Pity found no entrance into the self-absorbed mind of Horace; he saw his own position merely and no other, and thought as little of Mr. Scarsdale’s lifelong tragedy as if the recluse had been a wooden image; a scarecrow to keep him off his enchanted land. Yet something more; though he resisted it, the dark thought would return to increase the turmoil of his mind. His father was still young, a strong man in the vigour and flush of life. Again and again that dark red flush rose to the young man’s cheek, and the dew hung heavy on his forehead. Ten years, twenty years—who could prophesy how long that dreary life might hang and linger out yonder on the dreary moor? The good, the just, the lives most loved and prized, fade out of human ways; but the man accursed and excommunicated lives on. This man, perhaps, whose death would scarcely call a tear to any eye, would die most likely a very patriarch of disappointment, hatred, and misery; while his son, the heir, lingered out the blossom of his life in daily drudgery, unconsidered and poor.
This idea pertinaciously clinging to his mind might have crazed a better heart than that of Horace; him it persecuted with a shuddering chill of inarticulate suggestions which paled his cheeks, yet stirred his mind with the wild excitement of temptation and crime. Crime! he was familiar enough with wickedness; but that ruffian whispering in his ear sickened him to the heart, yet moved his pulses with a tingle of passion. Wealth beyond his reckoning, power, riches, and Amelia, and only one desolate life standing between his strong arm andthat threefold prize. The whisper which horrified him, but which he still listened to, stole into his heart as he went on; he had not closed his door against it. Already a fiercer excitement than he had ever known grew upon him and consumed him: he was innocent—he had never lifted his hand against life, nor shed blood; yet the passion and horror took hold upon him as if he were already guilty. How the hours and miles of his journey passed he was ignorant; when he had mechanically alighted at Harliflax he called himself fool not to have gone on; on, he did not know why, to that charmed spot, charmed by enmity and hostile passions, where his father, his hinderer, the bitter obstacle between him and fortune, dragged through his melancholy days. There was no influence upon the miserable young man to dispel the gloom of incipient murder from his heart; his very love, such as it was, urged him instead of staying him. He went on to the lodging which he had left yesterday with such different thoughts, in a brooding fit of hatred and disgust with himself and everybody else, afraid of the dreadful thoughtwhich made his pulses leap and his veins tingle, yet yielding to its fierce excitement, and permitting its fire of hideous temptation to light his path. A ghastly light; but it strung his nerves so high, and excited his mind so intensely, that by-and-bye the intoxicating influence was all that he was aware of, and the idea growing familiar ceased to horrify him. What was it?—but not even in the deepest silence could the coward crime shape itself into words. It was there, and he knew it. That was enough for the devil who had led, and the spirit which followed. He went through the darkness and the peaceful streets with this deadly inspiration within him; his thoughts hovering like so many spies, and closing in dark battalions round the house on the moor, where childhood and youth had passed for Horace. He had still almost a week’s freedom—what was he to do?
WHENHorace arrived at his lodgings he found two letters awaiting him, which gave a momentary diversion to the dark current of his thoughts. One of them was from Colonel Sutherland, being an innocent device of that innocent old soldier to draw a candid and frank reply out of his nephew’s uncandid soul. Out of his dismal passion and murderous thoughts Horace came down to something like his old everyday contempt of other people, as he read his uncle’s letter, which ran thus:—
“My dear Horace—I have lately learnt by accident that you know Roger Musgrave, which I was not aware of; and as the youth has interested me very much, I would gladly knowwhat you, with your superior penetration, think and know of him. I will tell you frankly what makes me wish this. Susan had begun to tell me of some encounter of yours with an old man at the railway, in which mention was made of young Musgrave, when she suddenly remembered that you did not wish her to mention it. This, of course, as you will suppose, knowing the nature of garrulous old men and gossips like myself, made me ten times more curious, and I managed to get out of Susan some vague story about a pension and something that had been found out. Susan is ignorant as a girl should be of a young man’s follies, but I unfortunately know better. I wish you would tell me, if you can without breaking confidence, the rights of this story, and whether it is to hide some youthful sin that Musgrave is expected to pay somebody a pension. If it should be so, believe me, my dear boy, who know life and the world, that it is far better to tell all. Pay the money if need be, but hide nothing; it is fatal policy, trust an old man’s word.
“Susan is very well and happy with me,where I hope you will come and see this flown bird, and where we have always a bed and a welcome for my sister’s son. Come when you can—the sooner the better; and while this unfortunate difference lasts between you and your father, it would give me great pleasure, my dear boy, if you would look upon Milnehill as your home.
“Affectionately your uncle,“E. Sutherland.”
This simple-minded letter brought Horace back to himself for the moment. He read it over a second time, with one of his familiar sneers, and, with scarcely the pause of a minute, hunted up writing materials in a cold corner of his half-lighted room, and rushed into a premature and imprudent reply.
“Your acuteness, my dear uncle,” wrote Horace, “has not led you astray. Of course I could enter into no explanations with a girl like Susan, from whose ears one would naturally keep everything of the kind. But you are quite right in your supposition. Such insight as yours into our little concealments is a more effectual argument than anyother to prevent us young fellows from trying to bide what cannot be hidden. I cannot enter into any particulars, and it seems needless to say anything more than that you are right.
“Thank you for your kind offer of a home at Milnehill; and with love to Susan, believe me in haste,
“Your dutiful nephew,“Horace Scarsdale.”
This letter was closed and thrown aside before Horace perceived the other one which lay on the table before him. He turned it over half suspiciously. In a female handwriting, and sent evidently by some private messenger, the look of it puzzled him who had no correspondents. Then the signature threw him into a flush of eager anxiety. What could induce Amelia Stenhouse to write tohim?But, after all, the contents were commonplace enough. It was a very brief note, dated from her father’s house the morning of this same day:—
“Dear Sir—Papa is suddenly taken ill.The doctors fear it looks like cholera, and he is rather alarmed himself. He wishes to see you immediately, if you can come. I hope this may reach you soon, and that you will be able to return directly, for he seems anxious to see you, as if he had something to say.
“Yours sincerely,“Amelia Stenhouse.”
It was some little time before Horace understood distinctly the contents of this note; for he was a lover, unlovely though his love was, and the first communication moved him into a momentary tumult, in which the words lost their due meaning. When he turned over to the address, however, and the “to be forwarded immediately” caught his eye, he began to rouse himself to a consciousness of the urgent circumstances. Mr. Stenhouse was ill, and wanted to see him. Twenty-four hours ago Horace would have supposed that his employer knew something of his father’s secret. Now he was somewhat indifferent as to any communication which Mr. Stenhouse might have to make. But he was Amelia’s father, andshe was likely to be there. He got up accordingly, in the haste which was congenial to his agitated condition, and made his toilette rapidly, but with unusual care. He was pale, and his passion of evil thoughts had left traces upon his face; but the very excitement of those murderous fancies lighted an unusual fire in his eye, and animated the countenance, which, in common times, was not a remarkable face. As he went out he took up the letter he had written to his uncle, and tossed it carelessly into the post as he passed, thinking, with a momentary contemptuous wonder as he did so, of the simple old man who had opened his arms and heart to Susan, and who held open for Horace himself that warm domestic shelter, the home of which the young man felt no need. The contrast was wonderful enough—Uncle Edward and his Susan in their bright, peaceful room at Milnehill, in the evening calm and sweet comfort of that home life; and this young solitary, hurrying by himself through the dark streets of Harliflax, the wind flaring the street-lamps overhead, and a crowd of hurrying phantoms rushing throughthe darkness of his mind, where the air was wild with the excitement of a storm, and lightning gleams of evil intention threw a fitful illumination. He went on, hurrying through the night, with a careless intuition that he was going to a death-bed. It was nothing to Horace. He was going to serve his own purposes, to see Amelia. His pulse beat high at last, with a rising exhilaration. In the changing tide of his thoughts he began to remember that fortune was secure to him, though not now, and he was going to see the first and only creature who had ever touched his selfish soul into passion. His spirit rose into a thrill of expectation and dark enjoyment. That inarticulate horror lay darkling still among his thoughts, but it did not disturb the rising flush of youthful elevation and hope.
The lawyer’s house was lighted all over, but not with lights which could be mistaken for an illumination of pleasure. Even in so short a time the whole place had acquired a look of painful hurry and anxiety. The daughters and the servants were wanderingrestlessly up and down the stairs, making ceaseless inquiries, and keeping up a perpetual disturbance at the door of the sick-room, where Mrs. Stenhouse, restored to her due place, by the visitation of trouble, watched by her husband, and where even Amelia was not permitted to enter. Amelia was not very anxious for the privilege, it must be owned. She kept up a perpetual succession of messages, sending her sisters and her maid, and every half hour going herself to ask whether papa was any better?—whether there was any change?—with cheeks paled half by anxiety about her father, and half by fright and apprehension for herself; for the cholera had come to Harliflax, a dreaded visitor, some months before, and still made itself remembered in fatal droppings of poison, here and there a single “case” renewing in the public mind its original panic. The beauty was glad to escape from her fears and the troubled atmosphere of the house, into a burst of hurried conversation with Horace, who was not sentimental enough to require of her any great degree of devotion to her father, and didnot find it at all unsuitable to the agitated condition of the household that Amelia turned to himself so readily for occupation in her restless idleness. She swept down upon a little sofa, which was lost and disappeared under the covert of her ample skirts, and shaded her face with her hand, and declared that she was so unhappy she did not know what to do. “For it really is the cholera, Mr. Scarsdale,” said Amelia; “and we may all be gone in a week, for anything any one can tell. Poor papa is so bad, it is dreadful to think of it! And I am sure, ever since I knew what it was, I have been in such a state! If you were to listen now, you could hear my heart beat.”
“I am listening; but my ear is too far off,” said Horace, with bold admiration. “I should like to study that sound at a less distance, if I might——”
“Oh! Mr. Scarsdale—if I were not so anxious and so agitated, I should be very angry,” said Amelia. “Pray, go away, sir. You are a great deal too bold, you gentlemen. But to think of poor papa: quite well yesterday morning, and to-night—oh dear! oh dear!”
“Perhaps he is not so bad as you suppose,” said Horace.
“He is a great deal worse than anybody supposes,” cried Amelia, with a little sob. “Here, you—Harriet—Emma! Run up this moment, and knock at the door, and ask how dear papa is; whether there is any change. I am so afraid to hear there is any change; the words sound so dreadful—don’t they, Mr. Scarsdale?—and when it is one’s father! Oh! what a long time that child loiters. I must run myself! Wait just a moment, please.”
And Amelia swept away, upsetting a chair in her progress, and almost puffing out one of the candles on the table by the current of air which attended her movements. She came back again a few minutes after, breathless, but walking with great solemnity.
“He is no better—there is no difference, Mr. Scarsdale,” she said, with a great sigh, seating herself with the deepest seriousness, casting down her eyes, and shaking her head. Horace watched her through all this pantomime with glowing eyes. Not that he remarkedor commented on the character which thus showed itself: he cared no more for Amelia’s character than he did for her grandmother’s; but from the splendid black hair wreathed round her head, to the little foot which came out from under her wide drapery, and upon which her own downcast eyes were fixed, the young man devoured her with his gaze of bold and selfish passion. He should have her yet, whoever might object: she should belong to him, whether she would or not. That was the pivot of his fancy; and all Amelia’s pretty trickery was nothing to her thorough-going admirer, nor did he even feel himself reminded of his special errand here, or of the suffering man upon whom “as yet”—ominous words—there was no change!
Perhaps neither of the young people knew very well how long Horace remained in that deserted drawing-room, which had so strange an air of agitation to-night upon all its familiar aspects, and which, though nothing was changed, bore somehow so clear an impression of being no longer the centre of interest, but rather a forsaken corner out ofthe current. After a while, however, thetête-à-têtewas rudely interrupted by the staggering entrance of Mr. Stenhouse’s man-of-all-work, carrying in his arms the invalid boy with whom Horace had made private acquaintance on his first visit here.
“Mr. Edmund’s sent for up to master,” said the man, confusedly, as he saw that his young mistress was there. “Beg your pardon, Miss Amelia; but I didn’t know no one was here, and come in to rest—he’s mortal heavy, for all he’s so little,” he continued, as he staggered out again, somewhat dismayed by his blunder. Miss Amelia was not the gentlest of rulers. Little Edmund, meanwhile, clung to his bearer’s shoulder, with his suspicious eyes gleaming large and eager out of his little white child’s face. Edmund was not the person to come and go without a word.
“I say, sir, you!” cried Edmund, “papa’s ill. You’re not to come a-courting, as Stevens says you all do, to-night. I won’t have it—Iwon’t! I’m papa’s son, and when he’s ill there shan’t be strangers in the house!”
The end of this harangue was lost in the depths of the stairs, where Stevens had borne forth in alarm his dangerous charge. Amelia started, half rose, shook out her great skirts, and turned with graceful condescension to her lover.
“Don’t mind that little savage, Mr. Scarsdale. But really I had quite forgotten that papa asked to see you; this has been such an agitating, anxious day. Pray call Stevens, and make him tell papa that you are here; and please,” she continued, rising up suddenly, and laying her hand on Horace’s arm, “please do let me know what he says to you. Oh, I’m sure it’s about little Edmund—that little wretch is such a pet with papa, and it’s so unfair to us. Will you?” she cried, with animation, making no resistance when Horace took and held her hand. “Will you really? Oh, do, there’s a dear good—oh no, I did not mean that; I meant, there’s a kind friend; now don’t be foolish, Mr. Scarsdale; go up directly to papa.”
“I will, because you tell me,” said Horace; “for your sake—it would be hard to go onany other argument; and when I promise to tell you what he says, promise thatyouwill see me again.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Amelia, hurrying him to the door, with a little fright, adding piquancy to her gratified vanity. She had seen various people “in love,” and was a little indifferent to the manifestations of that youthful delusion; but the eyes of Horace glowed upon her with no commonplace fervour. She was flattered, but she was a little afraid, even though she was not aware what black companion she had in the young man’s dangerous heart.
WITHOUTany awe, or indeed much interest—with the indifference of a man absorbed in his own affairs, and the still more revolting carelessness of one who had begun to play in his dark thoughts with other human lives, and to find them obstacles in his way—Horace Scarsdale entered the sick room of his employer. Mr. Stenhouse lay, huddled among his pillows, in all the exhaustion of his terrible disease, shivering and blue beneath the load of coverings with which his attendants vainly endeavoured to restore vital warmth to his frame. He was not dyingyet—he had still force enough to retain the dismal, anxious look into which that malady writhes and puckers the suffering face; but he had reached to thatcondition of entire occupation with his own pangs, which sometimes happily, sometimes miserably, beguiles the departing soul out of the shrinkings of nature on the verge of death. The appearance of Horace, recalling him from that absorbing consciousness of pain, he perceived with all a sick man’s impatience. He had got free of his thoughts by means of those bodily tortures through which he had just passed—and to feel himself brought back to the more delicate agony of heart and conscience, seemed an infliction of wanton cruelty to the sufferer. He turned aside his chilled and colourless face, and closed his eyes on the unwelcome apparition of the man he had himself desired to see. He did not desire to see him now, nor to return to the anxieties of a living man in contemplation of death. He was no longer at a sufficient distance from that event to be able to contemplate it. Almost in the river, he would rather have forgotten what these dark waters were, and be left at the present moment to himself and his pain.
But as Horace drew close to the bed, alittle cry of impatience from the sharp voice of little Edward, who was then being carried downstairs, startled the father. He was still open to the touch of human love and anxiety in that point. He opened his eyes instantly, and made a sign of recognition to the young man standing beside him. “Go away, let them all go—Mary, leave me,” he said faintly; then louder, as Mrs. Stenhouse lingered timidly—“leave me, do you hear; I have something to say to him; go, I tell you, or it will be all the worse for your boy. Scarsdale,” continued the sick man, watching with his anxious eyes his wife’s figure disappearing, “come closer—no one is aware of it but you—sit down here.”
Horace obeyed, bringing his ear near to the wavering voice. He was not sympathetic, and did not pretend it; he listened without a look or a word of pity, and the sufferer’s spirit rallied into its wonted expression at the sight of his cold, business face.
“I’ve left everything to Edmund, if he lives,” gasped the dying man; “here, Scarsdale, are you sure you hear me?—and aboutthat young Musgrave’s concern, you know. I don’t want the boy to hear of it; eh, do you understand?—Ihadnothing to do preserving Musgrave’s interests; do you hear me?—the boy is not to know.”
“I shall not tell him,” said Horace, briefly.
“Tell him!—that is not enough. He is not to know. Do you hear me? The child’s a Quixote. How can I tell what he would do? He is not to hear of it! And, Scarsdale,” continued the sufferer, almost piteously, in a tone of deprecating cunning, “there’s Amelia; she has a little fortune, and if she’ll have you, I shan’t object.”
“No,” said Horace, looking with his eyes still fiery in their excitement, and all the superiority and contempt of youth and health upon the dying man, whose will, twenty-four hours hence, would be impotent as the grave could make it. “No!” There was almost a smile upon his lip; it was cruel life exulting over the vain intentions of the dying. A few hours, and what wouldhisobjection signify? Undisguised and manifest, that thought rung in the mocking tone of theyoung man’s reply, and looked out of his uncompassionating face.
Perhaps the congenial spirit lying there felt it!—and knew his own impotence. He threw out his shivering hands in a gesture which might be appeal—which might be passion—which was actual physical agony, a paroxysm of returning pain. The wife and her assistants came back, and Horace stood aside from the bed, without the sufferer being aware of it. “Remember, Scarsdale, the boy is not to know!” he shouted out in the height of his sufferings. Horace remained in the room with a morbid curiosity strange to himself, though his eager thoughts were with Amelia below. He was not aware that few men depart in a paroxysm of pain, and he stood there with a strange excitement, almost thinking that, for the first time, he should see a fellow-creature die.
When those pangs subsided the sufferer was nearer the last act of life; a merciful haze and dimness of exhaustion had begun to creep over him. Through this mist he spoke faintly out of his wandering mind—words only half audible, only half intelligible. One of these murmuring sounds was over and over repeated, until the watchers recognized it:—“In its mother’s milk—in its mother’s milk; seethe a kid in its mother’s milk; Scarsdale!” said the dying man, opening his dim eyes with a sudden renewal of energy—“isn’t it in the Bible so?—ah! the Bible, boy—you know!”
“Yes, Julius dear—yes!” cried poor weeping Mrs. Stenhouse, eager, poor soul, to thrust into his mind, even then, more hopeful words—“and a great deal more, and better, about the forgiveness of sins. Oh, Julius! let me read—you can hear me yet!”
“Oh! you are there, are you?” said Stenhouse, raising his eyes with an effort. “I thought it was Scarsdale—ha!—he’s off to Amelia, is he? to court the girl when her father’s dying? But I tell you, Scarsdale,” cried the sufferer, raising his sharp voice high and ghastly in the stillness, “the boy is not to know!”
These were the last words Horace heard from the man who had crossed so actively, yetso briefly, the current of his life. Warned by the unspoken appeal of Mrs. Stenhouse, and feeling that even decorum forbade him to remain, he left the room; nor had even he hardihood sufficient to linger long with Amelia, who awaited his return in the drawing-room. He told her a rapidly-invented fable as to what Mr. Stenhouse had said to him, and left the house almost immediately. His regard for ordinary proprieties was small enough, certainly; but he was not quite bold enough to come from the father’s death-bed and make violent love to the daughter below. He postponed it for that night.
This episode turned the young man’s thoughts back a little into a more familiar and less tragic current; and now that the lawyer’s secret threatened to become known, Horace bethought himself of one way still remaining by which he might have, even althoughnothing happenedat Marchmain, some benefit by his grandfather’s will. That merciless document precluded the heir from availing himself of the aid of money-lenders, under penalty of losing the inheritance; and it was,accordingly, vain to think of availing himself of the common resource of impatient heirs. Mr. Stenhouse dead, and Roger Musgrave’s friends aroused to the first inklings of a discovery, Mr. Pouncet’s character and credit, and no inconsiderable portion of his wealth, lay absolutely in the power of Horace. If he could exercise that power so as to procure such support as he felt himself entitled to from the unwilling lawyer, it might save him yet from the deadly, secret, and unexpressed impulse in his hidden mind. Something might happen at Marchmain, without any agency of the unnatural son. Was it a good angel which put the lesser sin of deceit before those covetous eyes, to guard them from the bigger sin which loomed darkly within their vision? Heaven knows: but, at least, the phantoms crowding round his bed that night were less hideous than the latent horror which still cowered darkling in a corner of his heart.
“ARMITAGEis the most indolent man I know, Susan,” said Colonel Sutherland; “here is his letter, my love, saying he has written to his attorney to make inquiries. And yet, after all, they’re sharp these country lawyers—perhaps it was the best thing he could do; and here’s—eh?—why, a letter from Horace! Come now, that’s satisfactory—let us see what the boy says.”
“What does he say, uncle?” asked Susan, when, after a considerable pause, and two readings of the letter, Uncle Edward carefully refolded it, laid it down by his own plate, and went on with his breakfast without another word.
“Oh, hum—nothing particular, my dearchild—nothing of any importance,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a troubled face, opening the letter again and glancing over it; as if he might perhaps find out somewhere a key to the moral cipher in which it was written. He was slow to take offence; but its tone affronted the old soldier. There was a shade of mockery, visible even to Uncle Edward’s earnest, unsuspicious eyes; and whether it was true, and Musgrave was to blame—or false, and a disgrace to Horace, there was equal pain in the alternative; in either case it was not for Susan’s eyes.
“Uncle, has Horace been doing something very wrong?” asked Susan, after a little interval, with the moisture rising to her eyes. Colonel Sutherland made a little use of his infirmity at that moment. He bent his deaf ear towards her, asking, “What, my love?” as if he had neither heard nor could guess what her question was; and before she could speak again, made an exclamation of surprise over another letter, the postmark of which he was regarding curiously. “London! why, Susan, Musgrave has come home!”
And before the Colonel could assure himself of this unexpected event by a glance over his letter, a commotion was heard outside; Patchey intent upon showing into the drawing-room somebody who was equally intent upon finding his way direct to the Colonel’s presence.
“Why, man, I have come all the way from the Cape to see him,” burst at last upon their hearing, in a manly voice, somewhat loud, and full of exhilaration, from the hall. “I tell you, he’ll give me some breakfast; the kindest friend I ever had in the world, do you think he’ll refuse to seeme?”
“The Colonel’s a kind friend to many a person, but it’s agin his principle to be disturbed at his meals,” said Patchey, obstinately. “I’ll tell him whenever the bell rings, but in the meanwhile you’ll walk inhere.”
And Patchey’s pertinacity would have gained the day but for the interference of Colonel Sutherland, who got up hastily from the breakfast-table, with an exclamation very rare on his gentle lips, and threwopen as wide as it would go the door of the dining-room. There outside stood Roger Musgrave, brown and manful, in his dark Rifleman’s uniform, and restored to such a degree of self-confidence and social courage as became a man who had been living among his equals for a couple of years, who had earned his place, and made himself a modest degree of fame. He grasped the Colonel’s hands in his own with an exuberant satisfaction, which the poor Squire of Tillington’s penniless heir would not have ventured upon. He came in boldly, overflowing with honest gratitude and pleasure, secure of finding his place, and delighted to be “at home” once more. But Roger was suddenly interrupted, and struck dumb in his jubilant and rapid account of having been sent home with dispatches, and arriving suddenly without due time to warn his old friend of his approach. Susan rose from her place by the breakfast-table, and the young man lost his head and his tongue in an instant, scared by that formidable apparition. After a minute’s interval, turning very red, and stammering out,“Miss Scarsdale?” Roger shyly approached the unlooked-for mistress of the house; while Susan on her part, with an equal blush, and a faltering exclamation of “Mr. Musgrave!” made an imperceptible step of advance, and gave her hand to Uncle Edward’s “young friend.” Uncle Edward himself, much amazed and amused by this pantomime, looked on till it was over. Then he covered the embarrassment of the young people in his own fashion by innumerable questions, which Roger was only too glad to answer; but Susan, mortified and troubled, and finding herself sadly in the way, could not but perceive that her presence was an effectual damp upon the stranger’s high spirits, and had subdued him in the strangest fashion. How could it be? Susan took the earliest opportunity of leaving the room, dismayed at the influence she had unconsciously exercised, and more than half disposed to run upstairs to her own room and have a good cry over it. She had imagined to herself, perhaps, more than once, what might happen at this very arrival—but her thoughts had never pictured any such scene as this.
When Susan had left the room, however, Roger’s silence and diffidence, instead of lessening, rather increased; he followed her to the door with his eyes, and made a confused pause; and then he burst into the very middle of a little lecture upon strategy which the good Colonel was delivering to him, with the very inconsequent and illogical remark:—
“I was quite taken by surprise to see Miss Scarsdale here.”
“Why,” said Colonel Sutherland, swallowing the affront to his own eloquence, “you knew Susan was my niece, did you not?”
“I—I suppose I had forgotten,” said Roger, with another blush over this inexcusable fib. And as the young man seemed disposed to make another pause after this false statement, and to fall into a state of reverie, the Colonel bethought himself of applying the sharp spur of Horace’s letter to bring him to himself.
“I would have delayed for a little speaking to you so gravely,” said Uncle Edward; “butas we are talking of Miss Scarsdale, it is just as well to enter upon the subject at once. Now, remember, I don’t want to steal into your confidence, or urge you to tell anything you may wish to conceal; but let me know this much, Musgrave. When you left Tillington did you leave anything behind you; any foolish connexion, any boyish entanglement, anything you wished to conceal? My dear boy, I don’t want to make myself your judge—such things have been, and have been repented of—only tell me, ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”
“Foolish connexion!—boyish entanglement!” repeated Roger, in amazement; “I knowyoudon’t mean to insult me, Colonel Sutherland—what do you mean?”
The old man looked into the young man’s face, bending towards him with that stoop of benign weakness—the touch of physical imperfection, which put a tender climax to his fatherly words and ways.
“I will tell you what I mean by-and-bye; but in the meantime say to me in so many words—‘It is not true.’”
“It is not true!” said Roger, with emphasis.
The young man was certainly roused now—he sat quite upright, carrying high his soldierly head, not defiant as he might have been at Tillington, perfectly grave, conscious of nothing which slander could build upon. The old soldier’s eyes glistened over him—he was proud of his volunteer.
“I knew it all along,” said Colonel Sutherland, joyfully; “but to know you perfectly right, as I always believed, is not so much pleasure to me as it might be, since it proves somebody else entirely wrong. I’ll tell you now how this came about. Susan on her way here overheard part of a conversation between her brother and an old man, in which your name was introduced, and mention made of a pension which the man thought you might be induced to give him, in consequence of some discovery. This Horace forbade his sister to repeat, but Susan told me, thinking there was something wrong at the bottom. You will forgive me, Musgrave, if the idea glanced into my mind for a moment that there might be something to conceal. With that idea, thinking to appeal to my nephew’s generosity,I wrote to him, and this is the answer; see—I am assured now that there is something of importance to your interests beneath this veil.”
Roger read the letter with a rising colour; he saw the trick of it, and had hard enough ado to restrain his impatience.
“He is brother—I mean he is your nephew, Colonel Sutherland,” he said, returning the letter with a somewhat proud gesture. He thought of nothing else in his sublime, youthful contempt for this effort to dishonour him; he was innocent, and his veins tingled with momentary rage, proudly subdued; but he gave no second thought to the discovery, or to the something important and secret which this impotent slander had concealed.
However, the Colonel proceeded to question him upon the condition of his relation’s estate, and the chances there might be of some discovery of consequence. Roger answered at random, being very ignorant, quite hopeless of any good, and otherwise occupied in his mind. The old soldier was at last compelled to break up the conference from manifest signs of impatience on the part of his guest, who wasanxious to go to his room and refresh himself after his journey. When Roger had really got his release, however, and was on his way to the door, the young man came back again with another inconsequent question:—
“May I ask, Colonel Sutherland, if Miss Scarsdale was aware of this—of your suspicions?” he said, fumbling wrathfully with the handle of his travelling-bag.
“Certainly not—not a word,” said Uncle Edward, gravely; and while the young man went away relieved, the old one mused in his chair, with a little humour in his smile. “I wonder, now, what it mattered if she had?” he said to himself; “they never exchanged three words in their lives.” That was very true; but there are more things than words in the world when people are young.
WHENSusan and Roger met again late in the day they had somewhat changed conditions. Lieutenant Musgrave—for that was now the rank of the young volunteer—had, to his own pleasurable consciousness, improved his personal appearance during his hour of seclusion. Though he was rather too tall for a rifleman, that excess of stature is a drawback easily sustained in general by those afflicted with it; and perhaps Roger had a little satisfaction in thinking that the dress became him tolerably well, in spite of his inches. It is to be feared that the thought did glance into his mind as he finished his toilette, that his own was such a figure as might catch a lady’s eye, especially while the placid firmament of Milnehill wasdisturbed by no apparition of a rival knight; and that the likelihood of spending some days under the same roof with Susan was, when he realized it, rather exhilarating to the young man’s spirits. Susan, however, was in a very different position. She had seen what she supposed to be a sudden chill of discomfort fall upon the stranger at sight of her. She had observed his silence, his fallen looks, his diminished brightness, and it was impossible to attribute this change to anything but her own presence. Susan was very much mortified by this supposed discovery. She had known herself to be unregarded and unloved for the most part of her life, but never before had she felt herselfin the way; and the result was that a sentiment of injury, melancholy and heroical, arose in Susan’s heart. She was sad and dignified, when Roger appeared full of animation, and anxious to please. She thought he had recovered the first shock of seeing her, and was training himself into friendly behaviour; and she repulsed him as much as she could by her monosyllables and downcast eyes. After a little, he began togrow puzzled: he could not rouse her to interest, though he exerted all his powers; she was dull, saddened, and pre-occupied. Perhaps, after all, therewererivals to disturb the peaceable atmosphere at Milnehill.
Uncle Edward, who observed the two with quiet interest, and a little mingling of amusement, beheld the shadow, and was puzzled in his turn; for Susan hitherto had shown no lack of interest in Musgrave’s affairs. Colonel Sutherland’s anxiety, however, relieved itself by the instant despatch of Patchey with a note to the Colonel’s dear friend and ally, Mrs. Melrose, his sister-in-law, who was now his referee on all feminine topics. The tender-hearted old man concluded that Susan might possibly feel her position somewhat uncomfortable as hostess to the stranger, “especially if she likes him,” thought Uncle Edward; and, obedient to his summons, an hour or more before dinner arrived a Portobello “noddy,” containing Mrs. Melrose, her pretty maid, and her best cap. The old lady was almost as much disposed to make a pet of Susan as was Susan’s uncle, and the reproofwhich she administered to his solicitude was of the lightest.
“Here I am, Edward, you perceive,” said his old friend; “but why I should be sent for at this express rate is more than a quiet person like me can divine. Because Susan feels awkward at having a young man to entertain, and no other woman in the house? Nonsense! Susan is just the last girl in the world to be so foolish. What’s a young man more than any other person? It’s your punctilios, Edward, that put things into the bairns’ heads; but I’m here, for all that. If the truth must be told, I am growing very fond of that young creature myself.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Colonel Sutherland, conducting that short, bright, pleasant figure most carefully and gallantly through the garden; for Mrs. Melrose was older than the Colonel, and owned to a good many infirmities, and had almost given up walking by this time. Then he began to recommend Roger very specially to her notice; and then he had to hear Mrs. Melrose’s news; that the mail which came in yesterday hadbrought a joint letter from Charlie and his wife, and that the regiment was ordered to Outerabad, “where we were when my poor General got his first step,” said the old lady. “I hope it will be as fortunate with his son,” answered Uncle Edward; and so they entered the house, to receive Susan’s glad, astonished welcome. The advent of Mrs. Melrose almost delivered Susan from that rare fit of romantic and heroical sullenness. There was no necessitynowfor Mr. Musgrave being specially civil to herself. Now she had some one to talk to, to release “the gentlemen” from the imperative claims of politeness. She seized upon the old lady with all the fervour of pique, resolved to show Roger that if she was inhisway, he was an object of great indifference toher; and succeeded so well in this laudable attempt, that before the two ladies left the dining-room poor Roger was asdistraitand silent as ever. Susan’s cruel experiment, like the surprise of her first appearance, had puffed him out.
“But, my dear boy,” said Colonel Sutherland, “you must do something in this matter.I wrote to Armitage about it, but, considering how he managed matters when you went, I can’t say I have much confidence in him. And he is not married yet, the poor old sinner! My nephew, Musgrave, is—my nephew, as you said to-day, but I don’t know the boy at all. I don’t understand him, and therefore I don’t know what to think of this concealed matter, which evidently concerns yourself, whatever it is.”
Roger made no answer. He had not a vestige of belief in his heart that anything could be found out to his benefit, and he was consequently careless of it.
“What I should recommend you to do,” continued the Colonel, “would be to go at once to Kenlisle, to see this lawyer whom Sir John has written to, Mr. Pouncet. Most likely he had the management of your godfather’s affairs as well—and urge him to take all possible steps for hunting out the mystery.”
“The mystery!” cried Roger, with a momentary impatience; “I beg your pardon, Colonel, but what possible mystery can therebe about such a history as ours in these days? My dear, good, excellent old godfather, my tenderest of friends and benefactors,” said the young man warmly, reddening with that deep consciousness of blame cast upon the dead, which made his language more fervent than was any way needful—“was an old-fashioned country gentleman, and lived to the full extent of his means. Why should not he?—he had no children to provide for. It is so usual a story, that any county in England could match it. He had a liberal hand while he lived, and when he died nothing was left. What possible mystery, what concealment or secret, could be here?”
“I cannot tell, indeed,” said the Colonel; “but on the other hand, what possible reason could induce Horace Scarsdale, who is penniless himself, to promise a pension to a countryman of the district in your name, for the sake of some discovery connected with you?”
Roger mused over this an instant with a troubled face.
“Perhaps,” he said at last slowly, not so much in pique as might have been supposed,but slightly inclining that way, with visions of unknown rivals crowding darkly before his eyes, “perhaps—I never wrote to ask if I should be welcome—perhaps while Miss Scarsdale is here—”
“Miss Scarsdale has nothing whatever to do with the subject. Why, Musgrave, man!” cried the Colonel, “what is the use of bringing Susan in? Susan is as my own child in my own house; think of your own interests, my dear young fellow, and leave Susan alone, though sheisa very good girl.”
“A very good girl!” repeated Roger; “then you don’t mind us being together sometimes, Colonel, if she pleases,” added, with a blushing burst of frankness, the self-convicted lover.
The Colonel shook his head. “Oh, young fools, young fools!” groaned, not from the depths, but only from the surface of his heart, that bewildered veteran; “what’s to come of your being sometimes together? Not much increase to your purse, Musgrave, nor advantage to either of you. If you have begun to entertain such fantastic thoughts, yourbest plan is to think over what I am saying. There must be something, depend upon it, worth hearing, before my clever nephew, Horace, could make up his mind to offer an old countryman such a stipend as six-and-twenty pounds a-year.”
“Ah!” cried Roger; the young man was struck with momentary conviction, partly by the fact and partly by the argument. He made a hasty memorandum in his own mind, that he would certainly look into it; but his thoughts at the present moment did not very well bear such an interruption. “It looks as if there must be something in it; but, Colonel, won’t you postpone it till later?” he said, in a deprecatory tone; “I think, by this time, we ought to join the ladies. They’ll blame me already for detaining you. I know you never sit long over your wine.”
Once more the Colonel shook his head, but this time he smiled. He found the young man’s behaviour altogether so natural, that he could not criticize it severely; and perhaps, having once been young himself, was all the better pleased with Roger, that the youth hadheart enough to be shaken entirely off his balance by this deepest of disturbing influences. They went across the hall together into the drawing-room, where Susan sat by the side of Mrs. Melrose, hearing the old lady’s stories. She had many a story in her mind that cheerful mother—a mother in everything, though she had but one child—many an exciting drama of life and sad domestic tragedy, brought out under yonder burning Eastern skies, lay within her memory; but it was not one of these to which Susan listened. It was to an account of Mrs. Melrose’s Indian establishment, when she lived at Outerabad, “where my poor General got his first step,” and where her son Charlie was now going. That practical and homely tale pleased Susan. She liked to hear of the economics of the young subaltern’s wife; how she managed to do without superfluous servants, and strenuously laboured at the mending of that strange little hole in the purse through which their money seemed always running. Her contrivances about dress, when she and her lieutenant had an invitation to the Colonel’s bungalow to dinner; the thriftwith which this capable woman had managed that strange, half-savage, yet highly artificial and civilized household, with all its Anglo-Indian wants and luxuries. Susan was never tired of that long prolonged story, which always unfolded some new episode: “Did I ever tell you about so-and-so?” said the old lady, and forthwith ran into a variation which enlivened and animated the original strain. Susan was a capable woman, too, though she had not yet much tried her powers. She enjoyed hearing of these wonderful thrifts, and labours, and victories, as boys love stories of shipwrecks and hairbreadth escapes. “What I should have done myself!” ran through the whole like a golden thread. It roused Susan’s spirits and her heart—it was to her like the reading of a possible future, instead of a certain past. She did not think of the things dolorous and heavy which cheerful Mrs. Melrose dwelt on little. She did not pause to remember that the heroine of all that active existence was now an infirm old lady, dwelling alone. Susan only thought of the life, and the love, and the labour; the capable hands, the cheerful heart,the years and hours so well filled and liberal. The fashion of that existence charmed her congenial thoughts.
“For you see,” said Mrs. Melrose, after a long chapter of that history, which she meant to make an end of as soon as the gentlemen entered the room, “you see, Susan, we were poor then, the General and me.”
“But you were happy all the same, happier than if you had waited till you were rich,” cried Roger Musgrave, suddenly, in her ear.
“Happy!” cried the old lady, turning round upon him with an echo not to be described by words in her voice. Then she paused, with a humorous smile on her face; “I’m an old woman, and should be a good adviser; but I never was a good adviser, as your Uncle Edward will tell you. Now everybody knows that when two young fools marry upon nothing, it’s not only one of the greatest follies the world is acquainted with, butexceedingly wrong.”
Mrs. Melrose pronounced these words with great unction and emphasis. Could anybody doubt that she believed them thoroughly?But there was meanwhile a suspicious twinkle in her bright old eyes.
“And yet General Melrose was only a lieutenant,” said Roger, “when—”
“When I married him, blessings on him!” cried the old lady, “he was but an ensign—that I should dare say so before young people!—but you can make an example and a beacon of me, Susan, my dear. Yes, it was years and years long before he wasGeneralMelrose, Mr. Musgrave; such years! years of trouble and toil and misery and happiness. Ah! Edward, they’re gone and past, these years! Nothing but one thing will happen now to you and me, and that, please God, will give us back to them all.”
To them all! There was a silence in the room after these words. Tears sprang to the eyes of the young people in that tender, pitiful youth of theirs, which could not understand how to be content without happiness; but there were no tears in the old eyes which met in such a pathetic cheerful glance, and understood each other beyond all interpretation of words. Dear life, which they couldstill live cheerfully, all shorn and diminished as it was, for His sake who gave it, and out of the most natural humanity of their Christian hearts!—but dearer was the end and termination, the day of that holy death which should restorethem all.
But the evening was not sad after that, as a vulgar fancy might suppose. The old people were very cheerful, brighter than youth itself in the serenity of their old age; and Mrs. Melrose, who had been considered a very clever woman all her life by half the Indian service, and who had more actual humour and appreciation of the same than all her three auditors put together, kept Roger and Susan breathless with her recollections, her anecdotes, her sallies of quiet fun. She consented to stay all night, at her brother-in-law’s request and Susan’s anxious entreaty, and took Roger entirely under her protection, and treated him “like a boy of her own.” “But I cannot understand,” said the old lady reprovingly, as she bade her brother good night, “when you spoke of Susan and her delicacies, why you did not say there was anythingparticular in the business, or that this was not any person, but the special young man.”
Was it the special young man?—the true knight? Susan asked herself no questions on the subject, but made great haste to get to bed and avoid speculation, which, seeing it was after twelve o’clock, a very late hour for Milnehill, was doubtless the most sensible thing she could have done.
WHILERoger Musgrave travelled full of hope and pleasant anticipation towards Milnehill, Roger’s mother had been mourning over her dead husband. And now, while that happy evening party gathered in Colonel Sutherland’s drawing-room, the widow and her little boy were spending the slow hours together in the warm parlour, where Edmund spent his invalid childhood. His father’s death had given a shock more than it could bear to the nervous and weakly frame of the ailing child; his father was dead, and he was the heir. An unnatural excitement stimulated the precocious little mind, and rose to fever in the throbbing pulse and little pinched cheeks, now flushed with a hectic brightness. The little fellow hadvisions too magnificent to be safe, and projects as wild and impossible, as they were childish and simple-hearted. After the first pangs of his childish grief were over, Edmund, who knew nothing about guardians nor minority, began to speculate splendidly what he should do with his new wealth. He poured into his mother’s ears a flood of intentions, vain, lavish, childish dreams of universal help. He was to send for Roger and give the greater half of all he had to his elder brother; he was to get everything she could desire for Mrs. Stenhouse; he was to send a present of the most beautiful horse in the world to Colonel Sutherland; and henceforward they were all to live together, and “my brother Roger” was to be supreme in the joint household. Mrs. Stenhouse, afraid to check him, and at the same time trembling for the effect of this excitement upon his weak frame, looked on with a troubled heart. She knew Edmund would not get his wild willnow, as he supposed he should. She knew very well that nobody would permit him to do a tenth part of what he meant to do. But when he roused himselfup out of his chair with that light of pleasure on his face, and that hectic flush which she persuaded herself into supposing “a healthy colour,” and amused the languor of his lonely days with these imperative fancies, what could the poor woman do who had been his bondwoman and servant so long? And then she was full of sorrowful thoughts about “his dear father,” as Mrs. Stenhouse now called the careless partner of her life, mourning him as many a man is mourned who does little to deserve that remorseful tribute of late affection. Now that he was gone, she thought it must have been her own fault that they did not get on better; and it grieved her to find how impossible it was to check Edmund into sadness, and to make him feel that the loss of his father was a matter far more important than his supposed mastery of his father’s wealth. Edmund had cried all his tears out the first day, and had no more lamentations to make.
“What do you cry for?” he exclaimed at last, impatiently; “aren’t you glad to send for Roger, and have him at home? I shouldn’t wonder if he’d join the Edgehill Cricket-club, and get to be captain of the eleven—wouldn’t it be famous. And I mean to get strong,Ican tell you, mamma. I don’t mean to live in this stifle and coddle, now I’ve come into my fortune; for papa said it was all for me.”
“Oh, Edmund, dear child, your father was so fond of you!” cried the poor mother; “have you no thought to spare for him, now that he is gone? He loved you more than everything in the world. I wish—I wish you would think more of him than of what he leaves behind.”
Little Edmund looked up keenly at the weak, weeping, timid woman.
“Were you fond of him yourself?” said the child, half suspiciously; “now you love him and cry about him; but it is different with me. He was very good to me, was papa,” continued the little man, with a reluctant tear in the corner of his eye; “but all of you say he’s a deal better off now, and that we’ll see him again. If that’s true, why do you cry?—and besides, mamma, I used always to think that you liked Roger’s father best.”
Mrs. Stenhouse covered her face with her hands, and only cried the more; she was vexed, humiliated, and ashamed, as well as full of grief. It seemed somehow sacrilege to speak of Roger’s father to the son of her second husband; and Roger’s father was little to herself now but a bright, brief dream of her girlhood, too short, too happy to influence her life. Now the second, longer, harder, more serious portion of her existence had concluded also; but while she sat crying these tears of mortification and wounded feeling, some one beckoned her to the door of the room and gave her some letters. One of these was from Roger himself, announcing his arrival, and that he had gone to Milnehill; for Roger as yet did not know what had happened in his mother’s house. This surprising announcement raised her out of her distress in a moment and dried her tears. A thrill of new freedom ran warm through her heart, stirring the blood in her dull veins. Roger, her first-born, whom she had not seen since he was almost a baby—whom Mr. Stenhouse smilingly disliked, and would not permit tocome there—Roger, her brave soldier, her handsome boy! Now she could have him under her own roof, without asking anybody’s permission; now she could enjoy her son’s society in fullest freedom. Poor soul! it gave her a compunction to feel how glad she was; but she could not deny even to herself how exquisite for the first moment was that unaccustomed delight.
“Oh, Edmund, darling, look here!” cried poor Mrs. Stenhouse, crying again, but this time with joy; “Roger has come home—your brother, my love;” and with an outcry of mingled terror, compunction, and delight, to feel herself daring enough in this house to pronounce these words aloud, Mrs. Stenhouse thrust the letter into Edmund’s hands, and relapsed once more into tears.
Her other letters had fallen on the floor at her feet. When Edmund had finished Roger’s, his inextinguishable childish curiosity discovered these. His mother was still crying, and he was her lord and master, the autocrat acknowledged and apparent of the house; he slid out of the easy chair as a cripple slides,and snatched up the nearest. Though it was addressed to Julius Stenhouse, Esq., the arrogant little imp did not hesitate to tear it open; but he did it with some haste, to make sure of the epistle before his mother uncovered her eyes. It was a communication somewhat puzzling to brains so young. Edmund, though his pride would not acknowledge it even to himself, did not understand half of Mr. Pouncet’s letter, but he gleaned enough out of it to know that something that concerned Roger had been a subject of importance likewise to his father and his father’s friend; and that the writer of the present epistle, which had, it appeared, been delayed in the transmission, was in a state of considerable alarm and trepidation about something. What it was that Mr. Pouncet feared Edmund could not make out, but he jumped at the conclusion that something was wrong as rapidly as Susan had done. Afraid!—why should a man be afraid?—Roger wasn’t. Roger was the epitome of Edmund’s faith. He had been badly educated, this poor child. He knew very little in heaven or earth savehis prayers and Roger, and trusted in nothing as he did in that unknown, never-to-be-acknowledged, secret, invisible brother, whom his mother told him of in whispers, and whom he thought of by day and dreamt of by night. Now glorious times were coming. Papa and this other man, whose letter rather baffled Edmund, had doubtless entertained some project of keeping Roger down; but behold the tables were turned, the conspirators were cheated, and the details of the complot had fallen into the hands of Roger’s little knight and defender. True, he did not understand them very well, but still they were here.
“Roger shall come home directly,” said the little despot, waving aloft in his hand these two epistles. “I’ll give him half of all my money, mamma. He shan’t go for a soldier any more; and I’ll find out if anybody wants to do him any harm, and punish them, I will! Look here; it’s something about Roger, but I don’t quite know every word what it means.Youcan’t tell any more than me. I say, mamma, let’s have Scarsdale here, and askhim.”
“What is it, love?” asked Mrs. Scarsdale, wiping her eyes.
“I wish you’d mind what one says,” cried the impatient little invalid. “I told you I didn’t know quite all it means, neither could you if you was to try. Mamma, ring the bell and send for Scarsdale—he’s got no master now but you and me; send and tell him I want him, and he’s to come directly. Mamma, do you hear?”
And when Mrs. Stenhouse had glanced over the letter, which she did understand rather better than Edmund after all, she thought the boy’s suggestion wise. She had not the smallest gleam of discrimination in respect to character, and to be Colonel Sutherland’s nephew was enough to give her a blind confidence in Horace; and as to the possibility of acting for herself, that did not enter into the poor woman’s head. She sent for Scarsdale accordingly, not in little Edmund’s imperative mood, but with a pleading message that Mr. Scarsdale would be soverygood as to come to her as soon as it wasquiteconvenient for him, as she was soanxious to consult him about a letter she had received. Her heart beat higher in her breast that day with a deeper individual throb than it had known for many a previous year; a little flutter of tumultuous independence was in her mind; she would receive Roger into her own house unreproved; she seemed on the very eve of finding out something which might be of service to that cherished but unknown son; and her whole nature was stimulated by these unaccustomed hopes.