INMr. Stenhouse’s office, where affairs were being wound up, Horace Scarsdale held his clerk’s place in greater personal discomfiture than he had ever previously known. Mr. Stenhouse’s executors knew of nothing extraordinary in the position of this young man. His mysterious prospects were totally unknown to them, and he had no secret to hold overtheirheads and enforce his claims withal. To them he was only the newest and least acquainted of the lawyer’s clerks, and nobody cared for his black looks and assumptions of superiority. He remained reluctantly at his desk, because he could not afford, in present circumstances, to sacrifice the salary which would shortly be paid tohim, nor could he make up his mind, in spite of all the dark excitements which distracted him—the fascination of enmity and evil purpose which bound him to Marchmain, and the covetous and tyrannous impulse which placed so plainly before his eyes his power over Mr. Pouncet—to leave the place which contained Amelia, and where alone he had any likelihood of seeing her. After their last interview the lover was daring enough to have stood upon small punctilio at the next meeting. But Mrs. Stenhouse’s door was still decorously closed, and Stevens, at the present moment much more disposed to take Master Edmund for the tyrant of the house than Miss Amelia, was inexorable, and gave no admission. Mrs. Stenhouse’s message accordingly found the young man in a propitious mood. He made haste to obey it, extremely indifferent as to the subject of the consultation, but deeply excited with the more personal emotion of once more finding himself under the same roof with the lady of his love.
Mrs. Stenhouse would willingly have seenhim alone, feeling instinctively that little Edmund’s interference was not quite expedient here; but she had submitted her inclinations too long to that small autocrat to have any chance of freedom now. It was accordingly into Edmund’s parlour that Horace was shown. There was still a fire warming into a state of semi-suffocation that invalid chamber; and there sat the child, consciously regnant and despotic, with his eager eyes blazing out of his sharp little face, and the hectic flush upon his cheeks. The mother watching always, to whom Edmund’s illness had become quite a domestic institution, a thing which should last for ever, saw no change save of improvement; but the cold stranger’s eye saw differently. The little blade was wearing out its tiny sheath—all this excitement was too much for the feeble little body; and as distinctly as the doctor, highly skilled and richly feed, who should come down from town after awhile to pronounce the child’s death-sentence, Horace perceived that before he could do one of the splendid things he purposed, little Edmund, like a shadow, should have faded away.
But Horace thought no more of Edmund when he cast his eyes upon the letter which Mrs. Stenhouse hurriedly and with agitation put into his hand:—
“Dear Stenhouse—I wish fervently I had broken my leg or taken a fever on that unlucky day when I was persuaded into that Tinwold business of the coal-pits. I have never had a moment’s repose or comfort since, and from the day that young Scarsdale poked his inquisitive nose into the business everything vexatious in life has clustered about this unfortunate affair. I do not deny that it has paid very well as a speculation, but the profit twice over would not have paid for the annoyance which first and last it has caused to me. This morning I have a letter from Sir John Armitage. It has oozed out, somehow or other, through young Scarsdale doubtless, that there is an old man somewhere in the district who knows some secret worth telling about young Musgrave. It is true, they have not an idea what it is, but Sir John charges me with the duty of searching it out and ‘doing the boy justice.’ Armitage of ArmitagePark, my father’s clients before mine—one of the oldest families in the county! I know his affairs better than he does himself; and he dares not cut down a tree on his estate without consulting me; yet he breaks forth upon me as peremptory and absolute about this miserable business as if I could set it all square in a day. It is all very well for you, you are out of the way; you are never appealed to; the Musgraves never cross your path; but I am aggravated entirely out of patience. Would to heaven that I had never heard of your scientific friend and his discoveries! Such an accident is misery to a man of character, and if ever man was thrust and jostled into temptation that man was me.
“My temper has been so tried with this unhappy business, that I scarcely know what I am doing. Advise me how to answer Armitage, and send me Scarsdale if you can spare him. I want some assistance besides my own head and hands.
“O. Pouncet.”
“Now, I say, mamma,” cried Edmund, in a loud whisper, “don’t give him time to makeup a story—ask him what it means. Oh, Mr. Scarsdale, we’re very surprised about that, we are. It’s something about Roger—what is it?”
Horace was taken by surprise. Looking up, he caught the child’s sharp glance, and the imploring look of the mother, both fixed upon him; and he was disconcerted. Not for the last injunction of Edmund’s father—not because that worldly man, without repenting of the wrong, would have suffered another death rather than allow this secret to be known to his child. Horace had given no promise, and thought no more of that last adjuration; but what was to become of the secret if he shared it with a woman and a child?—the woman Roger’s mother, the child his earnest champion. And they already knew so much of it, without any aid of his. He faced round upon them, ready to defend this fancied talisman of his power.
“What reason have you to suppose that I was in Mr. Stenhouse’s secrets?” said Horace. “I had not been a fortnight in his employment. I had not known him above a monthwhen he died. Was he likely to be confidential with me? Surely you know him better than to imagine anything so foolish.”
“Ah, Mr. Scarsdale,” cried Mrs. Stenhouse, trembling all over, and with tears which almost choked her—tears of anxiety for her son, and distress for her husband, mingled yet antagonistic; “he sent for you on his deathbed; there was something—something—God forgive me if I disregard this last wish of his! but it is for my Roger’s sake—there was something that you were not to tell the boy.”
“And is that the argument you use—you his widow!” cried Horace, with a sneer; “to induce me, a man of honour, just a week after, totellthe boy? That may be a woman’s argument, Mrs. Stenhouse, but—”
“You hold your tongue, Scarsdale!” shouted little Edmund; “nobody shan’t bully mamma. And I should like to know why I’m not to be told—me! I’m my father’s heir, and I ought to know everything; and if you think me a child, it’s because you don’t know. Look here! I’m going to give half my money to Roger; but you shall marry Amelia, andhave the half of my share, if you tell me honest what it is.”
Horace rose up with a laugh of ridicule at the child’s folly, but before he could reach the door Mrs. Stenhouse came before him. “There’s some sad mystery here,” she said, wringing her hands; “Edmund was not to know I heard him say; and then about seething the kid in his mother’s milk. It’s something that will harm my Roger! What is it, Mr. Scarsdale? I charge you, as you had a mother yourself, to tellme!”
“I never had a mother myself,” said Horace, with his cold smile; “and if Mr. Stenhouse was a good step-father to Roger Musgrave, and took care of his property that the poor boy might not waste it, what was that to me? I can’t tell you—how can you suppose that I know?”
While he was speaking he made his way steadily to the door. He was pleased to go out and close it after him, leaving that reflection with the mother and child; that to be sure the dead man, their nearest relative, had defrauded his wife’s son; what was that toHorace Scarsdale? He went crushing Mr. Pouncet’s letter in his hand; he had got possession of that, at all events, and he felt sure that poor trembling Mrs. Stenhouse could not make much of its hints, even though coupled with her husband’s death-bed adjuration, and that strange maundering of his weakness, at which Horace smiled—seething the kid in its mother’s milk. Unlikely words to enter the mind of that hard, unrepentant man of the world, who, even at his last moments, wished not to amend but to conceal.
But he had not seen Amelia; it was hard to reconcile the contrary accidents of his fate. He could not deceive them blandly, as Mr. Stenhouse could have done, and he had no resource but to go away with abruptness, losing all chance of future admittance to the feet of the beauty, who was now Mrs. Stenhouse’s daughter, dependent upon her, and not the caressed and flattered mistress of the house. The cholera and the fright had unmanned Amelia. She had not been able to strike in at the proper moment and assert her sway; so that in the stillness of the house of mourningher mother and Edmund had unconsciously and tacitly won the supremacy. Fortune, however, gave him the advantage he had forfeited by legitimate means. He met the lady of his heart that very same afternoon, as she took languidly a solemn walk with her sisters, all crape and propriety. Amelia was sadly tired of decorum by this time—decorum which lasts so much longer than grief, and is so exacting and punctilious. Though she put down her veil, her heart fluttered at the approach of Horace; and she was quite well pleased that he should turn with her, and accompany her back almost to the door of the house. He told her of his magnificent prospects, as he had never yet told any one; that when his father died he could make a very fine lady of her, and give her a house in town, and all the unhoped for delights of fashion; but that might be years hence—and in the meantime would she marry him? Amelia was too wise to say yes without due consideration; but she blushed through her veil, and was quite sure Mr. Scarsdale would give her a little time to think—would not be too urgent in the sad,sad position of the family. Howcouldshe think of such things, and dear papa only a week in his grave? and some bright tears fell, easily shed. Horace was abundantly satisfied. He had excited her fancy with his hopes of fortune; and he thought she liked him, as it is so easy for people to believe; though in reality it was only the amusement, the admiration that Amelia cared for; and he wanted no more at the present moment. He said farewell, like an accepted lover, and went away jubilant; his dark purposes swelling in him, and a whole world of pleasure, wealth, and exaltation lying before him. A whole world, and only one dark, melancholy, unlovely shadow of life—a ghost alien to the sunshine, an unenjoying, unloving, dismal human thread of existence—hanging black between him and his enchanted kingdom. Accidents are rife and many in this troublous world—who could tell what might cut that thread?
WITHMr. Pouncet’s letter in his pocket—that self-betraying document, which he had estimated at once at its due value—Horace set out the next day for Kenlisle. Yet not for Kenlisle direct: the young man, with the oddest, uncharacteristic trifling, stopped half-way, to visit a remarkable cathedral town which lay in his road. What did Horace Scarsdale care for cathedrals? Yet he paused, in that most anxious and exciting moment, to inspect this one, and marched doggedly round and about it, as if to persuade himself that he was interested. In his progress he paused before an apothecary’s shop—but did not enter there, nor till hours after, when herushed in on his way to the railway, and made certain purchases. In haste to get his train, he did not permit himself time to look at the things he had bought, but hurried them into his pocket, and rushed on again as though it had been only a sudden thought which moved him. Yet he had never looked so darkly pale and dangerous as when, seated in the railway-carriage, he felt in his pockets these little sealed packets. That day was a Mayday, warm and bright; but Horace shivered in his corner with a chill that went to his heart. For a moment the colour went out of his face, and the light out of his eye; he gave a stealthy glance round—a glance full of the intolerable terrors of guilt. Did any one guess what he had in his pocket? Could any one tell what he had in his heart?
The next morning he presented himself to the troubled eyes of Mr. Pouncet, an image of conscious power. That unfortunate man of character knew by this time of the death of Stenhouse, and had spent a day or two of agony wondering into whose hands his letter was likely to fall. The advent of Horace wasa relief for the moment: here he had, at least, an assistant, who could do any further lying that might be necessary, without burdening Mr. Pouncet’s personal conscience. That was a great point gained. But the answer to his first eager question was far from satisfactory.
“Your letter was put into my hands by Mrs. Stenhouse,” said Horace; “and you know who she is—Roger Musgrave’s mother.”
Mr. Pouncet scratched his head in dismay. “She could not understand two words of it!” he exclaimed, at last, endeavouring to re-assure himself.
“Perhaps not—but one word, most likely, is enough. She is alarmed, and curious, and knows very well that something is wrong, though she cannot tell what; and that to exposeyouis for the interest of her son.”
“Toexposeme!” cried Mr. Pouncet, with a gasp of rage and mortification.
“Yes,” said Horace, coolly; “but,” he added, producing that document out of his pocket, “I managed, fortunately, to bring away your letter.”
Mr. Pouncet writhed silently under thispersecution, which he dared not resent; for it was quite true that the story of that past transaction, once laid open to the world, would empty those solemn boxes labelled with his clients’ names, which made his private office look so important, and would banish him at once from Armitage Park, and many another great house. The unfortunate lawyer was at his wit’s end. That secret would have died with Stenhouse but for the discovery of this cold-blooded and unmanageable young man; and Mr. Pouncet cursed the day when, in defiance of all accustomed rules, he admitted Horace to his office. What was a romance of possible expectations to him?
“Have you ever learnt anything more of your own circumstances and the fortune,” said Mr. Pouncet, with a slight sneer, “which you expected when I saw you last?”
But when Horace answered—as he did at once, having previously resolved upon it—with a very succinct account, quite unencumbered by any reflections or exhibitions of feeling, of what hehaddiscovered, the lawyer opened his eyes. The heir of such a heap ofmoney, penniless though he was at the present moment, was a very different individual from the poor Horace Scarsdale, with nothing but his cunning wits and unscrupulous mind to help him on in the world. The revelation reconciled Mr. Pouncet even to himself. It was no longer so sadly humiliating to acknowledge himself in the young man’s power.
“And what will you do?” he asked, breathlessly, with already a difference in his tone. One does not speak to an attorney’s clerk, even when he knows one’s cherished secret, as one speaks to the heir of a good many thousands a-year.
“What can I do?” said Horace, rising in due proportion, and tasting the first sweetness of his wealth. “Forbidden to borrow—debarred from all ordinary means of reaping some present advantage; unless—I can be of use to you, if you make it worth my while—unlessyoucan help me, Pouncet. You can if you please.”
Mr. Pouncet winced a little at this familiar address. “Had you not better try,” he suggested, “to make some arrangement with your father?”
“Arrangement with my father? What for? He has less power than you have: the will is expressly constructed so as to make arrangement impossible, and shut him out entirely,” cried Horace, with a certain suppressed exultation of enmity. “Besides, he hates me, and I’d much rather arrange with you. Look here, Pouncet—I want to get married. Give me a thousand a-year, and I’ll give you my best services, and my word of honour to pay you a reasonable sum, by way of acknowledgment, when I come into my property. Will you? There is no use lingering over it—say Yes or No.”
“A thousand a-year!” cried Mr. Pouncet, in dismay.
“Less would be useless,” said Horace, in his high-flying arrogance. “Besides, I could earn half as much anywhere, without asking any favour from you.”
Poor Mr. Pouncet took his hand out of his pocket, and grinned at the young man with a helpless spite and disdain. Words were so incapable of expressing all the mingled mockery and mortification with which he heardthat last speech, that the unfortunate lawyer would have made derisive faces at him had he dared. As it was, he turned away to his desk, and growled under his breath, “Catch me giving you fifty if you hadn’t known,” by way of relieving his feelings. Stifled as it was, the expression did him good. He turned round again with only some spasmodic remains of that grin agitating the corners of his mouth.
“And you’re going to marry? Any money—eh?” he said.
“I don’t think it,” said Horace—“but I should like to know your decision at once, for I have some arrangements to make.”
“A thousand a-year for the whole term of your father’s life? Why, I suppose he is no older than I am?—he may live for twenty years,” said the unhappy lawyer, rubbing up the scanty hair upon his head.
“He may,” said Horace, briefly; but, as he spoke, a terrible throb convulsed, in spite of himself, the young man’s heart, upon which those deadly packets seemed to press like an intolerable weight.
“He may! And you ask me, a man in my senses, to undertake paying you an income of a thousand a-year for, perhaps, twenty years!”
“I ask you only to consider the matter, and what I might be able to do for you at the end of my probation,” said Horace, loftily—“not to say my services for the present time. Don’t do anything against your will. A lawsuit promoted by young Musgrave—by that time most likely my brother-in-law—would, I have no doubt, be quite as profitable tome.”
The lawyer gave a gasp of rage and derision beyond words. “You could conduct it, you suppose?” he cried aloud—“you!”—which was very imprudent, but a burst of nature. Then he cooled himself down, with a little shiver of passion: he dared not irritate this remorseless, immovable boy.
“I could, easily, with all these facts in my possession,” said Horace, with a careless gesture; and Mr. Pouncet saw his whole substance, his business, and, worst of all, his reputation, falling like so many card-houses at the touch of that unpitying hand.
But the interview did not end so. Mr. Pouncet consented at last, with many a grudge and inward compunction, to pay Horace the large stipend he claimed, on the tacit understanding that one-half of it was to be repaid to him when the young man came to his fortune; and the lawyer, though he had guessed rightly when he judged Mr. Scarsdale to be about his own age, notwithstanding, with the reckless boldness of humanity, began to reckon in his mind all the chances against the recluse’s life. The wonder seemed to be that such a man, in such circumstances, could last so long: there could not be much vigour of existence left in him. A very short time now should surely make an end of these deplorable, hopeless years. So reckoned the lawyer, who cared nothing about Mr. Scarsdale; while that unhappy hermit’s son, with all the desperation of an unnatural enmity, cherished a darker kind of speculation in his hard heart.
The conclusion of all was, however, that Mr. Pouncet wrote a placid business letter to Sir John Armitage, informing him that hehad just dispatched a confidential clerk, in whom he could place the most perfect reliance, to make the fullest investigation throughout the district. Mr. Pouncet very much regretted that Sir John could not furnish him with particulars, or indeed any clue whatever to the name and residence of the suspected old man; but had every confidence,if there was any such person, in the abilities of his clerk, who would leave no means untried for finding him out.
Sir John thought this epistle so completely satisfactory, that he forwarded it to Colonel Sutherland, with some uncomplimentary suggestions about a “cock-and-a-bull story,” and feminine powers of imagination, which the Colonel did not read to Susan; and all the parties concerned were comfortably lulled out of their anxiety by the prospect of so complete an investigation. What might not be hoped from the researches of Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk?
WHILEthe simple household at Milnehill felicitated itself on the reality of the search about to be made, Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk left Kenlisle. Horace went slowly through the country, though he was not looking for any one. He did his journey on foot, and did it by very slow and gradual degrees—perhaps to favour slightly his worthy employer’s fiction of a search, but in reality playing with, resisting by fits, yet always entertaining, the horrible attraction which drew him to Marchmain. He had nothing to do there which could give him a pretence of a lawful visit. The last time he had gone like a thief into his father’s house, anxious to search into the secrets there; this time howwas he going?—in pretended friendship, or in open war? He could not tell. He only knew that a fascination too strong for him drew him on and on, though he fluttered in many a circle, prolonging his way, like a charmed bird, towards that house which contained the father of his life and the obstacle to his happiness. As he walked sullenly through these well-remembered paths, hovering round the borders of that moor which in May, sunshine, and daylight, a man with such black thoughts might well have feared to enter, he seemed to see perpetually before him, as in a picture, that pale spare figure in the dressing-gown—that formal attenuated man who sat by the polished dining-table, with his glass of purple claret, his two tall candles, and his reading-desk. Was that dismal existence life? Was there any pleasure in it to the forlorn endurer of all these nights and days? Would there be any cruelty in hastening his withdrawal from this bitter and impoverished existence? The questions formed dimly, and died away without articulate answer in the mind of his son. Hewanted to persuade himself, as he gradually neared the climax of his temptation and of his fate, that he came with no object, but simply because curiosity drew him to the old house, to see how things were going on there.
Horace came upon Marchmain from behind, on an afternoon of May. The moor was no wilderness at that season. The whins were burning under the sunshine, the heather blooming purple and fragrant, thrusting its flowery spires against the foot that disturbed their growth; and the young seedlings, sown here and there in little clumps, waved their delicate young leaves to the soft air, and glittered in the light with a genial spring triumph over the intractable soil. Even the dark moorburns and rivulets of water in the deep cuttings caught a grace from the sky, and brightened over their brown surface with a gleam of the blue heavens and white clouds above. Everything was sweet, and bright, and hopeful in that dull waste of unproductive soil, which at other times could look so dreary. The clump of firs on the hill-top looked down wistfully, nolonger weird spies, but gentle gazers upon the changed scene. But no change had passed upon Marchmain. The house, if any thing, was a little more lonely than of old, betraying unconsciously that some of the little life it had, had ebbed out of it. Susan’s flowerpots stood naked in the window, with withered stalks of plants, long since dead, standing up dead and dismal from the dry mould in which they had once grown; left here by Peggy as a grim reminder to her master of the daughter—the only chance of love and kindness which he had remaining in the world—whom he had thrust remorselessly away; and with that calm sky declining towards evening, the sun slanting westward, the home-going hour lengthening its shadows over the long stretches of moorland, where by-and-bye a few labouring men should cross the sunlight to cottages clustered somewhere on the road, hid in the lower nooks of the hills, few objects more desolate and solitary than the house of Marchmain could have been imagined. Human step or human shadow was not near. Theundisturbed heather almost brushed against the step of the door. In most of the windows the blinds were down, as though the heart within was too sick to bear the light. This was how Horace found the house which had nursed his childhood and imprisoned his youth.
When the young man essayed to enter at the kitchen door, he found even that entrance, once hospitably ajar, now closed and bolted. He had scarcely courage to seek admittance boldly. He hovered about, making a faint noise among the rustling herbage and broken stones, enough in that solitude to bring Peggy peering to the kitchen window. Peggy had changed for the worse, like the house. She looked, at last, as if patience and strength were being exhausted out of her: her eyes were peevish and dilated, with dark rings round them; and she looked out with a keen, suspicious glance, as if even confidence in her own powers—that last stronghold—was failing her. When she saw Horace, a softening sentiment came over Peggy’s face: she came softly to open the door to him, and broughthim into the kitchen, without a word either of welcome or comment. Then she wheeled her own cushioned chair out of the immediate range of the fire, and half led, half forced him into it. “You’ll be tired,” said Peggy, under her breath, with a tear twinkling bright in the corner of her eye. The surprise overcame her for the moment, and made her forget the sad difference between Susan’s brother and Susan herself.
And Horace, too, for that instant was not like the Horace of old times. He was subdued by his own thoughts. An involuntary tremor seized him, to think of the dark purpose in his mind, and of why he had obtruded himself into this melancholy-familiar house. He could have supposed that his dreadful secret impulse—the horrible secret instruments he carried about with him—were betrayed and visible to any eye that looked keenly at him. But Peggy did not look keenly; she faltered with a real emotion at the sight of him, and he trembled before her salutation with an intense anguish and remorse, of which he could not have supposedhimself capable. Warnings sharp and terrible, of the remorse not to be removed, which should cling for ever to the traces of the deed done; but Horace shut his eyes to that consideration. In another moment he was fully himself—recovered from his rare and strange qualm of feebleness—pleased to find, in Peggy’s softened mood, no suspicion of him or his intentions, and resolved to make the most of that unusual grace.
“I came to see how you were. How ishe, Peggy?” said Horace, pointing to the door which opened into the hall.
“Speak low!—oh! speak low, for your life!” cried Peggy, in a whisper. “If he knowed I let you into this house he would murder me!”
“I should like to see him try,” said Horace, grimly, with a smile over the fantastic idea;that, indeed, would be a better mode of removing this hindrance than any expedient he could devise. “He hates me so, does he?” he added, with a white smile of enmity. He was glad to hear of it—it spurred him to a passionate emulation in that unnatural art.
“’Tis himsel’ he hates and mortifies—the Lord forgive him!” cried Peggy. “Eyeh, Master Horry, if you knowed the wreck and the ruin that the devil, and pride, and ill-will have made of that man!”
“I daresay he has not much pleasure in his life?” said Horace, half interrogatively.
“Pleasure! I’m the auldest friend he has in this world, though I’m but a servant,” said Peggy, her eyes dilating still more with tears, which did not flow, but only reddened and expanded the limits which they filled; “but there’s scarce an hour in the day, nor a day in the year, but I would see him die sooner than live as he’s living now.”
“You speak,” said Horace, playing with his own self-terror, and turning a pale, ominous look upon her, before which she shrank instinctively, “as if you thought it would be a charity to rid him of his life.”
“Eh, Mr. Horry?—the Lord forgive ye! Would you put such an accursed thought on me?” cried Peggy, with an ebullition of violence as tearful and faltering as her kindness. “God help us, master and servant,two lone people, without comfort in this world! But it would be a new sight, and a strange sight, to see comfort come fromyou.”
“Why, Peggy, you said as much,” said Horace, with momentary weakness.
“Then, I tell you, sir, murder’s no charity,” said Peggy, sharply. “I’ve little pleasure in my life by what I had in my young days, but I would have died more cheerful then nor now; and the master takes grit care, moor care nor I ever knew him take before, of his health and strength, as behoves a man at his time of life. He’s aye at his medicine-chest off and on; and has the doors bolted and pistols in his room, for fear of robbers, though I’m aye saying there’s no robbers like to come here. He’s afflicted his flesh in the times that are past, but he’s a careful liver now.”
“That he may keep me a little longer out of my inheritance,” said Horace, between his teeth.
Peggy stopped short in the middle of the kitchen, where she had been hastily laying out a rapidly prepared meal for her master’s son.
“Keepin’ ye out of what?” she said solemnly, and with a scared look in her eyes.
“Of my inheritance—it’s no use humbugging me any longer,” said Horace—“I know it all.”
Peggy set down the dish she had in her hands, dropped upon the stool before the fire, and throwing her apron over her head, rocked herself for a few moments back and forward, in silence.
“Amen! it ought to have comed sooner; it must have comed some time,” said Peggy at last to herself; “but the Lord forgive me, didn’t I say and prophesy that when wance the bairns knowed it the end would come? Oh, Mr. Horry! for the love of God and your mother, if you have any love in you, go your ways, and tarry not a moment in this doomed house.”
“You are not very charitable, Peggy,” said Horace, who, by some diabolical impulse, began to recover his spirits at this stage of the interview; “especially as I presume your preparations were for me—and I’m rather hungry.You can’t surely refuse me a dinner, if itisin the kitchen, in my father’s house?”
Peggy rose without a word, and placed bread and ale on the table beside the little dish of meat which she had abstracted from her master’s dinner for his son’s benefit.
“Eat, if ye can eat in this house and with sitch thoughts,” said Peggy; “but I crave of ye to give God thanks ere ye break the bread.”
As Peggy stood over him, severe and disapproving, the remembrance of many such scenes in his childhood came to the memory of Horace; scenes in which Susan appeared, sweetly saying her child’s grace, and he himself rebelling and refusing, with Peggy standing by exactly as she did now—her judicial eye fixed sternly on him. He was a man now, and had bigger rebellions in hand. With a little sneer and levity in that momentary diabolical exhilaration of spirits, he said the child’s grace which Peggy herself had taught him nearly twenty years ago. When he had repeated the amen, his father’s faithful servant turned away from him to go about her needfulbusiness, for it was drawing near to Mr. Scarsdale’s dinner hour. But Horace put down his knife and fork upon his plate with a shudder of self-horror—the food choked him—he could not swallow the bread on which his lips, without any help from his heart, had dared at that terrible moment to ask God’s blessing. The time of opportunity, which he tried to persuade himself he did not premeditate, but which was forcing itself upon him, approached moment by moment. He got up from the table with a nervous, imperceptible trembling, and went to stand by the fire where Peggy was busy, and then to wander through the apartment, always restlessly returning to that bright spot. An impulse of flight seized him at one moment—at another, a wild thought of thrusting himself into his father’s very presence, by way of escaping the devil within him, and rather getting into hot words and a violent contest than this miserable guilt. But while he was at the height of his horrible excitement, Peggy, calmly doing her usual business, went out of the kitchen to spread the table in her master’s lonely dining-room.Horace, wild as in a fever, drew with trembling hands out of his pocket one of his mysterious packets. He burst the paper open clumsily, awkwardly, with fingers which seemed made of lead. A great shower of white powder fell upon the floor at his feet, but none reached the dish to which he supposed he had directed it. Trying to remedy this failure, he was startled by a sound, as of Peggy’s return. With a great start, which spilt still more of that fatal dust, he thrust it back into his breast, and in a horror of discovery snatched at something near him, he could not see what it was, and swept into the fire that evidence of his purpose. Having done, or thinking that he had done this, he threw the cloth out of his hands into the fire, and rushed out of the room and the house. As he escaped he saw somehow, by virtue of his passion and fever of overpowering excitement, Peggy coming quietly with a napkin over her arm, and her great white apron shining through the obscurity of the narrow passage, into the kitchen. That home figure, in its everyday occupation, struck him bitterly inhis own tremor; he had failed, but he was guilty. No harm to his father had the parricide left behind him, but he was his father’s murderer in his own heart; and all the world and all its riches could never make of him again the same Horace Scarsdale who scowled sullen but innocent upon that same Peggy, before the baleful knowledge for which he thirsted had scorched all nature out of his heart.
HORACEnever knew how he passed that night; during the twilight and the early darkness he hovered about the moor, lying down among the fragrant heather, when now and then for a moment he could keep still, and feeling the penetrating damp of the bog steal into his limbs, and the dark, noiseless prick of the whin bushes, startling him into energy as he rose out of that feverish, momentary rest. When the night had quite fallen—a dark summer night, soft, but gloomy, with a few faint stars, but no moon—he stole once more, circling and sweeping about the house, towards Marchmain; for no purpose, only to look in at theuncurtained window, and see sitting there in his utter solitude the formal figure, erect and motionless, which had shadowed, like a baleful tree, all his own young life. There he sat, a little turned aside from his familiar position at the head of the table, as though even he was glad to seek a little companionship in the morsel of evening fire which Peggy lighted in silent compassion every night; with his little reading-desk upon the table, and his glass of claret reflected in that shining surface, and the two tall candles lighting his white, worn visage, and the open page. There he sat, reading like an automaton, turning the leaves at regular intervals, doing the business to which he enforced himself, with his pale fingers and his rigid face. To think that one wicked, lawful expression of a dead man’s will could have drained the humanity thus out of one who was a woman’s husband and the father of children, when that devilish stroke smote him in full career! The woman was dead ages since, and the children banished; and dead down in its miserable solitude had stiffened that vexed heart. Didhe ever have a heart, that dismal man, at his dreary occupation, forlorn by the evening fire?—or was thislifewhich he lived, hugging to his bosom through all these years that big wrong which he had made the pivot of his impoverished existence? Who could tell? but there might, at least, have been pity in the kindred eyes which watched him through that melancholy night.
There was no pity, however, in the eyes of Horace: when his first guilty fear of being discovered was over, he stood and gazed, with a burning, steady gaze, upon his enemy. Years and days of his own existence rose before Horace as he looked; he heard himself once more addressed with that killing politeness which murdered nature in him; he saw himself once more lowering in a fierce, unnatural restraint at that same miserable table, cursing, and not blessing, the very bread he ate. He saw Susan’s head drooping, in timid and terrified silence, opposite that lonely man. Had there been heart or hope in him, would he have banished the harmless girl, to whom Horace did contemptuousjustice for once in his life? And as the young man gazed the fire burned. For a moment he seemed to see, by a better revelation, all the injury—a thousand times worse than disinheritance—which his father had done him; and became aware furiously, without regretting it, by some extraordinary magic of hatred, of his own unlovely character, the malicious creation of his father’s cruelty. These were dreadful thoughts; but he did not seek to get rid of them—rather encouraged the baleful imagination, and wrapped himself in its hostile suggestions. Nature! that was abrogated long ago by Mr. Scarsdale’s own words. They were rivals to the death—nothing but the bitterest dislike and mutual enmity could exist between that father and son; and Horace felt himself acquitted from any tie of nature by the thought.
While he stood thus, watching, Mr. Scarsdale, innocent of any enemy at the window, put up his hand to his head for a few minutes, as if in suffering, and then, rising, left the room. When he entered again he carried in his hand a mahogany box, bound with brass,not unlike a small desk. Horace, who watched all his proceedings keenly, with excited attention, saw him take out a vial, hold it up to the light, and then measure out for himself a minute dose of the medicine it contained. With eyes that burned through the darkness, Horace watched and noted. The box was left standing by his father’s side on the table—where had he brought it from? The young man watched and waited, shivering for long hours, till Mr. Scarsdale’s time for retiring came. Then he followed eagerly with his eyes the ghostly figure which glided out of the room, with the box under one arm. The light reappeared a few minutes after in the window of Mr. Scarsdale’s bedroom, into the secrets of which he had no power of spying. Then he wandered away blindly over the invisible heather, feeling nothing of the pricks that caught him on every side, insensible to the fresh night breezes blowing about his cheeks, unthinking where he went. When the morning came he could have fancied that he had slept there, so profound was his miserable preoccupation.But he had not slept there. The other man within him had struck out resolutely across the night, and gained shelter in a roadside public-house, from whence it was, refreshed and resolute, that he now came.
That same afternoon Horace once more essayed an entrance at Marchmain. Peggy received him with a suspicious face, but thrust him into the kitchen with a haste and force which betrayed to Horace that, as once before, her master was out, and everything propitious for him. He asked the question hurriedly.
“What does the like of you want here, Mr. Horry, two days running?” said the startled woman; “and what’s your business if he’s out or in? I tauld ye last time, and ye know what came o’t. It’s no’ your meaning that you came to seehim, like a dutiful son?”
“No, Peggy; but only to look for something I want in my old room. I confess I got frightened yesterday,” said Horace, with a grim, and somewhat tremulous smile. “I had no desire to meet him, fierce and furious as he used to be, or polite, which is worse. Iran away: but to-day you will surely let me go upstairs?”
“And what for,” said Peggy, steadily fixing her eyes on his face, “did you throwyonnapkin in the fire?”
Horace grew pale in spite of himself. “A napkin? Did I throw it in the fire? I was not aware of it,” he said, with all the boldness he could muster. “However, let me go upstairs.”
Peggy looked at him, and shook her head. “Ye’ll be a-going and rummaging again,” she said, with a voice of grieved uncomprehension. She had brought him up, and her heart warmed to him, unlovable as he was.
“I tell you I have found out everything. What should I rummage for?—and a great deal of good it is to me, now I know all,” said Horace, in a tone more natural than Peggy had yet heard from his lips. “Go you and watch, Peggy, and let me know when my father appears.”
Peggy followed him mournfully. Still, shaking her head, she went in after him with suspicion, and looked round the bare walls ofhis old room. “I’m bound to say I can see nowght to look for here,” said Peggy, sharply; but, after another inspection, she went reluctantly up to her watch-tower—the store-room—to look for her master’s approach. Whenever she was gone, Horace stole noiselessly as a ghost into his father’s apartment. It was not a murderous light that shone from the May skies into that room, the most comfortable in the house—but the young felon had night and darkness in his face. The box stood on the dressing-table, beside that chair of Mr. Scarsdale’s, in which some malicious ghost might have sat, it looked so occupied and observant. With a trembling yet rapid hand, Horace opened the box, and took out of it the little phial which he had seen his father use. It was carefully closed, with a piece of pink leather tied over the cork, and a very peculiar knot, which Horace, with his excited fingers, found great difficulty in opening. When he had succeeded, he poured out its contents, and replaced them from another of his own sealed packets. He did this mechanically and methodically, but with thecold dew bursting on his face, and his fingers, in their haste and tremble, fumbling over the knot, which he did not seem able to tie as it was before. When he had replaced it, and closed the box, he stood, trembling and miserable, looking at it. He could not tell whether he had placed the phial exactly as it was before: the box now would not close perfectly, and he could not remember, with his scared and desperate wits, whether it had been so when he opened it. At last, impatient, he put down the lid violently, with a jar which startled him into a fever of apprehension. Somebody must have heard it!—it went through his own head and heart with a thrill of terror. Then he skulked out, with that stealthy horror in his face which should henceforward be the prevailing sentiment of Horace Scarsdale’s unhappy countenance. Twice a parricide!—without calling Peggy from her watch, or daring to look in her face, he stole out the back-way from his father’s house, leaving Death and Murder there!
A week after, Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk returned to Kenlisle. He was restless,and deadly pale, and went to his desk to look for letters with a horrible anxiety. There were no letters there; and he turned out again with a breathless flutter of excitement to see his principal, and speak as he best could about business. But neither Mr. Pouncet nor any other person had heard anything from Marchmain, and Horace went out again in a miserable fever, which all his efforts could not quite conceal. He had laid the train; but heaven knows how long it might smoulder before the spark was set to that thread of death!
WHILEthese dark elements of tragedy were gathering about the lonely house of Marchmain, things went on very cheerfully in Milnehill, where everybody was vaguely encouraged by the idea of the investigation going on which might restore some wreck of fortune to the young Rifleman; and where a still more engrossing pursuit reconciled that hero himself to the necessity of waiting for news of this possible enrichment. Roger, who had no great hopes on the subject, bore the suspense with the greatest patience, and never, indeed, showed the least signs of anxiety, except when it seemed likely that a word or two of lamentation over his fate would call forth the compassion of the ladies—which compassion wasvery sincere on Susan’s part, and good-humouredly satirical on that of Mrs. Melrose. “It’s easy to see the poor young man’s losing heart altogether with this waiting,” the old lady would say with much gravity; “for you see, Susan, my dear, it’s not to be expected that he can find anything here to amuse him, poor man, seeing nothing but two old people and a quiet little girl like you.” Mrs. Melrose had quite taken up her abode at Milnehill since Roger’s arrival. She said it was good for her health to smell the chestnut blossoms, and overlook Uncle Edward’s gardening—and a very cheerful and lively addition she made to the happy house.
One morning, however, the quiet progress of affairs was interrupted by a letter, which Roger read not without a little agitation at the breakfast-table. When he had come to the end he handed it over suddenly, with a slight impetuous impulse, to the Colonel, who took it with his usual kind look of serious attention, put on his spectacles immediately, and addressed himself to the perusal of the letter with much gravity and earnestness. Itwas from Roger’s mother, and written partly under the inspiration of little Edmund, messages from whom were mixed with everything the timid woman said—
“MY DEAREST BOY—Your dear letter and the news of your arrival brought the greatest pleasure I have known for many a long day, though it came in the midst of great trouble, my dear Mr. Stenhouse having been buried just a few days before; a very great affliction, which I trust, forall your sakes, my dear boy, yours and little Edmund’s, and your dear sisters’, I shall have strength to bear. Little Edmund interrupts me to say—and I must give you theverywords of his message, or he will not be pleased—that, please, you’re to come home directly, and that his papa has left him a great deal of money, and he means to give you half of it, and wants so very, very much to see his brother Roger. My own boy, I must ask you to be very good to dear little Edmund; he has been such an invalid, the dear child, that everybody has always yielded to him all his life, and he does loveyouso! Since ever he could speak hehas kept on entreating me to tell him of his brother Roger, and he thinks there is not such another in the world; and he is very good, the dear little fellow, when he is not in pain, and one takes a little care and knows his way. However, I have something to tell you besides. The day before yesterday along with your letter there came a letter to my dear Mr. Stenhouse, which Edmund opened before I saw what he was doing. Edmund tells me to say that he does so hope you will come soon to see the cricketing in Leasough Park; and he thinks if you would join the Leasough eleven—Leasough is a village two miles off, where we always go for our drive, and where everybody knows Edmund—they would be sure to win. But about Mr. Pouncet’s letter, my dear son. It seemed written in a great fright, saying that Sir John Armitage had written to him something about you, and whatshouldhe do?—and speaking in a very improper manner, actuallycursingthe day he did something, which it seems my dear Mr. Stenhouse must have known of, and asking that young Mr. Scarsdale, Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, who seemed to know about it too, might be sent to Kenlisle at once. Edmund said, ‘Mamma, send for Mr. Scarsdale directly’ (he issoclever, the dear child), and so I did. But I must first go back to tell you that my dear Mr. Stenhouse himself had sent for young Mr. Scarsdale, and spoke with him in private, and charged him, as I heard with my own ears—dear Julius being taken very bad, and not knowing what he said—that ‘the boy was not to know’—just the day before his death. When Mr. Scarsdale came, I am sorry to say he was not so polite as I should have expected from Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, and would not tell either Edmund or me anything, but rather sneered at my poor child, and went off all in haste, keeping the letter in his hand. I should have sent it to you if he had not taken it away. Now, I do not know what this may mean—nor can it be expected that Edmund should, as he is only a child; but both he and I, my dear boy, beg of you to ask the Colonel what he thinks, and to try to find out yourself. And whatever you do, dear, don’t trust tothatMr. Pouncet; for itwas quite clear to me by his letter that he had somehow done you wrong, and wanted to conceal it. Edmund says, ‘Tell Roger, mamma, he’s not to trust Scarsdale either;’ but indeed I scarcely have the heart to say so, remembering that he’s the dear good Colonel’s nephew—only he was not so kind as he might have been, you know, and I have some reason to think he is fond of Amelia—which should surely keep him from doing anything that would harm her brother.
“But, my dearest boy, come home. I have not seen you—my son—my baby—my first-born!—forsomany years, and my heart yearns for a sight of you. Oh, come to me! Let me see you under my own roof! Roger—my son—my dear boy—come home to your mother! There is no other friend who can have so close a claim upon my darling child!
“Always your loving mother,“A. Stenhouse.”
“You will go at once?” said the Colonel, with some gravity, as he gave the letter back into Roger’s hand.
Go at once! The words rung upon Susan’s ear like a cannon-shot. She turned her blue eyes with a look of amazed alarm from her uncle to Roger; then she became suddenly very much busied with the duties of the breakfast table, swallowing down, as a very attentive observer might have noticed, something in her throat, and carefully keeping her eyes upon her tea-pot and coffee-pot. Roger had made no answer as yet. While the Colonel inclined his ear attentively across the table for the young man’s reply, Roger was studying Susan’s face; and it is not hard to explain that common paradox of youthful nature, which made Susan’s silent signs of sudden disappointment and vexation the most exhilarating sight in the world to the young Rifleman. While Uncle Edward listened, and heard nothing, and fancied his own deaf ear in fault, Roger, quite otherwise occupied—thinking, it is to be feared, not much about his mother, and nothing at all about Mr. Pouncet—concentrated all his faculties on the honest face of Susan, with its womanly but unconcealable dismay.
“Eh, Musgrave?” said the Colonel, stoopingtowards his young guest, and putting up his kind hand over his deaf ear.
“I suppose so, sir,” said Roger, in high spirits. Then, after a little pause, with sham sentiment, got up simply as a trap for Susan—“If one could only find out the secret of ubiquity, so that one might be able to content one’s mother, and enjoy one’s self, at the same time.”
Yielding to this temptation, Susan glanced up at the young hero for a moment, with some tender tearfulness about her eyes; but, finding nothing but triumph and delight in his, returned, disgusted, and much more inclined to cry than before, to the contemplation of her coffee-pot.
“One may manage that, I hope, without any ubiquity,” said the Colonel, still very gravely; for the old soldier was moved too seriously by this letter to notice the by-play of the youthful drama going on under his eyes. “But I am surprised you are not more excited by your mother’s communication, Roger. My dear fellow, it is quite evident now that there must be something in it; anda pretty person to conduct an investigation this Pouncet must be, after what you have just heard. Why, to be sure, referring the search to a guilty party is the very way to keep ourselves in darkness. I’ll tell you what, Musgrave; if you do not see after it at once, I shall take the liberty of constituting myself your guardian, and set out to-day.”
Roger stretched out his hand to meet that of Colonel Sutherland, who had gradually warmed as he spoke. “Amen,” said the young man. “Till I can persuade some still kinder and fairer hand to assume the reins, I could not have any guardian I should like so well.”
“Pshaw!” said Uncle Edward, awakening to the fact that his young guest was speaking at Susan much more than to himself—“never mind fairer hands. What do you mean to do?”
Upon which, Roger perceiving that his last shot had taken due effect, grew serious all at once.
“It does look at last as if there was something in it,” he said. “I have thought allalong that if any mischief had been done Pouncet must have known of it; and he was a man of such character! I cannot think yet how it is possible that he could put himself or his reputation in danger to defraud me;—but certainly,” continued Roger, growing rather red and wrathful, “the pretence of a sham investigation and a confidential clerk—”
“Ah!” cried Uncle Edward, with a sharp short exclamation like a sudden pang—“most likely it was—well, well, well!—wecannot help it; it is to his own Master that each of us standeth or falleth: let us not blame till we know.”
“Uncle,” said Susan in alarm, coming round to his side and sliding her hand into his, “it is something about Horace?—something more?”
“No, my love, nothing more—nothing at all that one could build upon,” said the Colonel tenderly; “only I rather fear, Susan, as we both did when you came first to Milnehill, that Horace knows of some injury which has been done to Roger, and yet does not let him know.”
Susan made a momentary pause of shame and distress as her uncle spoke, and then raised her eyes, full of tears and entreaty, to Roger’s face. Poor Susan believed that these tears were all about her brother, and would not have acknowledged that a single drop of that gentle rain had relation to the “going away” with which this conversation arose.
Roger, however, could not bear these tears. He put his mother’s letter hastily into her hand—would she read it? There was really nothing blaming Mr. Scarsdale, as she would see. And Susan stood shy and tearful, with the paper trembling in her hand—a maidenly, womanly, natural restraint forbidding her to read, while her heart yearned, notwithstanding, towards Roger’s mother; while Roger kept looking at her with anxious eyes, as earnest to have her read it as though his fate depended on the issue. Did either of them think of Horace in connection with this letter? or what, between these two young dreamers, trembling on the edge of their romance, was Colonel Sutherland, with very serious thoughts in his mind and matters in his hand, to do?He got up after a few minutes waiting, with good-humoured impatience.
“Boys and girls,” said Uncle Edward, “with all their life before them, like you young people, may waste a few hours of it without much harm done; but what I have to do must be done quickly. Make up your mind, Roger, my good friend; but as for me, I am going off to Armitage by the first train. Susan, my love, Mrs. Melrose will stay with you; for this young fellow’s interests, you see, must be looked after, whether he wishes it or not—especially, my dear”—and Uncle Edward’s kind face grew darker as he made that significant pause.
“Especially if Horace has had any share in it,” cried Susan. “Oh, Mr. Musgrave!” and a few tears fell suddenly over Roger’s mother’s letter. The Colonel at the moment had stepped out of the room to give his instructions to Patchey, and Susan’s one sole remaining intention, on which all her mind was fixed, was to rush after him; but that involuntary turn of her head and exclamation of her lips sealed Susan’s fate. Roger was notthe man to let slip so advantageous a moment—and had things to do of more importance than packing his portmanteau before he left Milnehill.
COLONELSUTHERLANDand his young friend, who had by this time something to communicate which the discreet old soldier was perhaps not unprepared to hear, left Edinburgh that evening by the earliest train they could get which stopped anywhere near Armitage Park. The Colonel was most seriously in earnest, entirely occupied with the new position of affairs; while Roger, quickened by the change in his own personal circumstances, speculated a little on this new possibility of improving his fortune, and was exceedingly well content to dream of endowing Susan with something more than the old Grange, the empty and miserable condition of which came dolefully on his memory, now that he and his home were likely to havea lawful mistress. As they travelled, the Colonel exhausted himself in inquiries and suggestions as to what this hidden business could be, touching on every mode known to his innocence, by which an attorney could defraud a client, but of course never approaching within a thousand miles of the one method in whichthisattorney had succeeded in defrauding his; while Roger listened in a happy mist, half hearing—dwelling in his own mind on the plea he had already won, in the most arbitrary court in existence, and feeling the other plea important in consequence; but light, light and trivial, after all, a feather to his happiness. Thus they went on, very good companions, to Armitage, where Sir John received them with open arms; and in spite of all Colonel Sutherland’s resistance, kept them four-and-twenty hours without doing anything. This delay postponed the execution of their business for a longer space than twenty-four hours, and produced other results not less important; for it left Horace time, in his restless wretchedness, to set out once more to Harliflax.
If Horace Scarsdale had encountered his uncle there, the chances are that he would have found very little difficulty in betraying his “friend” and principal. The young man had miscalculated the magnitude of those affairs in which he had embroiled himself.Heknew well enough that there was nothing soft or sentimental, and not very much of human impressionable stuff in his own nature, but he did not know that a mind inaccessible to compassion or sympathy may still be desperately alive to all the selfish horrors of remorse and guilt, and that not even the promised income of a thousand a-year which he had forced from Mr. Pouncet’s fears and hopes, or the expectation which he entertained of being able to persuade Amelia Stenhouse into an immediate marriage, could make him insensible to that dread horror of suspense in which he lived. There were no letters, no newspaper paragraphs, or country intimation of a sudden death—darkness and silence immovable had dropped like a veil over all that district which enclosed Marchmain. Every day and every night Horace could seethat wild stretch of moorland brooding under its dismal sky; and there was scarcely a moment, sleeping or waking, in which his guilty imagination ceased to dwell in his father’s lonely house. Had he met Colonel Sutherland in this miserable crisis of his affairs, the chances are that Horace would gladly have given a sop to his fevered conscience by telling all he knew of Mr. Pouncet’s fraud. As it was, possessed with a restlessness which he could not subdue, he returned to Harliflax, the onlyotherplace in the world where he could find even a temporary interest—resisting, with all the strength he still could muster, the dread curiosity which drew him to Marchmain.
Mr. Pouncet accordingly was alone when Sir John Armitage, the Colonel, and Roger made an unexpected descent upon him. There was nothing to frighten a good dissembler in the entire three of them, honest sincere souls each in their way, who came here with suspicion, it is true, yet had a natural habit of believing what was said to them. Mr. Pouncet played his part verywell. Knowing that his letter itself was out of their power, and could not be brought against him, he made his defence lightly. A lady’s mistake, a thing most easily explained:—he had indeed written to his friend Stenhouse about some private matters of business, and his wife had made a woman’s blunder about it, knowing nothing of business, and supposing, of course, that there could be no Musgrave in the world but her son. Of course Sir John might be perfectly assured that he should take every possible step to ascertain anything affecting Mr. Musgrave’s interests—indeed, was not the late Mr. Musgrave his client? And now especially, when his own honour was involved, his exertions should be redoubled; he had already sent his confidential clerk—
Here Colonel Sutherland interrupted the fluent speaker: “Did the confidential clerk, whom you sent to make inquiries, happen to be my nephew, Horace Scarsdale?” asked the old soldier.
“Yournephew!” Mr. Pouncet stood dismayed. “The young man’s name was certainlyScarsdale,” he said, after a little puzzled pause.
“Then I have no doubt that accounts for the failure of the investigation,” said the Colonel, who had been bending his deaf ear to the wily attorney with an earnest attention, strangely out of keeping with the insincere and untrustworthy voice to which he listened. “Much grief as it gives me to say so, Armitage, I am afraid Horace would hinder rather than help. I don’t know how he has mixed himself up with such an affair,” said Uncle Edward, musing; “but he certainly has to do with it somehow. He’s—alas! very clever, this nephew of mine; unhappily brought up, poor fellow! fond of intrigue, I fear, one kind or another. Mr. Pouncet, I’d recommend you to employ another man.”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Mr. Pouncet, chuckling to himself; “of course, I yield any little knowledge I may have of young Scarsdale to the superior information of a relative—ha, ha! Your candid judgment does you credit, I am sure, Colonel. Mr. Scarsdale is not here to-day, I am sorry tosay; very unsettled lately he has appeared to me. Ah, come in, Edwards! I’ve some instructions to give you before these gentlemen. We will lose no time, Sir John, and you shall hear my directions with your own ears.”
“That’ll do, Pouncet” said Sir John, with a slight air of disgust. “My own opinion is, you’re a deal too easy in your talk to mean anything. Hope you don’t know any more about it than you choose to tell us, which appears to me, begging your pardon, a long way more likely than not; for who’s to cheat a man if it isn’t his own attorney? Send your clerk if you like, I’ll have nothing to do with it. If one wants a thing well done, one must do it oneself. Come along, Sutherland; no, I’m not satisfied, and I don’t pretend to be.”
Saying which, in spite of Mr. Pouncet’s strenuous endeavours to explain, and to set himself right with his wealthy client, Sir John fought his way out, dragging along with him his young and his old friend. The Colonel looked very grave and rather sad, wondering what “motive” Horace could have for helping to injure Roger. Meanwhile, that young herohimself took, it is to be confessed, more amusement than anything else from the entire matter. His hopes were so slight that they did not at all excite him, whereas he could not but perceive that Sir John’s little burst of ill-humour, and Mr. Pouncet’s discomfiture thereat, was tolerably good fun. They went to the inn to have lunch, all three displaying their various humours—of which Sir John’s was the most demonstrative and plain-spoken.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the baronet; “Pouncet’s a deal too well up in his defence. I never like a man who knows just exactly what to say for himself when he’s accused of a sudden—ten chances to one, look you, Roger, that he’s guilty; for if he’s guilty, of course he knew every word you were going to say—whereas if he’s innocent, he’s taken by surprise and shows it. That’s my opinion; and, by Jove, if the rascal took in Musgrave, I’ll bet you something he’s taken in me as well. But you may rely upon it I’ll have the whole affair looked into now.”
“Eh?” said Colonel Sutherland, stooping over the chair into which Sir John had thrownhimself, with his hand curved over his ear; “have the whole affair looked into now? Well, Armitage, if I have less concern in it one way than you, I have more another. There’s still a week before my Ned comes home, I’ll see what I can do with my own eyes and spectacles. I’m an old campaigner: twenty miles a day over a pleasant country is no extraordinary work for an old soldier like me.”
“And I, Colonel—what am I to say to you for such painstaking kindness?” said Roger, forgetting his amusement in hearty gratitude and admiration.
“My dear boy, it’s a great deal for your sake, but something for the sake of my sister’s son,” said the Colonel, with a smile and a sigh—“and only till my boy’s holidays begin; but as for you, go on to whatever is the name of the place and see your mother, and the pretty sisters and the little boy, and if there’s anything to be heard of Horace there, send me word; and don’t forget if you do meet with him that he is, in spite of everything—”
“Susan’s brother!—there is not a chance that I shall forget,” said Roger, brightly.
Meanwhile Sir John, catching the sound of one word, which tickled the ear of his possessing demon, muttered to himself, “Pretty sisters!” Then added aloud, “Going to see your mother, Roger? Possibly she’s got something further to tell us—I’ll go too.”