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The House on the Moor. Volume 1

CHAPTER V

THE kitchen of Marchmain was built out from the house, and was a long and somewhat narrow apartment, quite unlike the rest of the building. People said it had been a cottage standing on the spot before this house was built, and arbitrarily connected with it – and the unceiled roof and large old-fashioned chimney favoured the notion. The mud or brick floor had been, however, replaced by a deal one; and the roof was now covered, instead of thatch, with the less picturesque but safer slates, which gave so cold an aspect to the house. Within, two large articles of furniture filled up half the space, though furniture these fixed encumbrances could scarcely be called. One was a prodigious press, in which Peggy kept her household linen – the other, a great square box with a sloping lid, which contained the immediate supply of coals, brought from the coal cellar outside. Beneath the window – which was large but high, so that Peggy, though she was tall, could do no more than look out, and Susan could only reach up to it on tiptoe – stood a large deal table, clean to the utmost extent of cleanliness, where Peggy did her ironing – (Peggy was punctilious in her concerns, and kept everything in its proper place) – another table in quite another quarter was appropriated to the cooking – and a third, a small round one, stood aside in a corner to be lifted in front of the fireplace at nights when Peggy’s work was over, beside the big old heavy elbow-chair, where Peggy took an evening nap and sipped a fourth cup of tea.

In this apartment, in the morning of the same day, while Colonel Sutherland drove through the rain, Susan, excited, happy, and restless, fluttered round Peggy at her work. Susan had in her hand the front of one of Master Horace’s new shirts, which she pretended to be stitching – but everybody knows that stitching is a delicate operation, and not to be performed on foot, or in a state of restlessness. This was the time of the day when Susan was most free to follow her own desires. Horace was out, and Mr. Scarsdale in his study. When this fortunate concurrence of circumstances was secured, Susan came lightly out of the dull dining-room to the bright kitchen, the only place in the house which had an appearance or sentiment of home. Peggy was better company for Susan than a thousand philosophers; she laughed, she sang, she danced about, she looked like a young living creature, as she was, in Peggy’s womanly presence. Her father and her brother were rather hard examples of the rule of man to Susan. Horace exacted endless sympathy – sympathy more bitter than it was in her to bestow – and scorned it when it was given; but Peggy cherished the girl with an all-indulgent tenderness – a motherly, nursely, homely love, advising, and interfering, and fretting, which kept her heart and her youth alive. But something more than usual occupied their thoughts to-day.

“Ay, honey – as if it was yesterday,” said Peggy. “R’c’lect him! – he was not the young man to be forgot, I can tell you! Many a handsome lady would have gone over seas to follow the young soldier. He was just the innocentest, bravest, kindest man I ever looked in the eye.”

“Why in the eye?” said Susan, who was a little matter-of-fact, and liked to understand a new phrase.

“Eh, child! his heart was in it!” cried Peggy. “When your mamma was alive, she was a dear, blessed creature, and kept religion and comfort in the house; but when Mr. Edward came, it was pleasure to be about, and the world was changed. He never arguified with a soul, nor set up his opinions, nor took slights nor offences, nor a single mortal thing that a’ persons beside did. He was just right himself and happy himself without thinking upon’t, and was a happiness to be nigh night and day. The master, so far as I can think, had never a cross word with Mr. Edward. Think you any other man would ever have come, or been let come, to this house?”

“No, indeed,” said Susan, gravely; “it is very strange. I wonder how he thought of it at all; one would suppose he must like us, Peggy, to come here – though I don’t see how that can be either. Hasn’t he been in India all our lives?”

“Little matter for that; but you understand nothing about friends’ feelings; and how should you, poor forlorn infant!” said Peggy. “He likes you, I’ll warrant; and he’s held you on his knee, Miss Susan – and besides, for your mamma’s sake.”

“To be sure, for mamma’s sake,” said Susan, satisfied; “but surely, other people, when she knew so many, must have loved mamma. Peggy, what can make papa so stiff and hard to strangers, and putting everybody out of the house, and never letting us make any friends – what do you think it can be?”

Peggy drew a long breath, which seemed to end in some inward words, said for her own private relief and satisfaction.

“Your papa has his own reasons, Miss Susan, and that’s neither for you nor me; but you see he lets Mr. Edward come. Who can tell how many more? – for Mr. Edward has the tongue of a nightingale, and steals folks’s hearts.”

“I wish he would sing into papa’s,” said Susan, laughing; “there’s never any music at Marchmain, Peggy. Oh, I wonder when Uncle Edward will come; look out and see if there’s anybody in the road; such a morning! and Horace will come in all muddy and sulky, and not get goodtempered the whole of the day. Peggy,” cried Susan, jumping down from the chair she had mounted to look out, “are boys always so dreadfully cross?”

“Indeed, Miss Susan, they’re little to be trusted,” said Peggy, with a grave face of wisdom, prudently refraining from blaming Horace, while she inculcated the moral lessons supposed to be most advantageous to feminine youth.

Susan shrugged her shoulders with a private internal reflection, which perhaps meant, “I should like to judge for myself;” but which said, “I am very glad, then, that we see so little of them.” For people don’t permit themselves to be very ingenuous, even in their thoughts – at least women and young girls do not. “I suppose, then,” she said very demurely aloud, “there never was but one Uncle Edward in the whole world, Peggy.”

“Eh, honey! if there were a hunderd the world would be saved, like the Lord said to Abraham,” cried Peggy. “My heart jumped when the master said it last night. I said to myself, ‘a good man’s coming, and a blessing will come with him.’ If I saw you out of this, you two unfortunate things, I would be content to go foot foremost the same day to Lanwoth Church.”

“That would be cheerful and pleasant for us, I am sure,” cried Susan; “I wonder how you dare say such a thing, Peggy – all about your own nonsense, and not a word of Uncle Edward! But, I say, Peggy – oh! tell me – Uncle Edward’s not a young man?”

Peggy took time to consider, pausing in her work for the purpose, with her hands covered with flour – for it was baking day. “I’m bound to allow he cannot be young – nay, it’s fifteen years since he was home,” cried Peggy, with a sigh. “Time flies! – it was the very same year, Miss Susan, that your mamma died.”

Susan paused with a question on her lips, awed by these last words; for she understood dimly that it was in some season of extreme and mysterious calamity that her mother’s life concluded. She could not have told how this impression had settled on her mind, but there it certainly was.

“Peggy,” she said suddenly, putting into words the suggestion of the moment, “was it mamma’s death that made papa so – so – “ – Susan hesitated for a word, and at last, with a natural hypocrisy, substituted one that did not express her meaning for a less dutiful term – “so sad?”

Peggy made no audible answer, but she screwed her lips into a tight round circle, through which came an invisible, inarticulate “No,” most emphatic and unmistakable though unpronounced, shaking her head violently as she did so. Susan was first frightened, then amused, at the extraordinary pantomime.

“Don’t shake your head off, however,” she cried, laughing. “But about Uncle Edward – you never will keep to the point, you troublesome Peggy! If he is an old man, what is he? Has he got any children? – where does he live? – do you know anything about him at all?”

“Not a mortal thing,” said Peggy, relieving herself by speaking loud. “Who can hear anything here, I would like to know? Not of my own brother, Miss Susan, let alone your mamma’s. But he’s coming, bless him! I’m strong in the hope nature will come with him, and something will be done for you two.”

“Peggy, you never spoke of us two before like that,” said Susan. “Has anything happened to us that we don’t know?”

“Oh, bless the innocent! – what do you know?” cried Peggy. “If I never said it before, it was because I saw no hope; but I’ve told your papa my mind, and that I can tell you, Miss Susan; and I’ll tell it to Mr. Edward, if Providence spares me, before he’s been twelve hours in this unlucky house!”

“You are very odd to-day, Peggy,” said Susan, looking at her with curiosity. “But I am sure if Uncle Edward gets us permission to see people sometimes, I should be very glad – but then, we have affronted everybody,” added Susan, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “However, he is coming himself – that is the great matter. Peggy, what will you have ready if he comes early? He cannot wait all the time till dinner! How foolish I was, never to think of it before! What shall we do?”

“We’ll have in the lunch, Miss Susan, and as good a lunch as anybody need wish for,” said Peggy, in triumph. “Is that all the good Peggy is for, to think upon things at the last moment? – for as sure as I’m living, there’s a wheel upon the big stones in the road!”

Susan sprang up upon the chair, leaped down again, her colour rising, her heart beating. Then she ran breathless towards the door – then paused. “Oh, Peggy! who must tell papa?” she cried, in great excitement and trepidation. Peggy, without pausing to answer her question, rushed past her and through the hall, to throw the door open and seize upon the carpet-bag, as before related. Peggy was not afraid of papa, and her shriek of joy and welcome, “Eyeh, Master Edward!” penetrated even through the closed windows and doors of the study, where Mr. Scarsdale sat as usual, while Susan stood in the hall, eagerly bending forward to see the newcomer, and speculating with herself whether it was safe to secure herself the pleasure of her uncle’s first greeting, without the dreadful operation of telling papa. The issue was, a sudden spring forward on the part of the excited girl, while her uncle – sad, oppressed, and wondering – stooped his deaf ear to Peggy, and tremulously bent over his carpet-bag. Susan had no sooner seen his face than the long restrained heart yearned within her – her mother’s brother – somebody who loved them! She sprang forward and clasped his arm with both her hands, and fell a-crying, poor child, as girls use, and looked up in his face, all-conquering in her wistfulness, and her smiles, and her tears. The old man caught her in his arms, and read her face as if it had been a picture, with eager wet eyes that, after a moment, could scarcely tell what they gazed on. In that moment the poor lonely girl woke up, by dint of finding it, to discover the love that had been wanting, the immeasurable lack of her young life. And the old soldier took his sister’s child – the only woman of the family – a new, tender, delicate tie, almost more touching and intimate than any other, into his fatherly old heart; and, on the instant, took courage about all the unknown troubles of the mysterious house, and was at home and himself again. They went in together to the dull dining-room, where Susan had no desire to remember that papa had not been told, and grew friends in half a minute, saying nothing but the common words that every stranger at the end of a journey hears from his entertainers. But the “Oh, Uncle, I am so glad you are come!” – the glistening eyes – the joyful young voice – the little figure fluttering about him, unable to rest for anxiety that he should rest, and have exactly what he wanted – spoke more eloquently than volumes of fine words. And Susan’s face had already almost reconciled Uncle Edward to the savage solitude of Marchmain, and the dreary blank of Lanwoth Moor.

CHAPTER VI

WHEN Colonel Sutherland had been established for nearly half-an-hour in the angular arm-chair, which was the most luxurious seat this room afforded, where he sat holding Susan’s hand and keeping her by his side, it suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten the other members of the family in his satisfaction with his new-found niece. “But, my dear child, your father?” he said, hastily; “he expected me, did he not? – he is surely at home.”

And instantly Susan’s countenance fell.

The old Colonel had begun to recover his spirits about his brother-in-law’s house. He saw Susan in blooming health, affectionate, frank, and cheerful, and he began, with natural hopefulness, to impute the dismal house and solitary life to some caprice, and to imagine to himself a loving, united family, who were society enough to themselves. But it was impossible to mistake the cloud which fell instantly upon Susan’s face. “Oh! – I ought to have told papa,” she said, with a hesitation and reluctance in her voice which went to her uncle’s heart. He drew her still closer to him, and looked in her face anxiously. But Susan knew nothing of that domestic martyrdom which conceals and smiles on the family skeleton. She was not aware how great a skeleton it was – it was simply a thing of course, to her inexperienced spirit.

“I should think he must have heard – I should think Peggy must have told him,” said Susan. “He is not so angry when Peggy goes into the study as when I go; but if you like, I will go and tell him, uncle, now.”

“Never mind, Susan. I daresay your father will come when he chooses. A deaf man would have heard Peggy’s shout,” said Colonel Sutherland; “and Horace – was there nobody but my little girl who came to see the old uncle – is your brother in the study too?”

“In the study! – he would as soon go down the well or up the chimney,” said Susan, with a very short and half-frightened laugh. “No, uncle – Horace is in Faneleigh Woods, or on the Moor. He never minds the weather. I do think at this time of the year he gets wet through three times a-week; but I am sure Horace will be very glad to see you – as glad as I was – oh, I am quite sure!”

This expression of conviction, made with some heat and anxiety, had a very different effect from that which Susan intended – it revealed to the Colonel very plainly that Susan was anything but quite sure of Horace’s sentiment; and, perhaps, Colonel Sutherland’s first sensation thereupon was offence and indignation; and his personal dignity suffered a momentary mortification, from the idea that he had volunteered a visit which was welcome to nobody but this little girl. This personal feeling, however, was but momentary. A deeper pain returned to his heart; he looked anxiously into Susan’s blue eyes to find out, if possible, how and why this unnatural state of things existed; or, failing that, what effect upon her the loneliness and the hardness of her life had made. But there were no mysteries in those eyes of Susan’s – her girlish, undisturbed heart, clouded by a little terror of her father, which took no deeper form than that of discomfort and uneasiness, gleamed in them with otherwise unmingled joy and satisfaction. All the natural filial love hitherto denied her had sprung to life in a moment in Susan’s heart. She looked at her uncle with an affectionate pride, which made her breast swell and astonished herself. To stand by his side, to feel her hand held in his kind hand, to know by intuition that there was interest for all her little affairs, and sympathy for all her unregarded troubles in this new friend, was a new life to Susan. She felt encouraged and emboldened without knowing how, as she appropriated, involuntarily, his affection, his aid, his succour. She kept naming him over and over within herself, with a secret inexplainable swell of pride and comfort. Susan had never been disposed before to use the possessive pronoun in regard to anything more important than pin-cushions and scissors; and now to say, “My uncle!” was something as new as pleasant. But notwithstanding that reference to her father curbed her tongue and brought a shade of restraint over her thoughts in spite of herself; and Uncle Edward’s affectionate questions flagged – he too had something else to think of – the change was apparent to both; and Susan, for the first time in her life, moved to exert herself to seek a less unfortunate subject, immediately remembered that her uncle must want refreshment, and proposed to call Peggy to bring in his luncheon.

“Suppose we ring,” said Colonel Sutherland, putting out his hand with a smile to the unused bell-rope.

Susan started with terror to prevent him.

“Oh, uncle, we never ring!” she cried, in an alarmed tone.

The sound of that bell tinkling through the house might produce Susan could not tell what tragedy in the study. She put out her trembling hand and caught at her uncle’s to stop his intended action. When she did so, to Susan’s great surprise the Colonel, dropping the bell, turned round upon her suddenly, and put his arm round her.

“My poor child!” he exclaimed, with some sudden access of feeling, scarcely intelligible to Susan, and with tears in his eyes.

She did not know what it meant, and yet she was very much inclined to cry too.

At this moment fortunately Peggy came in unsummoned, bringing the tray, but not the dainty dish which her care had prepared for Mr. Edward. When she set it down upon the table, she addressed the visitor with the tone and manner of one who has something disagreeable to say.

“The master’s in his study, Mr. Edward: he never comes out on’t at this hour of the day. Will you please to step athwart the hall, and see him there?”

“Certainly,” said Colonel Sutherland, and rose at once, releasing Susan, who could not help feeling a little tremor for the consequences of his visit to her father. The old Colonel himself stepped solemnly, with a certain melancholy in his whole figure and bearing, as he went out of the room. It went to his heart to see the clouded face with which Susan responded to his mention of her father, and he went to meet him forgetting even the discourtesy which did not come to meet him – oppressed, and grieved, and wondering. When he had closed the door behind him he laid his arm on Peggy’s arm, detaining her.

“What does it all mean?” he asked, with a troubled face, and stooped his deaf ear to Peggy’s voice.

“What does’t mean? Mischief and the devil! – and good reason he has to be proud of his handiwork,” cried Peggy, vehemently, though in a whisper; “and oh, Mr. Edward! before the two unfortunate things are killed and murdered, save him from himself!”

Perhaps Colonel Sutherland did not perfectly hear this strange communication; he nodded and went on after her, looking puzzled and distressed – he was not of an intrusive or interfering nature. He had no idea of thrusting into any man’s secrets, with the view of doing him good. And then, what influence had he, whom after twenty years absence his host would not come to meet. So he went across the hall, stooping his lofty grizzled head, and with a great confusion of grieved thoughts in his mind – while Susan, left behind, went to the window to look for Horace, and stirred the fire into a flame, and placed the tray and the arm-chair in the most comfortable position possible, and trembled a little, in a vague idea that Uncle Edward might somehow dissolve in that awful study, or come out a different man.

In the study, just risen up from his chair, Mr. Scarsdale received his visitor; he scarcely made a step forward to meet him, but he shook him coldly by the hand. They stood there together, two strangely different men – the recluse standing bolt upright, with his wide dressing gown falling off from his spare figure, and his book open on the table – cold, self-absorbed, in a passion of unnatural stillness; the soldier, with his tall stooping figure, his deaf ear bending with that benign and kind humility which made the infirmity a grace, and his anxious countenance afraid to lose a word of anything that might be said to him. Mr. Scarsdale’s greetings were few and hurried; he asked when he returned, and how he had travelled, and then, reaching a chair which happened to be within arm’s length, begged that Colonel Sutherland would sit down, in a tone which plainly signified that the request itself was a favour. Colonel Sutherland did so, looking at him with a strange wistfulness – and then, reseating himself, his host spoke.

“Since you have come to Marchmain, I have something to say to you at the commencement of what I suppose you will call our renewed intercourse. I will deal with you frankly. I should not have ventured to invite, if you had left it to me, a man of your tastes and feelings here.”

“I can guess as much,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a passing, angry blush.

“I should not,” said Mr. Scarsdale, coldly; “because my establishment is very limited. I live in great seclusion, and I remember that you are a lover of society, and what is called cheerfulness. But you have come, and yours is the responsibility if our life oppresses you. And one thing I would say; I do not fear your discretion, having warned you. You are aware of the very peculiar circumstances under which I stand – you know, in short, the blight of my life. Pshaw! why speak of it, or give it a name? – you know, of course, thanks to your sister’s frankness, exactly what I mean. Now this, I beg you to observe, is totally unknown to my children: my son is not aware of his advantage over his father. I do not mean that he shall be, until,” added Mr. Scarsdale, with a ghastly smile, “until the time of his triumph approaches; but, in the meantime, I have to request that you will not think of extending to these young people a confidence which I do not wish them to possess.”

A flood of painful feelings rose during this speech over the Colonel’s face, of which kindness misconstrued and personal dignity wounded were the least and lightest. He looked with an amazed, grieved, uncomprehending wonder in the face of his brother-in-law, and was silent for a few minutes, while the first pangs of indignant pain were subsiding, though he involuntarily rose to his feet, an action which Mr. Scarsdale followed. Perhaps this last rudeness might have roused the warlike blood of the old soldier, had not his eye at the moment lighted upon that portrait in the shadow of the curtain. That touch of old love and sorrow moved him in the midst of his resentment almost to tears. He had to pause before he could speak as calmly as he wished to speak. “I have never thought it my duty,” said Colonel Sutherland, “to interfere in any man’s house: I will not begin in yours – nor would I remain in it even for a night, but for recollections which neither you nor I can efface by any measure of hard words. But, for heaven’s sake, Robert Scarsdale, why is all this? – why do you meet me after this extraordinary fashion? – why do you shut yourself out from human sympathy? – why refuse yourself the comfort of your own children? As for myself, I am neither an enemy nor a stranger. Old ties and kindness have never died out of my recollection through all the sorrows and labours of my life, which have not been few. Why have they passed out of yours? We are relations – not antagonists.”

“We were relatives,” said Mr. Scarsdale, stiffly.

“Were! And my dear sister – your good wife – do you count her, then, only among the things that were?”

“I beg your pardon: a man is generally the best judge of the goodness of his wife; but there is no question at present of the virtues of the late Mrs. Scarsdale,” said the recluse. “I can see no benefit to result from discussing past circumstances. You are welcome to my house, such as it is; but, knowing my position as you do, I think myself quite justified in requesting your silence on this matter. It was not my will, certainly, which made you aware of it at first.”

Colonel Sutherland stood before his brother-in-law in a flush of unusual and inexpressible passion. He could not give utterance to the indignant, mortified, impatient surprise with which he heard these words. But what can any one say? It is hard for the voice of kindred to praise a poor woman – even when she is dead – while her husband looks on blankly, and is the best judge whether his wife has been a good wife or not. So he is, of course: therefore, be silent, brother of the dead – say nothing about her – she is judged elsewhere, and beyond human criticism now. But the old soldier stood listening, with the pang of wonder, almost stronger than that of anger and indignation, at his heart. He was so much surprised, that he was speechless. This unexpected sentiment shook him suddenly in his supposed position, and turned all his previous ideas into folly. He was not the brother of a wife beloved, the uncle of children who cherished their mother’s memory, but an intruder, presuming upon a past relationship. A flush of deep mortification came upon his face: he made a stately, ceremonious bow to his ungracious host —

“In that case – as things are,” stammered the Colonel, “I will make no encroachments upon your hospitality. Pray, don’t say anything – it is unnecessary. I – I shall take care to pay due respect to your desires so far as your children are concerned. In short, I beg you to understand that your secret is, and has always been, with me as though I knew it not; but,” said Colonel Sutherland, pausing in his haste, and steadying his voice, “it was, as you are well enough aware, known to half, at least, of your former friends, and that by no – no indiscretion on the part of – my sister – and it is open at this day, or any day, to the most indifferent stranger who chooses to pay a fee at Doctors’ Commons. What you can mean, in these circumstances, by a precaution so – by such precautions, I cannot tell. Is it not better your son should learn this from his father, than from any ill-disposed companion whom the young man may pick up? But that is certainly not my business. I presume that I may, without objection on your part, see my niece and nephew sometimes during the few days I remain in the nearest village? The children must acknowledge a certain relationship with their mother’s brother.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a slight blush of shame on his cheek, “I shall be glad to have you remain here.”

Glad! the word was out of keeping entirely with his aspect and that of the scene; it looked like a piece of mockery. Colonel Sutherland bowed again with still more ceremony.

“It is too late,” he said, quietly.

“Your room is prepared – you have been expected,” said Scarsdale, awaking, not only to the reproach of sending a stranger away, which, distant as he was from the opinions of the world, touched him still, but to the vexation of being resisted. “My daughter, so far as looks can express it, has been expecting you eagerly. I beg you to reconsider your decision – nay, I entreat, I insist that you should remain.”

“Too late for that,” said the Colonel, with a smile and a bow; “but I will not detain you from your studies. Susan, I believe, has some refreshment ready for her old uncle. I will not carry a punctilio of welcome so far as not to break bread in your house; but I will bid you now, and finally, good-bye.”

So saying, the old soldier made a superb bow, and, without lifting his eyes again to his churlish host to see how he took it, turned round on his heel and left the room.

In the hall he encountered Peggy waiting for him, who, familiar in her anxiety, laid her hand upon his sleeve, and stretched up on tiptoe to whisper her anxious interrogation into the Colonel’s deaf ear. He waved his hand to her with an assumed carelessness, which he was far from feeling.

“We should not ’gree, Peggy, if I stayed a day,” he said, familiarly, and with a smile. “You must direct me to the next village, where I can get a bed and a dinner – for I will not leave the quarter till I know my sister’s bairns.”

“But ye’ll not forsake them; say you’ll never go away till he promises their rights,” cried Peggy, in a whispered shriek.

The Colonel shook his head, and put her aside with his hand.

“If I can do anything for them, I will,” he said briefly; and so went into the dining-room, where Susan waited, trembling for the issue of this scene: while Peggy, retiring to her kitchen in fierce disappointment and mortification, threw her apron over her head and wept a sudden torrent of hot tears; then comforting herself, repeated over his words, wiped her tears, and carried in the luncheon. She would not lose faith in her favourite with so short a trial. Daylight, good sense, common affection did but need to breathe into this morbid house, and all might yet be right.