The House on the Moor, v. 1/3

PREFACE

THIS book was overshadowed and interrupted by the heaviest grief. The author says so, not to deprecate criticism, but to crave the tender forbearance of her unknown friends.

CHAPTER I

IN a gloomy room, looking out through one narrow window upon a moor, two young people together, and yet alone, consumed the dreary hours of a February afternoon. The scene within doors exhibited scarcely less monotony and dreariness than did the moor without, which stretched black and heavy to the hills under a leaden sky. The room was well-sized, and lighted only by that one window, which was deeply sunk in the deep wall, and hung with terrible curtains of red moreen, enough to kill what little amount of light there was. A large dining-table, of cold, well-polished mahogany, occupied the centre of the apartment – an old-fashioned sideboard and mysterious bureau of the same character stood out darkly from the walls – and hard, angular chairs furnished forth the dining-room, as it was called – but which was, indeed, drawing-room, study, boudoir, everything to the brother and sister who held occupation of it now.

And here were none of those traces of feminine presence which one reads of in books – no pretty things, no flowers, no embroideries, nothing to cast a grace upon the dulness. Perhaps that might be partly Susan’s fault; but when one lives all one’s life on the borders of Lanwoth Moor, ten miles off from the humblest attempt at a town, without any money, and seeing nobody to stir one’s ambition, even a girl of seventeen may be pardoned if she can make little brightness except that of her presence in her shady place. To tell the truth, nobody made much account of Susan; she was not expected to exert much influence on the changeless atmosphere of Marchmain. No one supposed her to be the flower of that solitude: any little embellishments which she tried were put down ruthlessly; and the little girl had long ago learned, as the first duties of womankind, to do as she was bid, and hold her peace. She was seated now before the fire, making a little centre with her work upon the cold glimmer of the uncovered table. She was very fair in her complexion, with hair almost flaxen, white teeth, blue eyes, and a pretty colour. She did not look intellectual, nor interesting, nor melancholy; but sat leaning very closely over her work, because there was not much light, and Horace stood full between her and what little there was. She had a pair of scissors, a reel of cotton, and a paper of buttons on the table before her; and on the back of her chair hang a huge bag, made of printed cotton, which it was safe to believe was her work-bag. There she sat, with a little firelight playing vainly upon her dark woollen dress – a domestic creature, not very happy, but very contented, dully occupied in the silence and the gray afternoon, living a life against which her youth protested, but somehow managing to get on with tolerable comfort, as women unawakened and undisturbed do.

Of a different character altogether was the other inmate of this room. On the end of the table nearest the light lay a confusion of open books and an old-fashioned inkstand, which two instruments of learning had, it seemed, gone towards the composition of a German exercise, which appeared, half finished, and with a big blot on the last word, between them. Twenty times over, while that blurred page was being compounded, the young student had flown at the fire in silent irritability, and poked it half out; and he now stood in the recess of the window, between the red curtains, blocking up the light, and looking out with angry eyes upon the dim black blast of February rain which came with the darkness from the hills. It was certainly a dismal prospect. The very shower was not the hearty, violent shower which sweeps white over a landscape in vehement sheets of water; it had not a characteristic of storm or vitality about it; but, saturating, penetrating, invisible, went chill to the heart of the sodden land, if heart was in that wild, low stretch of blackened moss and heather, where nothing living moved. The young man stood in the window, looking out with a vexation and dull rage indescribable upon the falling night. He had this only in common with Susan, that his features were cast in an unheroic type, and could only have been handsome under the influence of good humour and good spirits, two beneficent fairies unknown to that lowering face. Good health and much exercise kept the colour on his cheeks and the light in his eye – against his will, one was tempted to suppose. He was short-sighted, and contracted his eyes in his gaze out, till the eyelids hung in heavy folds over the stormy stare which he sent across the moor – and querulous lines of discontent puckered the full youthful lips, which were made for a sweeter expression. Weariness, disgust, the smouldering rage of one oppressed, was in his face. He was not only in unnatural circumstances, but somebody had injured him: he carried his head with all the loftiness and superiority of a conscious victim; but it was evident that the sentiment of wrong – just or unjust – poisoned and embittered all his life.

“Rain!” he exclaimed, jerking the word out as if he threw something at fate. “My luck! – not so much as the chance of a run on the moor!”

“Are you tired of your German already, Horace?” asked Susan, as he came to the fire to make a last attempt upon its life – lifting up her contented woman’s face, not without the shadow of a smile upon it, to her restless brother.

“Tired? D’ye think I’m a child or a girl like you? Do you think I can spend my days over German exercises? What’s the good of it? Have I a chance of ever using that or any other language, unless, perhaps, as a beggar? Pshaw! – look after your work, and don’t aggravate me.”

“But it would please papa,” said Susan, with some timidity, as if this was rather a doubtful argument; “and then, perhaps he might be persuaded to do what you wish, Horace, if you tried to please him.”

“To please papa,” said her brother, imitating her words with contemptuous mockery, “is an inducement indeed. To please him! Why should I please him, I should like to know? What has he ever done for me? At least, I shan’t cheat him with a false submission. I’d rather chuck the lot of them into the fire, than have him suppose that I read German, or anything else, for his sake!”

“But oh, Horace, you would make me so unhappy!” said Susan, with a little unconscious gesture of entreaty, letting her work fall, and clasping her hands as she looked up in his face.

“I suppose so,” said the young man, with perfect indifference.

“And you don’t care?” cried his sister, moved to a momentary overflow of those sudden tears of mortification and injured affection which women weep over such cool, conscious, voluntary disregard. “I would do anything in the world for you, but you don’t mind how I feel; and yet there are only two of us in the world.”

“So much the better,” said Horace, throwing himself down in a chair before the fire; “and as for those vain professions, what is the use of them, I should like to know? What could you do for me, if you were ever so anxious? Anything in the world, in our circumstances, means simply nothing, Susan. Oh! for heaven’s sake, don’t cry! – you’re a good girl, and sew on my buttons – but what, in the name of fortune, could you do? You know as well as I that it is only a fashion of words – ”

“I did not mean it so,” cried Susan, quickly – but stopping as suddenly, cast a hurried, painful look at him, and dried her tears with a hasty hand – the look which natural Truth casts upon that cruel, reasonable fool, Wisdom, whom she cannot contest, yet knows in the wrong. A little indignation burning up upon her ingenuous cheek helped the hurried hand to dry the tears, and she returned to her work with a little tremble of haste, such as a discussion with her brother very frequently threw Susan into. She did not pretend to argue with him: she was not clever, but his philosophy filled her with impatience. She “could not bear it.” She felt inclined to get up and seize hold of him, and try physical measures to shake this arrogant pretence of truth out of him; for Susan, though she could not argue, was not without a temper and opinion of her own.

Silence ensued. Susan made nervous haste with her needlework, and stumbled over it in her little flutter of vexation; but Horace was too much absorbed to notice this girlish show of feeling. When he had rocked in his chair a little, placing one foot on the side of the old-fashioned grate, he suddenly sprang up and thrust away his seat. “By George!” cried Horace – but not as that exclamation is usually uttered, “I’ve not got a friend in the world! – there isn’t a man in existence, so far as I know, that will do anything for me!”

“Oh, Horace!” said Susan, “think how much better off you are than some people. Don’t always make the worst of everything! Think of poor Roger Musgrave at Tillington, who has neither father nor home – his godfather dead without making any provision for him, and nothing to do and nobody to look to, poor fellow – and breaking his heart for grief besides, and Peggy says will either ’list or die!”

“And a very good alternative too,” said Horace; “he’s very well off for a poor milk-and-water nobody – free! and able to ’list if he likes, or die if he likes, without any one troubling their head about the matter. As to home and father, I heartily wish he had my share of these precious commodities. Do you think anywhere else a man like me would sell his soul for a bed and a dinner? There! there! hold your tongue, or talk of what you understand.”

“What do I understand, I wonder,” cried Susan, “sewing on your worship’s buttons? A man like you! – you are only nineteen after all, when the truth is told.”

“I am man enough to make my own way,” said the youth, angrily; “it is not a question of years or days, if indeed you were able to judge of it at all, which you are not.”

“If I were so very certain of my own strength,” cried Susan, following up her advantage, “I’d run away, if I did not care for home, or father, or – or anybody. If I did not mind about duty or affection, or such trifles, I’d go and make my own way, and not talk of it – I would! I know something, though I’m not so wise as you. I think it’s shocking to talk discontent for ever, and gloom at everything. Why don’t you go away? Think of the great people in books, that go to London with sixpence in their pockets, and turn out great merchants – or with a tragedy, and turn out Dr. Johnson. Think of Chatterton, whom you were reading of. You are better off a great deal than he!”

“Chatterton was a fool,” said Horace. “I promise you I’ll wait for the tide, and not shoot myself when it’s in the flow. I am much obliged for your advice. I’ve neither a tragedy nor a sixpence that I can call my own – but some of these days I’ll go.”

Pronouncing these words with slow and formal emphasis, as if he meant something dreadful, Horace marched solemnly to his German exercise, and sat down to it once more. The evening grew darker round the two; by degrees Susan’s head drooped down on her needlework, till you could see that she had been seized by a womanish panic, and was secretly putting up the linen on her knee to wipe her wet eyes. This terror and compunction worked its way silently as the early wintry night came on. By-and-by, through the quietness, which was broken only by Horace’s pen, the ashes from the grate, and a slow patter outside of the wet which dropped from the eaves, there broke a little hurried, suppressed sob. Then Susan’s white work, more distinct than herself in the twilight, went down suddenly upon the floor, and a darkling figure glided round to Horace’s side. “Oh, don’t think of it any more!” cried Susan; “it was only my ill-temper. Oh, Horace, never mind me! – don’t think of it again.”

“Think of what?” said Horace, peevishly; “what on earth do you mean, thrusting your arms about me? I did not ask to be petted, did I? – what do you mean?”

“Oh, Horace – what we were saying,” said his sister, with humility.

“What were we saying? Can I remember all the nonsense you talk?” cried the young man, shaking off her arms with impatience – “can’t you keep to your own business, and let me alone? Oh, you wanted me to be Whittington and the cat, didn’t you? – thank you, that’s not my vocation. Isn’t it bad enough I must stand your sauciness, without standing your repentance – oh, for mercy’s sake, go away!”

Susan went away without another word, gathered her work into her big work-bag, and went out of the room, not without making it sufficiently audible that she had closed the door.

“He’s a coward! he does nothing but talk!” she said between her teeth, as she went up the dark stairs; but nobody save herself knew that her momentary passion had brought these words to Susan’s lips, and ten minutes after she would not have believed she had said them – nevertheless, sometimes passion, unawares, says the truth.

CHAPTER II

THE household of Marchmain consisted of four persons. The brother and sister we have already seen, their father, and one female servant. In this little interval of twilight, while Susan puts on her clean collar for dinner, and which Horace, who would rather disarrange than improve his dress, out of pure ill-humour and disrespect, spends in the dark, staring into the fire with his head between his hands, we will explain to our readers the economy of this singular household. At this hour all is dark in the solitary house. Without, the chill invisible rain, the great unbroken blackness of the moor and the night – within, an unlighted hall and staircase, with a red glow of firelight at the end of a long passage, betraying the kitchen, and a faint thread of light coming out beneath a door opposite the dining-room. Thrift, severe and rigid, reigns in this dwelling. In Mr. Scarsdale’s own room a single candle burns, when it is no longer possible to read without one; but there are no lights in the family sitting-room till the dinner is placed on the table, and Peggy has nothing but firelight in the kitchen, and Susan puts on her collar by intuition upstairs. Everything is under inexorable rule and law. The family have breakfast between nine and ten, sometimes even later; for Mr. Scarsdale is not a man to modify his own habits for any consideration of suitability. From that time till six o’clock, when there is dinner, the young people see nothing of their father. He sits with them in the evening, imposing silence by his presence; and that, so far as family intercourse goes, is the chronicle of their life.

Let us enter at this door, which marks itself off from the floor of the hall by that slender line of light. It has the same prospect as the dining-room, when there is any daylight to see it; but it is smaller than that gloomy apartment; two large bookcases, shut in by a brass network, stand out with sharp and angular corners from the walls, no attempt having been made to fill up the vacant space at either side of them, or to harmonize these gaunt pieces of furniture with anything else in the room. There are two or three chairs, which stand fixed and immovable in corners, plainly testifying that nobody ever sits there; and before the fire a library table, and in a round-backed elbow-chair the father of the house. He sits there reading with a forlorn persistence wonderful to see – reading for no purpose, reading with little interest, yet turning page after page with methodical regularity, and bending his lowering forehead on the book as if it were the business of his life. He is dark, not so much in complexion as in sentiment – a close, self-absorbed, impenetrable man. It is not difficult to perceive that he is neither a student by ardent inclination, nor by profession a searcher into books; but what is the secret of these solitary studies is hard to discover. He sits with his head leaning upon one hand, and the other turning the pages – sits often for hours in that one position. He is scarcely ever stimulated into interest, and never owns the enlivening touch of that zeal and curiosity which hunts for proofs or illustrations of a favourite theory through a dozen volumes. There is no heap of books by his side, but only one orderly volume, which is not of the class of those fantastic delightful reverie books in which studious men delight. The blank, straightforward manner in which he reads on comes to be impressive in its singularity after a time. He seems to pursue this occupation as a clerk keeps books, and counts his progress, you could imagine, by the number of the pages he has read, and by no less tangible criterion; and nothing moves the settled darkness of his uncommunicative face.

Behind him, hung by the side of the window, in the worst light of the room, is a portrait, a very common work, done by a mediocre painter, but in all probability very like its original, for the face looks down through the gloom with a real smile, which paint cannot give – a sweet, home-like, domestic woman, such another as Susan will be when the years and the hours have carried her into her own life. There can be no doubt it is Susan’s mother and this man’s wife. There is no other picture in the house, and he cares so little for anyone seeing this, that he has hung it in the shadows of the red moreen curtains, where nobody can distinguish the features. Most likely he knows the features well enough to penetrate that darkness; for though he sits with his back to it most usually, it is for his pleasure it is here.

Nobody knows anything about this man; he has not any family connection whatever with the house or locality. Nobody can understand why of all places in the world he should come here to the tumble-down old house on the edge of the moor, which nobody else would live in. When he came, ten years ago, the country people paid him visits – half in curiosity, half in kindness – which were never returned, till at last society dropped off entirely, even from the attempt to break upon his seclusion. To account for his ungraciousness, rumours of great crimes and great misfortunes were whispered about him; but as the novelty failed, these sunk into abeyance; and it was tacitly understood or believed now that the loss of a great lawsuit, which materially lessened his means, was the cause of his withdrawal from the world. He was then but a young man, scarcely forty; and if neither sport nor society had attractions for him then, it was not to be supposed that his heart had expanded now. He lived in a severe, rectangular, mathematical poverty, which calculated every item, and left room for no irregularity. He kept his children rigidly within the same bounds which confined himself. If they formed acquaintances, it must needs have been at “kirk or market,” in the roads or the fields, for he strictly forbade them from either receiving or accepting invitations; while for his own part he gave a certain cold attention to their education as a duty, but spent as little time as possible in their society. It is not surprising, under these circumstances, that this gloomy and brooding man should have roused the kindred temper of his son to a slight degree of desperation, or succeeded in making the thraldom of his life very irksome to a youth who was neither amiable nor submissive, to begin with. Mr. Scarsdale did not even pretend a fatherly regard for Horace; all his life he had treated the lad with a cutting and desperate civility, which would have pierced a more sensitive child to the heart; and from his boyhood had given him a certain position of equality and rivalship, totally contrary to the relationship they really held, and which at once stimulated the pride and raised the passions of the solitary youth. This unhappy state of things had never come to a climax by any outburst of passion. Horace might be as disrespectful, as sullen, as defiant as he pleased. His father extorted a certain hard lineal obedience, but neither expected nor seemed to wish for, reverence, love, or any filial sentiment; and this aspect of affairs had become so habitual, that even Susan did not observe it. Most likely she thought all fathers were more or less the same; her whole heart of tenderness went back to her little recollection of her mother – and Mr. Scarsdale was still human so far as Susan was concerned. He was not kind certainly, but at least he seemed conscious that he was her father and she his child.

Notwithstanding his seclusion, his limited means, and morose habits, he still bore the appearance, and something of the manners, of a gentleman – something which even those neighbours whose kindnesses he had repulsed acknowledged by an involuntary respect. When the half-hour chimed from his clock on the mantel-piece – almost the only article of luxury visible in the house – he closed his book as a labourer gives up his work, pausing only to place a mark in the page, and, taking up his candle, went solemnly upstairs. He was scarcely of middle size, but so spare and erect that he seemed tall; thin almost to the point of emaciation, with marked and prominent features, unlike either of his children. Yet, strangely enough, though Horace’s face resembled that of his mother, the expression – the spiritual resemblance – was like this dark and brooding face: possibly, the very pang and keenness of opposition between the father and the son lay in their likeness. Mr. Scarsdale carried his candle up the gloomy staircase, leaving his study in darkness, to exchange his easy dressing-gown for a coat, and prepare himself for dinner. Dinner for ten years, at least, had been to him a solitary meal: during all that time his doors had never opened to admit a stranger; but he never once failed in the customary punctilio, or neglected to close his book when the timepiece chimed the half-hour.

Meanwhile, the preparations of the kitchen were coming to a climax. This was the only cheerful place in the house. It had a large old-fashioned chimney, with a settle in its warm corner, and the warmth centered in that recess as in a chamber of light. Bundles of herbs were hung up to dry over the mantel-shelf, where was a little oil-lamp attached to the wall, but rarely lighted – so that the apartment itself, with its broad but high window, its great wooden presses and tables, was but half seen in the wavering light. There stood Peggy, putting on her “dinner cap.” Peggy was, at least, as tall as her master, and very little younger. She was his foster-sister, attached all her life to his family, and knew the secret of his retirement, if anybody did; but Peggy was of the faithful type of ancient servants, and gave no sign. She had been comely in her youth, and was still fresh-coloured and neat when she pleased – and she did please at dinner-time. She had on a dark stuff gown, with a white soft muslin handkerchief covering her neck under it, as is the fashion with elderly women in the north country; a great white apron, and the before-mentioned cap, which had pink ribbons in it. Peggy had rather a large face, and features big and strong. Had she been born a lady, with nothing to do, she would have been a strong-minded woman; but Providence had been kinder to Peggy. As it was, she had her own opinions about most things, and hesitated not at all to express her approbation and disapprobation. She was, in short, very much what old servants were, as we have said, a generation or two ago. But one thing was the pride of Peggy’s life: to have everything in perfect order for her master’s dinner, which was the event of the day to her; to feel convinced that her cookery was as careful and delicate as if she had been attended by a score of scullions; to do everything indeed, as far as it lay in one pair of active hands and one vigorous brain to do, as perfectly as if a whole establishment of servants waited on the comforts of “the family” – was the ambition of Mr. Scarsdale’s solitary waiting-woman. If no one else felt the compliment, Peggy was continually flattered and inspirited by her master’s evening-coat.

And it was she, though nearly fifty, who did everything in the house, it was she alone who knew the former history of “the family” which she tended so carefully. If ever Mr. Scarsdale unbended his reserved soul for a moment, it was Peggy who received the rare confidence. It was she who had helped the inherent woman to come to feminine life in poor little Susan’s neglected education; and it was she, the only busy, cheerful living inhabitant of the house, who now carried those slender silver candlesticks into the dark dining-room, and disturbed Master Horace in his reverie with the gleam of the unexpected light.

CHAPTER III

THERE were strange elements of incongruity in the scene presented by that dinner-table. Mr. Scarsdale sat at the head of the table, with his son and daughter at the sides, and Peggy behind his chair, erect and stately in his evening dress. All the furniture of the table, the linen, the silver, the china, were of the finest description, and in beautiful order; and strangely around this little centre of light gloomed the meagre unadorned walls, the homely furniture, the heavy hangings of the cheerless apartment, which, however, scarcely formed a greater contrast to the dainty arrangements of the table than Horace Scarsdale’s gray morning jacket, and disordered hair, did to the formal toilette of his father. Susan sat at Mr. Scarsdale’s right hand, in her clean collar. Her dress was very homely; but Susan, at seventeen, was one of those women who have a natural fitness for their place everywhere, and never fall out of harmony. Perhaps she was not over-sensitive by nature; at all events, she was not distressed by the silence of this meal, at which there was no conversation. It was their invariable custom, and Susan had seen no other family-table to make her aware of the misery of this. Horace was of another temper: everything was an offence to the unhappy lad; the silence galled almost beyond endurance; and when his father addressed him as he did always, with formal politeness, upon helping him to anything, the blood rushed to the young man’s cheeks with such sudden violence and force, that no one, who watched his countenance, could have been surprised to see him answer with some demonstration of passion. But he never did; he replied, in the stifled voice of rage, with thanks and formal courtesy. Thus they sat like two enemies, forced to civility by the circumstances of sitting at the same table, and together ate, as if it choked them, their unblessed bread. “Shall I help you to some soup?” asked Mr. Scarsdale, and Horace made a stubborn bow and said, “Thank you.” Neither spoke the other’s name, neither even looked in the other’s face – yet, by that strange magic of antagonism, which is as strong as love, were aware, instinctively, of every movement, almost of every sentiment, which influenced each other’s conduct for the moment. But they had this little duel all to themselves – Susan, dulled by habit, and knowing that it had always been so, observed it not – Peggy, behind her master’s chair, saw everything, and said nothing. Sometimes, indeed, an acute observer might have noticed that the faithful servant set down something on the table with an unnecessary emphasis, which answered, instead of words, to give her impatience vent, and which her master never failed to notice. Peggy, too, did not hesitate to interfere in the business of the table – to remark that Mr. Horace did not eat, and to recommend a particular dish to Miss Susan. Peggy’s dialect was rather a remarkable one, and difficult to identify. She was a North-countrywoman by birth, but had lived in many districts of England, and had taken up, with great impartiality and candour of mind, their different manners of speech. But Mr. Scarsdale, who had killed all natural utterance in his children, had no power over Peggy; he never even tried to restrain her. Her discourse ran on a cheerful chorus during the whole solemn period of dinner; and this it was, more perhaps than anything else, which prevented a positive outbreak between the father and the son.

“Young Master Roger, Miss Susan, dear, he’s agoin’ hoam,” said Peggy; “he’s got father and mother livin’ after all, as I hear say, and none so poorly off neither, for all his goin’ off in a despair wi’ talk o’ ’listin’. Natur’s a mystery, that’s for certain – to turn off a manchild upon a godfayther, and rather to ’list nor to go hoam! I dunno know which is worst if ye ask me. Stewed chicken, master, and done perfect, though I say it as should not; but I’m none so pleased with the peatoes. I’ll not have no more from the mill – they’re agoin’ in the disease. Wine? – this very minute, if I had the keys.”

Mr. Scarsdale brought forth the keys from his pocket; and, totally regardless of Peggy’s monologue, which ran on in further gossip, broke the silence of the table in his own person – a most portentous and unusual incident. He spoke without either addressing or looking at anyone, though it was, in fact, a question which he asked.

“There is, I believe,” observed Mr. Scarsdale, “a spare bedroom in the house?”

Peggy did not hear for the first moment, being taken aback by the unusual event; and Susan said, timidly, “Yes, papa,” taking the remark to herself.

“The door was open this very day, master,” said Peggy, when she recovered her surprise; “I judge you wur lookin’ with your own eyes what like it was; but the good of a spare bedroom in this house I would wish a wise woman to tell to me.”

Mr. Scarsdale made no response, but delivered himself of his further intelligence as though he heard her not. “I wish it to be put in order,” he said, briefly; “Colonel Sutherland arrives here on a visit, to-morrow.”

Even Horace was moved to a momentary start and look of surprise at his father’s immovable countenance, while Susan clasped her hands in spite of herself, and cried – “Oh! papa, is it my uncle?” with the most eager and joyful anxiety suddenly suffusing her face.

But Susan’s voice was drowned in Peggy’s more decided accents. “Master Edward!” cried Peggy, with a restrained shout of triumph – “blessings on his honest face! he never crossed a door but he brought comfort – and as handsome a man as eye could see, and the pleasantest gentleman to speak to that ever said good-morrow. So he’s Cornel now! – and well deserves it, I’ll be bold to say. Custard, master? – as light as a May breeze – and the very tarts you had in holiday times, when you were a boy. I had a thought of old times, and knew no reason – to be sure, it was for a forewarning of the news!”

Mr. Scarsdale thrust the china dish containing the tarts out of his way with an unusual expression of impatience. Then, recollecting himself, took it up and turned to Horace – that is to say, turned his head to him, without turning his eyes, as was his custom. “May I have the pleasure of helping you?” said the father, with a tone of suppressed bitterness. Horace put forth his plate immediately; Peggy’s harmless confectionery was evidently vexatious and annoying to Mr. Scarsdale, and his son took pains to express his enjoyment of it, and compliment Peggy on her handiwork. It was as rare an event to hear Horace’s voice at dinner as his father’s. The approaching event seemed to have loosed the tongues of both.

This little incident put an end to Peggy’s gossip; she removed the remainder of her tarts with a visible flutter of offence, and set down the wine on the table with double emphasis. When Peggy withdrew, Mr. Scarsdale took a book from his pocket, and set up a small folding reading-desk, which had been placed by his hand when the cloth was withdrawn. There he sat, with his glass of purple claret reflected in the shining mahogany, and the two tall, slender candles illuminating a little circle round him, and his head relieved against the dark curtains, which looked almost black in the feeble light. A line of magic drawn round him could not have screened him more completely from the other inmates of the room. Horace thrust his chair away rudely, and leaving it thus at a little distance from the table, went to the window and disappeared behind the curtains to look out on the night. Susan stole quietly round to the side of the table, and produced out of her big bag her evening work – an occupation dear to her heart, though it was only a patchwork quilt, the only fancy work that Susan knew; but before she sat down, withdrew her brother’s chair noiselessly to the side of the fire, where it looked human and companionable. Then silence, entire as if these three human creatures were statues, fell upon the room, where still Mr. Scarsdale sat at the shining table with its two lines of reflection, with the claret jug at his elbow, and his book supported on the reading-desk, and the glass before him half-full of purple wine. He turned the leaves at regular intervals, and went through them with mechanical gravity; but his ears were keen to every rustle of the curtain, and with all the virulence of domestic strife the mind of this singular father watched his son.

As for Susan, her whole mind, as she worked in silence, was full of the wonderful intimation she had just heard. Perhaps by this time you are disposed to think that Susan was very insensible and dull in her feelings not to be miserable about the enmity which existed between her father and brother; but Susan was accustomed to it, and had never seen other fathers and sons, and had seen this go on in the same way so long, that, though she felt it uncomfortable, she entertained no apprehensions about it. As for Horace, if he would remain by himself in the window, looking out upon the black night, Susan could not help it. He was not more miserable there than he would be at the table with his father’s austere shadow upon him; and conversation was tacitly prohibited in those dismal evenings. Susan’s was still an unawakened mind; her brother did not encourage her to think her own influence over him of any importance, nor permitted her to suppose that she had any power to soothe him; and the trembling, timid, mediatory love, which holds a fearful balance in many a divided household, needs love and softness of some kind, on one side or the other, to keep it alive. Love Susan found none in either of her two nearest relatives. She loved them by nature and custom; sometimes a terrible impatience of their discord seized her, and a momentary impulse of passion, to do something or say something which should stir this stagnant, stormy calm, or perhaps change the manner of their existence, had possessed her once or twice in her life; but the tender, anxious, intense love which cruelty cannot kill when it has once developed itself, never can develop itself without the stimulus and creating power of dear love from some one to begin with. Thus it was that Susan beheld with vexation and distress sometimes, but without agony, the unnatural feud beside her, that she took neither side, because either side was equally cold, repulsive, and unaffectionate. She did not know life; she knew not even the fictitious life of books. She did not fear when her brother rushed out into the night, as he did often, that Horace would fall into the rude snares of village dissipation, or run in the way of vulgar crime. She was not alarmed for a possible outbreak of violence between the father and son; such things had never been suggested to her inexperienced mind.

So she sat in the silence, not resenting it for her own part, content in herself, and making out of that dismal quiet a little circle of domestic tranquillity when she arranged her patches and contrasted her colours, and secretly entertained vague anticipations of unknown pleasure, and a warmth of inextinguishable personal happiness, in the very heart of the misery through which her life had grown.

At eight o’clock to a minute Peggy brought in the tea-tray, and removed the claret-jug, which, though he had only once filled his glass, stood all that time by Mr. Scarsdale’s side. Then he took his cup of tea from his daughter’s hand without even looking at her, and went on with his reading. Comfort was not to be got out of anything in this house. Horace drank his standing – told his sister it did not rain now, and went off out of the room like a wind. And when Susan looked over her tea-tray to see her father’s eyes fixed upon his book, and the door closed upon her brother, and herself compelled to sit formally there till Mr. Scarsdale, sipping it slowly and by intervals, had finished his second cup of tea – a certain forlorn sensation of solitude and discomfort moistened Susan’s eyes, and brought an ache to her heart. Then her thoughts went back with a joyful rebound to the promised visitor of to-morrow – her mother’s brother, an actual relation, whose love and kindness she had a claim on. She lost herself in wonder what like he would be, and how he would treat his sister’s children. To-morrow would solve Susan’s long and troubled problem – whether all men were like papa: to-morrow would give her a glimpse into that world of which she knew nothing. Nature was sceptical in Susan’s heart: she could not believe that papa was the type and impersonation of man. Kindness, unknown and longed for, seemed coming to her in the person of that uncle. She returned to her patches, longing to run into the cheerful kitchen to Peggy, to ask all about the new-comer; but bound by the customary punctilio of the house to sit there silent and occupied opposite the reading-desk – a bondage which Susan had never felt more oppressive than on this particular night – while Mr. Scarsdale still turned the mechanical pages, and Horace roamed through the black moor and the falling rain, cursing his fate.

CHAPTER IV

THIS same evening, while Susan sat at her patchwork, comforting herself with fancies concerning the unknown uncle who was to make so strange and unexpected a break upon their solitude, an old gentleman, carrying his own carpet-bag, went into one of the carriages of the night-trains about to start from Edinburgh for the south. He was not a first-class passenger, but the railway people put up instinctive fingers to their caps as he addressed them. He was tall, thin, erect – of a soldierly bearing, with a grey moustache and gray hair, wearing thin upon the crown. That he was a little deaf it was easy to perceive, from the sudden stoop he made when the person sitting next him in the carriage put a question to him unexpectedly; and that his eyes were touched by years and usage was equally apparent when, unable to find his spectacles, he held his time-bill at arm’s length to read it the better. But there was something ingratiating and prepossessing even in the bend which brought his ear to the level of the voice which addressed him, with that instinctive and delicate courtesy which will not treat the most trivial application with carelessness. The good woman who spoke felt flattered – she could not tell how; it was only to ask when the train would start – a thing which her next neighbour knew no better than she did – but the ready attention, and sincere endeavour which the old soldier instantly made to satisfy her, gave the questioner all the feeling of a personal compliment. When the long line of carriages got under weigh, our friend wrapped himself up in his warm cloak, and leaned back in his unluxurious corner. It was a gloomy, rainy, miserable night; the little lamp jolting in the roof, and throwing a feeble illumination over four benches full of drowsing night-travellers, was the only light visible in earth and heaven, save when the nocturnal express plunged with ostentatious speed through some little oasis of a station, with faint lamps gleaming through the universal gloom. The old soldier, however, was not easily disturbed by the discomforts of his journey; if there were any special meditations in his mind, he showed no sign of them; but, with his face half buried in his cloak, kept motionless in his corner – where, in the very midst of the black night, or, to speak more properly, about three o’clock in the winter morning, the guard awaked him. He had reached the end of his journey. The rest of the night he passed in the Railway Inn of a country town, from which he set out next morning in a gig, to face the raw February blast for a drive of fourteen miles over an exposed country. Colonel Edward Sutherland, though he had been twenty years in India, had come home still a poor man; and habits of economy were strong upon the old officer, accustomed all his life, even in the luxurious eastern climate, to spare and restrain unnecessary expenses. He was a solitary man, but he was not a free old bachelor, at liberty to expend his own means on his own pleasure; wife and many children had been left behind in Indian graves, but he had a boy at Addiscombe, and one at St. Andrew’s, and consequently not a shilling of his income to spare; so he placed his carpet bag carefully below the seat out of the reach of rain, and tied a travelling-cap over his ears, and muffled his cloak half over his face, and so turned his face to the wind for his chilly journey to Lanwoth Moor.

“Ay, sure the wind’s in the east – it’s ever in the east on this road,” said the man who drove him. “When it’s could as could all the country over, it’s double could Lanwoth way. Beg your pardon, Cornel,” said the man, touching his cap, “but it’s strange for a gen’l’man to goo this gate in ought but a shay.”

“That is my business, my man,” said the traveller, quietly; “is it a good road?”

“Bits,” said the postboy, shrugging his shoulders; “and bits the very dyeuce for the poor beasts; but we never goo this direction, Cornel, not twicest in a year – not all the way. There’s Tillington, five mile this side o’ Lanwoth, but the road strikes off to the reet – Lord blees you, gen’l’men know better nor to build on a moorside. The wind comes down off the fells fit to pull your skin off, Cornel; and ne’er a shelter, and ne’er a tree, but bits o’ saplings in the moss. Rain and snow and hail, they sweep a’ things before them. I’d never set a brute beast, let alone a christian, with its nose to Lanwoth Moor.”

“Yet somebody must live there,” said the traveller, shivering in spite of himself within his cloak.

“Not a soul, Cornel, but the one house,” said the driver, eagerly; “not a thatch roof or a clay wall – nought but Marchmain. They say it was built at the riding of the Marches, that’s once in the hunderd year, and a’ foor strife, foor to part the lands of the twae Allonbys, brothers and foes as should never be seen in God’s world. But sure there it stands, black as hate, and – “ – the man made a sudden pause, and looked suddenly up in the old officer’s face – “Cornel, you’re gooing there?”

“Do you know me, driver?” said Colonel Sutherland, with a little curiosity.

The man held down his head with a sly, half-abashed smile, not quite sure whether to pretend knowledge or to confess that he acquired his information from the card on the carpet bag. The result of his deliberations was an equivocal reply. “I know an army gen’l’man when I see him, sir,” he said, raising his slouching rustic shoulders, and quickening his speech out of its Cumbrian drawl. “My father was an ould 53d, and Cornel Toppe Sawyer’s own man; and, begging your pardon, Cornel, a blind man could see you had borne command.”

Colonel Sutherland was human; he was not only human, but a little amiable vanity was one of his foibles. He inclined his ear blandly to this clever compliment, and perhaps thought his driver rather a sensible fellow; but at that moment the blast came wild in their faces – wet, dismal, cold – a wind that cut to the bone, and the chattering teeth and shivering frame which owned its influence was not lively enough for conversation. The horse winced, and turned his unfortunate head aside, making a momentary pause. The hills – low, gray, and piebald, with their yellow circles of lichen, and brown turrets of rock – were blurred into the dull horizon, which expressed nothing but that dismal, penetrating moisture and murderous cold; and when, by a sudden turn of the road, the hapless traveller found himself suddenly under the shelter of high banks and hedges which intercepted the blast, the sudden contrast was so grateful that Colonel Sutherland withdrew his cloak from his blue face, and looked about him with a sigh of relief. There was nothing very particular to see: a common country road descending a slope – for which some necessity of the soil had made a deep cutting expedient – with a village within sight, and a soft, broad valley; green fields, dotted with farm-houses and haystacks, and leafless trees. The houses were all of the silvery-grey limestone of the district, and walls of the same stone, more frequent than hedge-rows, divided the fields. The old Colonel, drawing breath under the shadow of the bank, thought to himself that under sunshine the prospect would be very pleasant, and was scarcely pleased to find that this, the only comfortable bit of the road, was the one on which their progress was most rapid – and to hear that they were still ten long dreary miles from Marchmain.

“There was talk enow in the country, Cornel,” said the driver, resuming his discourse, “when a strange gen’l’man coom’d to take that ’ouse. Ne’er a sowl in twenty mile but had heard of Marchmain. I reckon you’ve never been there?”

“No,” said the traveller, briefly.

“He’s a terrible quiet gen’l’man too, as we hear say,” continued the man; “a great scholard, I do suppose – and ignorant folks have little understanding on the ways of sich. They say strange foot has never crossed the door this nine year. It’s a terrible place to bring up children, Cornel, is Lanwoth Moor, and the young gen’l’man and Miss they’re kepp as close at hoam as if they were but six-year-olds; never a gun on young master’s shoulder, and the young lady ne’er saw a dance in her born days. Them things come natural to young folks. I’m saying but what I hear: it might be a parcel o’ stories for ought I know – but Mr. Scarsdale yonder, he’s a very uncommon man.”

“Poor children!” said Colonel Sutherland half aloud, with a sigh. The open air, the rustle of the wind, and the noise of the wheels improved the Colonel’s hearing, as it so often does a gentle imperfection of the kind. He beard every word of these scattered observations, and began to feel more anxiety touching his visit to his morose brother-in-law than he would have thought possible when he started. He knew, it was true, the secret calamity which had driven his sister’s husband to the wilderness; but his own simple, pious, cheery spirit had no understanding of the unwholesome passions of a self-regarding soul. He had blamed himself for years for unconsciously feeling his relative’s withdrawal from life to be pusillanimous and unworthy of a man; but nothing had suggested to the practical and innocent-minded soldier a gloomy retreat such as that which began to be revealed to him by hints and suggestions now. He was unable to conceive how a man with children could make an utter hermit of himself, “especially children under their extraordinary circumstances,” said the Colonel anxiously, in his own heart. He grew silent, absorbed, troubled, as they proceeded on their way. When, immediately after settling himself on his return from India in a home of his own, that home often longed for, to which his sons could come in their holidays, he had volunteered a visit to his brother-in-law – it was the reciprocity of honest affection and kindred which the veteran wished to re-establish between his own family and their nearest relatives. He set out to visit the Scarsdales in the full idea that they too would visit him, and that the father of that household lived like himself in the tenderest friendship with those inheritors of his blood in whom he renewed his own youth; and with an old man’s sentiment of tender gallantry, this old soldier thought of Susan, the only surviving woman of his race, his sister’s daughter and representative, his baby-favourite long ago. Perhaps a floating idea of appropriating this only woman of the house had dawned upon his fatherly mind with other matters – for the Addiscombe cadet was a year older than Susan, and boys are so likely to marry when they go to India. At all events, it was a sunny, simple picture of family kindness and comfort which had presented itself to the honest eyes of the old soldier when he set out upon his journey. This prospect began to cloud over sadly now; he could not understand nor explain these singular circumstances, which must be facts, and visible to the common eye. A lonely house which no one else would live in, a seclusion which no stranger ever broke, young people shut out from the society of their fellows, and gloom and mystery upon the whole house! The Colonel wrapt his face once more in his cloak and subsided into deafness and silence, pondering painfully in his own mind what might be required of himself under such unexpected circumstances, and what he could do for the relief of Horace and Susan, whom in his kind heart he fondly called “the children.” These deliberations had come to no satisfactory result, when, rounding a corner of the road, the bare extent of Lanwoth Moor became suddenly visible, stretching to the fells, and the sky to the horizon, blurred with rain, where it was scarcely possible to tell which was hill and which was cloud.

They drove along in silence, a long half mile, seeing nothing but that same blank expanse traversed by the long, deep cuttings of an attempted drainage, until at last the driver silently, with a certain sympathy for the silence of his companion, pointed out the solitary walls rising on the edge of the moor. The house was a square, common-place erection of two stories, with no remarkable feature, but that one side was raised a story higher than the other, and stood up square and gray, like the little distinguishing tower of an Italian house. Like – yet how unlike! – the rough, gray limestone, unpolished and savage, the deep walls into which those small windows sank like cavernous eyes, the cold blue slated roof, the cold door coming bare out upon the path, without a morsel of garden or any enclosure, all enclosed and backed by that monotonous mystery of moor, the distant spectral hills, the clouds that carried them out in ghostly ranges, the wind and the rain so blended together that they made but one – and they went to the heart with a chill indescribable, and not to be resisted.

Colonel Sutherland looked upon all this with a sensation of anguish. It was incomprehensible to him. That he should find his relatives here, and not in the cheerful village house he had expected, overpowered him with complete wonder. He ceased even to be indignant at the father who sacrificed wilfully the happiness of his children – he suspended his judgment till he should hear what extraordinary circumstances had fixed them thus. In his unsuspecting heart he felt certain that something which he did not know must have produced this exaggerated and unnatural retirement. The sudden impression produced upon him by the sight of this house made his cheek pale, and added a nervous trembling to the shiver of the cold; he got down, stumbling at the door, which the driver watched with undisguised curiosity, as if something unnatural and portentous was about to make its appearance – and, in his emotion, let the money fall out of the purse which he took out to pay his conductor. While he stooped to pick it up, the door opened hastily, and Peggy rushed forth and seized the carpet-bag. At sight of her the Colonel recovered a little from his confusion and tremor.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed fervently, “there is some sunshine here at last.”

The driver opened his eyes somewhat disappointed. Peggy was not known at the country town, though Mr. Scarsdale’s extraordinary life had been heard of there; and the vigorous servant-woman, who began to scold forthwith between the exclamations of her joyful recognition, reduced the mysterious house to matter-of-fact. The man drove off, not knowing what to make of it; and fearing to hear of some new misfortune, with his honest heart beating with grief, sympathy, and anxiety to mend the position of his friends, Colonel Sutherland, after twenty years’ absence, entered at his brother-in-law’s inhospitable door.

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.

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