The House on the Moor. Volume 2

“A new hand!” groaned his querulous interlocutor; “an I was as I hev been, my young spark, I’d gie you a lesson would larn you better than to speak light to an ould man. I’ve bin about the pit, dash her, since ever the first day she was begoud, and mought have broke my neck like the rest if it hadn’t a bin for good loock, and God A’mighty – eyeh, eyeh! I was about the very ground, I was, when the first word was giv there was coal there; but I’ll never believe there was ought let on o’ that to the ould Squire.”

“Eh! – the pits here are not old pits then, aren’t they?” said Horace; “who was it found the coal? I daresay the landlord made it worth his while.”

“The Lord make me quat of a parcel o’ vain lads, that ken no more nor as many coodies!” cried the old man; “haven’t I as good as told you my belief? – and will ye pretend ye ken better than me, that was born on his very land?”

“That’s a bad cough of yours,” said Horace, who had good practice in the means of extending information; “what do you say to a dram this sharp morning, to warm you before you go underground?”

“Eyeh, eyeh, lad, we’re owre near the border,” said the old pitman, shaking his head; “if ever there was a deevil incarnate on this earth it’s the whiskey, and makes nought but wickedness and misery, as I can see; but to them as knows how to guide themselves,” he added, slowly, “it’s a comfort now and again, specially of a morning, when a man has the asthmatics, and finds the cowld on his stomach. If you’re sure you’re able to afford it, sir, I’ve no objection, but I would not advise a brisk lad like you, d’ye hear, to partake yoursel’. Ye haven’t the discretion to stop at the right time at your years, nor no needcessity, as I see. Robbie, I’m a-gooin’ on a bit with the gentleman – see you play none on the road, nor put off your time, and say I’m coming. Eugh, eugh! as if it wasn’t a shame and a disgrace to them as has the blame, to see the likes of me upon the road!”

“At your time of life they ought to take better care of you,” said Horace; “see, here’s a seat for you, and you shall have your dram. Why don’t your sons look to it, eh, and keep you at home? It doesn’t take very much, I daresay, to keep the pot boiling; why don’t you tell them their duty, or speak to the parson? You are surely old enough to rest at your age!”

“Eugh, eugh! I haven’t got no sons,” said the old man, with a cough which ran into a chorus of half-sobs, half-chokes. “The last on ’em was lost i’ the pit, two year come Michaelmas, and left little to his ould father but that bit of a cripple lad, poor child, that will never make his own salt. It’s the masters, dash them! as I complain on. There they bees, making their money out on it, as grand as lords; and the like of huz as does it a’ left to break our ould bones, and waste our ould breath for a bit of bread, after serving of them for a matter of twenty year. Eyeh, eyeh, lad, it’s them, dash them! If it had been the ould Squire, or ony o’ the country gentlemen, an ould servant mought hev a chance. No that I’m saying muckle for them, more nor the rest o’ the world – awl men is for their own interest in them days; but as for mercy or bowels, ay, or justice nouther, it’s ill looking for the like of them things in a couple o’ ’torneys, that are born and bred for cheating and spoliation. I never had no houps of them mysel’ – they’ll sooner tak’ the bit o’ bread out atween an ould body’s teeth, than support the agit and the orphant – ay, though it was their own wark and profit, dash them! that took the bread from Robbie and me.”

“Ah!” said Horace, “that’s hard; so the pits here don’t belong to the Armitage property, nor any of the great landlords? But what have a couple of attorneys to do with them – they manage the property for somebody, I suppose?”

“My respects to you, sir,” said the old pitman, smacking his thin lips over the fiery spirit, which he swallowed undiluted; “and here’s wishing us awl more health and better days; but I wouldn’t advise you, a young lad, to have ony on’t. There’s guid ale here, very guid ale, far better for a young man of a morning. You may weel ask what has the like o’ them to do concerning sich things; and there’s few can tell like me, though I say it as shouldn’t. I was a likely man mysel’ in them days – a cotter on the ould Squire’s land, and serving at Tinwood Farm, and had my own kailyard, and awl things commforable. It’s like, if you knaw this country, you’ve heard speak of the ould Squire?”

“To be sure – old Musgrave, of the Grange,” cried Horace, with a certain malice and spite, of which he himself was scarcely aware; for Roger Musgrave’s honest simplicity, which he scorned, yet felt galled and disconcerted by, had often humiliated and enraged the son of the recluse, who could take no equality with the young relative of the fox-hunting Squire. He listened more eagerly as this name came in – not with a benevolent interest, certainly; but the mystery grew more and more promising as it touched upon the history of a ruined man.

“About twenty year ago, I would say, as near as moight be, there was a couple o’ young chaps comed about here, for their holiday, as I aye thought to mysel’. The wan o’ them was uncommon outspoken in his manner, wan of them lads that’s friends with every stranger at the first word, with a muckle mouth and teeth – dash em! – that would crunch a man’s bones like a cannibal. T’other he was some kind of a student, aye fiddling about the grass and the rocks, and them kind o’ nonsense pastimes. I heard the haill business with my ain ears, so it’s no mystery to me. I was ploughing i’ the lang park belonging to Tinwood then, with the two o’ them somegate about the ploughtail, having their own cracks, with now and again a word to me – when all of a suddent the student, he stops, and he says out loud, ‘There’s coal here!’ I paid little attention till I saw them baith get earnest and red in the face, and down on their knees aprying into something I had turned up with my plough; and then I might have clean forgot it – for what was I heeding, coal or no coal? – when the t’other man, the lad with the muckle mouth, he came forrard, and says he, ‘Here’s my friend and me, we’ve made a wager about this land, but we’ll ne’er be able to settle it unless awl’s quiet, and you never let on that you’ve heard what he said. He’s awl wrong, and he’ll have to give in, and I’ll be the winner, as you’ll see; but hold you your peace, neighbour, and here’s a gold guinea to you for your pains.’ Lord preserve us, I never airned a goold guinea as easy in my life! I wush there was mair on them coming a poor body’s way. I held my whisht, and the lads gaed their way; but eugh, eugh! eh, man, if I had but knawn! I would ne’er have been tramping this day o’er the very grund I ploughed, to work in that pit, dash her! and me aughty years of age and mair.”

“How, then, did it happen?” cried Horace, eagerly.

“But I’ll hev to be agooin,” said the pitman, lifting himself up with reluctance and difficulty – “the timekeeper yonder, he’s a pertickler man, and has nae consideration for an old body’s infirmities: though I’m wonderful comforted with the speerits, I’ll no deny. Eyeh! eyeh! the old Squire, he was a grand man, he was, as lang’s he had it, and threw his siller about like water, and was aye needing, aye needing, like them sort o’ men. Afore mony days, if ye’ll believe me, there was word of his own agent, that was Maister Pouncet, the ’torney in Kenlisle, buying some land of him, awl to serve the Squire, as the fowks said; but when I heard it was this land, ‘Ho, ho!’ says I to mysel’, ‘there’s more nor clear daylight in this job,’ says I. So I held my whisht, and waited to see; and sure enow, before long came down surveyors and engineers, and I know not all what, and the same lad, with the muckle mouth, that was now made partner to Mr. Pouncet; and that was the start o’ the pit, dash her! that’s cost me twenty years o’ my life and twa bonnie sons; and them’s the masters, blast them! that take their goold out o’t year after year, and wunna spare a penny-piece for the aged and frail. Eyeh, that’s them! – but it’s my belief I’ll see something happen to that lad with the muckle mouth before I die.”

“And what did your old Squire say, eh, when the land was found so rich?” said Horace; “did he try to break the bargain, and take it back again?”

“Him!” cried the decrepid old labourer, now once more halting along in the fresh sunshine, with his shadow creeping before him, and his “Davy” creaking from his bony finger – “him! a man that knawed neither care nor prudence awl his born days; and to go again his own ’torney that had done for him since ever he came to his fortin’, – not him! He said it was confoonded lucky for Pouncet, and laughed it off, as I hev heard say, and thought shame to let see how little siller he got for that land. He never had no time, nor siller nouther, to goo into lawsuits, and his own agent, as I tell you; besides that he was a simple man, was the Squire, and believed in luck more nor in cheating. Eyeh! eyeh! but I blamed aye the chield with the muckle mouth. He was the deevil that put harm into the t’other lawyer’s head; for wan man may be mair wicked nor anither, even amang ’torneys. It wasn’t lang after till he left this country. Eh, lad, yon man’s the deevil for cunning. I wouldna trust him with his own soul if he could cheat that – dash them a’! I mought have keeped on my kailyard, and seen my lads at the tail of the plough, if, instead of his pits and his vile siller, them fields had still been part o’ Tinwood Farm!”

And the poor old man relapsed out of the indignation and excitement into which the questions of Horace, his own recollections, and, above all, his “dram,” had roused him, into the same querulous discontented murmurs over his own condition which had first attracted the notice of his young companion. Horace sauntered by him with a certain scornful humour to the mouth of the pit – untouched by his misfortunes, only smiling at the miserable skeleton, with his boasted wisdom, his scrap of important unused knowledge, and his decrepid want and feebleness. He set his foot upon this new information with the confidence of a man who sees his way clear, and with a strange, half-devilish smile looked after the poor old patriarch, who had known it for twenty years and made nothing of it. The idea amused him, and the contrast: for pity was not in Horace Scarsdale’s heart.

CHAPTER XIX

AS he started on his rapid walk back to Kenlisle at a very brisk pace, for the distance was between four and five miles, and business hours were approaching, Horace put together rapidly the information he had obtained. Perhaps a mind of different calibre might have rejected the pitman’s inference, and benevolently trusted, with the defrauded Squire, that Pouncet and his partner were only “confoonded looky” in their land speculation – such things have happened ere now honestly enough. Horace, however, was not the man to have any doubt on such a subject. His mind glanced, with a realization of the truth, quick and certain as the insight of genius, along the whole course of the affair, which appeared to him so clear and evident. How cautious, slow Mr. Pouncet, in most matters a man of the usual integrity, had been pounced upon by the sudden demon which appeared by his side in the shape of his clever clerk: how his mind had been dazzled by all the sophisms that naturally suggested themselves on this subject: how he had been persuaded that it was a perfectly legitimate proceeding to buy from the needy Squire these lands which at present to all the rest of the world were only worth so little, and which concealed, with all the cunning of nature, the secret of their own wealth. The Squire wanted the money, and was disposed to sell this portion of his estate to any bidder; and even if he were aware of the new discovery, had he either money or energy to avail himself of it? Horace knew, as if by intuition, all the arguments that must have been used, and could almost fancy he saw the triumphant tempter reaping the early harvest of his knavery, and stepping into a share of his victim’s business, and of the new purchase which was made in their joint names. These coal-pits were now a richer and more profitable property than the whole of Mr. Pouncet’s business, satisfactory as his “connection” was; but Horace was very well able to explain to himself how it was that the career of Mr. Stenhouse at Kenlisle had been very brief, how all Mr. Pouncet’s influence had been exerted to further the views of his partner elsewhere, and how it happened that the stranger’s reception showed so much ceremonious regard and so little cordiality. With a certain sense of envy and emulation, the young man regarded this new comer, who held another man, repugnant and unwilling, fast in his gripe, and had him in his power. It is chacun a son gout in matters of ambition as well as in other matters. There was something intoxicating to the mind of Horace in this species of superiority. To have command secretly, by some undisclosable means, of another individual’s will and actions: to domineer secretly over his victim by a spell which he dared neither resist nor acknowledge; this was something more than a mere means of advancement; independent of all results, there was a fascination indescribable in the very sensation of this power.

And it was this power which he himself had acquired over these two men, so totally unlike each other, who would see him to-day, unsuspicious of his enlightenment, and this evening meet him at the social table, which already won such influence, put under a painful constraint. Horace exulted as he thought of it, and brushed past the early Kenlisle wayfarers with such a colour on his cheek, and a step so brisk and energetic, that not one of them believed the tales to his disadvantage, and furtive hints of having been seen in unnameable places, which began to be dropped about the little gossiping town. He had only time to make a hurried toilette, deferring to that more important necessity, the breakfast, which he had no leisure to take, and to hasten to “the office,” where he sat punctual and composed at his desk, for full two hours before his companion of the previous night appeared, nervous and miserable, at his post, with an aching head and trembling fingers. Horace glanced across with cool contempt at this miserable as he entered. He was conscious that he himself, in his iron force of youth and selfishness, looked rather better and more self-controlled than usual under the inspiration of his new knowledge, and he looked at his weaker compeer with a half-amused, contemptuous smile. This very smile and disdain had their effect on the little circle of spectators, who all observed it with an involuntary respect, and forgot to think what might be the heart and disposition of this lofty comrade of theirs, in admiring homage to the coolness of his insolence and the strength of his head.

Meanwhile, thoughts at which they would have stood aghast mingled in the busy brain of Horace with the drier matters of daily work which passed through his hands. Upon which of these two men who were in his power should he exercise that unlooked-for empire? Should he frighten Mr. Pouncet out of his wits by disclosing to him his new discovery? He was certainly the most likely person to be frightened with ease; but this did not suit the ideas of Horace. He was tired of Kenlisle, and found no advantage in a residence there, and he felt in Mr. Stenhouse a kindred spirit with whom he could work, and under whom his fortune was secure. Thus the virtuous young man reasoned as he sat at his desk, the bland object of his thoughts passing him occasionally with smiles upon that wide mouth which the old pitman remembered so well. It might not be possible for Horace to refrain from waving his whip over the head of his present employer, but it was the stranger upon whom for his own advancement he fixed his eyes. Mr. Stenhouse was a man much more able to understand his gifts, and give them their due influence, than Mr. Pouncet would ever be; and in the excitement and exaltation of his present mood Horace thrust from his mind more consciously than ever before that anxiety about his father’s secret which had moved him to so much eagerness ere he began to have affairs and prospects of his own. He became contemptuous of it in his youthful self-importance and sense of power. He was dazzled to see how his own cool head and unimpressionable spirit, the undeviating iron confidence of his supreme self-love, had imposed upon his comrades in the town – if comrades they could be called, who won no confidence and received no friendship from him; and he was elated with the new power he had gained, and ready to believe himself one of those conquerors of fortune before whose promptitude and skill and unfailing acuteness every obstacle gives way.

In this mood he filled his place in Mr. Pouncet’s office during that day, meditating the means by which he should open proceedings in the evening. Mr. Pouncet, meanwhile, as it happened, by way of diverting his conversation with his former partner from matters more intimate and less manageable, had been pointing out to his notice the singular qualities of Horace, his remarkable position and subtle cleverness. Perhaps Mr. Pouncet would not have been very sorry to transfer his clever clerk to hands which could manage him better; at all events, it was a subject ready and convenient, which staved off the troublesome business explanations which had to be made between them. Mr. Pouncet had committed himself once in his life, and betrayed his client; but he was a strictly moral man notwithstanding, and disapproved deeply of the craft of his tempter, even though he did not hesitate to avail himself of the profits of the mutual deceit. Twenty years had passed since the purchase of that “most valuable property,” but still the attorney, whose greatest failure of integrity this was, remained shy of the man who had led him into it, reluctant to receive his periodical visits, and most reluctant to enter into any discussion with him of their mutual interest. So Mr. Pouncet talked against time when necessity shut him up tête-à-tête with Mr. Stenhouse, and told the stranger all about Horace; while Horace outside, all his head buzzing with thoughts on the same subject, pondered how to display his occult knowledge safely, and to open the first parallels of his siege. For which purpose the young man made his careful toilette in preparation for Mr. Pouncet’s dinner-table, where the attorney’s important wife, and even Mr. Pouncet himself, received the young clerk with great affability, as people receive a guest who is much honoured by their hospitality. How he laughed at them in his heart!

CHAPTER XX

HORACE laughed at the condescension of his hosts, but not with the laugh of sweet temper or brisk momentary youthful indignation. There was revenge in his disdain. It fired his inclination to exhibit the power he had acquired, and make the most of it. The party was few in number, and not of very elevated pretensions; a few ladies of the county town, in sober but bright-coloured silk and satin, such as was thought becoming to their matronly years, who had plenty of talk among themselves, but were shy of interfering with the conversation of “the gentlemen”; and a few gentlemen, the best of their class in Kenlisle, but still only Kenlisle townsmen, and not county magnates. Even the vicar was not asked to Mr. Pouncet’s on this occasion; the show was very inconsiderable – a fact which Horace made out with little difficulty, and which Mr. Stenhouse’s sharp eyes were not likely to be slow of perceiving. Nothing, however, affected the unchangeable blandness of that wide-smiling mouth. Before the dinner was over, Horace, by dint of close observation, became aware that there was a little bye-play going on between the hosts and their principal guest, and that Mr. Stenhouse’s inquiries about one after another of the more important people of the neighbourhood, and his smiling amazement to hear that so many of them were absent, and so many had previous engagements, had an extremely confusing effect upon poor Mrs. Pouncet, who did not know how to shape her answers, and looked at her husband again and again, with an appeal for assistance, which he was very slow to respond to. Horace, however, permitted Mrs. Pouncet and her accompanying train to leave the room before he began his sport; and it was only when the gentlemen had closed round the table, and when, after the first brisk hum of talk, a little lull ensued, that the young man, who had hitherto been very modest, and behaved himself, as Mr. Pouncet said, with great propriety, suffered the first puff of smoke to disclose itself from his masked battery, and opened his siege.

“Did you see in yesterday’s Times a lawcase of a very interesting kind, sir?” said this ingenuous neophyte, addressing Mr. Pouncet – “Mountjoy versus Mortlock, tried in the Nisi Prius. Did it happen to strike you? I should like extremely to know what your opinion was.”

“I was very busy last night. I am ashamed to say I get most of my public news at second hand. What was it, Scarsdale? Speak out, my good fellow; I daresay your own opinion on the subject would be as shrewd, if not as experienced, as mine; a very clever young man – rising lad!” said Mr. Pouncet, with an aside to his next neighbour, by way of explaining his own graciousness. “Let us hear what it was.”

Mr. Stenhouse said nothing, but Horace saw that he paused in the act of peeling an orange, and fixed upon himself a broad, full smiling stare; a look in which the entire eyes, mouth, face of the gazer seemed to take part – a look which anybody would have said conveyed the very soul of openness and candour, but which Horace somehow did not much care to encounter. Mr. Stenhouse looked at him steadily, as if with a smiling consideration of what he might happen to mean, glanced aside with a slight malicious air of humour at Mr. Pouncet, gave a slight laugh, and went on peeling his orange. The whole pantomime tended somehow to diminish the young schemer’s confidence in his own power, which naturally led him to proceed rather more vehemently and significantly than he had intended with what he had to say.

“The case was this,” said Horace, with somewhat too marked a tone – “Mortlock was a solicitor and agent among others to a Sir Roger Mountjoy, a country baronet. Sir Roger was very careless about his affairs, and left them very much in his agent’s hands; and, besides, was embarrassed in his circumstances, and in great need of ready money. Mortlock somehow obtained private information concerning a portion of his client’s land which more than tripled its value. After which he persuaded the baronet to sell it to him at a very low price, on pretence that it was comparatively worthless, and that he made the purchase out of complacency to meet the pressing needs of his patron. Immediately after the sale a public discovery was made of a valuable vein of lead, which Mortlock immediately set about working, and made a fortune out of. A dozen years after, when the baronet was dead, his heirs brought an action against the solicitor, maintaining that the sale was null and void, and demanding compensation. Only the counsel for the plaintiff has been heard as yet. What do you think they will make of such a plea?”

Mr. Pouncet set down upon the table the glass he was about raising to his lips, and spilt a few drops of his wine. He was taken by surprise; but the momentary shock of such an appeal, made to him in the presence of Stenhouse, and under his eye as it was, did not overwhelm the old lawyer as Horace, in the self-importance of his youth, imagined it would. His complexion was too gray and unvarying to show much change of colour for anything, and the only real evidence of his emotion were these two or three drops of spilt wine. But he cleared his throat before he answered, and spoke after a pause in a very much less condescending and encouraging tone.

“It depends altogether on what the plea is,” said Mr. Pouncet; “the story looks vastly well, but what is the plea? Can you make it out, Stenhouse? Of course, when a man acquires a property fairly at its fair value, no matter what is found out afterwards, an honest bargain cannot be invalidated by our laws. I suppose it must be a breach of trust, or something of the sort. You are very young in our profession, my friend Scarsdale, or you would have known that you have stated no plea.”