The House on the Moor. Volume 2

“I write this without the least idea where it will find you; but earnestly trust you will lose no time in answering. I need scarcely tell you, who I daresay have not forgotten the time when you were twenty, that the boy is very impatient, and quite likely to do something rash out of his own head, if he supposes himself neglected. Address to me at Milnehill, Inveresk, North Britain, where at all times you will find my solitary quarters, and a warm welcome, should you think of straying so far north. My dear Armitage, yours very faithfully,

“Edward Sutherland,“Late Colonel, 100th B.N.I.”

Having finished, read, and re-read this important epistle, the Colonel put it up, and writing in large characters, deeply underscored, To be forwarded immediately, put it beside him to be sent by express to Armitage Park. Then the old soldier’s countenance relaxed. He laid his other sheet of paper lightly before him and dipped his pen in the ink with a smile. This time he was going to write to his boy.

“I have had no small vexation, Ned, since I came here,” wrote the Colonel to his son; “you shall hear a circumstantial account of it. First, I was dismayed at the sight of the house – a melancholy place on the edge of the moor, without a scrap of garden or enclosure of any kind, and not a house within sight; fancy your poor pretty cousin Susan, at seventeen, shut up in such a prison, with never a face but her father’s and brother’s to cheer the dear child in her solitude! You have always heard that your uncle Scarsdale was a man of very peculiar character, and you will remember that I told you the very remarkable circumstances in which your cousin Horace stands. This, my dear boy, if you should happen to have any intercourse with Horace, you must do your best to forget. By some unaccountable perversion of mind, which I can excuse, perhaps, in a man of his character, but certainly cannot explain, your uncle has carefully concealed everything from his son which can throw the least light upon his position; and as he has at the same time refused all special training and education to the lad, and never encouraged or directed him to make any provision for his future life, you may imagine what an unsatisfactory state everything is in at Marchmain. First of all, you know, Ned, I am delighted with Susan. Please God, some day we’ll have her at Milnehill, and let her see that there is something in life worth living for. It would make my old heart light to see her pleasant face about the house, and yet, Ned, sometimes I can scarcely look at her without tears. Heaven knows it should be our duty as well as our pleasure to do everything we can to brighten the life of this dear, pure-hearted little girl, who is the only woman in the family now.

“But, to begin at the beginning, I got a very strange account of the family from the man who drove me to Marchmain; then I was startled by the sight of the house; then, though greatly re-assured by the appearance of Susan, I was overcast again by seeing the cloud that came over her at the mention of her father. He never appeared to receive me, but sent for me to his study, where he made the request that I would keep his secret from his children in the most absolute terms, not without reproaches against me, and against – God forgive him! – my poor sister, because I knew it, which I confess rather exasperated me. I resolved at once not to stay in the house, nor to see him again, and accordingly came down here to this little inn – very poor quarters – where I have been for three days. Horace accompanied me here, and on the way broke out into rather extravagant protestations of his wish to leave home, and bitter complaints against his father. You may suppose I was confused enough, longing to let the poor lad know the secret which could have explained all to him, and hindered by my promise. I detest mystery – always abjure it, Ned, as you value my approbation; nothing can be honest that has to be concealed. This miserable, mistaken idea of your uncle’s has gone far, I am afraid, to ruin the moral nature of his son. There is a shocking unnatural enmity between the two, which cuts me to the heart every time I think of it. Of course, Horace has no clue whatever to the secret of his father’s conduct. He thinks it springs out of mere caprice and cruelty, and naturally fumes against it. This is all very dismal to look at, though I suppose, by dint of usage, it does not seem so unnatural to them as it does to a stranger. Horace himself, I am sorry to say, does not quite satisfy me; with such an upbringing, poor fellow, who can wonder at it? He is very clever, but much occupied with himself, and does not seem to have the honest, spontaneous wishes and ambition of a young man. There is a look of craft about him which grieves me; and I fear he has got into indifferent company, according to his own avowal, and declares to me he despises them, which, in my opinion, does not mend the matter. Altogether, I am very much puzzled in my own mind about him; he is very unlike the young men I have been accustomed to meet with – and that with my experience, in thirty years of active life, is a good deal to say.

“However, with my advice, he has been led to conclude that he will adopt the law as a profession, and is anxious to be put in the way of it immediately, and do what he can to qualify himself for making his own bread in an honourable way. Can you believe it possible, my dear boy, that his father, on my appeal to him, absolutely refused either to help your cousin in his most laudable wish, or to explain to him why he did not? Oh, Ned, Ned, how miserable we can make ourselves when we get leave to do our own will! The man is wretched – you can read it in every line of his face; but he will not yield to open his heart to his boy, to receive him into his confidence, to make a friend of his only son. This miserable lucre – and I am sure in his better days, when your poor aunt was alive, nobody imagined that Scarsdale had set his heart much upon it – has turned his whole nature into gall. God forgive the miserable old man that left this curse behind him! – though, indeed, that is a useless wish, as he has been dead for fifteen years, and his fate determined long ago.

“So you perceive, on the whole, I have had a good deal on my hands since I came here. Now that nothing can be done with his father, I mean to make an appeal on behalf of your cousin to one of the trustees. To tell you the truth, Ned, I am almost afraid now of the secret being made known to Horace. Your uncle has so forgotten that word, ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath,’ that it absolutely alarms me when I think what may be the consequences if Horace hears it suddenly from any lips but his father’s. So, if you should chance to come in contact with your cousin, my dear boy, see that you forget it, Ned. Let never an appearance of knowledge be perceived in you – to be sure, this of itself is a kind of deceit, but it is lawful. If Scarsdale himself could be moved to disclose the whole to his son, a better state of affairs might be brought about – otherwise, I am alarmed to think of any discovery, more than I can say.

“Not content with this business, I have taken in hand, like an old fool as I am, another young fellow, whom I have fallen in with here; a fine, sincere, hearty lad, whom I hope to hear of one day as your brother-in-arms. I have just been writing on his behalf to old Armitage, of the 59th, whom you remember, I daresay, when you were a child, and who knows this young fellow, of whom I’ll tell you more hereafter. To-morrow I go home (D.V.), and will post this in Edinburgh, as I pass through, that you may know I have had a safe journey. I had a letter from Tom the day before I left. The rogue has got five or six prizes at the examination; but of course he has told you all about that before now.

“God bless you, my dear boy; never forget the Gospel grace, and all we owe to it – nor your love and duty to our Father in Heaven.

“E. Sutherland.”

After finishing this paternal letter, the Colonel leaned his head upon his hands for a little in silent cogitation. He was rather tired of his epistolary labours, and could not help thinking with a secret sigh of the carpet-bag, which had still to be packed up-stairs, and of the chilly journey which he had to undertake early next morning. Had he not better put off his other letter till he got home to Milnehill? “There is no time like the present,” said the Colonel, with a sigh, and he rung the bell and commissioned Mrs. Gilsland to procure him another sheet of that famous gilt-edged paper. Having obtained it, and fortified himself meanwhile with a cup of tea, which the landlady brought at the same time, the persevering Colonel thus indited his third epistle: —

“Sir, – It is a long time since I met you at the house of my brother-in-law in London, and it is very possible that you may have forgotten even the name of the writer of this letter. I am the brother of the late Mrs. Robert Scarsdale – late Colonel in command of the 100th Regiment, B. N. I., in the Honourable Company’s service, and since retiring from active service have resided at Milnehill, Inveresk, North Britain, where any answer you may think proper to give to this communication will find me. I write to you now on behalf of my nephew, Horace Scarsdale. His father, to my great grief, has kept him entirely ignorant of his very peculiar and painful circumstances; and, at the same time, with a feeling sufficiently natural, but much to be deplored, declines to aid him in studying the profession which he has chosen, being that of the law. Under these circumstances, which, as his nearest relative, I have become aware of, I feel that my only resource is to apply to you. Mr. Robert Scarsdale, as you are aware, is still a man in the prime of life, and, so far as I know, in excellent health. To keep the young man without occupation, waiting for the demise of a vigorous man of fifty, would, even if my nephew were aware of all the circumstances, be something at once revolting to all natural feeling, and highly injurious to himself. I venture to ask you, then, whether you are justified in advancing to him, or, if you prefer it, to me, under security for his use, a sufficient sum to enable him to enter on the study of his profession? The matter is so important, that I make no apologies for stating it thus briefly. This would be of more importance than twice the amount can be when his youth is gone, and the best part of his life wasted. I beg you, for the young man’s sake, to take the matter into your serious consideration, as trustee under the unhappy arrangement which has done so much harm to this family. I will be happy to enter into further details, or make any explanation in my power, on hearing from you; and trusting that your sympathy may be so far moved by my story as to dispose you to the assistance of my unfortunate nephew, of whose talents I have formed a very high opinion – I have the honour to remain, your faithful servant,

“Edward Sutherland.”

This done, the Colonel put his letters together and retired into his arm-chair, with a satisfied conscience; as he sat there silent by the fire, the old man carried his pleadings to a higher tribunal. How could he have kept his heart so young all these years, except by the close and constant resort he made to that wonderful Friend, whom every man who seeks Him must come to like a little child?

CHAPTER IV

WITHIN a week after Colonel Sutherland’s departure from Tillington a little flight of letters arrived from him – one to Susan, full only of her uncle’s heart, and all the kind devices he could think of to amuse and give her pleasure; and a more business-like communication to Horace, who, during these seven days, had felt Marchmain more and more unendurable, and did not behave himself so as to increase anybody’s comfort in the house. “I have appealed on your behalf to a person who ought to feel an interest in you,” wrote the Colonel – “and as soon as I hear from him I will let you know immediately whether he can help me to put you in a satisfactory position. If not, my dear boy, we must try what my own means can do; and, in that case, I should propose that you come here to me, where it might be possible enough for a vigorous young man like yourself to pursue your studies in Edinburgh, and at the same time live with me at Milnehill. All this we can arrange by-and-bye. At present there is no resource but to wait, which I must advise you to do, my dear Horace, with as much cheerfulness as possible, for your own, and for all our sakes.”

Horace put up this letter with a smile. There was one thing in it which should certainly have made the advice contained here palatable. The Colonel, remembering himself that very likely his nephew was kept without money, enclosed to him, with the merest statement that he did so, a five-pound note – the sight of which did bring a momentary pleasure, mingled with mortification, to the young man’s face. But his bitter, ungenerous pride, made the kindness an offence, while it was a service. He never dreamed of rejecting it, but wiped off all necessity for gratitude by feeling the present an affront. It was a strange alchemy which Horace exercised; he made the most precious things into dross, putting them into the fire of his contemptuous philosophy. “Was it to please me my uncle did this, or was it to please himself?” he said, with that smile in which no pleasure was: and so made it out, instead of a natural act of kindness, to be a selfish piece of personal gratification on the part of Colonel Sutherland, who very likely had pleased himself mightily by this little exhibition of liberality and apparent goodness, at Horace’s expense. With this miserable ingenuity Horace defended himself from all the influences of kindness, and stood coldly and bitterly superior to the devices which he supposed himself to have found out. Having thrust the note into his pocket with this satisfactory clearance of everything like thanks from his own mind, he turned to the letter itself, which was not at all agreeable to him. He had no more idea of waiting for the decision of the anonymous individual to whom his uncle had appealed, than he had of proceeding to Edinburgh, and living under the eye and inspection of Colonel Sutherland. He had unbounded confidence in himself, in his own abilities and skill in using them; he was not disposed to wait upon anybody’s pleasure, or to be diverted from his own purpose, because some one else was labouring for his benefit in another fashion. He smiled as he read his uncle’s letter, and thought upon his own scheme; but it never occurred to him to tell the Colonel that his pains were unnecessary, that he himself saw another way, and had resolved upon his own course. That was not Horace’s way; he preferred to know of these exertions being made for him, and secretly to forestall, and make them useless, by acting for himself. Then it appeared to him as if he should recover his natural superiority to his uncle, and demonstrate triumphantly that he was not a person to be insulted with favours and kindnesses, or from whom thanks and gratitude were to be expected. With these sentiments he put up the letter in his pocket, and looked with disdainful amusement at Susan, who was still in the full delight of her excitement over hers; and went out, as was his wont, to ripen his own plans in his mind, and, secure in the possession of the Colonel’s bank-note, to determine on his own independent movements, and decide when he should leave home.

Emotions somewhat like those of Horace, yet as different as their natures, were roused in the mind of young Roger Musgrave by a communication very similar. To him, afraid of startling the sensitive young man, the Colonel wrote with the greatest delicacy and tenderness. He told him that he had applied to Sir John Armitage for the aid of his influence, and had already put all his own in motion; that he had very little doubt speedily to see his young friend bear Her Majesty’s commission, and that all he had to beg of him was a little patience and confidence in his very sincere friend. Roger did not pause for a moment to suggest to himself that Colonel Sutherland was exercising a natural taste for patronage and affairs in thus befriending him. The young man started up in the solitary library of the Grange, where he sat that day for the last time, his cheeks crimson with excitement, and his eyes full of tears. He was confounded, troubled, touched to the heart by the friendship shown to him; and yet, as he thought over it alone in the silent house, felt it overmuch for him, and could scarcely bear it. Should he take advantage of this wonderful goodness, the busy devil whispered in his ear? Was it right to impose his misfortunes – which, after all, were not so bad as many others in the world – as a claim upon the tender compassion of the Colonel? Was it generous to accept services which, perhaps, another had more need of? He could not remain quiet, and resist this temptation; he rushed out, like Horace Scarsdale, into the bare woods, where the wind was roaring, and through the dark plantation of fir-trees, with all its world of slender columns, and the dark flat canopy of branches overhead, which resounded to the level sweep of the gale; and where, by-and-bye, the things around took his practical and simple eye, and won his heart out of the tumult of thoughts which he was not constituted to withstand, and which were very likely, in his unwonted solitude, to drive him into some irresistible but unpremeditated rashness, and make him break his promise before he was aware. Then he returned home, fatigued and exhausted, lost himself willingly, and of purpose, in an old romance, borrowed from the village library, and so kept out of the dangerous power of thought, till it was time to sleep. After that his imagination played strange freaks with Roger. We cannot tell anybody what his dreams were about; for though they seemed to himself wonderfully significant and vivid, he was mortified to find that he could not recall them in the morning so distinctly as he hoped. For he was not a poetical hero, but only a young man of very vigorous health and simple intelligence, whom grief and downfall, and melancholy change of circumstances, had influenced deeply, without making any permanent derangement, either of his mind or his digestion.

He had no need of dreams to increase the real pain of his position next morning. It was the day of the sale; a kind of simple heroical devotion to the memory of his godfather, an idea of being on the spot to repel any slight which might be thrown on his character, impelled him to be present in or near the house during the whole day. Very likely he was very wrong to expose himself to the trial, but in his youthful, excited feeling, he thought it his duty, and that was enough for Roger. The bland Rector, who came with his wife to buy some favourite china ornaments, which the lady had contemplated with longing eyes in the Squire’s time, extended a passing hand to Roger, and recommended him, scarcely stopping to give the advice, not to stay. Some young men, warmer hearted, surrounded him with attempts, the best they knew, to divert him from the sight of what was going on, and scandalized the grave people by their jokes and laughter. The humbler persons present addressed Roger with broad, well-meaning condolences: “Ah, if th’ ould squire had but known!” one and another said to him with audible sighs of sympathy. The poor youth’s eyes grew red, and his cheeks pale; he assumed, in spite of himself, a defiant look: he stood on the watch for something he could resent. The trial was too much for his warm blood and inexperienced heart; and when the great lady of the neighbourhood passed out to her carriage, as the sale drew towards a close, and saw him near the gate with his colourless face and agitated look, she scarcely bowed to poor Roger, and declared, almost in his hearing, that the young man had been drinking, and that it showed the most lamentable want of feeling on his part to be present at such a scene.

Poor Roger! perhaps it was very foolish of him to expose himself unnecessarily to all this pain. When the night came, and the silence, doubly silent after all that din, he went through the rooms, where the moon shone in through all the bare, uncurtained windows; where the straw littered the floor; and where the furniture was no longer part of the place, but stood in heaps, as this one and that one had bought it, ready to be carried away to-morrow; with his heart breaking, as he thought. In a few hours the desolation of the Grange would be complete, although, indeed, emptiness itself would be less desolate than the present aspect of the familiar place. Once more he read over the Colonel’s letter, with all its good cheer and hopefulness. Only to have patience! Could he have patience? – was it possible that he could wait here, listless and inactive, while the good Colonel laboured for him? – and once more all his doubts and questions returned upon the young man. Should he accept so great a favour? – was he right to stand by and allow so much to be done for him, he who was a stranger to his benefactor? He buried his face in his hands, leaning on the table, which was the only thing in the apartment which had not been removed out of its usual place. Here exhaustion, and emotion, and grief surprised the forlorn lad into sleep. Presently he threw himself back, with the unconscious movement of a sleeper, upon his chair. The moon brightened and rose in the sky, and shone fuller and fuller into the room. The neglected candle burned to the socket and went out; the white radiance streamed in, in two broad bars of light, through the bare windows, making everything painfully clear within its range, and leaving a ghostly twilight and corners of profound shadow in the rest of the apartment. There he lay in the midst of his desolated household sanctuary, with the heaps of packed-up furniture round him, and the candle trembling and dying in the socket, and the white light just missing his white face – the last of the Musgraves, the heir of emptiness! – yet in his trouble and grief keeping the privilege of his years, and sleeping sweet the sleep of his youth.

CHAPTER V

WHILE the two young men responded thus to Colonel Sutherland’s communications, Susan took her letter to her heart, and found unbounded comfort in it. All had not disappeared with Uncle Edward. Here was a perennial expectation, a constant thread of hope henceforward to run through her life. Never before had Susan known the altogether modern and nineteenth-century excitement of looking for the postman. It gave quite a new interest to the day – any day that unknown functionary might come again to refresh her soul with this novel delight. She could see him come across the moor, that celestial messenger! Not a Cupid, honest fellow; but bearing with him all the love that brightened Susan’s firmament. She thought it would be quite impossible to be dull or listless now: even to be disappointed was something which would give a point and character to the day; and all was very different from the dead blank of her former life, in which she had no expectation, no disappointment, nothing to look for, and for entertainment to her youth only her patchwork and Peggy’s talk, enjoyed by intervals. Her whole existence was changed. Uncle Edward’s bundle of books, which had not captivated Susan at first sight, she found, after looking into them, to be more attractive even than her new embroidery frame. They were all novels – a kind of composition totally unknown to Susan. She had been very little attracted by literature hitherto; in the first place, because to obtain a book was a serious matter, necessitating a visit to her father’s study, and a formal request for the undesirable volume, which had no charm for a young imagination when it came. But now Susan read with devotion, and amazement, and delight, each more vivid than the other. She entered into the fortunes of her heroes and heroines with a perfect interest, which would have won any story-teller’s heart. She sat up almost all night, in breathless engrossment, with one which ended unhappily, and cried herself to sleep, almost frozen, with great indignation and grief at the last, to find that things would not mend. There, too, she found enlightenment upon many things. She learned, after its modern fashion, the perennial fable of the knight who delivers his lady-love. She found out how it is possible for a heroine to come through every trouble under heaven, to a paradise of love, and wealth, and happiness; and Susan’s spirits rose, in spite of herself, into that heaven of imagination. Sometime or other nature and youth must come even to Marchmain; sometime it would be Susan’s turn; sooner or later there would be some one in the world to whom she too would be the first and dearest. This inalienable privilege of womankind came to every Laura and Lucy in her novels, happily or unhappily; and the novels were not so far wrong either – so it does, to be sure, in life; but Susan did not take into her consideration the sad chance that liberation might be offered to the bewitched princess only by the wrong knight. The wrong knight only came in as a rival to make some complications in the story, as Susan read it; and somehow the girl adopted the tale by intuition, and fell into a vague delight of innocent dreams. Pursuing these at her needlework, after all her novels were exhausted, was almost as good as another romance; and this tale spun itself on inexhaustibly, a story without an end.