The House on the Moor. Volume 2

This last address was unanswerable. The Colonel closed his lips with a sigh. As for his own influence, from which he at one time hoped a good deal, he found it conclude in a courteous letter and a ready promise. The Colonel was extremely discomfited and discouraged; for the first time in his life he repented of kindness. Had he, after all, “raised expectations which could never be realized?” The matter gave him a great deal more pain than Sir John could have thought possible. He, with all the carelessness of a man who has commonly found the world go well with him, put this affair aside lightly. Why should anything happen to disconcert their plans? As soon as the boy should turn up he was ready and eager to help him. He had no apprehension of any romantic contretemps, such as the Colonel feared; such things only occurred in very rare cases. What harm could it do to wait?

Thus still another week passed on. A month after hearing from Roger, Colonel Sutherland found another letter on his breakfast table; it was dated “Ship ‘Prince Regent,’ in the Downs, March 21st.” With a gasp of excitement the Colonel ran his eyes over it, and then thrust it into the hand of Sir John, who was calmly eating his breakfast. The baronet started, read it over, jumped from his seat, and called for his man in a voice of thunder. Then he flew to a writing-table which stood in one corner, wrote something hurriedly in gigantic characters, shouting aloud at the end of every word for “Summers! Summers!” Summers made his appearance hastily, amazed and fluttered by the imperative demand.

“Fly! – horseback, railway, anything that’s quickest – telegraph-office, Edinburgh! To be sent this instant; return directly; here’s your money; I tell you, fly!” cried the excited baronet.

Summers made an astonished bow, looked at the paper, and demanded where? His master took him by the shoulders and thrust him out of the door, following him through the rain along the garden, and shouting, “Telegraph-office, Edinburgh!” in his ear, with sundry stimulating expletives. Then Sir John returned much more slowly. He found the Colonel marching about the room, very grave, and very much excited.

“It’s not your fault, old fellow,” said the baronet, hastily “bolting,” to use his own expression, the remainder of his breakfast; “here’s the man that’s to blame; come down upon me, it’ll do you good. I don’t give this up yet. How’s the wind? Dead south-west for a miracle – can’t go a step down the Channel in a sou’-wester! Come along – put up your traps, brighten your grave face, and let’s be off by the first train!”

“We’ll be too late!” said the Colonel, whose mortification and distress were great.

“Not a bit of it,” said Sir John. “Telegraph reaches the ship in half-an-hour – ‘Young man, Roger Musgrave, enlisted among the troops on board the “Prince Regent,” to be detained. To the officer in command.’ We shall be there by noon to-morrow all right. Why do you suppose now that Fortune should make up her mind to spite us? Why shouldn’t the wind stay for twenty-four hours in that quarter, and all be well?”

“Why, indeed?” said the Colonel, with a sigh; “why should not everything serve our caprice when we lose the true opportunity, and then make a fictitious one? – but they don’t, Armitage. I shall never forgive myself; however, while there is still a hope let us go.”

For the Colonel’s fears had been literally fulfilled. Roger had enlisted in a regiment about to sail for the Cape, where there was at present raging one of the many Caffre wars. He wrote to take leave of his friend, believing well to be out of reach before any late succour could reach him. A certain shade of proud and forlorn melancholy was in his farewell. The young man felt to his heart a pang which he would not confess – he had been taken at his word.

CHAPTER XV

BY the same evening train – for they were too late for any other – which had carried the Colonel not very long before to that little rural world which included Tillington and Marchmain, Horace Scarsdale and Roger Musgrave, the two gentlemen that night rushed to London. As they went their darksome way in the dimly-lighted carriage, which, as it chanced, they occupied alone, each leaned back into a corner, occupied with his own thoughts. Sir John, totally refusing to accept the uncomfortable chance of being too late, looked out at every station with an anxious eye upon the wind, and cried, “Hurrah for the sou’-wester!” as they dashed into London in the cheery spring morning which brightened the grimy face of even that overgrown enchantress. Colonel Sutherland said nothing; his interest in the wind was very limited; he had made up his mind to misfortune, and blamed himself deeply. The old man understood, as by a revelation, the mind of the youth who had addressed to him that letter. The feeling of secret disappointment, without anything to complain of, the forlorn success of his experiment, the perfect acquiescence which everybody seemed to have given to his self-disposal; while, at the same time, it was quite true that he had put himself out of everybody’s way, and “that nobody was to blame,” as people say, all shone through his melancholy leave-taking. If they did succeed in finding him, would he return? the Colonel asked himself. If they came to the rescue at last, after he had made his plunge, and had borne the bitterest part of it, would he consent to be bought off, and owe his improved rank to Sir John’s tardy benevolence? The message itself – was that judicious? – might not its only effect be to leave a certain stigma upon the character of the young soldier? Thus one subject of reflection only more painful than another had quick succession in the Colonel’s thoughts. He vowed to himself he should never again wait for the co-operation of another in anything which was necessary to be done; and so only shook his head as Sir John hurra’d for the “sou’-wester,” and, looking behind him as he descended from the carriage, shook his head still more, and felt the cold whisper of another wind rising upon his cheek. Sir John perceived it also, and grew pale. “It is only a current – there are always currents of wind under these archways,” he explained, hurriedly. Then they drove across London in a cab to the Dover railway, snatched a hasty breakfast of boiling coffee and cold beef, for which they had not above ten minutes time, and so rushed on again to make sure of poor Roger’s fate. Even Roger’s uncertain fate, however, and all his self-reproach on this occasion, could not hinder the Colonel’s eyes to brighten as they whirled past almost in sight of Addiscombe, and saw some distant figures in the Cadet’s uniform on a distant road. Could one of them perhaps be Ned? – and the Colonel thought of seeing his boy to-morrow with a cheerful warmth at his heart, which, in spite of himself, made him more hopeful – thinking of Ned he could still believe to find the wind unchanged, the ship unsailed, the young man’s mind unembittered. As the miles and the moments passed, as the green country sloped upward into grassy hills, and showed here and there its little precipice of chalk, the Colonel’s courage rose. Not from any reason; he was a man to be above reasons sometimes, this tender old soldier; the comfort and the courage came, an inexplicable genial breath from the neighbourhood of his boy.

While, in the meantime, a result perfectly contrary was produced on Sir John: he shuffled about in his seat with an incontrollable impatience; he gazed out of the window; he closed his eyes with disgust when he turned from that; he could have got out and pushed behind like the Frenchman, so eager was his anxiety. The express train was too slow for him – the wind had changed!

The wind had changed! When they came in sight of the sea these stormy straits were specked with ships liberated from their prison, with white wings spread, and impatient feet, making their way out to the ocean. Cold and shrill, with its whistle of ungracious breath, the gale hissed with them through the narrow tunnels; pennons fluttering to the west – bowsprits pointed seaward, clouds flying on the same cold track, and as much as these an increase of cold, an acrid contradiction of the sunshine, bewrayed the east wind which drove invalids to their chambers, but carried ships down channel. Often before had Sir John Armitage anathematized the east wind – perhaps he never cursed it in his heart till now, as he watched with envious impatience a large vessel covered with sail making her way out of the Downs. “That’s her for a wager!” said Sir John to himself; “the very thing they’d send troops in – a round, shapeless, horrid old hulk, warranted the worst sailer on the station. To be sure! – there she goes, bobbing like an apple in a posset – ugh, you ugly old beast! – couldn’t you have waited another day?”

“Eh? – you were speaking – what’s the matter, Armitage?” said the Colonel, roused by the sound.

“Nothing,” said Sir John. To tell the truth, he did not feel himself quite the hero of the position at this moment; he did not care to disclose his fears until hope was proved vain; perhaps, after all, that was not the “Prince Regent” – perhaps the officers were still not aboard, or some happy accident had prevented her from taking the earliest advantage of the change of wind. The baronet dragged his companion along with him to the “Ship” before he would suffer him to ask any questions. There the obsequious attendants who received the strangers were startled by the impatient outcry and gesture, almost wild, of the excited baronet. “The ‘Prince Regent,’ lying in the Downs, with troops on board for the Cape – who can tell me if she has sailed?” This inquiry was somewhat startling to the innkeeper and his vassals. “We can send and see,” suggested timidly one of the waiters, “directly, sir.” Sir John rushed out again, and started off almost at a run towards the pier. “Sailed two hours ago,” said a “seafaring” individual, of questionable looks, who stood on the steps of the hotel smoking his cigar. “Hallo there! sailed two hours ago, I tell you – d’ye think you can make up to her, hey? I’d back you against the precious old tub if you’re in that mind – but she’s got the start, look you, by two hours – all sail and a fresh wind!”

Sir John came back much discomfited and crestfallen. He could not make up his mind to the disappointment. It was quite intolerable to him. He consulted everybody round as to the chances of overtaking the ship – was he likely to do so if he hired a steamer? The nautical bystander took up this idea with great zeal; but before Sir John committed himself a better informed waiter volunteered the information that there were still some officers to join the vessel at Portsmouth, and that she might be overtaken there. The Colonel shook his head. To him the chances of success seemed so small, that the further journey was scarcely worth the while, and some hours would still elapse before there was a train. Sir John however, still sanguine, found out with a telescope the vessel, which he still held to be the “Prince Regent,” exhausted himself in contemptuous criticisms on her build and sailing qualities, and declared that they were certain to be at Portsmouth hours before the unwieldy transport. The Colonel said nothing; he paced about the room with serious looks and a grieved heart, sometimes pausing to look wistfully out from the windows; a week earlier and Roger might have been saved – a day earlier and they could still have seen him, have tried the last chance for his deliverance, and made him aware of their real intentions and regard for his welfare. The Colonel could not forgive himself. For perhaps the first time in his life he judged his companion unfairly, felt disgusted at Sir John’s exclamation of self-encouragement, and secretly blamed as levity his eager special pleadings and arguments with himself. Presently they started again for Portsmouth, fatigue and vexation together proving almost too much for Colonel Sutherland, who was the elder by several years, and the most seriously affected in the present instance. As for Sir John, he still kept himself up by expectations: of course, they must reach Portsmouth in time – of course, there could be no difficulties in the way of buying Roger off – he would return with them, get his commission, and then follow his pseudo-comrades, if he had still a hankering after the smell of powder. He was thus flattering himself, when they reached the busy seaport. Sir John, for once forgetful alike of dinner, rest, and toilette, with yesterday’s beard, and no better provision for the fatigues of the day than a couple of biscuits, rushed at once into the hubbub of the port. Some time was occupied in these inquiries; he ran from place to place, the Colonel marching gravely by his side, putting his hand to his anxious ear when any one addressed them, listening with his solicitous stoop forward to every word of every answer. But it was again in vain – the “Prince Regent” had only signaled in passing, and had neither paused nor taken in any officers at Portsmouth: by this time, heavy transport as she was, the vessel was at sea.

Heavily and in silence the two travellers sought an hotel, marched up the stairs side by side, without saying a word to each other, and threw themselves, with a simultaneous groan of fatigue and disappointment, into chairs. This last performance elicited a short, hard laugh from the baronet, now thoroughly out of sorts. “I’ve been a confounded fool!” cried Sir John – “I’ll never forgive myself. Why the deuce don’t you come down upon me, Sutherland? – I’m an ass – I’m an idiot – I deserve to be turned out of decent society! Hang me, if I did not mean to be a father to that boy!”

The real sincerity and penitence of his tone woke once more all the kindly feelings of the Colonel. “It cannot be helped now,” he said with a sigh; “by this time it’s providence: and I don’t doubt it’ll turn out for the best.”

“Ah, it is easy for you to speak,” said Sir John, who perhaps did not quite understand his companion’s simple, practical reference to a disposition beyond the power of man; “you are not to blame: to think, with my confounded trifling, I should have let Musgrave’s boy throw himself away!”

This led the Colonel to soothe his friend, and take the guilt upon himself, a proceeding which the baronet, after a few minutes, did not object to. After a while his spirits rose. He began to be reminded of a vigorous appetite, and to recover the exhaustion of fatigue. With a little assumption of languor on his own part, and a tender regard for the necessities of the Colonel, Sir John took upon himself at last to order dinner. Then the travellers separated, to make their most needful ablutions. When they met again at dinner Sir John was himself again.

“After all, Sutherland,” he said, “nothing can be more absurd than to disturb ourselves about this, though it is very vexatious. ’Twill do the boy good, after all – nothing I should have liked better at his age; and won’t harm his prospects a bit – everybody likes adventurous young men. Here’s a health and a famous voyage to the young fellow. I’ll take care there’s a welcome waiting for him when he lands – for of course every ship that sails the passage will outstrip the transport. To be sure, he’s melancholy enough now, I believe. Do him good – teach him to be careful how he runs away from his friends another time. What’s the good of breaking our hearts over it? – he’d be just as sea-sick if he were Colonel; and I warrant the ‘Prince Regent’ gives him quite enough to think of for eight days. What can’t be cured, you know – here’s good luck to him! – the end of his voyage will make up for it all.”

The Colonel drank his luckless protegé’s health very gravely: he thought of him all night, travelling with the forlorn lad over the darksome sea; and sent better things than wishes after him – remembering his name, in every break of his sleep through that long night, before God, who saw the boy; and so, unseen, unaided, and ignorant of the disappointed efforts which had toiled after him, and of the one tender heart which ached over its failure, and was his bedesman, nothing else being possible, the young adventurer went away deeper into the world and his life, further into the night and the distance, and the black paths of the sea.

CHAPTER XVI

THE two gentlemen returned next day to Dover, to make inquiries after the fate of Sir John’s telegraphic despatch, which, it appeared, had been delivered without doing any good. Roger had enlisted in a regiment of rifles: he was a famous shot, young, strong, and active – by no means such a recruit as a commanding officer concerned for the credit of his regiment would relinquish readily; and, so far as the travellers could ascertain, no notice had been taken of their communication. Then they went back to London, where Sir John, feeling himself considerably discomfited, hurried to the Horse Guards, to see what could be done at last for his unfortunate protegé. Having ascertained, with difficulty, the regiment in which Roger had enlisted, he discovered, with no difficulty at all, that this regiment was quite complete in its number, and that at present there were no vacancies among the officers. At present! The chances were that a few months of a Caffre war might show some difference in those full lists; but a man could not purchase a prospective commission on this grim possibility. The only thing Sir John could do in the circumstances he did. There was no lack of kindness at the bottom of his heart: he wrote a kind letter to Roger, enclosing a bank-bill for a considerable amount, confessing his mortification at the consequences of his own delay, and ordering the young man, with an imperative cordiality which he felt quite justified in using, and which Roger was not likely to resist, to use the money and come home directly – at least, whether he came home or not, he was not to serve the campaign in the ranks. “If he comes home, he’s not the boy I took him for,” said Sir John; but he dispatched his letter, and with it a note to the major who led the detachment, and with whom he had some slight acquaintance. Having done this, the baronet’s conscience was clear: he did what he could to persuade Colonel Sutherland to remain for some time in town; he himself, after what had happened, having no particular inclination to return to Milnehill. When he found the Colonel was not to be persuaded, Sir John remained by himself, finding refuge, alike from Armitage Park and the grave looks of his friend, in the London season. He had been long out of the gay world. After a week or two in town, he gradually warmed to its fascinations, and forgot all about his failure very speedily, in a modest amount of fashionable dissipation and the comforts of his club.

The Colonel stayed only to spend a day with Ned, and hastened home; and as everything there went fair and softly, and nothing else within the limits of this history requires immediate attention, let us spare a moment to glance after poor Roger, forlorn and alone among his comrades upon the monotonous sea.

Among his comrades, and yet alone – more alone than the young man had been during all his life. He had never supposed – he had no means of imagining – the humiliations of this new life. He could gulp the inferior rank, the mortifications of his humble position – he could manage to salute as superiors, totally above him and out of his sphere, the young officers who a year ago would have been too happy to accompany him into the preserves of the Grange, or sit by his side at his godfather’s hospitable table. These things he could bear; what Roger could not bear was the perpetual society from which he could not free himself – the constant presence of his “mates,” and entire lack of anything like privacy in this existence, of which he had not conceived half the pangs. If he had been able to seek the meanest possible retirement of his own, he could have borne all other grievances cheerfully – but this was impossible; and the life of which every hour sleeping or waking was spent in the rude companionship of men of a class much inferior and a breeding totally different from his own, grew bitter to the young man. He became unnaturally grave and self-absorbed. He attended to the minutest details of his duty with the most scrupulous and rigid care: but the sunshine and the glow of youth died away from him – life spread around him full of vulgar circumstances, unceasing noise, unceasing mirth, a perpetual accompaniment which made his heart sick. He did everything he could to recall his courage – he tried to flatter his imagination with pictures of future distinction; but Roger had not the imagination of a poet; his fancy was not strong enough to carry him out of the midst of the reality which vexed his soul; the pictures grew languid, the hopes feeble. His whole nature retreated within itself, and had to summon its uttermost forces to bear the trial. An experience which he had never looked for deepened his thoughts, and gave a painful development to his mind. His nearest approach to solitude was when he leaned over the side of the ship, and lost the talk of his comrades in the sweep of the waves. Then many a melancholy fancy possessed poor Roger: sometimes he could fancy he saw the face of his godfather gazing at him with a melancholy compunction; and the loyal heart rose, and his own looks did their best to brighten, as if even the departed spirit should not blame itself while he had power to say No. Sometimes it was the good Colonel who looked out of Roger’s imagination, with a kind and grieved reproach, “Why did you not wait a little? – could you not trust me?”

Sometimes for an instant the face he had seen upon that moorland road beside Marchmain – the young face troubled and blushing, which knew and recognized him, in spite of itself, flashed for a moment before Roger’s dreaming eyes; and then he turned away from the water and the heavens with a quick sigh, and turned back to the little world which made its passage over that sea – the noisy world between those wooden bulwarks, lounging here and there, playing cards, sleeping in the sun, jesting, quarrelling, talking unprofitable talk, and laughing loud laughter. This was his world, where Roger had to live.

At the same time an incident occurred to trouble him. A detachment of a regiment of infantry shared the comforts of the same transport; and one day, shortly after they sailed, Roger was startled to meet Sam Gilsland, who for his part came to an amazed stand before him, and sheepishly put up his hand to his forehead in respectful salutation. Nothing could persuade Sam that “th’ young Squire” was, like himself, in the ranks. A hurried conversation ensued, in which Roger made strenuous endeavours to knock the fact into the thick head of his countryman; and Sam went away with a confused idea that he was not to touch his cap any more to this unexpected shipmate, or to address the rifleman as Mr. Roger, or to speak of him as the young Squire. This incident at once grieved Roger and comforted him. Somehow there was a certain consolation in the idea that one individual, at least, in that little community knew what and who he really was. But the annoyance overbalanced the comfort. Sam after this could not come in contact with his former patron but with a ludicrous and embarrassing consciousness, which would have made Roger laugh if it had not pained him; the simple lout felt himself alarmingly on his good behaviour whenever he suspected Roger’s neighbourhood, and made a hundred furtive errands and clumsy attempts to do something for him, which at once disturbed his mind and touched his heart. He was by no means a bad fellow, this Sam – a certain gleam of chivalrous sentiment warmed his opaque spirit at sight of the sad equality with himself to which, in appearance, never in reality, the young Squire was reduced. The honest clown felt a certain mortification and downfall in his own person to think that Roger in his crowded cabin was cleaning his own accoutrements like “a common man!” Sam made stealthy private expeditions into the rifleman’s quarters to do it for him, moved by an indescribable mixture of compassion and respect, and those tender home-associations which never had been so warm in the simple fellow’s heart as now, and could not comprehend the burst of mortified gratification – the mixture of pain and pleasure, wrath and gratitude, with which Roger sent him away. After that he had to content himself with touching his cap stealthily when he could have a chance unseen, to the young Squire, and confiding, when he had the opportunity, his own private troubles to him, not without a secret conviction that Mr. Roger, by-and-bye, if not immediately, would be able to right and avenge his humble follower. Sometimes Roger was disposed to think Sam’s presence an augmentation of his own downfall, but in reality there was a certain solace in it unawares.