The House on the Moor. Volume 2

All this time, however, a third person, totally unsuspected by the unfortunate youth, observed him narrowly and closely, losing nothing, not even the clownish services which Sam would fain have rendered to the young rifleman. The Major was one of the most unsentimental of men. Abstract benevolence would never have suggested to him any special interest whatever in a recruit of superior rank. “His own fault, of course – best thing the fellow could do,” would have been the only comment likely to fall from the lips of the Major; and no indulgence had any chance to drop from his hands upon the head of the unhappy volunteer who had been “wild,” or “gay,” or “unsteady,” and who had lost himself in the ranks.

But from the day of their embarkation the face of Roger had caught his eye. A puzzling consciousness of knowing these ingenuous features troubled him; he felt certain that he had seen them, and seen them under very different circumstances, somewhere. Then came the telegraphic message of Sir John Armitage, which, abrupt and unauthorized as it was, made the Major wroth. He tore it through and sent the fragments overboard in the first flush of his indignation. After a while, however, he repented of his wrath. He had scarcely noted the name in his hurried glance upon the paper – he forgot it in the flush of passion with which he tossed the presumptuous missive overboard; but as soon as he came to himself an uneasy idea that it concerned the young man whom he began to note, troubled the Major. The thought riveted his attention more and more upon the melancholy and grave young rifleman, who seemed to spend all his leisure time leaning over the bulwark watching the waves sweep by the vessel’s side. Gradually, and unawares to himself, the Major grew more and more interested in this solitary soldier; his interest grew into a pursuit; he could no longer help observing him, and so strongly had the idea entered his mind, that to find it mistaken would have been a personal mortification and disparagement of his own wisdom. Then the Major, in his quick, quarter-deck promenade, was witness to the amazed recognition of Sam Gilsland, and of various other private encounters between the two young men, in which Sam’s furtive salutation of respect spoke more than words to the sharp eye of the old soldier. How to act upon his suspicions was, however, a more difficult matter than how to pursue them; and if he was right, what then? Sons of gentlemen before now had dropped clandestinely into the green coats of the Rifle Brigade, about whom the Major had given himself no manner of trouble; and he scarcely liked to acknowledge to himself how much that unregarded message lay on his conscience, or how glad he would have been now to have paid a little more attention to it.

However, the time slipped on, and the voyage progressed, while the commanding officer busied himself with these fancies, finding himself strangely unable to dissociate the melancholy young private soldier in his green coat from a certain radiant young huntsman “in pink,” whom his fancy perpetually conjured up before him as the hero of some north-country field, but whom he could not identify by name. The Major even tried the unjustifiable expedient of discovering Roger in some neglect of duty, that he might have a plausible motive for calling him into his judicial presence. But not the most sudden and unlooked-for appearance of his commanding officer could betray the young rifleman into forgetfulness of the necessary salute, and in every other particular his duty was done rigidly and minutely, beyond the chance of censure. This circumstance itself piqued the Major’s curiosity further. Then his interest was aided by the interest of others. Somebody discovered the “superior education” (poor fellow! he himself, in sincere humility, was ready to protest he had none) of the young man, and suggested his employment apart in those regimental matters which required clerking. Strange occupation for the old Squire’s Nimrod! Recognizing that he was not what he seemed, the first impulse of assistance thrust the young huntsman – the child of moor, and fell, and open country – into a little office, and put a pen into the fingers which were much better acquainted with gun and bridle. This odd conclusion of modern philosophy contented the projectors of it mightily, and by no means discontented Roger, who, sick at the heart of his humiliated life, was glad of anything which separated him from his comrades, and gave him at least his own society, if not that of anybody higher; though he knew very well, if no one else did, that his rôle of rifleman was much more natural and congenial to him than the rôle of clerk, of which he knew nothing whatever.

The fact, however, which everybody knows perfectly well, yet few people acknowledge, that all the nameless somethings which distinguish between the lower and the higher – and build most real and palpable, though indescribable, barriers between class and class, do by no means necessarily include education, was not a fact taken into account by the good-natured subaltern who interested himself in Roger’s behalf, while the Major only watched him. So the young man, whose penmanship was not perfection, sat by himself over the regimental business, puzzling his honest brains with accounts which were sometimes overmuch for his arithmetic, yet encouraged by the consciousness that even this irksome business, totally unsuitable for him as it was, was a step of progress. And the Major now and then appearing across his orbit, tempted him with wily questions, to which Roger was impenetrable; and Sam Gilsland, with a grin of satisfaction, tugged his forelock and whispered his conviction that Master Roger would ne’er stand in the ranks when they came to land – which conclusion, however, and the hopes of his subaltern patron to get permanent employment for him of this same description when they reached the end of the journey, were anything but satisfactory to Roger. It began to be rather hard for the young man to keep on the proper respectful terms with this honest subaltern, whom yet he did not choose to confide in. “No!” exclaimed Roger, “I am fit for a soldier, not for a clerk;” and a flush of his old sanguine conviction, that on the field and in actual warfare there must still be paths to distinction, swept across his face and spirit for the moment. The next minute he was once more puzzling over his papers, with his head bent low and his frame thrilling, his emotion and enthusiasm all suppressed; though they would have made a wonderful impression on the young officer who patronized and took care of him, and who was convinced that Musgrave was not a common fellow, and had a story if he would tell it. This, however, was the very last thing in the world which Roger, totally hopeless now of any deliverance, and too proud to accept the pity of men who were no more than his equals, had any mind to do.

Their arrival at the Cape, however, made a wonderful difference in the prospects of the young rifleman. Sir John Armitage’s letter, put into his hands before they landed (for the baronet was correct in his supposition that the “Prince Regent” was of course the slowest sailer on the seas), threw him into a sudden agitation of pride, gratitude, shame, consolation, and perplexity, which it is impossible to describe; in the midst of which paroxysm of mingled emotions he was summoned to the presence of the Major. The Major received him with outstretched hand. “Thought I knew you all along,” said that unagitated functionary; “could not for the life of me recollect where – made up my mind it was a peculiar case – eh? – Sit down and let me hear at once what you mean to do.”

“What I mean to do?” asked Roger, in amazement.

“To be sure – you’ve had your letters, I suppose? This here is a delusion,” said the Major, tapping upon the coarse sleeve of the young man’s uniform; “found it out, haven’t you? – knew it myself all along; meant to interfere when we came to land, whether or no, and inquire about your friends. Here’s old Armitage spared me the trouble; recollect as well as possible the meet with the Tillington hounds – your uncle’s, eh? – and the old boy was extravagant, and left you unprovided for? Never mind! a young fellow of pluck like you can always make his way. Now, here is the question – Are you going home? What are you going to do?”

These questions were easy to ask, but impossible to answer. Roger had scarcely read with comprehension Sir John’s letter, and his mind was in the utmost agitation, divided between his old ideas of entire independence and the uneasy consciousness, of all that his experience had taught him. He scarcely knew how he excused himself from immediate answer, and managed to conclude his audience with the Major. The rest of the day he spent in the most troubled and unsatisfactory deliberations; but a little later, delayed by some accident, a letter from Colonel Sutherland came into his hands. That letter persuaded and soothed the young man like an actual presence; he yielded to its fatherly representations. That voice of honour, simple and absolute, which could not advise any man against his honour – Roger could scarcely explain to himself how it was that his agitation calmed, his heart healed, his hopes rose with all the rebound and elastic force of youth; he no longer felt it necessary to reject the kindness offered him, or to thrust off from himself, as bitter bonds, those kindly ties of obligation to which it was impossible to attach any mean or sordid condition. Why should he be too proud to be aided? But he had no mind to go home and lose that chance of distinction and good service which would be his best thanks to his friends. A few days after, Roger Musgrave had rejoined his regiment as a volunteer, money in his purse, a light heart in his breast, and everybody’s favour and goodwill attending him. He who was the best shot within twenty miles of Tillington was not far behind at Cape Town; and there we leave him for his first enterprise of arms.

CHAPTER XVII

IN the meantime the life of Horace Scarsdale had made progress, according to his own plan, in his new sphere. His uncle, at first annoyed and disturbed by the summary settlement which the young man had made for himself, was perhaps, after all, rather pleased than otherwise to be thus freed from the charge of arranging for one whom he understood so little; and no opposition of friends hindered his establishment in the office of Mr. Pouncet, where the lawyer, half out of admiration for the abilities which speedily developed themselves in his new clerk, and half in tender regard for the suit which he possibly might have to conduct for him, was very gracious to Horace. Everything promised well for the new comer: his prodigious knowledge of the private affairs of everybody in the county, their weaknesses and follies – knowledge acquired, as we have said, from the outdoor servants and humble country tradesmen in the village alehouses, but of which Horace was skilful enough to veil the origin – amazed his employer, who found these gleanings of unexpected knowledge wonderfully useful to him, and could not comprehend how they had been gained. The young man had now an income, small in reality, but to him competent and satisfactory, and sweetened by the consciousness of freedom and of knowing it was all his own. He was eminently cold-blooded, and “superior to impulse” – a man who could calculate everything, and settle his manner of life with an uncompromising firmness; but he was not a stoic. He stepped into all the dissipations of the little country town – stepped, but did not plunge – with an unlovely force, which could command itself, and did not. He was not “led away,” either by society, or youthful spirits, or by that empire of the senses which sometimes overcomes very young men. What he did which was wrong he did with full will and purpose, gratifying his senses without obeying them. He carried his cool head and steady nerves through all the scenes of excitement and debauchery of which Kenlisle was capable – and it had its hidden centre of shame and vice, like every other town – sometimes as an observer, often as a partaker; but he was never “carried away” – never forgot himself – never, by any chance, either in pleasure, or frolic, or vice more piquant than either, ceased to hold himself, Horace Scarsdale, closer and dearer than either sin or pleasure. He was the kind of man to be vicious in contradistinction to being a victim or a slave of vice. He was the man to pass triumphantly through hundreds more innocent than himself, strong in the unspeakable superiority of being able to stop when he found it necessary, and of having at all times that self-control and self-dominion which belongs to cold blood and a thoroughly selfish spirit. Secure in this potent ascendancy of self-regard, Horace could do many things which would have destroyed the reputation of a less cool or more impressionable man. Yet his entry into independent life, and those pleasures hitherto unknown to him – mean and miserable as were the dissipations of the little country town – occupied Horace, though not to the exclusion of his own interests, enough to make him slower than he had intended to be, in his searches after his father’s secret. True, there was no case of Scarsdale versus Scarsdale, or versus any other person, in any of the law reports he could reach, any more than there was in Mr. Pouncet’s brain; and he knew no means at the present moment of entering on his inquiry, and had obtained no clue whatever as to the manner of this secret, or which was the way of finding it out. But he did not chafe under this, as in other circumstances he might have done: for the present he was sufficiently occupied, and not at all discontented with his life.

At the same time, in spite of the deportment which displeased the Colonel, there were some traces of breeding, unconsciously to himself, in the speech and manner of Horace, which gained him acceptance among the people around him. He was not refined nor cultivated, nor accustomed to society; but though his sentiments might be vulgar enough, he himself was not so. His very rudeness was not the rudeness of a Kenlisle townsman; he was ignorant of that extraordinary junction of rural vanity and urban importance, which goes towards the making of the fashionable class of such a place. His father, whom Horace would not have imitated consciously on any account whatever, and who certainly bestowed no pains on his instruction, had notwithstanding known in his day a society and breeding much superior to anything in the little north-country town, and the atmosphere lingered still about Mr. Scarsdale, an imperceptible influence which had affected his son unawares. Then his very position, outcast from society as he had been brought up, gave him a certain superiority over the limited people to whom a local “circle” was the world, and an introduction to some certain house the highest point of ambition. Horace laughed aloud among his new associates at the idea of society in Kenlisle, and smiled to the same import with a silent contempt which was extremely superior and imposing in Mrs. Pouncet’s drawing-room, to which he was speedily admitted, in right of his mysterious “prospects.”

By dint of this contempt for the community in general, which everybody of course understood to bear exception for themselves, and of the singular and mysterious circumstances of his family, which began to be remembered and talked of; by his own arrogant philosophy, which imposed upon the inexperienced youths about him, and the subtle talents to which his employer bore witness, he grew rapidly into an object of interest and curiosity in the little town. No one could tell what sudden eminence he might spring into, upon some sudden discovery; nobody knew anything of him – no one was admitted to his confidence; he was the inscrutable personage of the place, and left the fullest ground for fancy, which, in the form of gossip, occupied itself mightily about the singular young man. All this involuntary homage was incense to Horace; he sneered at it, yet it pleased him. He was elated to find himself a person of importance, though he despised the community which honoured him; and between the honours of the little Kenlisle society, the pleasures deep down below the surface, which gave a black side to the humanity of even that secluded place, and the new sense of freedom, solitude, and self-government in this new life – the whole put together effaced from his mind for the time all that eagerness for his father’s secret which had preyed upon him when his life was idle and unoccupied, and when he sat by that father’s table every day. He had no responsibilities, no “ties,” and no heart to feel the want of affection. He abandoned himself, so far as he could abandon that self which was the only thing he never forgot, to all his new enjoyments. He was still young, absolute, and highflying, though his youth was neither innocent nor lovely; he forgot his deeply-laid projects for the moment, and stood still on his way, contenting himself with an importance, a mysterious superiority, a license of pleasure unknown to him before.

He was not an experienced schemer, bent upon the success of his plans, and deaf to the voices of the charmers. He was young, and, according to his fashion, he stood still and forgot his object in the pastimes of his youth.

CHAPTER XVIII

THIS state of things went on for a longer time than Horace himself was aware of. He had no correspondence with Marchmain, nor indeed with any one. For though he wrote once to Colonel Sutherland, he had no present motive sufficient to keep up a correspondence with his uncle; and nearly a year had passed over his head before he recollected this unrecorded passage of time. At the end of this period, however, business brought a visitor to Kenlisle, and to Mr. Pouncet’s office, who was destined to have a most serious part in Horace Scarsdale’s future life.

This was Mr. Julius Stenhouse, the principal solicitor of an important county town in Yorkshire – a man who had been bred in Mr. Pouncet’s office, had suddenly, to everybody’s amazement, become his partner, and who, as suddenly, a few years after had left Kenlisle for his present residence. These events had all happened before Horace had any cognizance of the news of the district, and were consequently unknown to him until Mr. Stenhouse appeared. The stranger was a man of about fifty, with what people called an “extremely open manner,” and a frank wide smile, which betrayed two rows of the soundest teeth in the world, and gave a favourable impression to most people who had the honour of making Mr. Stenhouse’s acquaintance. This prepossession, however, as might be ascertained on inquiry, was not apt to last – everybody liked, at first sight, the candid lawyer; but he had few friends. Unlike the usual wont of a country town, nobody appeared anxious to claim the recognition of the new arrival. Far from being overwhelmed with hospitality, Mr. Pouncet had so much difficulty in making up a tolerable number of people to meet him at the one little dinner-party given in his honour, that Horace Scarsdale, for the first time, though he had long assisted at Mrs. Pouncet’s “evenings,” had the distinguished honour of an invitation.

Before this time, however, various circumstances had concurred to attract the attention of Horace towards Mr. Stenhouse. The extreme difference between his manners and his reputation, the mixture of repugnance and respect with which Mr. Pouncet treated him, the great reluctance which he showed to enter upon any private business with his visitor, and the mystery of the former partnership which had existed between them, roused the young man’s curiosity. Altogether, these new circumstances brought Horace to himself; he remembered that he was still only in an inferior position, with no avenue open as yet to fortune or importance. Running over everything in his mind, he perceived that he stood farther than ever from his father’s secret, and that no other means of advancing himself had as yet appeared; and with a certain instinctive and sympathetic attraction, his thoughts turned to Mr. Stenhouse. He bestowed his best attention upon him on every opportunity – he sought all the information he could procure about him, and about the connection subsisting between him and Mr. Pouncet. It appeared they were joint-proprietors of some coal-mines in the neighbourhood. What might a couple of attorneys have to do with coal-pits? Horace scented a mystery afar off, with an instinctive gratification. Did the mystery lie here? – and what was its importance, could it be found out?

Without knowing anything whatever on the subject, except the sole fact that Pouncet and Stenhouse were partners in this valuable piece of property, Horace set out very early one spring morning to inspect the ground, and see if anything could be discovered on the subject. It was, as it happened, the morning of the day on which he was to dine at Mr. Pouncet’s. Horace had been late, very late, the previous night. This early walk was of two uses – it restored his unsusceptible nerves to the iron condition which was natural to them, and it gave him a chance of finding out in his old fashion anything that there might be to find out. Horace neither knew the extent nor the value of the land possessed by Messrs. Pouncet and Stenhouse: he knew they drew very considerable revenues from it, but did not know how they had acquired it, nor from whom. He pushed briskly along the long country road, winding downwards to a lower level than that of Kenlisle, where once more the hawthorn hedges were greening, and the primrose-tufts unfolding at their feet.

The country looked cheerful and fresh in the early morning, with its few clumps of early trees here and there, in the tender glory of their buds, diversifying the deeper green of the fields. The smoke rose from the cottages, and the labouring men came trudging out from their doors, greeting one another as they passed with remarks upon the weather. By-and-by he came in sight of the village, with its irregular line of thatched and red-tiled houses, with the one blue-slated roof rising over them, which marked the place where an enterprising publican had swung his “Red Lion,” in well-justified dependence upon the “pitmen’s drouth.” Beyond, several tall shafts here and there scattered over the country gave note of the presence of the pits and their necessary machinery. Horace slackened his pace, and went sauntering through the village, keeping a wary eye around him. He had not gone very far when he perceived an old man limping out of a miserable little house near the end of the village, with a poor little cripple of a boy limping after him, in the direction of the coal-fields. Their lamps and the implements they carried pointed out clearly enough their occupation; and a certain dissatisfied, discontented look in the old man’s face made him a likely subject for Horace, who quickened his steps immediately to overtake the wayfarers. It required no great exercise of speed. The querulous, complaining jog with which the old man and his shadow went unsteadily across the sunshine, told its own tale – the very miner’s lamp, swinging from his finger by its iron ring, swung disconsolately, and with a grumble and crack, complaining audibly of the labour, which, to say the truth, was sufficiently unsuitable for the two who trudged along together, the crippled childhood and tottering age, to whose weakness belonged a milder fate. The old man’s face was contracted and small with age – the nose and chin drawn together, the cheeks still ruddy from a life of health, puckered up with wrinkles, and the very skull apparently diminished in size from the efforts of time. On he went, with his feeble limbs and stooping shoulders, the “Davy” suspended from his bony old fingers, and a complaint in every footstep, with his shadow all bent and crumpled up, an extraordinary spectrum moving before him along the sunny road. Horace, who gave him the usual rural salutation of “A fine morning,” received only a half-articulate groan in reply. The old pitman was not thinking of the fine morning, the sweet air, or the sunshine; but only of his own troubles and weaknesses, and himself.

“To them as has the strength it’s fine and fine enow,” he mumbled at last; “but an ould man as should be in his commforable bed – eugh-eugh! Needcessity’s sore upon the ould and frail.”

“How is it that you have to get to work so early? – you’re not a new hand,” said Horace, with the rough and plain-spoken curiosity which often does instead of sympathy.