The House on the Moor. Volume 3

When Horace’s wandering, feeble glance fell upon his uncle, a great cloud and shadow came over him even in the calm of his weakness. Everything came back to him in that first glimpse of Uncle Edward’s face. He shut his eyes tightly again, with a longing to return to his insensibility, and gave a groan out of the depths of his miserable heart. He was cured – his fever was over: he had come back to life, with its agonies worse than fever. The very sound of that groan gave signal of recovery to the watcher by his side.

“You must keep quiet, Horace; you are better: you will soon be well, if you take care. And here is something you are to take,” said the Colonel. “Hush! compose yourself, you live; and God is in heaven, and all will be well!”

But Horace did not answer; he kept his eyes shut for another bitter moment, gathering up the threads of his scattered recollections. Then the last incident of all returned to him – he was innocent! – so he said to himself, with a natural human casuistry; innocent! though it was in spite of himself. Innocent! at least, not guilty by the actual event. Then he opened his eyes and took the medicine, which his uncle had poured out for him. He was the same Horace as of old – subdued, but not changed; and in the sudden recollection that he was not a parricide, a rush of his old self-assertion returned to his awakening mind, and of his old sullen look to his face. But he did not say anything for the moment – he sunk back again upon his pillows, weak to extremity; almost the only sign of life in him being that uneasy guiltiness in his heart, which even the discovery, which had released him from the weight of murder, could only salve, and could not cure.

But he was uneasy, too, with the Colonel’s grave, grieved, conscious face beside him – he could not help saying something. He remembered so distinctly now the study and all its familiar objects, the medicine-chest standing on the table; somebody must have brought him from that place where he lost consciousness, to this where he regained it. “Uncle, who found me?” he said, shutting his eyes once more, unable to bear that grieved look of knowledge which was in the Colonel’s eyes.

“I found you, Horace,” said Colonel Sutherland, quietly; “let your mind be quite at rest, no one else came near us. I put away the little medicine-chest,” he continued, with hesitation, “and the paper which dropped out of it. They are locked up in one of your drawers; no one has either seen or touched them but myself.”

Then there was a long, conscious pause; neither the sick man nor the watcher spoke – the one contending with his natural sullen pride, which would confess no sin, and the horror within him of knowing that so far as intention and purpose went he was as guilty as any actual murderer; the other grieved, silent, afraid, anxious not to hear that some diabolical purpose had been nursed in that young head, yet sadly fearing that, whether confessed or not, the wickedness had been there.

“Uncle,” said Horace, at last, the words bursting from his lips in an eager paroxysm of defence against himself, and vindication to his own conscience – “Uncle, I did him no harm.”

“I am very thankful to hear it, Horace,” said the Colonel, very gravely; then he made another pause – “unless it will relieve your mind tell me no more,” he said, quickly – “only, Horace, remember, you have been very near the grave; perhaps you know yourself that you have been near something more terrible than the grave; you should pause and think now while you can; for every evil intention, as well as for every act of sin, there is pardon with God, for Jesus’ sake.”

He said it simply, but with a solemn, almost judicial gravity. He could not help guessing what had been going on in the troubled spirit beside him, of which he knew so little; he could not help shuddering at the thought of the horrible guilt from which, by accident, as it appeared, and interposition of God, the young man had been unwittingly preserved. God help him! – so young, so wretched, to drag the hideous burden of that remembrance through all his days of life! The deepest pity, even amid his horror, struck the old soldier’s noble, innocent heart. He could not comprehend the guilt – but he felt the remorse, with a compassion that was half divine.

Horace made no reply – he shrank, in spite of himself, as though he would have crept away morally out of his uncle’s presence; for the instant the young man realized, with a desperate force of conviction, the “gulf fixed” between heaven and hell which none can pass over; he felt it in his guilt a thousand times more deeply than the pure heart beside him did, in its tender depths of pity. He lay still in his weakness, with a mortified consciousness of humiliation and inferiority, insufferable to his arrogant spirit. Then it occurred to him that there was still one thing, by which he might drag himself up fictitiously to that higher elevation, which he recognized vaguely in his downfall, and envied, though he knew it not. He turned once more towards the watcher by his bed with a sudden movement, which was so quick as to give him pain.

“You think very badly of me,” he said, hastily; “but I have got something to tell you – something to tell Roger Musgrave, which will remedy one evil at least, and change, more than you can suppose, his position in the world.”

The Colonel waved his hand, with the action of a man who knows what another is about to say. “My dear boy,” he said, compassionately, “I am grieved that you cannot have the satisfaction of doing, at least, this piece of justice – but you are too late. The Kenlisle attorney, hearing of your connection with Musgrave, and of some promise you had made him when you heard of your father’s illness, sent to beg an interview with Roger and Sir John, and confessed the whole transaction. That matter has been arranged while you have been ill.”

“Do you mean Pouncet? – Pouncet has consented to his own ruin?” cried Horace, with a pang of disappointment. He had still been reckoning on this as a moral compensation which it would always be in his power to make, to balance more or less his personal guilt.

“Not to his ruin – they have made terms,” said the Colonel. “He restores the property, and pays something to Roger besides, and there will be no prosecution or exposure. He loses Armitage’s confidence, of course, and is no longer his man of business; but he preserves his character, and eases his conscience. All that is arranged. My dear Horace, you are extremely weak: try to compose yourself, and forget these troublesome affairs. If you can, for your health’s sake, endeavour to sleep.”

Horace turned his face sullenly towards the wall, and said no more. Perhaps this sharp pang of unexpected mortification and disappointment eased him of his heavier load. He set his teeth as he turned away and relieved himself from the sight of Uncle Edward’s compassionate and kind face: everything humiliated him in that self-importance which was so strong a power within him. He once had it in his power to be at least Roger Musgrave’s magnanimous deliverer, and to expose the fraud which had left the youth penniless; but he had lost his opportunity, and even that moral make-up for his other grievous guilt had slid away from him. He lay here powerless, known to one man, at least, in all the blackness of his evil intention, and to more than one man, stood revealed and visible, a willing accomplice in a fraud, left in the lurch by the principal sinner. His disappointment – his failure – the humiliation of his guilt – sickened him to the heart; he closed his eyes upon the light, disgusted and miserable. He had his reward!

CHAPTER XXVI

“AND so, hinny, you’re to be married, and set up in a house of your own; and, ’stead o’ solitude, and a wild moor, and ould Peggy, have all the county wishing ye joy. Eh, weel! I’m an ould fool, and nowght else: I think upon the mistress, and I canna forbear. The bride goes forth with joy and blessing, but the Lord alone He knows what will come to pass thereupon.”

And Peggy, who was standing in the old dining-room – that room so strangely thrilled through, warmed, and brightened with the new life – examining one after another the pretty things which already began to be prepared for Susan’s marriage, suddenly sunk down on a chair by the table, and covered her face, and sobbed aloud.

“But, Peggy, you should have a cheerful word for me,” said Susan – “we have had so much trouble. Things will never happen with me as they did with mamma. For, Peggy,” added the bride, with her honest eyes smiling frank and sure out of the warm blush that rose over her face, “we will trust and help each other through every trouble. Trouble never can be very heavy when there are two of us to bear the load.”

“The Lord knows, and He alone,” said the faithful servant of the house. “I’m ould, and my heart trembles; the like of me cannot see, Miss Susan. I look upon the bride-white, and there’s shadows o’ shrouds and widow’s mourning a’ covered ower and hidden in the bonnie folds. The Lord preserve ye from all ill and trouble that is beyond the strength of man! – and grant to me to depart and be at rest, before ever cloud or shadow comes upon the light o’ my ould eyes!”

Susan was not discouraged in her own undiscourageable hope and happiness even by these melancholy words; but she was grieved for Peggy, who, broken and nervous with her long solitude, was no longer like herself. She came round to the old woman’s side, and put her young arms, which had clung there so often, round Peggy’s neck.

“Do you know Horace is going to give me a fortune, Peggy?” said Susan. “Horace is different, don’t you think, since he has been ill? I thought it would have turned his head to be so rich – but he does not seem to care; he is so much quieter, older than he used to be. I did not suppose he would have felt so much for poor papa.”

Peggy said nothing – but she gave an emphatic shake of her head, and, diverted into a less pathetic channel of thought, dried her eyes. Peggy’s sentiments were changed. It was the younger generation who were now in the ascendant, and Peggy’s magnanimous instincts, falling to the weaker side, turned all her sympathy towards the dead.

“But he is changed, though you shake your head,” said Susan; “and I am to have a fortune – me! Everything is Uncle Edward’s doing. How I wondered when he brought me these India muslins, Peggy – do you remember? I thought you were all crazy when you spoke of me wearing them – and now look here; and I suppose,” said Susan, with womanful satisfaction and vanity, “we shall see the best people in the county at the Grange.”

“And only your right, too,” said Peggy, by way of interjection; for Susan, having fully launched herself, was quite qualified to keep up the discourse.

“Especially when Amelia Stenhouse marries Sir John. I wonder how she can marry that odd old man; and so pretty as she is too – don’t you think she is very, very pretty, Peggy?”

“‘Handsome is as handsome does,’” said Susan’s oracle, with great solemnity.

“Oh, to be sure; but one likes to be handsome all the same,” said Susan. “I don’t say I like Amelia out-and-out. I suppose she’s too grand and too accomplished, and too clever, and that sort of thing, for me; but she’s very nice to look at, Peggy; and when she marries Sir John – ”

“When who marries Sir John?” asked Horace, abruptly. He had just come rather feebly into the room – convalescent, but not strong, his mind working out all the vigour which should have gone to the strengthening of his body. That he was changed was certain, but it was doubtful whether the change was so entirely for the better as his sister charitably supposed. He did not look much more amiable at the present moment; he came in with the sullen shade of old upon his face. He had heard part of Susan’s last words; but she did not know what a furious passion awoke in his heart when he asked, “Who marries Sir John?”

“Oh, it is Amelia, Horace – Amelia, Roger’s half sister; did not you know about it?” said Susan, innocently – “you, too, who have known them longer than I; it was settled last week.”

“Oh, was it?” said Horace, bitterly. He went out of the room the next moment, flinging down, half unawares, half consciously, a heap of his sister’s wedding preparations. It was natural that the sight of such things at such a time should gall the young man; the next moment they heard him up in his own room, making a great commotion there. Susan was a little startled and frightened in spite of herself. Horace took strange fancies now and then. He was rich now, and could do as he pleased. Sometimes Susan, all unaware of the canker there, imagined that his mind was a little affected. She could not imagine what freak possessed him now.

A little while after Horace came downstairs, dressed more carefully than she had yet seen him. He told her he was going away “to town” – which Susan supposed to mean to Kenlisle – and should walk to the nearest roadside public-house, where they kept a gig. He would send for his things, but might not see her for some time again, and so he held out a hot, trembling hand, and bade her “Good-bye – good-bye!” Susan tried some remonstrances, but he hurried out in the midst of them, and strode away across the moor in the bright August sunshine. His sister stood at the window watching him, as she had stood many a day before, till his figure disappeared among the distant saplings and dark gorse bushes. It was the last time that Horace Scarsdale trod the familiar heather of Lanwoth Moor.

That evening Roger’s mother came with him when he came on his daily visit to his affianced bride. They knew she was alone, and guessed she must be anxious. Horace had been at the Grange, where he saw only Amelia, and went away again in half-an-hour, leaving even that stout-hearted beauty, who was not too sensitive, fainting and overpowered by the violence of his farewell. That was the last any of the party saw of Horace for many a year. The marriages took place in due time, and all went well with the new households; but the unhappy heir of the Scarsdales went out and was lost in the world, and its great waves concealed him and his pleasures and wretchedness. He had put himself out of the reach of common blessings and sorrows, the dews and sunshine, of God’s every-day world. He had his fortune, his failure, his dead burden of guilt, to begin his life withal; and so carried out among men, and the bustle and commotion of the world, a second bitter chapter of that hereditary curse, which had made a recluse and wretched misanthrope of his father, and a dismal prison and place of bondage of the solitary house upon the moor.

THE END