The House on the Moor. Volume 3

“Yours sincerely,“Amelia Stenhouse.”

It was some little time before Horace understood distinctly the contents of this note; for he was a lover, unlovely though his love was, and the first communication moved him into a momentary tumult, in which the words lost their due meaning. When he turned over to the address, however, and the “to be forwarded immediately” caught his eye, he began to rouse himself to a consciousness of the urgent circumstances. Mr. Stenhouse was ill, and wanted to see him. Twenty-four hours ago Horace would have supposed that his employer knew something of his father’s secret. Now he was somewhat indifferent as to any communication which Mr. Stenhouse might have to make. But he was Amelia’s father, and she was likely to be there. He got up accordingly, in the haste which was congenial to his agitated condition, and made his toilette rapidly, but with unusual care. He was pale, and his passion of evil thoughts had left traces upon his face; but the very excitement of those murderous fancies lighted an unusual fire in his eye, and animated the countenance, which, in common times, was not a remarkable face. As he went out he took up the letter he had written to his uncle, and tossed it carelessly into the post as he passed, thinking, with a momentary contemptuous wonder as he did so, of the simple old man who had opened his arms and heart to Susan, and who held open for Horace himself that warm domestic shelter, the home of which the young man felt no need. The contrast was wonderful enough – Uncle Edward and his Susan in their bright, peaceful room at Milnehill, in the evening calm and sweet comfort of that home life; and this young solitary, hurrying by himself through the dark streets of Harliflax, the wind flaring the street-lamps overhead, and a crowd of hurrying phantoms rushing through the darkness of his mind, where the air was wild with the excitement of a storm, and lightning gleams of evil intention threw a fitful illumination. He went on, hurrying through the night, with a careless intuition that he was going to a death-bed. It was nothing to Horace. He was going to serve his own purposes, to see Amelia. His pulse beat high at last, with a rising exhilaration. In the changing tide of his thoughts he began to remember that fortune was secure to him, though not now, and he was going to see the first and only creature who had ever touched his selfish soul into passion. His spirit rose into a thrill of expectation and dark enjoyment. That inarticulate horror lay darkling still among his thoughts, but it did not disturb the rising flush of youthful elevation and hope.

The lawyer’s house was lighted all over, but not with lights which could be mistaken for an illumination of pleasure. Even in so short a time the whole place had acquired a look of painful hurry and anxiety. The daughters and the servants were wandering restlessly up and down the stairs, making ceaseless inquiries, and keeping up a perpetual disturbance at the door of the sick-room, where Mrs. Stenhouse, restored to her due place, by the visitation of trouble, watched by her husband, and where even Amelia was not permitted to enter. Amelia was not very anxious for the privilege, it must be owned. She kept up a perpetual succession of messages, sending her sisters and her maid, and every half hour going herself to ask whether papa was any better? – whether there was any change? – with cheeks paled half by anxiety about her father, and half by fright and apprehension for herself; for the cholera had come to Harliflax, a dreaded visitor, some months before, and still made itself remembered in fatal droppings of poison, here and there a single “case” renewing in the public mind its original panic. The beauty was glad to escape from her fears and the troubled atmosphere of the house, into a burst of hurried conversation with Horace, who was not sentimental enough to require of her any great degree of devotion to her father, and did not find it at all unsuitable to the agitated condition of the household that Amelia turned to himself so readily for occupation in her restless idleness. She swept down upon a little sofa, which was lost and disappeared under the covert of her ample skirts, and shaded her face with her hand, and declared that she was so unhappy she did not know what to do. “For it really is the cholera, Mr. Scarsdale,” said Amelia; “and we may all be gone in a week, for anything any one can tell. Poor papa is so bad, it is dreadful to think of it! And I am sure, ever since I knew what it was, I have been in such a state! If you were to listen now, you could hear my heart beat.”

“I am listening; but my ear is too far off,” said Horace, with bold admiration. “I should like to study that sound at a less distance, if I might – ”

“Oh! Mr. Scarsdale – if I were not so anxious and so agitated, I should be very angry,” said Amelia. “Pray, go away, sir. You are a great deal too bold, you gentlemen. But to think of poor papa: quite well yesterday morning, and to-night – oh dear! oh dear!”

“Perhaps he is not so bad as you suppose,” said Horace.

“He is a great deal worse than anybody supposes,” cried Amelia, with a little sob. “Here, you – Harriet – Emma! Run up this moment, and knock at the door, and ask how dear papa is; whether there is any change. I am so afraid to hear there is any change; the words sound so dreadful – don’t they, Mr. Scarsdale? – and when it is one’s father! Oh! what a long time that child loiters. I must run myself! Wait just a moment, please.”

And Amelia swept away, upsetting a chair in her progress, and almost puffing out one of the candles on the table by the current of air which attended her movements. She came back again a few minutes after, breathless, but walking with great solemnity.

“He is no better – there is no difference, Mr. Scarsdale,” she said, with a great sigh, seating herself with the deepest seriousness, casting down her eyes, and shaking her head. Horace watched her through all this pantomime with glowing eyes. Not that he remarked or commented on the character which thus showed itself: he cared no more for Amelia’s character than he did for her grandmother’s; but from the splendid black hair wreathed round her head, to the little foot which came out from under her wide drapery, and upon which her own downcast eyes were fixed, the young man devoured her with his gaze of bold and selfish passion. He should have her yet, whoever might object: she should belong to him, whether she would or not. That was the pivot of his fancy; and all Amelia’s pretty trickery was nothing to her thorough-going admirer, nor did he even feel himself reminded of his special errand here, or of the suffering man upon whom “as yet” – ominous words – there was no change!

Perhaps neither of the young people knew very well how long Horace remained in that deserted drawing-room, which had so strange an air of agitation to-night upon all its familiar aspects, and which, though nothing was changed, bore somehow so clear an impression of being no longer the centre of interest, but rather a forsaken corner out of the current. After a while, however, the tête-à-tête was rudely interrupted by the staggering entrance of Mr. Stenhouse’s man-of-all-work, carrying in his arms the invalid boy with whom Horace had made private acquaintance on his first visit here.

“Mr. Edmund’s sent for up to master,” said the man, confusedly, as he saw that his young mistress was there. “Beg your pardon, Miss Amelia; but I didn’t know no one was here, and come in to rest – he’s mortal heavy, for all he’s so little,” he continued, as he staggered out again, somewhat dismayed by his blunder. Miss Amelia was not the gentlest of rulers. Little Edmund, meanwhile, clung to his bearer’s shoulder, with his suspicious eyes gleaming large and eager out of his little white child’s face. Edmund was not the person to come and go without a word.

“I say, sir, you!” cried Edmund, “papa’s ill. You’re not to come a-courting, as Stevens says you all do, to-night. I won’t have it —I won’t! I’m papa’s son, and when he’s ill there shan’t be strangers in the house!”

The end of this harangue was lost in the depths of the stairs, where Stevens had borne forth in alarm his dangerous charge. Amelia started, half rose, shook out her great skirts, and turned with graceful condescension to her lover.

“Don’t mind that little savage, Mr. Scarsdale. But really I had quite forgotten that papa asked to see you; this has been such an agitating, anxious day. Pray call Stevens, and make him tell papa that you are here; and please,” she continued, rising up suddenly, and laying her hand on Horace’s arm, “please do let me know what he says to you. Oh, I’m sure it’s about little Edmund – that little wretch is such a pet with papa, and it’s so unfair to us. Will you?” she cried, with animation, making no resistance when Horace took and held her hand. “Will you really? Oh, do, there’s a dear good – oh no, I did not mean that; I meant, there’s a kind friend; now don’t be foolish, Mr. Scarsdale; go up directly to papa.”

“I will, because you tell me,” said Horace; “for your sake – it would be hard to go on any other argument; and when I promise to tell you what he says, promise that you will see me again.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Amelia, hurrying him to the door, with a little fright, adding piquancy to her gratified vanity. She had seen various people “in love,” and was a little indifferent to the manifestations of that youthful delusion; but the eyes of Horace glowed upon her with no commonplace fervour. She was flattered, but she was a little afraid, even though she was not aware what black companion she had in the young man’s dangerous heart.

CHAPTER VII

WITHOUT any awe, or indeed much interest – with the indifference of a man absorbed in his own affairs, and the still more revolting carelessness of one who had begun to play in his dark thoughts with other human lives, and to find them obstacles in his way – Horace Scarsdale entered the sick room of his employer. Mr. Stenhouse lay, huddled among his pillows, in all the exhaustion of his terrible disease, shivering and blue beneath the load of coverings with which his attendants vainly endeavoured to restore vital warmth to his frame. He was not dying yet– he had still force enough to retain the dismal, anxious look into which that malady writhes and puckers the suffering face; but he had reached to that condition of entire occupation with his own pangs, which sometimes happily, sometimes miserably, beguiles the departing soul out of the shrinkings of nature on the verge of death. The appearance of Horace, recalling him from that absorbing consciousness of pain, he perceived with all a sick man’s impatience. He had got free of his thoughts by means of those bodily tortures through which he had just passed – and to feel himself brought back to the more delicate agony of heart and conscience, seemed an infliction of wanton cruelty to the sufferer. He turned aside his chilled and colourless face, and closed his eyes on the unwelcome apparition of the man he had himself desired to see. He did not desire to see him now, nor to return to the anxieties of a living man in contemplation of death. He was no longer at a sufficient distance from that event to be able to contemplate it. Almost in the river, he would rather have forgotten what these dark waters were, and be left at the present moment to himself and his pain.

But as Horace drew close to the bed, a little cry of impatience from the sharp voice of little Edward, who was then being carried downstairs, startled the father. He was still open to the touch of human love and anxiety in that point. He opened his eyes instantly, and made a sign of recognition to the young man standing beside him. “Go away, let them all go – Mary, leave me,” he said faintly; then louder, as Mrs. Stenhouse lingered timidly – “leave me, do you hear; I have something to say to him; go, I tell you, or it will be all the worse for your boy. Scarsdale,” continued the sick man, watching with his anxious eyes his wife’s figure disappearing, “come closer – no one is aware of it but you – sit down here.”

Horace obeyed, bringing his ear near to the wavering voice. He was not sympathetic, and did not pretend it; he listened without a look or a word of pity, and the sufferer’s spirit rallied into its wonted expression at the sight of his cold, business face.

“I’ve left everything to Edmund, if he lives,” gasped the dying man; “here, Scarsdale, are you sure you hear me? – and about that young Musgrave’s concern, you know. I don’t want the boy to hear of it; eh, do you understand? – I had nothing to do preserving Musgrave’s interests; do you hear me? – the boy is not to know.”

“I shall not tell him,” said Horace, briefly.

“Tell him! – that is not enough. He is not to know. Do you hear me? The child’s a Quixote. How can I tell what he would do? He is not to hear of it! And, Scarsdale,” continued the sufferer, almost piteously, in a tone of deprecating cunning, “there’s Amelia; she has a little fortune, and if she’ll have you, I shan’t object.”

“No,” said Horace, looking with his eyes still fiery in their excitement, and all the superiority and contempt of youth and health upon the dying man, whose will, twenty-four hours hence, would be impotent as the grave could make it. “No!” There was almost a smile upon his lip; it was cruel life exulting over the vain intentions of the dying. A few hours, and what would his objection signify? Undisguised and manifest, that thought rung in the mocking tone of the young man’s reply, and looked out of his uncompassionating face.

Perhaps the congenial spirit lying there felt it! – and knew his own impotence. He threw out his shivering hands in a gesture which might be appeal – which might be passion – which was actual physical agony, a paroxysm of returning pain. The wife and her assistants came back, and Horace stood aside from the bed, without the sufferer being aware of it. “Remember, Scarsdale, the boy is not to know!” he shouted out in the height of his sufferings. Horace remained in the room with a morbid curiosity strange to himself, though his eager thoughts were with Amelia below. He was not aware that few men depart in a paroxysm of pain, and he stood there with a strange excitement, almost thinking that, for the first time, he should see a fellow-creature die.

When those pangs subsided the sufferer was nearer the last act of life; a merciful haze and dimness of exhaustion had begun to creep over him. Through this mist he spoke faintly out of his wandering mind – words only half audible, only half intelligible. One of these murmuring sounds was over and over repeated, until the watchers recognized it: – “In its mother’s milk – in its mother’s milk; seethe a kid in its mother’s milk; Scarsdale!” said the dying man, opening his dim eyes with a sudden renewal of energy – “isn’t it in the Bible so? – ah! the Bible, boy – you know!”

“Yes, Julius dear – yes!” cried poor weeping Mrs. Stenhouse, eager, poor soul, to thrust into his mind, even then, more hopeful words – “and a great deal more, and better, about the forgiveness of sins. Oh, Julius! let me read – you can hear me yet!”

“Oh! you are there, are you?” said Stenhouse, raising his eyes with an effort. “I thought it was Scarsdale – ha! – he’s off to Amelia, is he? to court the girl when her father’s dying? But I tell you, Scarsdale,” cried the sufferer, raising his sharp voice high and ghastly in the stillness, “the boy is not to know!”

These were the last words Horace heard from the man who had crossed so actively, yet so briefly, the current of his life. Warned by the unspoken appeal of Mrs. Stenhouse, and feeling that even decorum forbade him to remain, he left the room; nor had even he hardihood sufficient to linger long with Amelia, who awaited his return in the drawing-room. He told her a rapidly-invented fable as to what Mr. Stenhouse had said to him, and left the house almost immediately. His regard for ordinary proprieties was small enough, certainly; but he was not quite bold enough to come from the father’s death-bed and make violent love to the daughter below. He postponed it for that night.

This episode turned the young man’s thoughts back a little into a more familiar and less tragic current; and now that the lawyer’s secret threatened to become known, Horace bethought himself of one way still remaining by which he might have, even although nothing happened at Marchmain, some benefit by his grandfather’s will. That merciless document precluded the heir from availing himself of the aid of money-lenders, under penalty of losing the inheritance; and it was, accordingly, vain to think of availing himself of the common resource of impatient heirs. Mr. Stenhouse dead, and Roger Musgrave’s friends aroused to the first inklings of a discovery, Mr. Pouncet’s character and credit, and no inconsiderable portion of his wealth, lay absolutely in the power of Horace. If he could exercise that power so as to procure such support as he felt himself entitled to from the unwilling lawyer, it might save him yet from the deadly, secret, and unexpressed impulse in his hidden mind. Something might happen at Marchmain, without any agency of the unnatural son. Was it a good angel which put the lesser sin of deceit before those covetous eyes, to guard them from the bigger sin which loomed darkly within their vision? Heaven knows: but, at least, the phantoms crowding round his bed that night were less hideous than the latent horror which still cowered darkling in a corner of his heart.

CHAPTER VIII

“ARMITAGE is the most indolent man I know, Susan,” said Colonel Sutherland; “here is his letter, my love, saying he has written to his attorney to make inquiries. And yet, after all, they’re sharp these country lawyers – perhaps it was the best thing he could do; and here’s – eh? – why, a letter from Horace! Come now, that’s satisfactory – let us see what the boy says.”

“What does he say, uncle?” asked Susan, when, after a considerable pause, and two readings of the letter, Uncle Edward carefully refolded it, laid it down by his own plate, and went on with his breakfast without another word.

“Oh, hum – nothing particular, my dear child – nothing of any importance,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a troubled face, opening the letter again and glancing over it; as if he might perhaps find out somewhere a key to the moral cipher in which it was written. He was slow to take offence; but its tone affronted the old soldier. There was a shade of mockery, visible even to Uncle Edward’s earnest, unsuspicious eyes; and whether it was true, and Musgrave was to blame – or false, and a disgrace to Horace, there was equal pain in the alternative; in either case it was not for Susan’s eyes.

“Uncle, has Horace been doing something very wrong?” asked Susan, after a little interval, with the moisture rising to her eyes. Colonel Sutherland made a little use of his infirmity at that moment. He bent his deaf ear towards her, asking, “What, my love?” as if he had neither heard nor could guess what her question was; and before she could speak again, made an exclamation of surprise over another letter, the postmark of which he was regarding curiously. “London! why, Susan, Musgrave has come home!”

And before the Colonel could assure himself of this unexpected event by a glance over his letter, a commotion was heard outside; Patchey intent upon showing into the drawing-room somebody who was equally intent upon finding his way direct to the Colonel’s presence.

“Why, man, I have come all the way from the Cape to see him,” burst at last upon their hearing, in a manly voice, somewhat loud, and full of exhilaration, from the hall. “I tell you, he’ll give me some breakfast; the kindest friend I ever had in the world, do you think he’ll refuse to see me?”

“The Colonel’s a kind friend to many a person, but it’s agin his principle to be disturbed at his meals,” said Patchey, obstinately. “I’ll tell him whenever the bell rings, but in the meanwhile you’ll walk in here.”

And Patchey’s pertinacity would have gained the day but for the interference of Colonel Sutherland, who got up hastily from the breakfast-table, with an exclamation very rare on his gentle lips, and threw open as wide as it would go the door of the dining-room. There outside stood Roger Musgrave, brown and manful, in his dark Rifleman’s uniform, and restored to such a degree of self-confidence and social courage as became a man who had been living among his equals for a couple of years, who had earned his place, and made himself a modest degree of fame. He grasped the Colonel’s hands in his own with an exuberant satisfaction, which the poor Squire of Tillington’s penniless heir would not have ventured upon. He came in boldly, overflowing with honest gratitude and pleasure, secure of finding his place, and delighted to be “at home” once more. But Roger was suddenly interrupted, and struck dumb in his jubilant and rapid account of having been sent home with dispatches, and arriving suddenly without due time to warn his old friend of his approach. Susan rose from her place by the breakfast-table, and the young man lost his head and his tongue in an instant, scared by that formidable apparition. After a minute’s interval, turning very red, and stammering out, “Miss Scarsdale?” Roger shyly approached the unlooked-for mistress of the house; while Susan on her part, with an equal blush, and a faltering exclamation of “Mr. Musgrave!” made an imperceptible step of advance, and gave her hand to Uncle Edward’s “young friend.” Uncle Edward himself, much amazed and amused by this pantomime, looked on till it was over. Then he covered the embarrassment of the young people in his own fashion by innumerable questions, which Roger was only too glad to answer; but Susan, mortified and troubled, and finding herself sadly in the way, could not but perceive that her presence was an effectual damp upon the stranger’s high spirits, and had subdued him in the strangest fashion. How could it be? Susan took the earliest opportunity of leaving the room, dismayed at the influence she had unconsciously exercised, and more than half disposed to run upstairs to her own room and have a good cry over it. She had imagined to herself, perhaps, more than once, what might happen at this very arrival – but her thoughts had never pictured any such scene as this.

When Susan had left the room, however, Roger’s silence and diffidence, instead of lessening, rather increased; he followed her to the door with his eyes, and made a confused pause; and then he burst into the very middle of a little lecture upon strategy which the good Colonel was delivering to him, with the very inconsequent and illogical remark: —

“I was quite taken by surprise to see Miss Scarsdale here.”

“Why,” said Colonel Sutherland, swallowing the affront to his own eloquence, “you knew Susan was my niece, did you not?”

“I – I suppose I had forgotten,” said Roger, with another blush over this inexcusable fib. And as the young man seemed disposed to make another pause after this false statement, and to fall into a state of reverie, the Colonel bethought himself of applying the sharp spur of Horace’s letter to bring him to himself.

“I would have delayed for a little speaking to you so gravely,” said Uncle Edward; “but as we are talking of Miss Scarsdale, it is just as well to enter upon the subject at once. Now, remember, I don’t want to steal into your confidence, or urge you to tell anything you may wish to conceal; but let me know this much, Musgrave. When you left Tillington did you leave anything behind you; any foolish connexion, any boyish entanglement, anything you wished to conceal? My dear boy, I don’t want to make myself your judge – such things have been, and have been repented of – only tell me, ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

“Foolish connexion! – boyish entanglement!” repeated Roger, in amazement; “I know you don’t mean to insult me, Colonel Sutherland – what do you mean?”

The old man looked into the young man’s face, bending towards him with that stoop of benign weakness – the touch of physical imperfection, which put a tender climax to his fatherly words and ways.

“I will tell you what I mean by-and-bye; but in the meantime say to me in so many words – ‘It is not true.’”

“It is not true!” said Roger, with emphasis.

The young man was certainly roused now – he sat quite upright, carrying high his soldierly head, not defiant as he might have been at Tillington, perfectly grave, conscious of nothing which slander could build upon. The old soldier’s eyes glistened over him – he was proud of his volunteer.