The House on the Moor. Volume 3

“Roger shall come home directly,” said the little despot, waving aloft in his hand these two epistles. “I’ll give him half of all my money, mamma. He shan’t go for a soldier any more; and I’ll find out if anybody wants to do him any harm, and punish them, I will! Look here; it’s something about Roger, but I don’t quite know every word what it means. You can’t tell any more than me. I say, mamma, let’s have Scarsdale here, and ask him.”

“What is it, love?” asked Mrs. Scarsdale, wiping her eyes.

“I wish you’d mind what one says,” cried the impatient little invalid. “I told you I didn’t know quite all it means, neither could you if you was to try. Mamma, ring the bell and send for Scarsdale – he’s got no master now but you and me; send and tell him I want him, and he’s to come directly. Mamma, do you hear?”

And when Mrs. Stenhouse had glanced over the letter, which she did understand rather better than Edmund after all, she thought the boy’s suggestion wise. She had not the smallest gleam of discrimination in respect to character, and to be Colonel Sutherland’s nephew was enough to give her a blind confidence in Horace; and as to the possibility of acting for herself, that did not enter into the poor woman’s head. She sent for Scarsdale accordingly, not in little Edmund’s imperative mood, but with a pleading message that Mr. Scarsdale would be so very good as to come to her as soon as it was quite convenient for him, as she was so anxious to consult him about a letter she had received. Her heart beat higher in her breast that day with a deeper individual throb than it had known for many a previous year; a little flutter of tumultuous independence was in her mind; she would receive Roger into her own house unreproved; she seemed on the very eve of finding out something which might be of service to that cherished but unknown son; and her whole nature was stimulated by these unaccustomed hopes.

CHAPTER XI

IN Mr. Stenhouse’s office, where affairs were being wound up, Horace Scarsdale held his clerk’s place in greater personal discomfiture than he had ever previously known. Mr. Stenhouse’s executors knew of nothing extraordinary in the position of this young man. His mysterious prospects were totally unknown to them, and he had no secret to hold over their heads and enforce his claims withal. To them he was only the newest and least acquainted of the lawyer’s clerks, and nobody cared for his black looks and assumptions of superiority. He remained reluctantly at his desk, because he could not afford, in present circumstances, to sacrifice the salary which would shortly be paid to him, nor could he make up his mind, in spite of all the dark excitements which distracted him – the fascination of enmity and evil purpose which bound him to Marchmain, and the covetous and tyrannous impulse which placed so plainly before his eyes his power over Mr. Pouncet – to leave the place which contained Amelia, and where alone he had any likelihood of seeing her. After their last interview the lover was daring enough to have stood upon small punctilio at the next meeting. But Mrs. Stenhouse’s door was still decorously closed, and Stevens, at the present moment much more disposed to take Master Edmund for the tyrant of the house than Miss Amelia, was inexorable, and gave no admission. Mrs. Stenhouse’s message accordingly found the young man in a propitious mood. He made haste to obey it, extremely indifferent as to the subject of the consultation, but deeply excited with the more personal emotion of once more finding himself under the same roof with the lady of his love.

Mrs. Stenhouse would willingly have seen him alone, feeling instinctively that little Edmund’s interference was not quite expedient here; but she had submitted her inclinations too long to that small autocrat to have any chance of freedom now. It was accordingly into Edmund’s parlour that Horace was shown. There was still a fire warming into a state of semi-suffocation that invalid chamber; and there sat the child, consciously regnant and despotic, with his eager eyes blazing out of his sharp little face, and the hectic flush upon his cheeks. The mother watching always, to whom Edmund’s illness had become quite a domestic institution, a thing which should last for ever, saw no change save of improvement; but the cold stranger’s eye saw differently. The little blade was wearing out its tiny sheath – all this excitement was too much for the feeble little body; and as distinctly as the doctor, highly skilled and richly feed, who should come down from town after awhile to pronounce the child’s death-sentence, Horace perceived that before he could do one of the splendid things he purposed, little Edmund, like a shadow, should have faded away.

But Horace thought no more of Edmund when he cast his eyes upon the letter which Mrs. Stenhouse hurriedly and with agitation put into his hand: —

“Dear Stenhouse – I wish fervently I had broken my leg or taken a fever on that unlucky day when I was persuaded into that Tinwold business of the coal-pits. I have never had a moment’s repose or comfort since, and from the day that young Scarsdale poked his inquisitive nose into the business everything vexatious in life has clustered about this unfortunate affair. I do not deny that it has paid very well as a speculation, but the profit twice over would not have paid for the annoyance which first and last it has caused to me. This morning I have a letter from Sir John Armitage. It has oozed out, somehow or other, through young Scarsdale doubtless, that there is an old man somewhere in the district who knows some secret worth telling about young Musgrave. It is true, they have not an idea what it is, but Sir John charges me with the duty of searching it out and ‘doing the boy justice.’ Armitage of Armitage Park, my father’s clients before mine – one of the oldest families in the county! I know his affairs better than he does himself; and he dares not cut down a tree on his estate without consulting me; yet he breaks forth upon me as peremptory and absolute about this miserable business as if I could set it all square in a day. It is all very well for you, you are out of the way; you are never appealed to; the Musgraves never cross your path; but I am aggravated entirely out of patience. Would to heaven that I had never heard of your scientific friend and his discoveries! Such an accident is misery to a man of character, and if ever man was thrust and jostled into temptation that man was me.

“My temper has been so tried with this unhappy business, that I scarcely know what I am doing. Advise me how to answer Armitage, and send me Scarsdale if you can spare him. I want some assistance besides my own head and hands.

“O. Pouncet.”

“Now, I say, mamma,” cried Edmund, in a loud whisper, “don’t give him time to make up a story – ask him what it means. Oh, Mr. Scarsdale, we’re very surprised about that, we are. It’s something about Roger – what is it?”

Horace was taken by surprise. Looking up, he caught the child’s sharp glance, and the imploring look of the mother, both fixed upon him; and he was disconcerted. Not for the last injunction of Edmund’s father – not because that worldly man, without repenting of the wrong, would have suffered another death rather than allow this secret to be known to his child. Horace had given no promise, and thought no more of that last adjuration; but what was to become of the secret if he shared it with a woman and a child? – the woman Roger’s mother, the child his earnest champion. And they already knew so much of it, without any aid of his. He faced round upon them, ready to defend this fancied talisman of his power.

“What reason have you to suppose that I was in Mr. Stenhouse’s secrets?” said Horace. “I had not been a fortnight in his employment. I had not known him above a month when he died. Was he likely to be confidential with me? Surely you know him better than to imagine anything so foolish.”

“Ah, Mr. Scarsdale,” cried Mrs. Stenhouse, trembling all over, and with tears which almost choked her – tears of anxiety for her son, and distress for her husband, mingled yet antagonistic; “he sent for you on his deathbed; there was something – something – God forgive me if I disregard this last wish of his! but it is for my Roger’s sake – there was something that you were not to tell the boy.”

“And is that the argument you use – you his widow!” cried Horace, with a sneer; “to induce me, a man of honour, just a week after, to tell the boy? That may be a woman’s argument, Mrs. Stenhouse, but – ”

“You hold your tongue, Scarsdale!” shouted little Edmund; “nobody shan’t bully mamma. And I should like to know why I’m not to be told – me! I’m my father’s heir, and I ought to know everything; and if you think me a child, it’s because you don’t know. Look here! I’m going to give half my money to Roger; but you shall marry Amelia, and have the half of my share, if you tell me honest what it is.”

Horace rose up with a laugh of ridicule at the child’s folly, but before he could reach the door Mrs. Stenhouse came before him. “There’s some sad mystery here,” she said, wringing her hands; “Edmund was not to know I heard him say; and then about seething the kid in his mother’s milk. It’s something that will harm my Roger! What is it, Mr. Scarsdale? I charge you, as you had a mother yourself, to tell me!”

“I never had a mother myself,” said Horace, with his cold smile; “and if Mr. Stenhouse was a good step-father to Roger Musgrave, and took care of his property that the poor boy might not waste it, what was that to me? I can’t tell you – how can you suppose that I know?”

While he was speaking he made his way steadily to the door. He was pleased to go out and close it after him, leaving that reflection with the mother and child; that to be sure the dead man, their nearest relative, had defrauded his wife’s son; what was that to Horace Scarsdale? He went crushing Mr. Pouncet’s letter in his hand; he had got possession of that, at all events, and he felt sure that poor trembling Mrs. Stenhouse could not make much of its hints, even though coupled with her husband’s death-bed adjuration, and that strange maundering of his weakness, at which Horace smiled – seething the kid in its mother’s milk. Unlikely words to enter the mind of that hard, unrepentant man of the world, who, even at his last moments, wished not to amend but to conceal.

But he had not seen Amelia; it was hard to reconcile the contrary accidents of his fate. He could not deceive them blandly, as Mr. Stenhouse could have done, and he had no resource but to go away with abruptness, losing all chance of future admittance to the feet of the beauty, who was now Mrs. Stenhouse’s daughter, dependent upon her, and not the caressed and flattered mistress of the house. The cholera and the fright had unmanned Amelia. She had not been able to strike in at the proper moment and assert her sway; so that in the stillness of the house of mourning her mother and Edmund had unconsciously and tacitly won the supremacy. Fortune, however, gave him the advantage he had forfeited by legitimate means. He met the lady of his heart that very same afternoon, as she took languidly a solemn walk with her sisters, all crape and propriety. Amelia was sadly tired of decorum by this time – decorum which lasts so much longer than grief, and is so exacting and punctilious. Though she put down her veil, her heart fluttered at the approach of Horace; and she was quite well pleased that he should turn with her, and accompany her back almost to the door of the house. He told her of his magnificent prospects, as he had never yet told any one; that when his father died he could make a very fine lady of her, and give her a house in town, and all the unhoped for delights of fashion; but that might be years hence – and in the meantime would she marry him? Amelia was too wise to say yes without due consideration; but she blushed through her veil, and was quite sure Mr. Scarsdale would give her a little time to think – would not be too urgent in the sad, sad position of the family. How could she think of such things, and dear papa only a week in his grave? and some bright tears fell, easily shed. Horace was abundantly satisfied. He had excited her fancy with his hopes of fortune; and he thought she liked him, as it is so easy for people to believe; though in reality it was only the amusement, the admiration that Amelia cared for; and he wanted no more at the present moment. He said farewell, like an accepted lover, and went away jubilant; his dark purposes swelling in him, and a whole world of pleasure, wealth, and exaltation lying before him. A whole world, and only one dark, melancholy, unlovely shadow of life – a ghost alien to the sunshine, an unenjoying, unloving, dismal human thread of existence – hanging black between him and his enchanted kingdom. Accidents are rife and many in this troublous world – who could tell what might cut that thread?

CHAPTER XII

WITH Mr. Pouncet’s letter in his pocket – that self-betraying document, which he had estimated at once at its due value – Horace set out the next day for Kenlisle. Yet not for Kenlisle direct: the young man, with the oddest, uncharacteristic trifling, stopped half-way, to visit a remarkable cathedral town which lay in his road. What did Horace Scarsdale care for cathedrals? Yet he paused, in that most anxious and exciting moment, to inspect this one, and marched doggedly round and about it, as if to persuade himself that he was interested. In his progress he paused before an apothecary’s shop – but did not enter there, nor till hours after, when he rushed in on his way to the railway, and made certain purchases. In haste to get his train, he did not permit himself time to look at the things he had bought, but hurried them into his pocket, and rushed on again as though it had been only a sudden thought which moved him. Yet he had never looked so darkly pale and dangerous as when, seated in the railway-carriage, he felt in his pockets these little sealed packets. That day was a Mayday, warm and bright; but Horace shivered in his corner with a chill that went to his heart. For a moment the colour went out of his face, and the light out of his eye; he gave a stealthy glance round – a glance full of the intolerable terrors of guilt. Did any one guess what he had in his pocket? Could any one tell what he had in his heart?

The next morning he presented himself to the troubled eyes of Mr. Pouncet, an image of conscious power. That unfortunate man of character knew by this time of the death of Stenhouse, and had spent a day or two of agony wondering into whose hands his letter was likely to fall. The advent of Horace was a relief for the moment: here he had, at least, an assistant, who could do any further lying that might be necessary, without burdening Mr. Pouncet’s personal conscience. That was a great point gained. But the answer to his first eager question was far from satisfactory.

“Your letter was put into my hands by Mrs. Stenhouse,” said Horace; “and you know who she is – Roger Musgrave’s mother.”

Mr. Pouncet scratched his head in dismay. “She could not understand two words of it!” he exclaimed, at last, endeavouring to re-assure himself.

“Perhaps not – but one word, most likely, is enough. She is alarmed, and curious, and knows very well that something is wrong, though she cannot tell what; and that to expose you is for the interest of her son.”

“To expose me!” cried Mr. Pouncet, with a gasp of rage and mortification.

“Yes,” said Horace, coolly; “but,” he added, producing that document out of his pocket, “I managed, fortunately, to bring away your letter.”

Mr. Pouncet writhed silently under this persecution, which he dared not resent; for it was quite true that the story of that past transaction, once laid open to the world, would empty those solemn boxes labelled with his clients’ names, which made his private office look so important, and would banish him at once from Armitage Park, and many another great house. The unfortunate lawyer was at his wit’s end. That secret would have died with Stenhouse but for the discovery of this cold-blooded and unmanageable young man; and Mr. Pouncet cursed the day when, in defiance of all accustomed rules, he admitted Horace to his office. What was a romance of possible expectations to him?

“Have you ever learnt anything more of your own circumstances and the fortune,” said Mr. Pouncet, with a slight sneer, “which you expected when I saw you last?”

But when Horace answered – as he did at once, having previously resolved upon it – with a very succinct account, quite unencumbered by any reflections or exhibitions of feeling, of what he had discovered, the lawyer opened his eyes. The heir of such a heap of money, penniless though he was at the present moment, was a very different individual from the poor Horace Scarsdale, with nothing but his cunning wits and unscrupulous mind to help him on in the world. The revelation reconciled Mr. Pouncet even to himself. It was no longer so sadly humiliating to acknowledge himself in the young man’s power.

“And what will you do?” he asked, breathlessly, with already a difference in his tone. One does not speak to an attorney’s clerk, even when he knows one’s cherished secret, as one speaks to the heir of a good many thousands a-year.

“What can I do?” said Horace, rising in due proportion, and tasting the first sweetness of his wealth. “Forbidden to borrow – debarred from all ordinary means of reaping some present advantage; unless – I can be of use to you, if you make it worth my while – unless you can help me, Pouncet. You can if you please.”

Mr. Pouncet winced a little at this familiar address. “Had you not better try,” he suggested, “to make some arrangement with your father?”

“Arrangement with my father? What for? He has less power than you have: the will is expressly constructed so as to make arrangement impossible, and shut him out entirely,” cried Horace, with a certain suppressed exultation of enmity. “Besides, he hates me, and I’d much rather arrange with you. Look here, Pouncet – I want to get married. Give me a thousand a-year, and I’ll give you my best services, and my word of honour to pay you a reasonable sum, by way of acknowledgment, when I come into my property. Will you? There is no use lingering over it – say Yes or No.”

“A thousand a-year!” cried Mr. Pouncet, in dismay.

“Less would be useless,” said Horace, in his high-flying arrogance. “Besides, I could earn half as much anywhere, without asking any favour from you.”

Poor Mr. Pouncet took his hand out of his pocket, and grinned at the young man with a helpless spite and disdain. Words were so incapable of expressing all the mingled mockery and mortification with which he heard that last speech, that the unfortunate lawyer would have made derisive faces at him had he dared. As it was, he turned away to his desk, and growled under his breath, “Catch me giving you fifty if you hadn’t known,” by way of relieving his feelings. Stifled as it was, the expression did him good. He turned round again with only some spasmodic remains of that grin agitating the corners of his mouth.

“And you’re going to marry? Any money – eh?” he said.

“I don’t think it,” said Horace – “but I should like to know your decision at once, for I have some arrangements to make.”

“A thousand a-year for the whole term of your father’s life? Why, I suppose he is no older than I am? – he may live for twenty years,” said the unhappy lawyer, rubbing up the scanty hair upon his head.

“He may,” said Horace, briefly; but, as he spoke, a terrible throb convulsed, in spite of himself, the young man’s heart, upon which those deadly packets seemed to press like an intolerable weight.

“He may! And you ask me, a man in my senses, to undertake paying you an income of a thousand a-year for, perhaps, twenty years!”

“I ask you only to consider the matter, and what I might be able to do for you at the end of my probation,” said Horace, loftily – “not to say my services for the present time. Don’t do anything against your will. A lawsuit promoted by young Musgrave – by that time most likely my brother-in-law – would, I have no doubt, be quite as profitable to me.”

The lawyer gave a gasp of rage and derision beyond words. “You could conduct it, you suppose?” he cried aloud – “you!” – which was very imprudent, but a burst of nature. Then he cooled himself down, with a little shiver of passion: he dared not irritate this remorseless, immovable boy.

“I could, easily, with all these facts in my possession,” said Horace, with a careless gesture; and Mr. Pouncet saw his whole substance, his business, and, worst of all, his reputation, falling like so many card-houses at the touch of that unpitying hand.

But the interview did not end so. Mr. Pouncet consented at last, with many a grudge and inward compunction, to pay Horace the large stipend he claimed, on the tacit understanding that one-half of it was to be repaid to him when the young man came to his fortune; and the lawyer, though he had guessed rightly when he judged Mr. Scarsdale to be about his own age, notwithstanding, with the reckless boldness of humanity, began to reckon in his mind all the chances against the recluse’s life. The wonder seemed to be that such a man, in such circumstances, could last so long: there could not be much vigour of existence left in him. A very short time now should surely make an end of these deplorable, hopeless years. So reckoned the lawyer, who cared nothing about Mr. Scarsdale; while that unhappy hermit’s son, with all the desperation of an unnatural enmity, cherished a darker kind of speculation in his hard heart.

The conclusion of all was, however, that Mr. Pouncet wrote a placid business letter to Sir John Armitage, informing him that he had just dispatched a confidential clerk, in whom he could place the most perfect reliance, to make the fullest investigation throughout the district. Mr. Pouncet very much regretted that Sir John could not furnish him with particulars, or indeed any clue whatever to the name and residence of the suspected old man; but had every confidence, if there was any such person, in the abilities of his clerk, who would leave no means untried for finding him out.

Sir John thought this epistle so completely satisfactory, that he forwarded it to Colonel Sutherland, with some uncomplimentary suggestions about a “cock-and-a-bull story,” and feminine powers of imagination, which the Colonel did not read to Susan; and all the parties concerned were comfortably lulled out of their anxiety by the prospect of so complete an investigation. What might not be hoped from the researches of Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk?

CHAPTER XIII

WHILE the simple household at Milnehill felicitated itself on the reality of the search about to be made, Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk left Kenlisle. Horace went slowly through the country, though he was not looking for any one. He did his journey on foot, and did it by very slow and gradual degrees – perhaps to favour slightly his worthy employer’s fiction of a search, but in reality playing with, resisting by fits, yet always entertaining, the horrible attraction which drew him to Marchmain. He had nothing to do there which could give him a pretence of a lawful visit. The last time he had gone like a thief into his father’s house, anxious to search into the secrets there; this time how was he going? – in pretended friendship, or in open war? He could not tell. He only knew that a fascination too strong for him drew him on and on, though he fluttered in many a circle, prolonging his way, like a charmed bird, towards that house which contained the father of his life and the obstacle to his happiness. As he walked sullenly through these well-remembered paths, hovering round the borders of that moor which in May, sunshine, and daylight, a man with such black thoughts might well have feared to enter, he seemed to see perpetually before him, as in a picture, that pale spare figure in the dressing-gown – that formal attenuated man who sat by the polished dining-table, with his glass of purple claret, his two tall candles, and his reading-desk. Was that dismal existence life? Was there any pleasure in it to the forlorn endurer of all these nights and days? Would there be any cruelty in hastening his withdrawal from this bitter and impoverished existence? The questions formed dimly, and died away without articulate answer in the mind of his son. He wanted to persuade himself, as he gradually neared the climax of his temptation and of his fate, that he came with no object, but simply because curiosity drew him to the old house, to see how things were going on there.