The House on the Moor. Volume 1

WHEN Colonel Sutherland had been established for nearly half-an-hour in the angular arm-chair, which was the most luxurious seat this room afforded, where he sat holding Susan’s hand and keeping her by his side, it suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten the other members of the family in his satisfaction with his new-found niece. “But, my dear child, your father?” he said, hastily; “he expected me, did he not? – he is surely at home.”

And instantly Susan’s countenance fell.

The old Colonel had begun to recover his spirits about his brother-in-law’s house. He saw Susan in blooming health, affectionate, frank, and cheerful, and he began, with natural hopefulness, to impute the dismal house and solitary life to some caprice, and to imagine to himself a loving, united family, who were society enough to themselves. But it was impossible to mistake the cloud which fell instantly upon Susan’s face. “Oh! – I ought to have told papa,” she said, with a hesitation and reluctance in her voice which went to her uncle’s heart. He drew her still closer to him, and looked in her face anxiously. But Susan knew nothing of that domestic martyrdom which conceals and smiles on the family skeleton. She was not aware how great a skeleton it was – it was simply a thing of course, to her inexperienced spirit.

“I should think he must have heard – I should think Peggy must have told him,” said Susan. “He is not so angry when Peggy goes into the study as when I go; but if you like, I will go and tell him, uncle, now.”

“Never mind, Susan. I daresay your father will come when he chooses. A deaf man would have heard Peggy’s shout,” said Colonel Sutherland; “and Horace – was there nobody but my little girl who came to see the old uncle – is your brother in the study too?”

“In the study! – he would as soon go down the well or up the chimney,” said Susan, with a very short and half-frightened laugh. “No, uncle – Horace is in Faneleigh Woods, or on the Moor. He never minds the weather. I do think at this time of the year he gets wet through three times a-week; but I am sure Horace will be very glad to see you – as glad as I was – oh, I am quite sure!”

This expression of conviction, made with some heat and anxiety, had a very different effect from that which Susan intended – it revealed to the Colonel very plainly that Susan was anything but quite sure of Horace’s sentiment; and, perhaps, Colonel Sutherland’s first sensation thereupon was offence and indignation; and his personal dignity suffered a momentary mortification, from the idea that he had volunteered a visit which was welcome to nobody but this little girl. This personal feeling, however, was but momentary. A deeper pain returned to his heart; he looked anxiously into Susan’s blue eyes to find out, if possible, how and why this unnatural state of things existed; or, failing that, what effect upon her the loneliness and the hardness of her life had made. But there were no mysteries in those eyes of Susan’s – her girlish, undisturbed heart, clouded by a little terror of her father, which took no deeper form than that of discomfort and uneasiness, gleamed in them with otherwise unmingled joy and satisfaction. All the natural filial love hitherto denied her had sprung to life in a moment in Susan’s heart. She looked at her uncle with an affectionate pride, which made her breast swell and astonished herself. To stand by his side, to feel her hand held in his kind hand, to know by intuition that there was interest for all her little affairs, and sympathy for all her unregarded troubles in this new friend, was a new life to Susan. She felt encouraged and emboldened without knowing how, as she appropriated, involuntarily, his affection, his aid, his succour. She kept naming him over and over within herself, with a secret inexplainable swell of pride and comfort. Susan had never been disposed before to use the possessive pronoun in regard to anything more important than pin-cushions and scissors; and now to say, “My uncle!” was something as new as pleasant. But notwithstanding that reference to her father curbed her tongue and brought a shade of restraint over her thoughts in spite of herself; and Uncle Edward’s affectionate questions flagged – he too had something else to think of – the change was apparent to both; and Susan, for the first time in her life, moved to exert herself to seek a less unfortunate subject, immediately remembered that her uncle must want refreshment, and proposed to call Peggy to bring in his luncheon.

“Suppose we ring,” said Colonel Sutherland, putting out his hand with a smile to the unused bell-rope.

Susan started with terror to prevent him.

“Oh, uncle, we never ring!” she cried, in an alarmed tone.

The sound of that bell tinkling through the house might produce Susan could not tell what tragedy in the study. She put out her trembling hand and caught at her uncle’s to stop his intended action. When she did so, to Susan’s great surprise the Colonel, dropping the bell, turned round upon her suddenly, and put his arm round her.

“My poor child!” he exclaimed, with some sudden access of feeling, scarcely intelligible to Susan, and with tears in his eyes.

She did not know what it meant, and yet she was very much inclined to cry too.

At this moment fortunately Peggy came in unsummoned, bringing the tray, but not the dainty dish which her care had prepared for Mr. Edward. When she set it down upon the table, she addressed the visitor with the tone and manner of one who has something disagreeable to say.

“The master’s in his study, Mr. Edward: he never comes out on’t at this hour of the day. Will you please to step athwart the hall, and see him there?”

“Certainly,” said Colonel Sutherland, and rose at once, releasing Susan, who could not help feeling a little tremor for the consequences of his visit to her father. The old Colonel himself stepped solemnly, with a certain melancholy in his whole figure and bearing, as he went out of the room. It went to his heart to see the clouded face with which Susan responded to his mention of her father, and he went to meet him forgetting even the discourtesy which did not come to meet him – oppressed, and grieved, and wondering. When he had closed the door behind him he laid his arm on Peggy’s arm, detaining her.

“What does it all mean?” he asked, with a troubled face, and stooped his deaf ear to Peggy’s voice.

“What does’t mean? Mischief and the devil! – and good reason he has to be proud of his handiwork,” cried Peggy, vehemently, though in a whisper; “and oh, Mr. Edward! before the two unfortunate things are killed and murdered, save him from himself!”

Perhaps Colonel Sutherland did not perfectly hear this strange communication; he nodded and went on after her, looking puzzled and distressed – he was not of an intrusive or interfering nature. He had no idea of thrusting into any man’s secrets, with the view of doing him good. And then, what influence had he, whom after twenty years absence his host would not come to meet. So he went across the hall, stooping his lofty grizzled head, and with a great confusion of grieved thoughts in his mind – while Susan, left behind, went to the window to look for Horace, and stirred the fire into a flame, and placed the tray and the arm-chair in the most comfortable position possible, and trembled a little, in a vague idea that Uncle Edward might somehow dissolve in that awful study, or come out a different man.

In the study, just risen up from his chair, Mr. Scarsdale received his visitor; he scarcely made a step forward to meet him, but he shook him coldly by the hand. They stood there together, two strangely different men – the recluse standing bolt upright, with his wide dressing gown falling off from his spare figure, and his book open on the table – cold, self-absorbed, in a passion of unnatural stillness; the soldier, with his tall stooping figure, his deaf ear bending with that benign and kind humility which made the infirmity a grace, and his anxious countenance afraid to lose a word of anything that might be said to him. Mr. Scarsdale’s greetings were few and hurried; he asked when he returned, and how he had travelled, and then, reaching a chair which happened to be within arm’s length, begged that Colonel Sutherland would sit down, in a tone which plainly signified that the request itself was a favour. Colonel Sutherland did so, looking at him with a strange wistfulness – and then, reseating himself, his host spoke.

“Since you have come to Marchmain, I have something to say to you at the commencement of what I suppose you will call our renewed intercourse. I will deal with you frankly. I should not have ventured to invite, if you had left it to me, a man of your tastes and feelings here.”

“I can guess as much,” said Colonel Sutherland, with a passing, angry blush.

“I should not,” said Mr. Scarsdale, coldly; “because my establishment is very limited. I live in great seclusion, and I remember that you are a lover of society, and what is called cheerfulness. But you have come, and yours is the responsibility if our life oppresses you. And one thing I would say; I do not fear your discretion, having warned you. You are aware of the very peculiar circumstances under which I stand – you know, in short, the blight of my life. Pshaw! why speak of it, or give it a name? – you know, of course, thanks to your sister’s frankness, exactly what I mean. Now this, I beg you to observe, is totally unknown to my children: my son is not aware of his advantage over his father. I do not mean that he shall be, until,” added Mr. Scarsdale, with a ghastly smile, “until the time of his triumph approaches; but, in the meantime, I have to request that you will not think of extending to these young people a confidence which I do not wish them to possess.”

A flood of painful feelings rose during this speech over the Colonel’s face, of which kindness misconstrued and personal dignity wounded were the least and lightest. He looked with an amazed, grieved, uncomprehending wonder in the face of his brother-in-law, and was silent for a few minutes, while the first pangs of indignant pain were subsiding, though he involuntarily rose to his feet, an action which Mr. Scarsdale followed. Perhaps this last rudeness might have roused the warlike blood of the old soldier, had not his eye at the moment lighted upon that portrait in the shadow of the curtain. That touch of old love and sorrow moved him in the midst of his resentment almost to tears. He had to pause before he could speak as calmly as he wished to speak. “I have never thought it my duty,” said Colonel Sutherland, “to interfere in any man’s house: I will not begin in yours – nor would I remain in it even for a night, but for recollections which neither you nor I can efface by any measure of hard words. But, for heaven’s sake, Robert Scarsdale, why is all this? – why do you meet me after this extraordinary fashion? – why do you shut yourself out from human sympathy? – why refuse yourself the comfort of your own children? As for myself, I am neither an enemy nor a stranger. Old ties and kindness have never died out of my recollection through all the sorrows and labours of my life, which have not been few. Why have they passed out of yours? We are relations – not antagonists.”

“We were relatives,” said Mr. Scarsdale, stiffly.

“Were! And my dear sister – your good wife – do you count her, then, only among the things that were?”

“I beg your pardon: a man is generally the best judge of the goodness of his wife; but there is no question at present of the virtues of the late Mrs. Scarsdale,” said the recluse. “I can see no benefit to result from discussing past circumstances. You are welcome to my house, such as it is; but, knowing my position as you do, I think myself quite justified in requesting your silence on this matter. It was not my will, certainly, which made you aware of it at first.”

Colonel Sutherland stood before his brother-in-law in a flush of unusual and inexpressible passion. He could not give utterance to the indignant, mortified, impatient surprise with which he heard these words. But what can any one say? It is hard for the voice of kindred to praise a poor woman – even when she is dead – while her husband looks on blankly, and is the best judge whether his wife has been a good wife or not. So he is, of course: therefore, be silent, brother of the dead – say nothing about her – she is judged elsewhere, and beyond human criticism now. But the old soldier stood listening, with the pang of wonder, almost stronger than that of anger and indignation, at his heart. He was so much surprised, that he was speechless. This unexpected sentiment shook him suddenly in his supposed position, and turned all his previous ideas into folly. He was not the brother of a wife beloved, the uncle of children who cherished their mother’s memory, but an intruder, presuming upon a past relationship. A flush of deep mortification came upon his face: he made a stately, ceremonious bow to his ungracious host —

“In that case – as things are,” stammered the Colonel, “I will make no encroachments upon your hospitality. Pray, don’t say anything – it is unnecessary. I – I shall take care to pay due respect to your desires so far as your children are concerned. In short, I beg you to understand that your secret is, and has always been, with me as though I knew it not; but,” said Colonel Sutherland, pausing in his haste, and steadying his voice, “it was, as you are well enough aware, known to half, at least, of your former friends, and that by no – no indiscretion on the part of – my sister – and it is open at this day, or any day, to the most indifferent stranger who chooses to pay a fee at Doctors’ Commons. What you can mean, in these circumstances, by a precaution so – by such precautions, I cannot tell. Is it not better your son should learn this from his father, than from any ill-disposed companion whom the young man may pick up? But that is certainly not my business. I presume that I may, without objection on your part, see my niece and nephew sometimes during the few days I remain in the nearest village? The children must acknowledge a certain relationship with their mother’s brother.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a slight blush of shame on his cheek, “I shall be glad to have you remain here.”

Glad! the word was out of keeping entirely with his aspect and that of the scene; it looked like a piece of mockery. Colonel Sutherland bowed again with still more ceremony.

“It is too late,” he said, quietly.

“Your room is prepared – you have been expected,” said Scarsdale, awaking, not only to the reproach of sending a stranger away, which, distant as he was from the opinions of the world, touched him still, but to the vexation of being resisted. “My daughter, so far as looks can express it, has been expecting you eagerly. I beg you to reconsider your decision – nay, I entreat, I insist that you should remain.”

“Too late for that,” said the Colonel, with a smile and a bow; “but I will not detain you from your studies. Susan, I believe, has some refreshment ready for her old uncle. I will not carry a punctilio of welcome so far as not to break bread in your house; but I will bid you now, and finally, good-bye.”

So saying, the old soldier made a superb bow, and, without lifting his eyes again to his churlish host to see how he took it, turned round on his heel and left the room.

In the hall he encountered Peggy waiting for him, who, familiar in her anxiety, laid her hand upon his sleeve, and stretched up on tiptoe to whisper her anxious interrogation into the Colonel’s deaf ear. He waved his hand to her with an assumed carelessness, which he was far from feeling.

“We should not ’gree, Peggy, if I stayed a day,” he said, familiarly, and with a smile. “You must direct me to the next village, where I can get a bed and a dinner – for I will not leave the quarter till I know my sister’s bairns.”

“But ye’ll not forsake them; say you’ll never go away till he promises their rights,” cried Peggy, in a whispered shriek.

The Colonel shook his head, and put her aside with his hand.

“If I can do anything for them, I will,” he said briefly; and so went into the dining-room, where Susan waited, trembling for the issue of this scene: while Peggy, retiring to her kitchen in fierce disappointment and mortification, threw her apron over her head and wept a sudden torrent of hot tears; then comforting herself, repeated over his words, wiped her tears, and carried in the luncheon. She would not lose faith in her favourite with so short a trial. Daylight, good sense, common affection did but need to breathe into this morbid house, and all might yet be right.

CHAPTER VII

WHEN Peggy re-entered the dining-room, she found poor Susan struggling to restrain the sudden sobs of her distress and disappointment in finding that her uncle was not to remain at Marchmain. He had not meant to tell her at once, and even now he told her cheerfully, and without offence, as if he had changed his intention for his own convenience solely. He had just opened the carpet-bag, of which he had been so careful on the journey, and was taking out a parcel very carefully and elaborately packed up, which he proceeded at once to uncover. Susan looked on, a little curious, but not much interested; she had no conception what it was, or that she had any connection with it; and when at last it was all unfolded, and spread out before her, she looked on rather more interested, but no less wondering. What might Uncle Edward be going to do with those snowy lengths of India muslin, the fragile foundation of which was scarcely sufficient to bear the wreaths of embroidery, which Susan had never seen anything like in her life, and instantly longed, with a girlish instinct, to copy and emulate – pretty collars, too, and cuffs, feminine articles which the Colonel could have no possible use for; and wrapped up with these one or two unknown articles, rich with that wonderful tiny mosaic work which embellishes the card-cases and blotting-books of people who are fortunate enough to have friends in India. Susan had a vague idea that one of these was a card-case; it certainly was like something of her mother’s which Peggy preserved as a relic, and had promised to make over to her young mistress when she was old enough to pay visits – an impossible age, which Susan laughed to think of ever attaining at Marchmain. When he had opened them all out upon the shining uncovered table, which reflected the spotless whiteness of the muslin, the Colonel looked down at Susan with a smile, bending his ear towards her, and looking for gratification and pleasure in a face which was only admiring and puzzled. “Are you pleased with them?” said Uncle Edward. “I puzzled my old brains to think what you would like, and there you have the results of my cogitations – not anything very extraordinary, but bought a good many thousand miles off for you, when the only recollection I had of you was that of a baby. I had to count the years very carefully, I assure you, and was near committing myself, and losing credit for ever by bringing you a little frock.”

“But, uncle, do you mean they are for me?” cried Susan, in amazement.

“Eh? Precisely – for you,” said the Colonel, who had not quite heard her question, but understood her look. “There is but one woman in the family, my dear child: you don’t suppose that my boy Ned could wear muslin, or that Tom knows how to use a fan? But eh? – what’s happened? Have I vexed you without knowing it, for a blundering old blockhead? What’s the matter, Susan? I’ll toss them all into the fire rather than make you cry.”

“Oh, uncle, I can’t help crying – then, I like to cry!” exclaimed Susan, finding the old Colonel really concerned, and disposed to carry out his threat. “To think they should be for me– to think you should have thought of me in India! Do you suppose I could just say, ‘Thank you?’ Nobody ever gave me anything all my life before – and oh, uncle, to take the trouble of thinking of me!”

“If that is a troublesome operation, I have taken a great deal of trouble about you, one time and another, Susan,” said Colonel Sutherland. “Now, dry your eyes, my love, and tell me if you approve of my taste. They are nothing extraordinary, you little goose – you will make me ashamed of my bundle. Why, everybody brings such things from India, and bring them very often to people they care much less about than I do about my little niece. If I had been richer, you should have seen what we can do in the East; but I just managed, you perceive, to get you one shawl.”

Which shawl the Colonel extricated accordingly, as he spoke. Poor Susan, afraid he might think her foolish, managed to stop her crying, and gazed – half with dismay, half with admiration – at all the pretty things before her. What could she do with them? Colonel Sutherland, it was true, knew that she never was allowed to see anybody, or to make any friends, but a fact which is alien to nature makes no impression upon a natural mind. He could not remember or suppose that a young girl had no possible use for the pretty, simple dress he had brought, and looked on with a pleased face to see the effect of his gifts, as Susan began to examine them. Peggy, going backward and forward, saw it was now time enough for her to interpose, and, with a genuine woman’s interest, plunged into the delightful investigation, which Susan – flushed and agitated quite out of her wont, and tremulous with many new sensations – had just concluded, when Horace entered the room.

That room, all its life, had never looked so homelike, and the reason was not explainable; for, except in the heap of litter at one end of the table, and the old man eating his luncheon hard by, there was absolutely no change upon the apartment. That soldier’s face, weatherworn and brown, full of command yet full of tenderness, with grizzled hair and moustache, and erect soldierly pose, was not by any means a common-place countenance, or one which could have passed unnoted anywhere; but it was not even that which made the charm. It was the bright, pleased look which the Colonel, as he sat, lifted upon the girl before him – the amused, kind, tender smile which went over all his face like sunshine – the kindly, homely inclination towards her of that deaf ear – the care he took to hear all she said – the interest and indulgent regard with which he followed her movements and listened to her words. There was no criticism in those kind eyes – they were eyes accustomed to give a genial interpretation of everything – and the light of them changed the aspect of this dismal room. It did not even look so dark or so stifling – the very mahogany brightened, and hearty blazes awoke in the once-smouldering fire. Everything seemed to have become aware, somehow, that living human love and kindness, indulgence, tenderness were there.

Yes, indulgence – though, to be sure, it is very bad to spoil our children; but what would not one give, when one grows old, for that dear, lost indulgence of our youth, which will never come back to us – that consciousness that there is one at least who will see everything we do in the best light, and put the kindest construction upon our failings, and think us cleverer and better, and fairer and pleasanter, than we are and can be! Youth cannot thrive at all without this sunshine; but heaven help us, how it dies and disappears out of the noon of life! Susan had never once felt it before – the feeling came upon her, as she met her uncle’s eyes, that she had never really lived before – that she was only awaking to find out what she herself was, and what were the people around her. Somehow the dawning of a happiness unthought of brought with it the sudden revelation of miseries which had not struck her in all her past experience. Fathers, it became visible to her in a moment, were not all like her father – homes were different from this home – even Uncle Edward’s presents helped that enlightenment. These pretty things were common to girls of her own age, and in ordinary use among them. Her uncle was even puzzled that she should look at them as she did, and think them so beautiful, so wonderful, so much “too fine for me!” And as Susan came to comprehend this, between the pleasure and the pain, her cheeks flushed, her young limbs trembled, her heart beat loud with strange emotion. Even that excitement helped the effect of Uncle Edward’s kind face in the room. This very confusion and commotion was life.

When Horace appeared, wet as Susan had predicted he would be, and sulky as he always was, the sudden gleam of warmth in the familiar apartment penetrated even into his sullen heart. Its first result was the natural one of making him feel more unhappy; but in another moment, and with reflection, a change came upon Horace. He did not desire or care for the kindness of his uncle. He was not a domestic creature! – he longed to escape from home, and was exceedingly indifferent as to what he should have there, if he could but attain that desirable end. And Colonel Sutherland appeared a very likely assistant to Horace – as, his deaf uncle not having heard him enter, he stood for a moment looking at him before he advanced. The young man, in his hard wisdom, perceived the simplicity of the old man who sat unconscious before him. As far as he could comprehend a spirit so different from his own, he read his nature in the Colonel’s face, and took up his part accordingly with cleverness and dexterity. He advanced quickly to his uncle and held out his hand, Susan watching him with an unusual anxiety which she could not explain to herself.