The House on the Moor. Volume 1

“Uncle! – I need not ask who it is – uncle, welcome!” cried Horace, with a heartiness unknown to him heretofore, and perhaps more reality in the expression than he himself could have thought possible.

The Colonel rose with a little stumble of haste, putting his hand to his ear. For the moment he was perplexed, and thought it a stranger; but catching the sound of uncle, hailed his nephew with all the affectionate sincerity of his unsuspicious heart. He shook both his hands as Horace’s hands had never been touched before; he looked in his face, too, as in Susan’s, to trace the lineaments of their mother, and called him “my dear boy;” and shook his hands again with an effusion of satisfaction and kindness. For Horace, so far as features went, was somewhat like his mother, and, with his smile and his smoothed-out brow, looked a very different person from the Horace of every-day use and wont. “But will he persevere?” said Susan to herself, with an ache of delight in her heart; and “How to keep it up?” said Horace within his own saturnine spirit. The uncle knew nothing of these secret questions – did not suspect for a moment that the young man who met him so joyfully had changed his manners for the occasion, and congratulated himself in his simple heart that both the children had kept their hearts and feelings warm in their solitude. The old man grew quite radiant and talkative. He who had intended to leave Marchmain directly, sat still, opening out his honest heart to the young people like a long absent father. He told them first and principally about his boys, their cousins, whom they must know – about the house he had got, which was exactly what he wanted, and where he only wished he could have Susan to be “mistress and mair!” as he broke out joyfully in his Scotch – about India, where almost all his life had been spent, and which, with Edinburgh, and a peep of London, made up the world to the veteran. And the light had actually begun to wane in the short afternoon, when it suddenly occurred to Uncle Edward that he was forgetting himself, and that he must face the blast again to find his inn. A momentary austerity came into his face as he recollected this, and, rising hastily, begged of Horace to show him or to tell him the way to the nearest village. The nearest village worthy the name was five miles off; there was a miserable little hamlet nearer, with a miserable little public house, but that Uncle Edward shrugged his shoulders at.

“Can Susan walk five miles in a good day?” said the Colonel, smiling. “Then come along, my boy – we’ll go there.”

CHAPTER VIII

A WALK of five miles on that dismal February afternoon was not a pleasure excursion; nor was it pleasant to look back upon poor Susan’s face at the window – flushed, tearful, ashamed, mortified, Susan had not experienced an equal vexation in the whole course of her life. To think of Uncle Edward having to go away through the damp and twilight five miles off to find a lodging! Uncle Edward, who had come closer to Susan’s heart in half-an-hour than all the rest of the world in all her life! When they were out of sight she subsided into the arm-chair and had a good cry over it, and then went to talk to Peggy, who was actively furious, relieving herself by incomprehensible ejaculations. Still somehow, mortified and vexed as she was, there was all the promise of a new life remaining for Susan. Uncle Edward would return to-morrow; so long as he stayed he would see them every day – and the idea disturbed the stagnant atmosphere, and diffused an indescribable cheerfulness through the house. Even Peggy, though she fumed, was exhilarated by the thought – perhaps on the whole, it was even better that the Colonel’s tender, honest heart should not be grieved by the sight of the ghost of family life existing here. So long as he did not see it to make himself wretched with the view, Uncle Edward’s sweet and healthful imagination could conceive of no such scene as Mr. Scarsdale’s dinner, or the evening hours which followed it. And then he was coming back to-morrow!

So Susan took her presents upstairs, and fell wondering and dreaming over them, making impossible fancy scenes of cheerful rooms and pleasant people, and smiles, and flowers, and kindness unknown. Somehow whispers of all these delightful things seemed to breathe out of that pretty muslin, with its graceful wreaths of embroidery. The horizon opened to her awakened girlish fancy, far off, and almost inconceivable, yet with a vague brightness of possibility – and Susan spent an hour arranging her new riches in the drawer, which was the only scene they were likely to enlighten at present, and making herself happy with her novel thoughts.

While in the meantime the Colonel and his nephew trudged onward across the moor. The rain had ceased, but the sky was low and the air damp – and evening darkened round the vast blurred circle of the horizon, dropping down among the hills. The scene was dismal enough for anything: the exposed path across the moor – the black furze bushes and withered crackling heather – the slender saplings cowering together here and there in a little circle, where attempts had been made to naturalize them – and the great, monotonous, unbroken stretch of desert soil around, inspected from the lower heights by gaunt clumps of fir-trees, savage and melancholy anchorites, debarred from the change and variety, the autumn and the spring of common nature. Colonel Sutherland threw a shivering glance round him, and drew his cloak close about his throat. We will not say that even at that moment, when his thoughts were occupied with more important things, an involuntary patriotic comparison did not occur to the old soldier, who was native to the rich fields of Lothian, and might be disposed to wonder complacently whether this were indeed the sunnier south. He had, however, a more immediate subject of observation in Horace, who trudged beside him with the stoop and slouch, and heavy irregular step, of a neglected and moody youth. He was well-looking enough, and not deficient in any bodily quality, but the lad’s physique had been totally unattended to, and he had never been in circumstances which could have led himself to perceive his faults of bearing and carriage. The Colonel’s soldierly eye could not help regarding him with manifest dissatisfaction. We will not take it upon us to affirm that Colonel Sutherland at the head of his regiment might not be something of a martinet, or the least thing in the world particular about stocks and cross-belts. He looked at Horace, and could not help looking at him as he might have done at an awkward recruit. How he held his sullen head down against the wind, as if he butted at an invisible enemy; how he swung his hands in the pockets of his shooting-coat; how he dragged his heavy feet as if there was a clod at each heel. The Colonel did not quite understand how it was that his nephew’s person inspired him with a vague distrust, and, somehow, contradicted his nephew’s face; but the fact was that Horace could change the expression of his countenance when he had sufficient motive, but could not alter the habits into which neglect, and indolence, and sullen temper had thrown his outer man. And he himself was entirely unconscious of the clownish walk and ungracious demeanour which gave the old officer so much annoyance. Colonel Sutherland respected everybody’s amour propre. He could scarcely find it in his heart to wound any one, on the virtuous principle of doing them good; but, between professional sentiment, and that family pride which is wounded by being obliged to admit the imperfections of those it is interested in, he never exercised more self-denial in his life than that which he showed during this walk, in restraining an exhortation to his nephew in respect to his bearing and deportment; while his kind imagination went to work directly, to contrive expedients, and inducements, and hints for Horace’s benefit, to lead him to perceive his own deficiencies and adopt means to correct them, without wounding his feelings or his pride.

While Colonel Sutherland occupied himself with these reflections, Horace, totally unconscious of criticisms upon himself, which would have stung his self-love deeply, pondered, in his turn, the best means of bringing his uncle over to the length of helping him, by any means or in any way, to escape from Marchmain. The most palpable mode of entering on the subject – that of lamenting his father’s want of hospitality – had been made impracticable by Colonel Sutherland, who laid all the weight of the arrangement upon his own convenience; and his simplicity and straightforwardness made a sidelong approach to it equally out of the question. Horace was compelled, accordingly, to bring in his subject all at once, and without introduction. Colonel Sutherland, without meaning it, said something half consciously about the dreary country, and his nephew seized upon the chance.

“Dreary, indeed! – and nothing else do we see, uncle, from year’s end to year’s end!” cried Horace. “Is it not enough to kill a man? – without a human face to break it, either; and here am I, strong and young, condemned to this life, and kept from any information – any advice – which can direct me what to do. Uncle, you are the only friend I have been able to see with freedom and confidence, and I am almost glad you don’t stay at Marchmain – for there is no freedom there. Tell me, I beg of you, what can I do?”

“My dear boy!” cried the Colonel, grasping his nephew’s hand in sudden sympathy, and with a little gasp of earnest attention – “you take away my breath. Solitude has not diminished your energy, at all events. Do? Why, to be sure, a boy like you can do anything. We must look for an opening, that is all – but you should have begun before now.”

“My father,” said Horace, with unconscious bitterness, “has stopped that. I don’t know anything about the world, except this paltry little world here, of gamekeepers and poachers, and sporting farmers’ sons – for gentlemen, of course, don’t associate with me. What are we, uncle? – nobodies? I can’t tell – my father keeps up habits which look like the relics of a better time – and at the same time I know we’re poor; but he throws no light upon our unhappy circumstances. He keeps me shut up in this horrible house, till I think all sorts of horrors: that he’s a returned convict, or something like that – that our name’s a disgrace. What is it? – of course there must be some cause for this seclusion – and you must know.”

Colonel Sutherland was much embarrassed. He fumbled with his cloak in the first place to gain time, and then, finding no other resource, fell back upon the shelter of his deafness.

“I’m a little hard of hearing,” said the Colonel. “I partly lost your last observation – but what’s that about the poachers and gamekeepers? Bad company, Horace! – unfit associates, except in the way of sport, for any gentleman. I’ve known lads of good family ruined just by an inclination that way. Not that they meant ill to begin with; but what’s mere fun at first comes to be liking before long – and a gentleman’s son of course is flattered and courted among them. It’s a pernicious thing, Horace – attend to me! – it’s been the ruin of many a man.”

“What is ruin, uncle?” shouted Horace, with a wild and bitter smile, which somehow mingling congenially with the wind and the chill, carried into the Colonel’s mind a singular identification of that landscape and scene which gained their climax in this moment. He was startled, he could not explain how. He turned round to look into his nephew’s face, with a sudden consciousness of depths in the heart and in the life of Horace undecipherable and mysterious to himself.

“My dear boy,” he said, with a little tremble in his voice, “ruin is such a destruction as can be accomplished only by a man himself.”

Horace made no answer. His face subsided gradually, out of that self-revelation, into the assumed good-humour which he had put on for his uncle’s benefit. Colonel Sutherland, however, continued to regard him with concern and apprehension. The Colonel’s mind was not enlightened up to the pitch of modern times. When his imagination uncomfortably pictured Horace seated, perhaps, in the alehouse they had passed, with the gamekeeper or sporting men of the village, it was not the knowledge of life which the young man might acquire, but the old-fashioned horror of “bad society,” which moved the thoughts of the uncle, who secretly in his own mind began to attribute something of the slouching gait and unsatisfactory bearing of his nephew to his unsuitable companions. He could not give up the subject, but partly in natural anxiety, and partly to evade the youth’s troublesome questions, recurred to it immediately again.

“I am your oldest relation except your father, Horace,” said the Colonel. “I have some experience in life. You know what the proverb says: ‘A man is known by the company he keeps.’ ”

“Had he better keep no company?” said Horace; “very possibly; but then I can’t help being young, poor devil that I am. I can’t make a woman of myself, or be a child all my life. I must have something out of my prison – and you are not the man to blame me, uncle. The fellows you blame are those who have society in their favour. As for those country blockheads, whom I see in the woods or in the alehouses, do you think I care for them? Do you care for a set of dancing dogs or a wandering monkey? You laugh at them. If you have nothing else to think of, they amuse you for the moment. I despise the louts! – they are no more than bears on exhibition to me!”

Once more Colonel Sutherland looked at his young companion. It was not in his kindly human heart, which despised nobody, to like this manner of expression; but somehow the force with which it was uttered, and the implied superiority of tone, had a certain effect on the simple-hearted old man. He still retained his uneasiness, his want of comprehension; but he began to change his ideas of Horace, and to think him intellectual and clever – not a youth dangerously falling into “bad company,” but a man whose talents were lost to the world for want of “opportunities.” He fixed his gaze anxiously upon his nephew, and longed for the candid eyes which told all Susan’s sentiments and emotions; but that doubtful face said nothing of itself. There might be “talent,” but there was no candour in the countenance of Horace – what the lips might say, was the only index to what the head conceived or the heart felt. Colonel Sutherland turned away from him again with a little sigh. He was interested, his curiosity was awakened, and his paternal anxieties in full exercise; but somehow under all his heart whispered hesitations and inarticulate warnings to him. He had no experience in this unknown development of human nature. His own instincts said as much. But a man does not always give attention to those instinctive intimations. Colonel Sutherland was accustomed to believe that he had rather a natural gift for the guidance of young men – his sympathies with youth were warm – his heart young – his kindness unbounded. Many a youth ere now, charmed by the natural benignity and freshness of his character, had opened his soul to the old Colonel, and given to him that full, youthful confidence seldom bestowed by halves, which harsher fathers had failed to gain – with great advantage to themselves; for the old man was wise, as old men come to be who are not clever, but only humble, candid, religious, fearing God, and slow to make themselves judges of men. The habit of counsel, of assistance, of kindly attention, and regard to the self-revelations of his young companions, was accordingly strong upon Colonel Sutherland – yet, though he would scarcely acknowledge it to himself, a certain conviction of being out of his depths, and in a world altogether new to him – among elements which he was unable to handle – was present with him now.

“I am glad you have no inclination towards such society,” he said, in his perplexed tone; “but, Horace, my boy, even for sport you must not continue it. It sticks to a man in spite of himself; and, indeed, the young fellows now are very different from what they were in my time. I don’t bid you despise your fellow-creatures – there’s a long distance between despising them and preferring their society – a man of your condition should do neither the one nor the other, as you will learn when you come to know life.”

“What is my condition, uncle?” asked Horace, suddenly, interrupting the slow and hesitating general sentiments, which were the only things which the perplexed Colonel could find ready to his hand in this embarrassing case. It is to be feared that Colonel Sutherland heard this question, which was asked in a high tone, for his face became gradually flushed over with a painful heat and colour; but once more he put his hand to his ear.

“Yes; what are your own inclinations? – that is really the question, Horace – if we knew that, we could look out for you. There are many openings now to honourable ambition; but what do you wish yourself for your manner of life?”

“Uncle,” said Horace, with a force which would be heard, “I have no inclinations, thanks to my manner of life hitherto – I have only one wish, and that is, to escape from Marchmain. Get me away from that wretched house. I don’t care if I turn a shoe-black or a scavenger – get me away from here!”

The Colonel once more looked at his nephew, but with less respect – “On these terms, could you not get yourself away? You are not confined by locks and bars,” said Colonel Sutherland, disapprovingly; “why have you no inclinations? That dear child yonder, who has nobody in the world to speak to, has kept her heart as fresh as a May flower.”

“Susan?” said Horace, growing red; “you don’t compare me with Susan? – Susan’s a girl – she’s content – she’s very well off, so far as I can see – she’s in her natural vocation. Would you have me put on petticoats and sit down to patchwork? – As well do that as compare a man with a girl!”

“Susan,” said the Colonel, with a little hauteur and heat which became him, “is the only woman of the family. You are not aware, I daresay, of the indulgences and pleasures that are natural to girls of her years. I don’t wonder so much either that you think of yourself first – but why have you no inclinations? – she has, and you think yourself her superior, I perceive.”

“Don’t be displeased, uncle,” said Horace, changing his tone, and suffering only a little impatience, to testify to the fury with which he heard himself reproved. “You know better than I do, that women are tame creatures, and content themselves easily in their own sphere, when they don’t know any better. Susan has leisure to form little plans and fancies, I believe. I have no such thing – the pain of years has brought me to one point of desperation. I know nothing of the world: I don’t know what I am – my position – my prospects – my birth, are all a mist to me. My mind is not sufficiently disengaged to form projects; therefore I say I have no inclinations – the air stifles me – I must get out into the world, where there is room to breathe!”

“Then, why,” said the Colonel, “have you not gone away before?”

Horace was silenced – he fumed with silent rage within himself, wounded in the tenderest point of his self-love and pride – it was, perhaps, the only suggestion which could have made him feel a pang of humiliation. It was one which Susan herself, in her simple and practical intelligence, had made more than once. Why had he borne and brooded over his wretchedness? Why had he not gone away?

“Many young men,” said Colonel Sutherland, “have left home of their own accord on a less argument than that of desperation. I don’t mean to say I approve of it – but – there are some things that one could not advise, which, at the same time, being done, cut a difficulty which might be hard to solve. I say all this, my dear boy,” added the Colonel, moved by Horace’s gloomy face, “to show you that it is foolish to use such strong expressions: if your desperation had been so great as to deprive you of all choice or inclination, depend upon it you would have gone away.”

And having delivered himself of this kindly bit of logic, totally inapplicable as it was to the person whom he addressed, and attributing the silence of his nephew to the natural confusion of a young man detected in the use of undue heroical expressions, the Colonel was himself again.

“And this, I suppose, is my resting-place for the night,” he said, as a church-spire and the roofs of a village became dimly visible before them at the end of the road. “I will remain here three or four days, and during that time, Horace, you must find out your inclinations, my boy, and let us discuss them and see what is to be done. You must stay and dine with me in the first place, and be with me as much as possible while I am here – that is to say, unless your father makes any positive claim upon you during the time.”

“Positive claim! I wish you had dined with us one day, uncle, to see what these claims are!” cried Horace, with a laugh of bitterness; but the Colonel, who had been thinking of something else for the moment, inclined his ear towards him with a little start and a smile, before which bitterness fled. Horace could no more comprehend his uncle than his uncle could understand him. This smile discomforted him strangely – he could not stand against that kind prompt attention, the ear so solicitous to catch what he said, and the face so guileless and benign. The young man was of a crafty intelligence, and could have detected wiles – but this sunshiny simplicity put him out. It went deep into the primitive truth, sincerity, and honesty of nature – things which Horace Scarsdale had small acquaintance with in the secret spring and fountain of his life.

CHAPTER IX

THAT evening was an epoch in the life of Horace. The people in the little country inn to which he took his uncle were not unacquainted with the young man. For a year or two past, ever since the bitter independence of manhood had begun to possess him, he had spent much of his waste unoccupied time in this and the other humble houses of entertainment of the district. With a sensation of superiority, which he owed principally to his natural temper – for there was in reality very little distinction of breeding or character between himself and the society he frequented – he held a scornful dictatorial place among the humbler convives of the villages, and observed and amused himself with the peculiarities he saw, very much as if he had been a man of the world, trained to that odious criticism which is dignified by being called “the study of mankind.” The coarse enjoyments of the public-house company did not tempt him – he threw his violent decisions into the hum of drowsy talk when it suited him, and at other times looked on, noting, with contemptuous amusement, the dull jollity of the place. His father’s singular solitude imposed a certain respect upon the imagination of the district; and between Horace and the country lads around there remained always that inexplainable, undefinable difference which, independent of education, wealth, and every tangible advantage, separates those who are born in different classes of society, especially in rural places. He had accordingly a strange kind of popularity in the district – not the popularity of common love and esteem, but an attraction perhaps more remarkable; his careless rudeness, his bitter humour, the harsh philosophy which contrasted with his youth and inexperience, gave him a certain singular hold upon the imagination of his companions. The very certainty that he did not care a single straw for them attached the little crowd to his footsteps. Dominant and imperious self-regard, like all other regnant qualities, has a wonderful influence upon the common mind. No other person within the immediate knowledge of this rural community assumed the same tone, or showed the same spirit – and the vehement and forcible language, more refined than their own, the utterance of a gentleman, which Horace had acquired involuntarily, the arrogant sentiments he expressed, the unconcealed consciousness of superiority which belonged to him, united to impose a certain allegiance upon the inexperienced minds, which found him unique and singular, the sole development known to them of a kind of intelligence and a manner of man widely differing from their own.

But this night everything was changed. The landlady of the inn, amazed into a flutter of perturbation, appeared herself, at the astounding information that young Mr. Horry, as he was called, had arrived with a gentleman. The good woman supposed it must be his mysterious father, and hastened with all the speed of curiosity to receive them – but lost in amazement to find “the gentleman” a stranger, who required the best accommodation of her house for a few days, and desired to dine as soon as that was practicable – found it only possible to curtsey and retire, more curious than ever, without being able to show her previous acquaintance and familiarity with Mr. Horry, who turned his face with an arrogant blank of unrecognition full upon her, and added to his uncle’s orders a request that some one might be sent to Marchmain immediately for the carpet-bag.

“Something’s agoing to happen,” said the landlady, as she returned to her own domain. “A strange gentleman as wants the best o’ everything – an ould sodger lord with musstaches – egh, lad! – a lord I’ll warrant, at the very least o’ him – and I’ll lay you a sixpence he’s coom to set a’ things straight; for yonder’s Mr. Horry, he looks me in the face as broad as I look at you, and says, says he, ‘Send a man to Marchmain for a carpet-bag immediantly,’ as if he never set eyes on me in his born days afore. Like him! I would ne’er goo starving to his door in hopes o’ meat.”

Great preparations ensued for the hasty dinner, which was to be ready in an hour; but even the landlady’s conviction that her guest could not be less than a lord was not sufficient to work impossibilities. While it was getting ready, Colonel Sutherland and Horace sat together over the new kindled fire. The best room of the inn, which did not receive a guest twice in a year, was a dingy parlour hung with old portraits of famous horses, winners of the cups of antiquity, with a county map, and a print of George IV. to vary the embellishments, and two small windows looking out upon the village street. The Colonel placed himself as close as possible to the fire, not without dreadful apprehensions of the rheumatism, which already sent flying twinges into his spare limbs, and made him wince; and thought with a little natural indignation of his repelled kindness, and the cold reception which had forced him to seek this place, and substituted the accommodation of a poor little country inn for the hospitality he had expected. Silence and these recollections, and the startling twinges of his rheumatism, changed the expression of his face almost into sternness, and seemed to develop in him another phase of character. Horace watched him in the doubtful light, more and more puzzled. The indulgent, tender kindness and forbearance of the fatherly old man had disappeared with the animation of their talk and intercourse – the whole face had a loftier and more rigid expression. Horace, drawing back his chair out of the firelight, gazed and pondered with knitted brows. He began to think more elaborate approaches were necessary, and plans better laid. He had not found it possible hitherto to get much information from this kind old uncle touching the family secret, if there was one. Was Colonel Sutherland a kind old uncle merely? Horace began to suspect he must be something more, and that the task of persuading him and winning him over to his own interests might not be so very easy after all.

The Colonel sat long in meditation, as if he were in full consideration of the whole knotty subject; when he made a little stir in his chair as if about to speak, a sudden burst of anxiety ran over Horace. “I wonder,” said the Colonel, with the gravest face, “how long it is since a fire was lighted in this room before. Speak of England, Horace! I don’t believe there is anything so dismal from Berwick to John o’ Groats as that moor of yours, and no attempt at cultivation or improvement, so far as I can perceive. You should see our high farming in Lothian! I have not felt the cold so severe since I came home.”

Horace had almost laughed aloud in his sudden relief and contempt. These were the thoughts, so deeply ruminated, which had brought gravity to Colonel Sutherland’s face. The young man, who now less than ever comprehended the old man, went to stand at the window, not without a certain satisfaction in being seen there by the evening frequenters of the place, who were sure to hear of his companion, and of the different position he occupied for this night at least; and passed another half hour of waiting before the dinner appeared, in strange calculations, at once cunning and foolish – the wiles of a subtle mind, and the inexperience of a young one – thinking with himself how long his uncle’s simplicity could withstand his attacks – how soon he should be able to worm all the secrets of the family out of him, and how easily he could work the old man to do what he would. Then, if such a man as Colonel Sutherland had reached to a respectable position and command, what might not such a man as Horace Scarsdale do? The young man’s spirits rose – he imagined himself making a stepping-stone of his uncle, to push his way into the arena – and then – .

Considering the height and imaginative character of this ambition, which at the outset gave it a certain refinement, it was astonishing, notwithstanding, to perceive into what almost vulgar elation his spirits rose during that dinner. It was no great things of a dinner, being too ambitious by far for the occasion; but it was perhaps the very first meal in his life, at least since he came to years of self-knowledge, which Horace had eaten with freedom and pleasure. He thought of Marchmain, and the scene in the dining-room at that moment, where Peggy, in the ordinary course of events, would be about removing the cloth and setting on the table his father’s solitary glass and jug of claret, and smiled to think of Mr. Scarsdale’s silent rage at seeing his vacant place. He was pleased and flattered by the respectful manner of the landlord who waited on them, and could not refrain from talking rather big to his uncle, and assuming a confidence and frankness quite unusual to him, and foreign to his nature, for the advantage of that individual. He was too young to conceal this first gratification, and betrayed himself unawares. Simple and unsuspecting though the Colonel was, he perceived this. However, it was natural, and instead of a hard laugh at it, Uncle Edward smiled and grew kinder, and loved Horace better and trusted him the more for his weakness’ sake. They seemed growing friends gradually and surely – the old man believed they were, and rejoiced in it, and could not have believed, had anybody told him that the cold passion of self-regard, to the entire exclusion of warmer feelings, filled his nephew’s heart.

When they were left alone, Horace, a little stimulated by the wine he had taken, commenced his attack with boldness: —

“Uncle,” he said, “you must think of me – you must help me. I have never been able to speak my mind before to a single individual who could comprehend or assist me. I must know what are our circumstances. It is needless to say that my father’s past life does not affect me. It does affect me – everything affects me that I am kept in ignorance of. What are we? – what is he? – why are we here?”

Horace had hit by chance and unawares upon the means really most likely to attain his end. Colonel Sutherland could not return anything but a true answer to a plain and straightforward question; and evasion was so strange to him that he managed it in the clumsiest manner. He retired on his deafness in the first place – a defence from which Horace drove him out triumphantly by a repetition of the question in tones that could not be mistaken. Then he faltered over it a little, with common-places of hesitation too palpable to deceive anybody.

“Your true circumstances – your father’s past life? Your father’s past life has always been virtuous and honourable,” said the Colonel. “What is he? You ought surely to know better than I do, who have not seen him for fifteen years. He is, if you wish my opinion, a man of very peculiar temper. Horace, I do not wonder that you find him rather hard to get on with sometimes, but he is your father; and therefore, my dear boy, whatever others may do, impatience and a harsh judgment do not become you.”

Horace shook his head.

“This is not what I want to know. You know it is not,” he said, with a rising colour. “Say no, if you will, but don’t treat me like a child. Look here, uncle: I am assured there is a secret – I know it, no matter how – tell me what it is.”

Horace put the whole force of his voice and mind into the question. He made it not as one who asks, but as one who demands what he has a right to know, feeling convinced that his gentle relative could not now evade him, and had no strength to resist; and with this conviction strong upon him, the young man stared into the Colonel’s eyes, with the thought of overawing him and compelling his answer thus.

Colonel Sutherland looked at him steadily, withdrew his eyes a moment, looked again, and at last spoke.

“If you think,” said the Colonel, coldly, “that by this persistence and demand you can persuade any man of honour to betray to you a secret with which another has entrusted him, you show only your ignorance of gentlemen and want of belief in your fellow-creatures. If there is a secret in your family circumstances – though, mind you, I do not admit that there is – can you suppose that I will tell you anything which it is your father’s desire that you should not know?”