CHAPTER XIV
HORACE never knew how he passed that night; during the twilight and the early darkness he hovered about the moor, lying down among the fragrant heather, when now and then for a moment he could keep still, and feeling the penetrating damp of the bog steal into his limbs, and the dark, noiseless prick of the whin bushes, startling him into energy as he rose out of that feverish, momentary rest. When the night had quite fallen – a dark summer night, soft, but gloomy, with a few faint stars, but no moon – he stole once more, circling and sweeping about the house, towards Marchmain; for no purpose, only to look in at the uncurtained window, and see sitting there in his utter solitude the formal figure, erect and motionless, which had shadowed, like a baleful tree, all his own young life. There he sat, a little turned aside from his familiar position at the head of the table, as though even he was glad to seek a little companionship in the morsel of evening fire which Peggy lighted in silent compassion every night; with his little reading-desk upon the table, and his glass of claret reflected in that shining surface, and the two tall candles lighting his white, worn visage, and the open page. There he sat, reading like an automaton, turning the leaves at regular intervals, doing the business to which he enforced himself, with his pale fingers and his rigid face. To think that one wicked, lawful expression of a dead man’s will could have drained the humanity thus out of one who was a woman’s husband and the father of children, when that devilish stroke smote him in full career! The woman was dead ages since, and the children banished; and dead down in its miserable solitude had stiffened that vexed heart. Did he ever have a heart, that dismal man, at his dreary occupation, forlorn by the evening fire? – or was this life which he lived, hugging to his bosom through all these years that big wrong which he had made the pivot of his impoverished existence? Who could tell? but there might, at least, have been pity in the kindred eyes which watched him through that melancholy night.
There was no pity, however, in the eyes of Horace: when his first guilty fear of being discovered was over, he stood and gazed, with a burning, steady gaze, upon his enemy. Years and days of his own existence rose before Horace as he looked; he heard himself once more addressed with that killing politeness which murdered nature in him; he saw himself once more lowering in a fierce, unnatural restraint at that same miserable table, cursing, and not blessing, the very bread he ate. He saw Susan’s head drooping, in timid and terrified silence, opposite that lonely man. Had there been heart or hope in him, would he have banished the harmless girl, to whom Horace did contemptuous justice for once in his life? And as the young man gazed the fire burned. For a moment he seemed to see, by a better revelation, all the injury – a thousand times worse than disinheritance – which his father had done him; and became aware furiously, without regretting it, by some extraordinary magic of hatred, of his own unlovely character, the malicious creation of his father’s cruelty. These were dreadful thoughts; but he did not seek to get rid of them – rather encouraged the baleful imagination, and wrapped himself in its hostile suggestions. Nature! that was abrogated long ago by Mr. Scarsdale’s own words. They were rivals to the death – nothing but the bitterest dislike and mutual enmity could exist between that father and son; and Horace felt himself acquitted from any tie of nature by the thought.
While he stood thus, watching, Mr. Scarsdale, innocent of any enemy at the window, put up his hand to his head for a few minutes, as if in suffering, and then, rising, left the room. When he entered again he carried in his hand a mahogany box, bound with brass, not unlike a small desk. Horace, who watched all his proceedings keenly, with excited attention, saw him take out a vial, hold it up to the light, and then measure out for himself a minute dose of the medicine it contained. With eyes that burned through the darkness, Horace watched and noted. The box was left standing by his father’s side on the table – where had he brought it from? The young man watched and waited, shivering for long hours, till Mr. Scarsdale’s time for retiring came. Then he followed eagerly with his eyes the ghostly figure which glided out of the room, with the box under one arm. The light reappeared a few minutes after in the window of Mr. Scarsdale’s bedroom, into the secrets of which he had no power of spying. Then he wandered away blindly over the invisible heather, feeling nothing of the pricks that caught him on every side, insensible to the fresh night breezes blowing about his cheeks, unthinking where he went. When the morning came he could have fancied that he had slept there, so profound was his miserable preoccupation. But he had not slept there. The other man within him had struck out resolutely across the night, and gained shelter in a roadside public-house, from whence it was, refreshed and resolute, that he now came.
That same afternoon Horace once more essayed an entrance at Marchmain. Peggy received him with a suspicious face, but thrust him into the kitchen with a haste and force which betrayed to Horace that, as once before, her master was out, and everything propitious for him. He asked the question hurriedly.
“What does the like of you want here, Mr. Horry, two days running?” said the startled woman; “and what’s your business if he’s out or in? I tauld ye last time, and ye know what came o’t. It’s no’ your meaning that you came to see him, like a dutiful son?”
“No, Peggy; but only to look for something I want in my old room. I confess I got frightened yesterday,” said Horace, with a grim, and somewhat tremulous smile. “I had no desire to meet him, fierce and furious as he used to be, or polite, which is worse. I ran away: but to-day you will surely let me go upstairs?”
“And what for,” said Peggy, steadily fixing her eyes on his face, “did you throw yon napkin in the fire?”
Horace grew pale in spite of himself. “A napkin? Did I throw it in the fire? I was not aware of it,” he said, with all the boldness he could muster. “However, let me go upstairs.”
Peggy looked at him, and shook her head. “Ye’ll be a-going and rummaging again,” she said, with a voice of grieved uncomprehension. She had brought him up, and her heart warmed to him, unlovable as he was.
“I tell you I have found out everything. What should I rummage for? – and a great deal of good it is to me, now I know all,” said Horace, in a tone more natural than Peggy had yet heard from his lips. “Go you and watch, Peggy, and let me know when my father appears.”
Peggy followed him mournfully. Still, shaking her head, she went in after him with suspicion, and looked round the bare walls of his old room. “I’m bound to say I can see nowght to look for here,” said Peggy, sharply; but, after another inspection, she went reluctantly up to her watch-tower – the store-room – to look for her master’s approach. Whenever she was gone, Horace stole noiselessly as a ghost into his father’s apartment. It was not a murderous light that shone from the May skies into that room, the most comfortable in the house – but the young felon had night and darkness in his face. The box stood on the dressing-table, beside that chair of Mr. Scarsdale’s, in which some malicious ghost might have sat, it looked so occupied and observant. With a trembling yet rapid hand, Horace opened the box, and took out of it the little phial which he had seen his father use. It was carefully closed, with a piece of pink leather tied over the cork, and a very peculiar knot, which Horace, with his excited fingers, found great difficulty in opening. When he had succeeded, he poured out its contents, and replaced them from another of his own sealed packets. He did this mechanically and methodically, but with the cold dew bursting on his face, and his fingers, in their haste and tremble, fumbling over the knot, which he did not seem able to tie as it was before. When he had replaced it, and closed the box, he stood, trembling and miserable, looking at it. He could not tell whether he had placed the phial exactly as it was before: the box now would not close perfectly, and he could not remember, with his scared and desperate wits, whether it had been so when he opened it. At last, impatient, he put down the lid violently, with a jar which startled him into a fever of apprehension. Somebody must have heard it! – it went through his own head and heart with a thrill of terror. Then he skulked out, with that stealthy horror in his face which should henceforward be the prevailing sentiment of Horace Scarsdale’s unhappy countenance. Twice a parricide! – without calling Peggy from her watch, or daring to look in her face, he stole out the back-way from his father’s house, leaving Death and Murder there!
A week after, Mr. Pouncet’s confidential clerk returned to Kenlisle. He was restless, and deadly pale, and went to his desk to look for letters with a horrible anxiety. There were no letters there; and he turned out again with a breathless flutter of excitement to see his principal, and speak as he best could about business. But neither Mr. Pouncet nor any other person had heard anything from Marchmain, and Horace went out again in a miserable fever, which all his efforts could not quite conceal. He had laid the train; but heaven knows how long it might smoulder before the spark was set to that thread of death!
CHAPTER XV
WHILE these dark elements of tragedy were gathering about the lonely house of Marchmain, things went on very cheerfully in Milnehill, where everybody was vaguely encouraged by the idea of the investigation going on which might restore some wreck of fortune to the young Rifleman; and where a still more engrossing pursuit reconciled that hero himself to the necessity of waiting for news of this possible enrichment. Roger, who had no great hopes on the subject, bore the suspense with the greatest patience, and never, indeed, showed the least signs of anxiety, except when it seemed likely that a word or two of lamentation over his fate would call forth the compassion of the ladies – which compassion was very sincere on Susan’s part, and good-humouredly satirical on that of Mrs. Melrose. “It’s easy to see the poor young man’s losing heart altogether with this waiting,” the old lady would say with much gravity; “for you see, Susan, my dear, it’s not to be expected that he can find anything here to amuse him, poor man, seeing nothing but two old people and a quiet little girl like you.” Mrs. Melrose had quite taken up her abode at Milnehill since Roger’s arrival. She said it was good for her health to smell the chestnut blossoms, and overlook Uncle Edward’s gardening – and a very cheerful and lively addition she made to the happy house.
One morning, however, the quiet progress of affairs was interrupted by a letter, which Roger read not without a little agitation at the breakfast-table. When he had come to the end he handed it over suddenly, with a slight impetuous impulse, to the Colonel, who took it with his usual kind look of serious attention, put on his spectacles immediately, and addressed himself to the perusal of the letter with much gravity and earnestness. It was from Roger’s mother, and written partly under the inspiration of little Edmund, messages from whom were mixed with everything the timid woman said —
“MY DEAREST BOY – Your dear letter and the news of your arrival brought the greatest pleasure I have known for many a long day, though it came in the midst of great trouble, my dear Mr. Stenhouse having been buried just a few days before; a very great affliction, which I trust, for all your sakes, my dear boy, yours and little Edmund’s, and your dear sisters’, I shall have strength to bear. Little Edmund interrupts me to say – and I must give you the very words of his message, or he will not be pleased – that, please, you’re to come home directly, and that his papa has left him a great deal of money, and he means to give you half of it, and wants so very, very much to see his brother Roger. My own boy, I must ask you to be very good to dear little Edmund; he has been such an invalid, the dear child, that everybody has always yielded to him all his life, and he does love you so! Since ever he could speak he has kept on entreating me to tell him of his brother Roger, and he thinks there is not such another in the world; and he is very good, the dear little fellow, when he is not in pain, and one takes a little care and knows his way. However, I have something to tell you besides. The day before yesterday along with your letter there came a letter to my dear Mr. Stenhouse, which Edmund opened before I saw what he was doing. Edmund tells me to say that he does so hope you will come soon to see the cricketing in Leasough Park; and he thinks if you would join the Leasough eleven – Leasough is a village two miles off, where we always go for our drive, and where everybody knows Edmund – they would be sure to win. But about Mr. Pouncet’s letter, my dear son. It seemed written in a great fright, saying that Sir John Armitage had written to him something about you, and what should he do? – and speaking in a very improper manner, actually cursing the day he did something, which it seems my dear Mr. Stenhouse must have known of, and asking that young Mr. Scarsdale, Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, who seemed to know about it too, might be sent to Kenlisle at once. Edmund said, ‘Mamma, send for Mr. Scarsdale directly’ (he is so clever, the dear child), and so I did. But I must first go back to tell you that my dear Mr. Stenhouse himself had sent for young Mr. Scarsdale, and spoke with him in private, and charged him, as I heard with my own ears – dear Julius being taken very bad, and not knowing what he said – that ‘the boy was not to know’ – just the day before his death. When Mr. Scarsdale came, I am sorry to say he was not so polite as I should have expected from Colonel Sutherland’s nephew, and would not tell either Edmund or me anything, but rather sneered at my poor child, and went off all in haste, keeping the letter in his hand. I should have sent it to you if he had not taken it away. Now, I do not know what this may mean – nor can it be expected that Edmund should, as he is only a child; but both he and I, my dear boy, beg of you to ask the Colonel what he thinks, and to try to find out yourself. And whatever you do, dear, don’t trust to that Mr. Pouncet; for it was quite clear to me by his letter that he had somehow done you wrong, and wanted to conceal it. Edmund says, ‘Tell Roger, mamma, he’s not to trust Scarsdale either;’ but indeed I scarcely have the heart to say so, remembering that he’s the dear good Colonel’s nephew – only he was not so kind as he might have been, you know, and I have some reason to think he is fond of Amelia – which should surely keep him from doing anything that would harm her brother.
“But, my dearest boy, come home. I have not seen you – my son – my baby – my first-born! – for so many years, and my heart yearns for a sight of you. Oh, come to me! Let me see you under my own roof! Roger – my son – my dear boy – come home to your mother! There is no other friend who can have so close a claim upon my darling child!
“Always your loving mother,“A. Stenhouse.”
“You will go at once?” said the Colonel, with some gravity, as he gave the letter back into Roger’s hand.
Go at once! The words rung upon Susan’s ear like a cannon-shot. She turned her blue eyes with a look of amazed alarm from her uncle to Roger; then she became suddenly very much busied with the duties of the breakfast table, swallowing down, as a very attentive observer might have noticed, something in her throat, and carefully keeping her eyes upon her tea-pot and coffee-pot. Roger had made no answer as yet. While the Colonel inclined his ear attentively across the table for the young man’s reply, Roger was studying Susan’s face; and it is not hard to explain that common paradox of youthful nature, which made Susan’s silent signs of sudden disappointment and vexation the most exhilarating sight in the world to the young Rifleman. While Uncle Edward listened, and heard nothing, and fancied his own deaf ear in fault, Roger, quite otherwise occupied – thinking, it is to be feared, not much about his mother, and nothing at all about Mr. Pouncet – concentrated all his faculties on the honest face of Susan, with its womanly but unconcealable dismay.
“Eh, Musgrave?” said the Colonel, stooping towards his young guest, and putting up his kind hand over his deaf ear.
“I suppose so, sir,” said Roger, in high spirits. Then, after a little pause, with sham sentiment, got up simply as a trap for Susan – “If one could only find out the secret of ubiquity, so that one might be able to content one’s mother, and enjoy one’s self, at the same time.”
Yielding to this temptation, Susan glanced up at the young hero for a moment, with some tender tearfulness about her eyes; but, finding nothing but triumph and delight in his, returned, disgusted, and much more inclined to cry than before, to the contemplation of her coffee-pot.
“One may manage that, I hope, without any ubiquity,” said the Colonel, still very gravely; for the old soldier was moved too seriously by this letter to notice the by-play of the youthful drama going on under his eyes. “But I am surprised you are not more excited by your mother’s communication, Roger. My dear fellow, it is quite evident now that there must be something in it; and a pretty person to conduct an investigation this Pouncet must be, after what you have just heard. Why, to be sure, referring the search to a guilty party is the very way to keep ourselves in darkness. I’ll tell you what, Musgrave; if you do not see after it at once, I shall take the liberty of constituting myself your guardian, and set out to-day.”
Roger stretched out his hand to meet that of Colonel Sutherland, who had gradually warmed as he spoke. “Amen,” said the young man. “Till I can persuade some still kinder and fairer hand to assume the reins, I could not have any guardian I should like so well.”
“Pshaw!” said Uncle Edward, awakening to the fact that his young guest was speaking at Susan much more than to himself – “never mind fairer hands. What do you mean to do?”
Upon which, Roger perceiving that his last shot had taken due effect, grew serious all at once.
“It does look at last as if there was something in it,” he said. “I have thought all along that if any mischief had been done Pouncet must have known of it; and he was a man of such character! I cannot think yet how it is possible that he could put himself or his reputation in danger to defraud me; – but certainly,” continued Roger, growing rather red and wrathful, “the pretence of a sham investigation and a confidential clerk – ”
“Ah!” cried Uncle Edward, with a sharp short exclamation like a sudden pang – “most likely it was – well, well, well! —we cannot help it; it is to his own Master that each of us standeth or falleth: let us not blame till we know.”
“Uncle,” said Susan in alarm, coming round to his side and sliding her hand into his, “it is something about Horace? – something more?”
“No, my love, nothing more – nothing at all that one could build upon,” said the Colonel tenderly; “only I rather fear, Susan, as we both did when you came first to Milnehill, that Horace knows of some injury which has been done to Roger, and yet does not let him know.”
Susan made a momentary pause of shame and distress as her uncle spoke, and then raised her eyes, full of tears and entreaty, to Roger’s face. Poor Susan believed that these tears were all about her brother, and would not have acknowledged that a single drop of that gentle rain had relation to the “going away” with which this conversation arose.
Roger, however, could not bear these tears. He put his mother’s letter hastily into her hand – would she read it? There was really nothing blaming Mr. Scarsdale, as she would see. And Susan stood shy and tearful, with the paper trembling in her hand – a maidenly, womanly, natural restraint forbidding her to read, while her heart yearned, notwithstanding, towards Roger’s mother; while Roger kept looking at her with anxious eyes, as earnest to have her read it as though his fate depended on the issue. Did either of them think of Horace in connection with this letter? or what, between these two young dreamers, trembling on the edge of their romance, was Colonel Sutherland, with very serious thoughts in his mind and matters in his hand, to do? He got up after a few minutes waiting, with good-humoured impatience.
“Boys and girls,” said Uncle Edward, “with all their life before them, like you young people, may waste a few hours of it without much harm done; but what I have to do must be done quickly. Make up your mind, Roger, my good friend; but as for me, I am going off to Armitage by the first train. Susan, my love, Mrs. Melrose will stay with you; for this young fellow’s interests, you see, must be looked after, whether he wishes it or not – especially, my dear” – and Uncle Edward’s kind face grew darker as he made that significant pause.
“Especially if Horace has had any share in it,” cried Susan. “Oh, Mr. Musgrave!” and a few tears fell suddenly over Roger’s mother’s letter. The Colonel at the moment had stepped out of the room to give his instructions to Patchey, and Susan’s one sole remaining intention, on which all her mind was fixed, was to rush after him; but that involuntary turn of her head and exclamation of her lips sealed Susan’s fate. Roger was not the man to let slip so advantageous a moment – and had things to do of more importance than packing his portmanteau before he left Milnehill.