The House on the Moor. Volume 1

Horace’s eyes fell under his uncle’s look; he was half ashamed – not of his sentiments, but of having betrayed them.

“I am sure it is very good of you to take so much trouble for Susan,” he said, with his uncomprehending, half-resentful voice.

Colonel Sutherland supposed Horace to be jealous, and was a little pained, but yet acknowledged a certain amount of nature in the feeling. He had no conception of the true state of the case – of the entire contempt his nephew felt for himself, and the angry and derisive wonder with which he perceived the importance given to Susan. It was not jealousy: Horace only could not comprehend how any man in his senses could resign his conversation and society for that of his sister – Susan! a girl! who knew nothing, hoped nothing, desired nothing – a tame, contented woman! He found it hard to restrain himself under these circumstances, and called his uncle an old fool and an old trifler in his secret heart. Then Susan came downstairs, smiling and happy – her India shawl contrasting, perhaps, rather too strongly with her simple bonnet and dark merino gown, standing before her uncle to be admired, and turning round that he might see his present in all possible aspects. What trifling! what folly! what miserable vanity! But it pleased the two wonderfully, who stood there making a little sun-bright group of their own, the old man stooping over the girl, with his tender, indulgent smile, and the girl looking up to him in her unusual flutter of happy spirits. Perhaps it is true, after all, that common, every-day happiness – that dear solace of common life, which comes, when it does come, without asking – is made up of very trivial things; at all events, it was much more agreeable to look at them than at Horace, who loured behind them like a dark cloud, and turned away his head in disgust, and felt that it was all he could do to keep the sneer of scorn from his lip. In much the same condition he attended them to the door, and saw them drive away. Susan, wrapped up and covered over with shawls and cloaks of every description by her uncle’s careful hands, and with Peggy’s great black veil, embroidered with great flowers, like gigantic beetles, fastened over her bonnet; from the midst of all which unusual coverings the pretty face, smiling and blushing, radiant with pleasure and gratitude, looked out in its sweet colour and expression, with a simplicity of happiness quite beyond Horace’s frown to stifle or prevent. Somehow his sister’s face disgusted him that day: he stood looking after them, suffering his sneer to take form and remain, long after they were out of sight. He rose over them in his own mind with a contemptuous superiority, yet felt himself humbled and envious at sight of the happiness with which he had no sympathy, and which he did not understand. He did not wish to share it – it was something beneath his level. Yet the very power of being exhilarated by such trifles, and finding pleasure so independent of reasonable grounds, filled the young man with a certain envy, and humiliated his pride. Susan’s happiness did not give him a single throb of pleasure, yet it brightened his uncle’s face into quite a kindred light: it was altogether incomprehensible to Horace. He took refuge in silent contempt and sneers of unacknowledged mortification, disdaining the pleasure, yet galled in himself not to comprehend how it was.

CHAPTER XIV

MEANWHILE Colonel Sutherland and his niece drove along the bare and exposed moorland road with very different sentiments. Susan could not feel any cold, could not allow herself to suppose that any landscape more delightful or weather more entirely satisfactory was to be found anywhere in the world. She pitied the poor people shut up in a close carriage, whom they passed at a little distance from Marchmain. She appealed to her uncle if a gig was not of all other kinds of conveyance the most delightful. She listened to his stories of travel in India, with all its elephants and camels, and of the still more miraculous railway at home, with equal admiration and wonder, as things equally unlikely to come under her own observation, and enjoyed her present extraordinary felicity all the more from thinking how unlikely it was to occur again.

Everything concurred to put Susan in the highest spirits – her freedom, her kind protector, the novelty of her position, the wondering looks cast at her from the cottages they passed, the involuntary respect excited by her companion, the air, the sunshine – even the fine shawl, though it was entirely covered by her other wrappings and nobody could see it – all contributed towards the full and joyous satisfaction of her young mind. She put Peggy’s great old-fashioned veil, with its big beetles, up from her face – she was not afraid of the wind, or of taking cold, or of anything else in the world; and as the horizon gradually widened, and the road extended out of the immediate vicinity of her home, Susan’s delight increased. She declared the hills went faster than they did, and kept continually receding, and every new opening of the landscape increased her pleasure. The Colonel listened to all her admiring exclamations with a smiling face; he told her of his own neighbourhood, a fairer and richer country. He spoke of the visit she must make him shortly, and of all the places he should take her to. The wind blew cold in their faces, with by no means a balmy or genial breath; but then their hearts were so fortified with warm affections and honest happiness, that the cold did not hurt them. Little by little they fell into more particular conversation. Colonel Sutherland was interested and concerned about Horace, anxious to know how to help him; but he was not and could not be confidential with his nephew, whereas his heart flew open to Susan as at a touch of magic. He could not help speaking of everything which moved when he had gained her ear, and had her to himself alone. He had told her all about young Roger Musgrave before he was aware, and about Kennedy’s story, and his own vexation and annoyance to find that the young stranger had not dealt quite truly by him.

“But, uncle! – oh, Peggy knows all about him,” said Susan; “Peggy did not know he had any friends till just the other day. Perhaps he did not know himself – perhaps – I think, Uncle Edward, I would not believe he was wrong till he told you of it himself.”

“But if he is in the wrong, Susan, will he tell me of it himself?”

“Some people would not,” said Susan, gravely, “I know that; but yes, uncle, oh, yes, I am not afraid.”

“Perhaps you know him better than I do, my love,” said Uncle Edward, observing with a little curiosity the expression of Susan’s face.

“Yes, I think I saw him once,” said Susan. Then she added, with a little laugh – “I was very much frightened – I am afraid it was very wrong of him – he was actually fighting, uncle.”

“Fighting? – it was certainly very wrong,” said the Colonel; “but you laugh, you wicked little fairy – what was it about?”

“It was not so much fighting either,” said Susan – “it was punishing. It was gipsies, uncle – what the people here call muggers, you know. One of them was driving his little cart along the road with a poor wretched donkey, lashing it like a savage, and his poor wife came trudging after him, with her baby tied in a shawl on her back – and twice over he gave her a cut with his whip, to make her go faster. I could have beaten him myself – the great beast!” cried Susan. “Roger Musgrave was coming down the road; and, just as he met the muggers, that fellow pushed his wife out of the way so rudely, that she fell down, poor creature, and hurt herself. Mr. Roger had been watching them like me – he came up just then with a spring, and caught the mugger by his collar and his waist like this; and, before he had time to say a word, tossed him over the hedge —right over – where he rolled head-over-heels on the grass. You should have seen his face when he got up! I clapped my hands – I was so pleased. And Mr. Roger took off his hat to me,” said Susan, after a little pause, with a rising colour, “as you did, uncle, to-day.”

“It was very well done, I don’t doubt,” said Colonel Sutherland; “but, my dear child, that was not fighting.”

“Oh, no – not that! – but I liked it better than what came after,” said Susan. “The mugger scrambled through the hedge, and swore at Mr. Roger; and he took off his coat in a moment, and told him not to be a coward, to flog women and beasts, but to come on – and I was very much frightened; then the mugger’s wife, she came forward and swore too, and it was all very dreadful. I did not want to see them fight, and ran into a cottage – I rather think they did not fight at all, for the mugger was frightened too; but, however, that was the only time I ever saw Roger Musgrave; the people in the cottage told me who he was, and I liked him for punishing the man.”

“I daresay the fellow punished his wife and the donkey all the more, when they were out of sight,” said the Colonel; “but I confess I should have done it myself. Very well! I will put down in my books – my little Susan in favour of young Musgrave versus Sergeant Kennedy against. And so you only saw him that one time? Do you know anybody at all, you poor child? – have you ever had a companion in your life?”

“Not a companion,” said Susan; “but” – and she looked up in her uncle’s face – “you won’t be angry, I know, uncle. Peggy goes to the meeting, and sometimes in the morning, when papa does not go out, I go with her. It is dreary to go to church all alone.”

“So it is,” said the sympathetic uncle; “and what then?”

“Then,” said Susan, blushing a little more, and looking up shyly in his face – “I am sure I do not know how we got acquainted. We used to look at each other, and then we nodded, and then, at last, one day we spoke; and now, sometimes, we meet when we are out walking, uncle – and once I have been in their house – only once. I did not mean it – I was there before I knew what I was about.”

“But you have not told me yet who this mysterious person is,” said the Colonel, a little disappointed and troubled, if the truth must be told, at the thought of some young and no doubt perfectly unsuitable lover who met his little girl in clandestine walks, and whose house even, the inexperience of Susan had been persuaded into visiting. He said the words rather coldly, in spite of himself – he was mortified to find the virginal quiet of her mind already thus disturbed.

“Uncle, are you displeased?” said Susan, with a little fright and surprise. “Oh, I never thought you would be angry; for even Peggy said that to be friends with Letty would be for my good. She is the minister’s daughter at the meeting, and the only child; and she has learned so much, and knows a hundred things that I know nothing of; and, uncle, sometimes I want somebody to speak to – oh, so much!”

“My dear child, forgive me! I wish you knew a dozen Letties,” cried the repentant Colonel; “that you should have to blush over an innocent friendship, my poor dear little girl; but your confusion, Susan, made me think it something very different. Why should you be ashamed of knowing Letty? I am very glad to hear it, for my part.”

Susan did not answer just immediately. She said to herself, with a little quickening of her breath: —

“I wonder what was the something very different that Uncle Edward thought of,” and a little inclination to laughter seized the little girl. Who could tell why? She did not know herself, but felt it all the same.

“Does Horace spend much of his time with you, Susan?” said Uncle Edward; “does he tell you what he is thinking about? Do you know that your brother is tired of an idle life, and wants to be employed, and to make his own way in the world?”

With that question Susan was brought back to her home, and separated as if by magic in a moment from all her individual involuntary girlish happinesses; she shrank a little into herself and felt chilled and contracted, without knowing how. She could not even be so frank as she would have been a little while ago – Uncle Edward’s love had opened the eyes of the neglected girl, and developed all at once in her heart the natural instincts of “the only woman in the family.” She could not bear to convey an unfavourable impression of Horace to her uncle; but, unskilled in her new craft, she betrayed herself even by her reticences and reserves.

“I know he wants to go away,” she said, faltering a little; “and I am sure you would not be surprised, if you lived with us only for a day; – for,” added Susan, blushing and correcting herself, “it is very dull at Marchmain, and boys cannot put up with that as we can. Horace has always felt it a great deal more than I have.”

“I am not surprised,” said Colonel Sutherland; “if Marchmain was the happiest home in the world, still the young man must go away – it is in his nature. He must make his own way in the world.”

“Must he, uncle?” said Susan, looking up with a little surprise into his face.

“I was only sixteen, my love, when I first went to India,” said the Colonel; “the boys, as you call them, must not stay at home all their lives – they must do something. My Ned will be on his way to India, if all is well, in a year or two. The sooner a young man gets into his work the better – and now Horace would set about it too.”

“But he cannot do anything, uncle,” said Susan, seriously; “what is he going to do?”

“Has he never told you?” asked Uncle Edward.

The question seemed to imply blame, and Susan was troubled.

“Horace is not like you, uncle,” she said, recovering a little boldness; “he does not tell me things; he knows a great deal more than I do – he has almost learned German – and he thinks a great deal more. I am afraid I do not always understand him when he does speak to me. It is my fault; so he thinks over everything all the more, and I am afraid sometimes gets angry in his heart, because no one can understand him at Marchmain!”

Colonel Sutherland shook his head, but did not say anything. He began to tell Susan what he did when he was a lad.

“There were a great many of us at home, to be sure,” said the Colonel; “but we were all scattered before the youngest was fifteen – the sisters married, and the brothers making their own career. They are all dead, Susan, every one – but you have quantities of cousins, my dear, in India and elsewhere, whom you never heard of, I daresay. Your Uncle William was puisne Judge of the Saraflat, John was Resident at Cangalore, both of them very much respected. I was the youngest but one. I could not bear the thought that all my brothers were independent but myself. I gave them no peace at home till I got my cadetship. Unless one has the good fortune to get an appointment, it is quite as hard work getting on in India as at home, my dear; and all our influence had been used up for my elder brothers, and exhausted before it came to my turn. I was but a subaltern when I married, Susan. Your aunt was – ah, I can’t describe her, my love. I am very happy on the whole and contented, but sometimes I think on what might have been, and make myself wretched, which is very sinful, considering how much I have to thank God for. Yes, Susan, I was a rich man once. I had wife and daughters, and my house full. We had not very much money, but we were very happy; and now, my dear child, you are the only woman of the family – that is, here.”

Susan could not have spoken a word to save her life – she sobbed silently under her heap of warm wrappings, looking with a wistful, youthful sympathy into the grave face beside her. The Colonel shed no tears; – he guided his horse with the same quiet caution as before, turning the animal aside from a sudden obstacle in the way, with a steady promptitude, which showed his perfect attention to what he was about, even in the midst of these recollections; yet he was not looking at the road, nor at her, nor at anything; but had his eyes fixed on the far-away horizon, which yet he did not see. Susan sat beside him in silence, wondering with youthful awe and reverence over the indescribable yearning, with which some instinct told her this brave old heart longed for the heaven which held his departed; but she could not say anything – she would have felt it sacrilege.

However, they shortly approached the town, which recalled Colonel Sutherland from his graver thoughts. It was a comfortable country town, pleasantly placed at the opening of a valley, with the gray fells ranging themselves on either side, and the great gray tower of the old Abbey church reigning over the little crowd of houses. The market-place was still busy and bright, though the more serious merchandize of the morning was over; cosy country-women, in cloth pelisses, made promenades round the open square, where the best shops in the town displayed their riches, to see “how things were wore,” and make stray purchase of a kerchief or ribbon; and still the notable housewives of the town bought vegetables, and rabbits, and country eggs, and chickens, from the remaining stalls in the market-place. And still heaps of dark-green vegetables – winter greens and savoys, purple flowers of broccoli, and tiny red lines of carrots, illustrated some boards, close to the white eggs and yellow butter, the hapless decapitated poultry, and butter-milk pails of the others. Susan and her uncle walked through the throng, attracting no small degree of observation; for there were not many such cavaliers as Colonel Sutherland in Kenlisle, and very few such shawls as that one which, relieved of all her other wraps, Susan displayed upon her shoulders with no small degree of pride. The scene was quite extraordinary in its animation to her eyes. She looked at the ruddy winter apples and crisp greens with the most perfect interest. She longed, with a natural housewifely instinct, to make purchases herself, to the confusion and amazement of Peggy. She could scarcely conceal her unbecoming curiosity about the booths of toys and sweetmeats, the cases of coarse ornaments, brooches, and rings, and ear-rings, which Susan could not believe to be paltry and worthless. The glamour of her ignorance brightened everything; and when her eyes, as she looked up unconsciously, fell upon the gray mass of the Abbey tower withdrawn into a street which led off from this busy space, Susan felt awed and ashamed to think of her own vanity and extreme regard for “the things of this world.” But she could not school herself into righteous indifference; above all, when Uncle Edward, indifferent to her morals, took her into shop after shop, buying a little parcel of books in one place, some pretty ribbons in another, a cap for Peggy, which captivated the old man in a window; and, last of all, patterns and materials for work of various kinds, canvas and Berlin wool, and an embroidery-frame. This last purchase raised Susan into a paradisiacal condition, for which it is to be hoped nobody will despise her. She was not very intellectual, it is true – it might very well happen that she preferred her needlework to her book sometimes. She saw herself rendered completely independent, as she supposed, of ennui and domestic weariness by that ecstatic parcel. She longed to take it in her arms, and run all the way home with it, that Peggy might see, and half regretted for a moment the luncheon at Tillington, which, however, would give her still another hour or two of her uncle’s company. Then Susan looked at that uncle with a great compunction, thinking of what he had told her; but Colonel Sutherland was happy in her happiness, delighted to see her so delighted, and entered with fresh, natural pleasure into the scene for his own part. It was quite a work of art to pack the gig with all the parcels, and wrap Susan up again into all her cloaks. Then they went off at a great pace to Tillington. So far it had been a most successful day.

CHAPTER XV

HORACE had been waiting some time in the little inn before Colonel Sutherland and Susan arrived. This had not much improved the young man’s temper; but the result of his cogitations on the way here, and while he waited, had been, that it was necessary to be no longer critical, but that he must assume the virtue which he had not, and secure his uncle’s assistance in his own way. Horace had settled at last to his own satisfaction upon his version of his uncle’s character. He concluded the Colonel to be a well-meaning, superficial old man, most at home among women and children, finding pleasure in trifles, strongly prejudiced in favour of some old-fashioned virtues, which he recommended not so much from conviction as from custom. Industry and honesty, and straightforwardness, a homespun and sober interpretation of all human laws – Horace decided that his uncle lauded and urged these virtues on others just as he might recommend cod-liver oil or Morison’s pills, and that he was unable to comprehend anything higher than that old code of respectability. But granting this, it was all the more wise to humour and yield to the old man, and permit him to maunder on in his own way. Horace resolved to profess himself ready and anxious for employment, the choice of which he meant dutifully to leave to his uncle; and having thus settled summarily the more important issue, set himself with all his might to observe and entrap the unsuspicious Colonel in his confidential and unguarded talk. It suited him a great deal better to do this, than to consider honestly how he should provide for his own life, and establish his individual position in the world; and it was significant of his character that he dismissed the former question at once, but lingered with inclination and zeal upon the crafts of the other, laying his ambuscade with all the cunning and precaution possible.

He sat by the fire in the inn parlour, while the maid and mistress bustled in and out laying the cloth and preparing for the Colonel’s arrival. Mrs. Gilsland having recovered her temper, and remembering the embellishments of her master’s table, in the days when she professed herself a cook, had been at pains to gather a handful of laurustinus, with dim, pinky, half-opened blossoms, to adorn the table, upon which sparkled the best glass and whitest linen of the establishment. The worthy woman would fain have insinuated herself into the confidence of Horace as he sat by the fire, and wanted only the very smallest encouragement to break forth in praises of the Colonel, and to hint her fear that they would not see much of the young gentleman at Tillington now that “his grand friends had turned up at last, and he was nigh coom to his fortune.” But Horace did not give the slightest opening to any such familiarity. He kept possession of the room with an insolent unconsciousness of the landlady’s presence and her hesitating glances at him, which enraged and yet awed her. It was Mr. Horry’s “way,” and this arrogance imposed upon the village people even while it offended them; but it was very different from “the Cornel.” Mrs. Gilsland, who had been much disappointed at first to learn that her guest was no lord, and had not the shadow of a title, was by this time entirely captivated by the old man, and zealous to serve him; but still she turned to Mr. Horry with the interest which attaches to mystery. He took no more notice of her than if she had been a piece of furniture. She was angry but reverential – there was “a power o’ thought” in the young man.

When the gig arrived with the two travellers, Horace hastened to the door to meet them with a novel amiability. He lifted Susan down, and gathered her parcels together with a good-nature that astounded her. They were all equally pleased, it seemed, as they went in together and met Mrs. Gilsland, curtseying and cordial, ready – half from goodwill and half from curiosity – to attend Susan herself, and help her to take off her bonnet. Then Susan carried a passport to respect wherever she went in that wonderful shawl; the landlady touched it with reverential ignorance, knowing only that it was “Indae,” and ready to believe in any fabulous estimate of its value. Then, for the first time, Mrs. Gilsland remembered her unlucky trifle, with, not anger, but a pang of mortification. The wearer of such a shawl did certainly deserve something better than apples and custards, to which familiar dainties she had fallen back in despair. However, the luncheon was so far satisfactory, that it was eaten in perfect freedom, with a lively flow of conversation on all sides, which exhilarated even Horace, and raised Susan into a little paradise. What a difference it made to the common table, when Uncle Edward sat at the head instead of papa! – what an extraordinary revolution life would undergo, if the bread of every day were sweetened by such domestic intercourse as this! While her brother rose into a certain glow of personal exultation in the freedom he experienced, Susan, thinking less of herself, and feeling more deeply, found herself, unawares, surprised by the sudden mortification of a comparison. Involuntarily tears came into her eyes, and as she grew more grateful and affectionate towards her uncle, her heart ached more and more for her father. She saw now all the unnatural misery of their life. Why was it? But these thoughts did not take possession of the girl – they only came over her mind in a sudden, painful overflow as the tears came to her eyes; and then she thought of Horace’s instructions to her; and, moved by strong curiosity and anxiety of her own – of a very different kind from her brother’s – proceeded to obey him.