THE kitchen of Marchmain was built out from the house, and was a long and somewhat narrow apartment, quite unlike the rest of the building. People said it had been a cottage standing on the spot before this house was built, and arbitrarily connected with it—and the unceiled roof and large old-fashioned chimney favoured the notion. The mud or brick floor had been, however, replaced by a deal one; and the roof was now covered, instead of thatch, with the less picturesque but safer slates, which gave so cold an aspect to the house. Within, two large articles of furniture filled up half the space, though furniture these fixed encumbrances could scarcely be called. One was a prodigious press, in which Peggy kept her household linen—the other, a great square box with a sloping lid, which contained the immediate supply of coals, brought from the coal cellar outside. Beneath the window—which was large but high, so that Peggy, though she was tall, could do no more than look out, and Susan could only reach up to it on tiptoe—stood a large deal table, clean to the utmost extent of cleanliness, where Peggy did her ironing—(Peggy was punctilious in her concerns, and kept everything in its proper place)—another table in quite another quarter was appropriated to the cooking—and a third, a small round one, stood aside in a corner to be lifted in front of the fireplace at nights when Peggy’s work was over, beside the big old heavy elbow-chair, where Peggy took an evening nap and sipped a fourth cup of tea.
In this apartment, in the morning of the same day, while Colonel Sutherland drove through the rain, Susan, excited, happy, and restless, fluttered round Peggy at her work. Susan had in her hand the front of one of Master Horace’s new shirts, which she pretended to be stitching—but everybody knows that stitching is a delicate operation, and not to be performed on foot, or in a state of restlessness. This was the time of the day when Susan was most free to follow her own desires. Horace was out, and Mr. Scarsdale in his study. When this fortunate concurrence of circumstances was secured, Susan came lightly out of the dull dining-room to the bright kitchen, the only place in the house which had an appearance or sentiment of home. Peggy was better company for Susan than a thousand philosophers; she laughed, she sang, she danced about, she looked like a young living creature, as she was, in Peggy’s womanly presence. Her father and her brother were rather hard examples of the rule of man to Susan. Horace exacted endless sympathy—sympathy more bitter than it was in her to bestow—and scorned it when it was given; but Peggy cherished the girl with an all-indulgent tenderness—a motherly, nursely, homely love, advising, and interfering, and fretting, which kept her heart and her youth alive. But something more than usual occupied their thoughts to-day.
“Ay, honey—as if it was yesterday,” said Peggy. “R’c’lect him!—he was not the young man to be forgot, I can tell you! Many a handsome lady would have gone over seas to follow the young soldier. He was just the innocentest, bravest, kindest man I ever looked in the eye.”
“Why in the eye?” said Susan, who was a little matter-of-fact, and liked to understand a new phrase.
“Eh, child! his heart was in it!” cried Peggy. “When your mamma was alive, she was a dear, blessed creature, and kept religion and comfort in the house; but when Mr. Edward came, it was pleasure to be about, and the world was changed. He never arguified with a soul, nor set up his opinions, nor took slights nor offences, nor a single mortal thing that a’ persons beside did. He was just right himself and happy himself without thinking upon’t, and was a happiness to be nigh night and day. The master, so far as I can think, had never a cross word with Mr. Edward. Think you any other man would ever have come, or been let come, to this house?”
“No, indeed,” said Susan, gravely; “it is very strange. I wonder how he thought of it at all; one would suppose he must like us, Peggy, to come here—though I don’t see how that can be either. Hasn’t he been in India all our lives?”
“Little matter for that; but you understand nothing about friends’ feelings; and how should you, poor forlorn infant!” said Peggy. “He likes you, I’ll warrant; and he’s held you on his knee, Miss Susan—and besides, for your mamma’s sake.”
“To be sure, for mamma’s sake,” said Susan, satisfied; “but surely, other people, when she knew so many, must have loved mamma. Peggy, what can make papa so stiff and hard to strangers, and putting everybody out of the house, and never letting us make any friends—what do you think it can be?”
Peggy drew a long breath, which seemed to end in some inward words, said for her own private relief and satisfaction.
“Your papa has his own reasons, Miss Susan, and that’s neither for you nor me; but you see he lets Mr. Edward come. Who can tell how many more?—for Mr. Edward has the tongue of a nightingale, and steals folks’s hearts.”
“I wish he would sing into papa’s,” said Susan, laughing; “there’s never any music at Marchmain, Peggy. Oh, I wonder when Uncle Edward will come; look out and see if there’s anybody in the road; such a morning! and Horace will come in all muddy and sulky, and not get goodtempered the whole of the day. Peggy,” cried Susan, jumping down from the chair she had mounted to look out, “are boys always so dreadfully cross?”
“Indeed, Miss Susan, they’re little to be trusted,” said Peggy, with a grave face of wisdom, prudently refraining from blaming Horace, while she inculcated the moral lessons supposed to be most advantageous to feminine youth.
Susan shrugged her shoulders with a private internal reflection, which perhaps meant, “I should like to judge for myself;” but which said, “I am very glad, then, that we see so little of them.” For people don’t permit themselves to be very ingenuous, even in their thoughts—at least women and young girls do not. “I suppose, then,” she said very demurely aloud, “there never was but one Uncle Edward in the whole world, Peggy.”
“Eh, honey! if there were a hunderd the world would be saved, like the Lord said to Abraham,” cried Peggy. “My heart jumped when the master said it last night. I said to myself, ‘a good man’s coming, and a blessing will come with him.’ If I saw you out of this, you two unfortunate things, I would be content to go foot foremost the same day to Lanwoth Church.”
“That would be cheerful and pleasant for us, I am sure,” cried Susan; “I wonder how you dare say such a thing, Peggy—all about your own nonsense, and not a word of Uncle Edward! But, I say, Peggy—oh! tell me—Uncle Edward’s not a young man?”
Peggy took time to consider, pausing in her work for the purpose, with her hands covered with flour—for it was baking day. “I’m bound to allow he cannot be young—nay, it’s fifteen years since he was home,” cried Peggy, with a sigh. “Time flies!—it was the very same year, Miss Susan, that your mamma died.”
Susan paused with a question on her lips, awed by these last words; for she understood dimly that it was in some season of extreme and mysterious calamity that her mother’s life concluded. She could not have told how this impression had settled on her mind, but there it certainly was.
“Peggy,” she said suddenly, putting into words the suggestion of the moment, “was it mamma’s death that made papa so—so—“—Susan hesitated for a word, and at last, with a natural hypocrisy, substituted one that did not express her meaning for a less dutiful term—“so sad?”
Peggy made no audible answer, but she screwed her lips into a tight round circle, through which came an invisible, inarticulate “No,” most emphatic and unmistakable though unpronounced, shaking her head violently as she did so. Susan was first frightened, then amused, at the extraordinary pantomime.
“Don’t shake your head off, however,” she cried, laughing. “But about Uncle Edward—you never will keep to the point, you troublesome Peggy! If he is an old man, what is he? Has he got any children?—where does he live?—do you know anything about him at all?”
“Not a mortal thing,” said Peggy, relieving herself by speaking loud. “Who can hear anything here, I would like to know? Not of my own brother, Miss Susan, let alone your mamma’s. But he’s coming, bless him! I’m strong in the hope nature will come with him, and something will be done for you two.”
“Peggy, you never spoke of us two before like that,” said Susan. “Has anything happened to us that we don’t know?”
“Oh, bless the innocent!—what do you know?” cried Peggy. “If I never said it before, it was because I saw no hope; but I’ve told your papa my mind, and that I can tell you, Miss Susan; and I’ll tell it to Mr. Edward, if Providence spares me, before he’s been twelve hours in this unlucky house!”
“You are very odd to-day, Peggy,” said Susan, looking at her with curiosity. “But I am sure if Uncle Edward gets us permission to see people sometimes, I should be very glad—but then, we have affronted everybody,” added Susan, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “However, he is coming himself—that is the great matter. Peggy, what will you have ready if he comes early? He cannot wait all the time till dinner! How foolish I was, never to think of it before! What shall we do?”
“We’ll have in the lunch, Miss Susan, and as good a lunch as anybody need wish for,” said Peggy, in triumph. “Is that all the good Peggy is for, to think upon things at the last moment?—for as sure as I’m living, there’s a wheel upon the big stones in the road!”
Susan sprang up upon the chair, leaped down again, her colour rising, her heart beating. Then she ran breathless towards the door—then paused. “Oh, Peggy! who must tell papa?” she cried, in great excitement and trepidation. Peggy, without pausing to answer her question, rushed past her and through the hall, to throw the door open and seize upon the carpet-bag, as before related. Peggy was not afraid of papa, and her shriek of joy and welcome, “Eyeh, Master Edward!” penetrated even through the closed windows and doors of the study, where Mr. Scarsdale sat as usual, while Susan stood in the hall, eagerly bending forward to see the newcomer, and speculating with herself whether it was safe to secure herself the pleasure of her uncle’s first greeting, without the dreadful operation of telling papa. The issue was, a sudden spring forward on the part of the excited girl, while her uncle—sad, oppressed, and wondering—stooped his deaf ear to Peggy, and tremulously bent over his carpet-bag. Susan had no sooner seen his face than the long restrained heart yearned within her—her mother’s brother—somebody who loved them! She sprang forward and clasped his arm with both her hands, and fell a-crying, poor child, as girls use, and looked up in his face, all-conquering in her wistfulness, and her smiles, and her tears. The old man caught her in his arms, and read her face as if it had been a picture, with eager wet eyes that, after a moment, could scarcely tell what they gazed on. In that moment the poor lonely girl woke up, by dint of finding it, to discover the love that had been wanting, the immeasurable lack of her young life. And the old soldier took his sister’s child—the only woman of the family—a new, tender, delicate tie, almost more touching and intimate than any other, into his fatherly old heart; and, on the instant, took courage about all the unknown troubles of the mysterious house, and was at home and himself again. They went in together to the dull dining-room, where Susan had no desire to remember that papa had not been told, and grew friends in half a minute, saying nothing but the common words that every stranger at the end of a journey hears from his entertainers. But the “Oh, Uncle, I am so glad you are come!”—the glistening eyes—the joyful young voice—the little figure fluttering about him, unable to rest for anxiety that he should rest, and have exactly what he wanted—spoke more eloquently than volumes of fine words. And Susan’s face had already almost reconciled Uncle Edward to the savage solitude of Marchmain, and the dreary blank of Lanwoth Moor.