MR. SCARSDALE was alone in the study, where he passed his recluse life. The fire burned low in the grate, the red curtains hung half over the window, the atmosphere was close and stifling. He sat in his usual seat, with the invariable book before him. But though it was hardly possible for him to be more pale, there was something in the colour of his face, in the rigidity of his attitude, which betrayed a smothered passion and excitement exceeding his wont. When Colonel Sutherland knocked at the door, he got up with a kind of convulsive haste, stepped towards it at one hasty stride, and opened it. He thought it might be Susan, returned to make her submission. When he saw his brother-in-law, Mr. Scarsdale gazed at him with undisguised amazement and a sullen rage. He stood facing the Colonel, holding the door, but without inviting or even permitting him to enter. “I have something important to say to you,” said the old soldier—“permit me to come in. I shall not detain you.” Then the recluse stepped back suddenly, opening the door wide, but without uttering a word. Colonel Sutherland went in, and the door was closed upon him; they stood opposite each other, looking in each other’s faces. The Colonel, with a grieved surprise and appeal in his look, the other with his head bent, and nothing but sullen, smothered passion in his face. Two men more unlike never stood together in this world. For the first moment not a word passed between them, but their looks, full of human motion and painful life, made the strangest contrast in the silence, with the motionless, dreary quiet of this stifling room.
After this pause, natural wonder and impatience seized the Colonel; he could not resist the impulse of trying to right himself—to right his brother-in-law—to recover if possible a natural position. “Robert!” he exclaimed, suddenly, with unpremeditated warmth and emotion, “why is this?—what have I done to you?—is there any reason why you cannot receive me as of old?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a formal inclination of his head. “My life and all my habits differ very widely from yours. I have long made a rule against admitting strangers into my house. My circumstances are peculiar, as you are aware—perhaps my dispositions are peculiar too.”
“But, for heaven’s sake!” cried the Colonel, who found this repulse not so decisive as he had feared—“why shut out me?”
Once more the solitary man bowed, with a sarcastic respect. “Again, I beg your pardon; but it does not follow,” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a smile, which would have been insulting, but that it trembled with unreasonable passion, “that a man’s own favourable opinion of himself is shared by all the world.”
The Colonel looked at him with a hasty, astonished glance, a look of compassion and surprise, which wounded the pride of his companion to the quick.
“Well, then,” cried the master of Marchmain, “I decline to receive you—your society is disagreeable to me. Is not that enough?”
“That is perfectly enough,” said Colonel Sutherland; “now, I have only my commission to discharge, and I am grieved I should have made so unfavourable a beginning. I come to you on behalf of your son.”
“Of my son!—oh! and of my daughter also, I presume! You would wish me to bring her ‘out,’ and give parties for her—perhaps you would like her to have a season in London?” said Scarsdale, with his trembling lip, and the forced smile of his passion—“is there anything else I can do for you?—for, as it happens, I choose to take Susan into my own hands.”
“I say nothing of Susan,” said the Colonel, gravely; “if you choose to debar the poor child from all the pleasures of her youth, it is not for me to interfere. She is in God’s hands, who will guide her better than either you or I. I come to you from your son. Horace is a man grown, very nearly of an independent age, clever, ambitious, and at that time of life when youths would fain see the world and act for themselves; do you think it right to keep him here without occupation or training, in the most precious years of his life? I come to you with a humble entreaty from the young man, that you will give him your permission and help to set forth upon the world for himself.”
“That is admirable!” said Mr. Scarsdale—“my permission and help? This is the first time I have heard of the faintest desire on his part;—nay, I do not believe that he does desire it—you have made it up among you; and no doubt you have settled the manner as well as the fact. What profession, pray, does my clever son mean to devote himself to?”
“He wishes to study law,” said the Colonel, laconically.
“Law?—to read for the bar, I presume?” said the father; “to have chambers in the Temple, and the pleasures of his youth. It is vastly well, Colonel Sutherland—I admire your project greatly—he has my permission by all means; as for my help, I do not need to inform you what kind of claim this young man has upon me. Is it likely I should take my straitened means, from my own comfort and my daughter’s, to support him in luxury and idleness?—is it probable, do you think, that I will make a sacrifice for him? Can you look me honestly in the face and ask it of me?”
“I trust so,” said the Colonel, with a little sadness. “Scarsdale, we are both fathers—we ought to be able to understand each other; is it necessary to weigh the nature of claims, the probabilities of temper, when one appeals to a father for the future life of his son?”
“My son’s future life,” said Mr. Scarsdale, vindictively, “is quite independent of me. Had there been any nature left in our mutual position things might have been different. No! my son has no need to betake himself to a profession—he is quite above the necessity. Should I accelerate the time when he shall come to his fortune? Should I beg your prayers—for I remember you are pious—that he may enter speedily upon his inheritance? I thank you. I do not profess to be quite so disinterested. No, let him wait!—let him take his share of the evils of mankind. Must I deny myself to smooth his path for him, and give him roses for my thorns? It would be the conduct of a fool. No, I repeat he has no need for a profession—let him wait! I support him—is it not enough?”
“Too much!” cried Colonel Sutherland; “you must perceive that it would be ten times better for him to support himself, to labour for himself, instead of embittering his life in this forced idleness here. Why should he be a burden on you at all, at his years? Though he does not ultimately require a profession, to have one would be his salvation now. You are a hale and healthy man, in spite of all you do to yourself—you have twenty years to live before you attain the limited age of man. Can you think of this unfortunate boy living here as he lives now, in utter ignorance of the fortune which waits him, till he is forty? Think of it, I implore you! It has lasted long enough—too long, Scarsdale. Think, if you have human bowels, human mercy in you, of the extraordinary fate to which you destine your only son. Suppose him growing into maturity, into full manhood, to years in which you had the world at your feet and children at your knees; yet kept in darkness, kept in bitterness, idle, solitary, able to think of nothing but of the injury that has been done to him; until, all at once, you are struck down in extreme desolate old age—and wealth, which is no longer anything to him, wealth which will disgust him, falls into his hands. What! you turn away—you will not have that event even mentioned? What are you thinking of? Is a miserable heap of money of more importance to you than the welfare of your son?”
“Upon my word,” said Mr. Scarsdale, turning away with a violent colour on his face, and an exclamation of disgust, “I see no reason in the world why I should study the welfare, as you call it, of my son.”
“You do not—and you can say so?” cried the Colonel, in loud and stern astonishment.
“I do not, and I can say so, and without raising my voice,” said the other, with a sneer. “My son, I beg to tell you once again, is provided for. I give him food and clothing—he has nothing else to hope or to expect from me.”
“This is all then that you have to say?” said Colonel Sutherland; “you will not assist him to make his life honourable and useful? Will you explain to him why you decline doing so?—will you tell him that his future is so secured, that a profession is unnecessary to him? Do the boy some justice—let there be a natural explanation between you. You cannot expect him to go on in this way for years. Could you wish it? I beseech you, either tell him how matters stand, or help him to carry out his most lawful and virtuous wish! Will you do one or the other? I beseech you, tell me!”
“I tell you no!” said Mr. Scarsdale. “Let the dog wait! I will neither put myself in his power, nor help him to the best means of spying out my secret. No! Have I spoken distinctly?—he shall have neither confidence nor assistance from me!”
“Is it possible?” cried the Colonel, driven to an extremity of mingled wonder, indignation, and pity; “for the sake of your own exasperated feelings, can you make up your mind to revenge yourself, by ruining this unhappy lad, your only son, for ever?”
“I beg your pardon—this unhappy lad is very well off,” said his extraordinary father; “so well off, that I certainly do not find myself called upon to do any more for him—although,” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a glance of bitterness upon the kind, anxious face which bent towards him, “I am aware that to help a man who does not require help is understood to be the way of the world.”
The Colonel’s weather-beaten face flushed high with angry colour; he was surprised and grieved and wounded to his heart, but he had still and always this advantage over his adversary, that the unkindest insinuation which Scarsdale could make made his brother-in-law only the more sorry for him, and wrought more grief than passion in his mind. After the first moment he looked wistfully into the face of his former friend, with a compassionate and troubled amazement, which, little though the Colonel intended it, roused his companion to fury. “How you must be changed!” he said, sadly, “to be able to say such words to me;” and Colonel Sutherland sighed as he spoke, with the hopeless patience of a man who sees no means of bringing good out of evil. The sigh, the tone, and the look wound up the recluse into the utmost rage; he made a wild imperative gesture and exclamation—for his voice was choked with fury—and opened the door violently. It was thus that Colonel Sutherland’s appeal and hopes for Horace concluded; he left the study without another word.