THE next day John Gilsland and his cart took their leisurely way across the moor, carrying with them the note which Horace had addressed to Peggy at Marchmain.
Horace had now been gone two days. The afternoon of the day on which he left home Peggy confided her suspicions on this subject to Susan, who was struck with alarm and terror, quite out of proportion to the event. Where had he gone?—what would he do?—and what, oh! what would papa say? Susan sat by herself in the dining-room, vainly trying to work; and now that there was so little likelihood of hearing his footstep, watching for it with the most breathless eagerness. Evening came, and the dreaded hour of dinner; exactly at six o’clock Mr. Scarsdale took his seat at the head of the table. Horace’s chair was placed as usual, and stood empty by the side. Mr. Scarsdale gave one glance at the empty seat, as he took his own, but said nothing. Susan could not help remembering the only former time when that place was vacant, the day so happy and so miserable, when Uncle Edward first came to Marchmain. As on that occasion, his father took no notice of the absence of Horace; the dinner was eaten in silence, Susan swallowing a sob with every morsel which she ate, and trembling as she had trembled before her father ever since the interview in which he forbade her correspondence with her uncle, and she refused to obey him. That scene had never departed from her mind—her own guilty feeling had never subsided. Bearing on her conscience her first real personal offence against her father, it was impossible for Susan now to have any confidence even in their accustomed stillness. She felt a continual insecurity when he was present—at any moment he might address to her these commands and reproaches again.
But the evening passed as usual, without any interruption; once more Mr. Scarsdale sat motionless at the table, as he had done every evening in Susan’s remembrance, with his book set up on the little reading-desk, and the crystal jug with his claret, reflecting itself in the shining table. And there sat Susan opposite him, somehow afraid to-night to bring out her embroidery-frame, or to employ herself with any of the pretty things which Uncle Edward had bought for her—taking once more, with timidity, and half afraid that he would notice even that, her neglected patchwork, out of her large, old work-bag. Susan had been trimming up for her own use, with great enjoyment of the task, with linings of blue silk, and scraps of ribbon found in one of Peggy’s miscellaneous hoards, an old, round work-basket, which she had found in the upper room where the apples were kept. But she did not venture to put that ornamental article, so simply significant as it was of the rising tide of her young feminine life, upon the table. She bent over her neglected patchwork, smoothing it out and laying the pieces together, but somehow finding it entirely impossible to fix her attention upon them. She could not help watching her father, shaking with terror when, in putting down her scissors, or her cotton, she disturbed the profound stillness; she could not help listening intently for those sounds outside which betokened to her accustomed ear the approach of Horace. She longed, and yet she feared to see her brother come back again; she could not believe he had really gone away; she wondered, till her head ached, where he could be; and could not bring herself to realize anything more cheerful about him than an aimless wandering through that dreary moor, or through the cold cheerless dark streets described in some of her novels, which two things the poor child connected together with an unreasonable ignorance. Then came the dismal tea-making. The night went on—it grew late, but still Mr. Scarsdale kept his seat. Midnight, dark, cold, solitary night, with the fire going out, the candles burned to the sockets, and Peggy, as all was still, supposed to be in bed. Then Mr. Scarsdale closed his book. “It is quite time you should have gone to rest,” he said. “Why do you start?—is there anything astonishing in what I say? Good night!”
Susan got up instantly, stumbled towards the side-table, got her candle, and lighted it with a trembling hand. She went out of the room so quickly, and in such evident trepidation, that the sight of her terror struck another arrow into her father’s mind. He looked after her with a pale, dreadful smile. “She is afraid of me!” said the forlorn man. He said the words aloud, and Susan came back trembling to the door, to ask if he called her. His “No!” drove her to her room with hurried steps, and limbs which could scarcely carry her. Susan was so terrified that she could not rest; she put her candle in her room, and came out to look over the rail of the little gallery from which the bed-chambers opened. There, standing in the dark, after a little interval, she saw her father come out of the dining-room, with his candle in his hand, and go to the door, which he barred and bolted, with a precaution Susan had never known to be taken before. Then she heard him securing the shutters of the windows. With an infallible instinct of alarm and terror, she knew that it was against the return of Horace that all these precautions were taken. She stole into her room, closed the door noiselessly, and looked out. Black in its unbroken midnight of gloom lay the moor, a waste of desolate darkness on every side, rain falling, masses of black clouds sweeping over the sky, a shrill gleam of the windy horizon far away, shining over the top of the distant hills. And Horace, if he should be near, if he should still be coming home, remorselessly shut out! Susan sat up half the night, listening with a nervous terror to all the mysterious sounds which creep and creak in the absolute silence of the dead hours of night. Horace was most comfortably asleep in a comfortable room in the “George,” at Kenlisle, while his poor sister sat wrapped in a big shawl, trying to keep awake, thinking she heard his footsteps approaching the house, and waiting only to be certain before she should steal down-stairs in the dark to open the door. Poor Susan fell fast asleep at last, and slept till long after her usual time; then she was roused by Peggy to just such another day. Mr. Scarsdale still did not say a word, though his glance at the empty chair was more sharp and eager. And so things continued till the forenoon of the third day, when John Gilsland stopped his cart at the door; and, calling for Peggy in his loud, hearty voice, which could be heard over all the house, informed the entire family of Marchmain that he had come for Mr. Horry’s box.
Susan was with Peggy in the kitchen, solacing her anxieties by a discussion of where her brother could be, and what he was most likely to be doing. This summons made her jump, as she stood listlessly by the window. Peggy, without saying a word, made a stride to the side door, and went round to the corner of the house to confront this incautious messenger. Susan, trembling and afraid to join her, sprang up upon the wooden chair, and peeped out of the window. There she saw Peggy in the act of assaulting the unfortunate John, shaking him by the shoulder, and demanding to know if that was the way to deliver a message at a gentleman’s house. John scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders: he was too much accustomed to ill-usage from women to feel much resentment; he only looked sheepish, and, patting the mare on the shoulder, came round with Peggy to the side door. There she introduced him on tiptoe, taking elaborate precautions of quietness, which were all intended to impose upon John, and silence his heavy feet and country clogs to the greatest degree of silence possible.
“It’s not so heavy but what a man like you can carry it down on your shoulder,” said Peggy; “and if ye make a bump on the road, Gude forgive ye, for I’ll no, nor the master, if he’s disturbed in his study. I would not advise you to rouse up him. Whisht then!—if you have any regard for your own peace, hold your tongue! In the very stairs, and the study no furder off nor yon door! If ye cannot be quiet, it’s as much as your ears are worth!”
Thus warned, John went creaking on his tiptoes upstairs, and was introduced to Mr. Horace’s room, where the furniture had been specially arranged, and where the good order and trim array of everything made no small impression on his simplicity. John got downstairs again in safety, jealously watched by Peggy, who stamped her foot at him from the foot of the stairs, and produced the “bump” which she had deprecated by her super-caution. However, the business was performed in safety, the cart was drawn up to the side door, and Horace’s goods safely deposited in it—Mr. Scarsdale, up to this moment, taking no notice of the proceeding. Then John returned into the kitchen, to have a little chat with Peggy, who was nothing loth. Peggy did all the marketing for the family, and though perfectly impenetrable and deaf to all questions about her master, was rather popular in the neighbouring villages, as a housekeeper and purveyor, who was not sparing in her provisions for her master’s table, was like to be. John stood, with his hat in one hand and a glass of beer of Peggy’s own brewing in the other, describing to Mr. Scarsdale’s factotum the events of the previous days—Th’ young squire gone out of the Grange, no one knew where; his own son listed, and gone for a soldier; and Mr. Horry—ah! Mr. Horry was deep, he never let on of his secrets: he supposed the family knew where the young gentleman was.
Susan kept in the kitchen, hovering about the window, very anxious, but afraid, to ask questions, and listening to this volunteer gossip with all her ears. Peggy answered very brusquely to the inferred question of Horace’s messenger.
“You may depend the family doesn’t need to ask you,” said Peggy. “Mak’ haste, man, about your ain business—no wonder the wife has little patience if this is how you put off your time. How will ye send on the box?—that’s all I’m wanting to hear.”
“Oh, just by the carrier—to the ‘George’ at Kenlisle—it’s none so far away either,” said John; “if the family wanted word sent particular, I could goo a’ the way mysel.’”
As he made this offer he threw an inquisitive glance at Susan, whose restless attention he had skill enough to perceive. Peggy’s answer was a violent shake of her head, as she went on with her work. John resumed.
“Our wife, she thinks it’s a very strange thing that these three should be away at the same moment, as you may say. Not to compare our Sam to the young gentlemen, but you see Sam had a word himself with the Cornel. As for the young squire, he was coming and going the whole time, and Mr. Horry, he’s nevvy to th’ ould gentleman, as far as I can hear. It’s a rael coorious thing—they all had speech o’ the Cornel, and all started off on the same day. Maybe you and the young lady you ken a deal better nor that—but ye’ll allow it’s an awfu’ coorious thing.”
While John, pausing, looked for an answer, in calm security of having said something which could not fail to make an impression; while Peggy, with her back to him, vigorously washed her dishes, clattering one upon another with emphasis, which, however, did not drown his voice, and was not intended to do so; and while Susan stood timidly with her work in her hand, startled with this new piece of intelligence, and looking towards the stranger with a face full of wonder, a sudden sound startled the vigilant ear of Peggy. But she had scarcely time to put down the dinner-plate in her hand, and to wave her towel at John Gilsland, commanding imperatively a hasty retreat, when the door of the kitchen suddenly flew open, and Mr. Scarsdale himself, pale, erect, and passionate, his dressing-gown flying wide around him with “the wind of his going,” his thin lips set together, and an expression of restrained and silent fury in his face, came abruptly into the room.
John recoiled a step in amazement and awe; then, emboldened by curiosity, kept his place, and made his bow to the master. Mr. Scarsdale stamped his foot on the floor in lack of words, and pointed to the door with a violent gesture; and before he knew what he was about, Peggy rushed against John, thrust him out before her, and closed and bolted the door after him. The amazed and sheepish look with which he rubbed his shoulders, and gazed at the inhospitable door from which he had been so summarily expelled, would have been worth a comic actor’s while to see. The honest fellow stood outside, looking first at the house and then at his mare, with a ludicrous astonishment. “The devil’s in the woman!” said John. That was a proposition not unfamiliar to him. Then in his blank bewilderment he marched gravely round the house, spying in at the vacant windows. Everything was empty except that kitchen, in which the pale spectre in the dressing-gown might be murdering the women for anything John knew. What should he do? After various pauses of troubled cogitations, John decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and chirruped to his mare. The two went off together, much discomfited, and the landlord of the “Tillington Arms” had full occupation for the rest of the road in amending the circumstances according to his fancy, and bringing himself into sufficient dignity and importance in the tale to make it meet for the ears of his wife.
When John Gilsland was disposed of, Mr. Scarsdale addressed himself to his daughter and his servant.
“I understand,” he said, without speaking directly to either, “from his absence at table, and from the articles which I have just now seen taken out of the house, that Mr. Horace Scarsdale has chosen to leave Marchmain; I say nothing against that—he is perfectly welcome to choose his own residence; but I desire you to understand, both of you, that on no pretence whatever must this young man return into my house—not even for a visit; he has placed himself among those strangers whom I decline to admit. I make no complaint,” added the recluse, coldly, “that my family conspire against me, and that messages are received, and my property sent away, without my knowledge.”
“Master,” said Peggy, while Susan stood trembling before her father, her work fallen from her hands, and her womanish fright and anguish falling into tears. “Master,” exclaimed his old servant, who was not afraid of him, “you’re no to leave that reproach on me. I’ve conspired against none of you, if it was my last word! Your son’s gone, as he should have gone a dozen years ago, if ye had been wise, or ta’en my advice. He’s gone, and God’s blessing and grit speed be with him! I never was more glad of nothing in my born days; and for his things in his box!—I knowed you a lad and a man, and a better man nor you are this day; but did I ever even it to you to keep back another man’s, if it was a servant’s claithes?”
“Be silent!” cried Mr. Scarsdale, putting his hand to his ears; “you conspire, you whisper, you hide in corners; there is not a soul in the world whom I can trust; but I beg you to understand, in respect to Horace Scarsdale, that I am master here, and that he shall not return to this house. He may say he wishes to see his sister—he does not care a straw for his sister! Do you comprehend me?—he is never again to enter here!”
Neither at first said a word, but Peggy advanced before her master and dropped him a grave curtsey. “You’re master here,” said Peggy; “never a word against your will, as has been proved for fifteen years, could wild horses get out of me. I’ve served you faithful, and I will. Bear your ain blame before heaven, and the Lord forgive you, master. It’s my hope he’ll never seek to enter these darksome doors again.”
Thus concluded the startling episode of Horace Scarsdale’s departure from his father’s house. Deeply wounded, in spite of herself, by her father’s plain and cold statement that Horace did not care a straw for his sister, Susan went back to her now unbroken solitude. Perhaps it was true, but it was not the less cruel to say it; and now that he was gone Susan’s heart clung to her brother. She tried to remember that he had been sometimes kind to her; it was hard to collect instances, and yet Horace, too, like other people, had been moved by caprice sometimes in his life, and had done things once or twice contrary to the tenor of his character. And her whole nature revolted against the unnatural prohibition which debarred his return. There she sat, poor child, in that dreary room, certain now that no voice but her father’s should ever break its silence—that nobody but he should ever sit opposite to her at table; and if her heart sank within her, as she tried in vain to occupy herself with her needlework, it was not wonderful. She thought of Horace, and Roger Musgrave, and Sam Gilsland, with a sigh—she wondered whether John was right; and with almost a pang of jealousy wondered still more that her uncle should take pains to liberate these three, while yet he did not try to do anything for her. She could not work—she tried her novels, but she had read them all, and in them all there was not one situation so forlorn and hopeless as her own. Poor Susan threw herself on her knees, with her face against the prickly hair-cloth of the elbow-chair—not to pray, but to bewail herself, utterly disheartened, angry and hopeless! Her temper was roused; she was cross and bitter, and full of unkindly thoughts; she felt as if she herself loved nobody, as nobody loved her. By-and-bye, when a sense of her attitude struck her, with its appearance of devotion, and the strangely contrary feelings of her mind, she sprang to her feet in a passion of sobs and tears, feeling more guilty and miserable than she could have explained. After a long time—for there were elements of stubbornness and obstinacy in Susan’s nature—she subdued herself, and went upon her knees in earnest. When she was there the second time, thoughts came upon her of Uncle Edward’s tender blessing, of his family in heaven, and of the confidence, so calm and certain, with which the old man looked thither. The poor child scarcely knew how to pray out of her wont; but her very yearning for some compassionate ear to pour her troubles into gave her heart expression—and in the act was both comfort and hope.