THIS state of things went on for a longer time than Horace himself was aware of. He had no correspondence with Marchmain, nor indeed with any one. For though he wrote once to Colonel Sutherland, he had no present motive sufficient to keep up a correspondence with his uncle; and nearly a year had passed over his head before he recollected this unrecorded passage of time. At the end of this period, however, business brought a visitor to Kenlisle, and to Mr. Pouncet’s office, who was destined to have a most serious part in Horace Scarsdale’s future life.
This was Mr. Julius Stenhouse, the principal solicitor of an important county town in Yorkshire—a man who had been bred in Mr. Pouncet’s office, had suddenly, to everybody’s amazement, become his partner, and who, as suddenly, a few years after had left Kenlisle for his present residence. These events had all happened before Horace had any cognizance of the news of the district, and were consequently unknown to him until Mr. Stenhouse appeared. The stranger was a man of about fifty, with what people called an “extremely open manner,” and a frank wide smile, which betrayed two rows of the soundest teeth in the world, and gave a favourable impression to most people who had the honour of making Mr. Stenhouse’s acquaintance. This prepossession, however, as might be ascertained on inquiry, was not apt to last—everybody liked, at first sight, the candid lawyer; but he had few friends. Unlike the usual wont of a country town, nobody appeared anxious to claim the recognition of the new arrival. Far from being overwhelmed with hospitality, Mr. Pouncet had so much difficulty in making up a tolerable number of people to meet him at the one little dinner-party given in his honour, that Horace Scarsdale, for the first time, though he had long assisted at Mrs. Pouncet’s “evenings,” had the distinguished honour of an invitation.
Before this time, however, various circumstances had concurred to attract the attention of Horace towards Mr. Stenhouse. The extreme difference between his manners and his reputation, the mixture of repugnance and respect with which Mr. Pouncet treated him, the great reluctance which he showed to enter upon any private business with his visitor, and the mystery of the former partnership which had existed between them, roused the young man’s curiosity. Altogether, these new circumstances brought Horace to himself; he remembered that he was still only in an inferior position, with no avenue open as yet to fortune or importance. Running over everything in his mind, he perceived that he stood farther than ever from his father’s secret, and that no other means of advancing himself had as yet appeared; and with a certain instinctive and sympathetic attraction, his thoughts turned to Mr. Stenhouse. He bestowed his best attention upon him on every opportunity—he sought all the information he could procure about him, and about the connection subsisting between him and Mr. Pouncet. It appeared they were joint-proprietors of some coal-mines in the neighbourhood. What might a couple of attorneys have to do with coal-pits? Horace scented a mystery afar off, with an instinctive gratification. Did the mystery lie here?—and what was its importance, could it be found out?
Without knowing anything whatever on the subject, except the sole fact that Pouncet and Stenhouse were partners in this valuable piece of property, Horace set out very early one spring morning to inspect the ground, and see if anything could be discovered on the subject. It was, as it happened, the morning of the day on which he was to dine at Mr. Pouncet’s. Horace had been late, very late, the previous night. This early walk was of two uses—it restored his unsusceptible nerves to the iron condition which was natural to them, and it gave him a chance of finding out in his old fashion anything that there might be to find out. Horace neither knew the extent nor the value of the land possessed by Messrs. Pouncet and Stenhouse: he knew they drew very considerable revenues from it, but did not know how they had acquired it, nor from whom. He pushed briskly along the long country road, winding downwards to a lower level than that of Kenlisle, where once more the hawthorn hedges were greening, and the primrose-tufts unfolding at their feet.
The country looked cheerful and fresh in the early morning, with its few clumps of early trees here and there, in the tender glory of their buds, diversifying the deeper green of the fields. The smoke rose from the cottages, and the labouring men came trudging out from their doors, greeting one another as they passed with remarks upon the weather. By-and-by he came in sight of the village, with its irregular line of thatched and red-tiled houses, with the one blue-slated roof rising over them, which marked the place where an enterprising publican had swung his “Red Lion,” in well-justified dependence upon the “pitmen’s drouth.” Beyond, several tall shafts here and there scattered over the country gave note of the presence of the pits and their necessary machinery. Horace slackened his pace, and went sauntering through the village, keeping a wary eye around him. He had not gone very far when he perceived an old man limping out of a miserable little house near the end of the village, with a poor little cripple of a boy limping after him, in the direction of the coal-fields. Their lamps and the implements they carried pointed out clearly enough their occupation; and a certain dissatisfied, discontented look in the old man’s face made him a likely subject for Horace, who quickened his steps immediately to overtake the wayfarers. It required no great exercise of speed. The querulous, complaining jog with which the old man and his shadow went unsteadily across the sunshine, told its own tale—the very miner’s lamp, swinging from his finger by its iron ring, swung disconsolately, and with a grumble and crack, complaining audibly of the labour, which, to say the truth, was sufficiently unsuitable for the two who trudged along together, the crippled childhood and tottering age, to whose weakness belonged a milder fate. The old man’s face was contracted and small with age—the nose and chin drawn together, the cheeks still ruddy from a life of health, puckered up with wrinkles, and the very skull apparently diminished in size from the efforts of time. On he went, with his feeble limbs and stooping shoulders, the “Davy” suspended from his bony old fingers, and a complaint in every footstep, with his shadow all bent and crumpled up, an extraordinary spectrum moving before him along the sunny road. Horace, who gave him the usual rural salutation of “A fine morning,” received only a half-articulate groan in reply. The old pitman was not thinking of the fine morning, the sweet air, or the sunshine; but only of his own troubles and weaknesses, and himself.
“To them as has the strength it’s fine and fine enow,” he mumbled at last; “but an ould man as should be in his commforable bed—eugh-eugh! Needcessity’s sore upon the ould and frail.”
“How is it that you have to get to work so early?—you’re not a new hand,” said Horace, with the rough and plain-spoken curiosity which often does instead of sympathy.
“A new hand!” groaned his querulous interlocutor; “an I was as I hev been, my young spark, I’d gie you a lesson would larn you better than to speak light to an ould man. I’ve bin about the pit, dash her, since ever the first day she was begoud, and mought have broke my neck like the rest if it hadn’t a bin for good loock, and God A’mighty—eyeh, eyeh! I was about the very ground, I was, when the first word was giv there was coal there; but I’ll never believe there was ought let on o’ that to the ould Squire.”
“Eh!—the pits here are not old pits then, aren’t they?” said Horace; “who was it found the coal? I daresay the landlord made it worth his while.”
“The Lord make me quat of a parcel o’ vain lads, that ken no more nor as many coodies!” cried the old man; “haven’t I as good as told you my belief?—and will ye pretend ye ken better than me, that was born on his very land?”
“That’s a bad cough of yours,” said Horace, who had good practice in the means of extending information; “what do you say to a dram this sharp morning, to warm you before you go underground?”
“Eyeh, eyeh, lad, we’re owre near the border,” said the old pitman, shaking his head; “if ever there was a deevil incarnate on this earth it’s the whiskey, and makes nought but wickedness and misery, as I can see; but to them as knows how to guide themselves,” he added, slowly, “it’s a comfort now and again, specially of a morning, when a man has the asthmatics, and finds the cowld on his stomach. If you’re sure you’re able to afford it, sir, I’ve no objection, but I would not advise a brisk lad like you, d’ye hear, to partake yoursel’. Ye haven’t the discretion to stop at the right time at your years, nor no needcessity, as I see. Robbie, I’m a-gooin’ on a bit with the gentleman—see you play none on the road, nor put off your time, and say I’m coming. Eugh, eugh! as if it wasn’t a shame and a disgrace to them as has the blame, to see the likes of me upon the road!”
“At your time of life they ought to take better care of you,” said Horace; “see, here’s a seat for you, and you shall have your dram. Why don’t your sons look to it, eh, and keep you at home? It doesn’t take very much, I daresay, to keep the pot boiling; why don’t you tell them their duty, or speak to the parson? You are surely old enough to rest at your age!”
“Eugh, eugh! I haven’t got no sons,” said the old man, with a cough which ran into a chorus of half-sobs, half-chokes. “The last on ’em was lost i’ the pit, two year come Michaelmas, and left little to his ould father but that bit of a cripple lad, poor child, that will never make his own salt. It’s the masters, dash them! as I complain on. There they bees, making their money out on it, as grand as lords; and the like of huz as does it a’ left to break our ould bones, and waste our ould breath for a bit of bread, after serving of them for a matter of twenty year. Eyeh, eyeh, lad, it’s them, dash them! If it had been the ould Squire, or ony o’ the country gentlemen, an ould servant mought hev a chance. No that I’m saying muckle for them, more nor the rest o’ the world—awl men is for their own interest in them days; but as for mercy or bowels, ay, or justice nouther, it’s ill looking for the like of them things in a couple o’ ’torneys, that are born and bred for cheating and spoliation. I never had no houps of them mysel’—they’ll sooner tak’ the bit o’ bread out atween an ould body’s teeth, than support the agit and the orphant—ay, though it was their own wark and profit, dash them! that took the bread from Robbie and me.”
“Ah!” said Horace, “that’s hard; so the pits here don’t belong to the Armitage property, nor any of the great landlords? But what have a couple of attorneys to do with them—they manage the property for somebody, I suppose?”
“My respects to you, sir,” said the old pitman, smacking his thin lips over the fiery spirit, which he swallowed undiluted; “and here’s wishing us awl more health and better days; but I wouldn’t advise you, a young lad, to have ony on’t. There’s guid ale here, very guid ale, far better for a young man of a morning. You may weel ask what has the like o’ them to do concerning sich things; and there’s few can tell like me, though I say it as shouldn’t. I was a likely man mysel’ in them days—a cotter on the ould Squire’s land, and serving at Tinwood Farm, and had my own kailyard, and awl things commforable. It’s like, if you knaw this country, you’ve heard speak of the ould Squire?”
“To be sure—old Musgrave, of the Grange,” cried Horace, with a certain malice and spite, of which he himself was scarcely aware; for Roger Musgrave’s honest simplicity, which he scorned, yet felt galled and disconcerted by, had often humiliated and enraged the son of the recluse, who could take no equality with the young relative of the fox-hunting Squire. He listened more eagerly as this name came in—not with a benevolent interest, certainly; but the mystery grew more and more promising as it touched upon the history of a ruined man.
“About twenty year ago, I would say, as near as moight be, there was a couple o’ young chaps comed about here, for their holiday, as I aye thought to mysel’. The wan o’ them was uncommon outspoken in his manner, wan of them lads that’s friends with every stranger at the first word, with a muckle mouth and teeth—dash em!—that would crunch a man’s bones like a cannibal. T’other he was some kind of a student, aye fiddling about the grass and the rocks, and them kind o’ nonsense pastimes. I heard the haill business with my ain ears, so it’s no mystery to me. I was ploughing i’ the lang park belonging to Tinwood then, with the two o’ them somegate about the ploughtail, having their own cracks, with now and again a word to me—when all of a suddent the student, he stops, and he says out loud, ‘There’s coal here!’ I paid little attention till I saw them baith get earnest and red in the face, and down on their knees aprying into something I had turned up with my plough; and then I might have clean forgot it—for what was I heeding, coal or no coal?—when the t’other man, the lad with the muckle mouth, he came forrard, and says he, ‘Here’s my friend and me, we’ve made a wager about this land, but we’ll ne’er be able to settle it unless awl’s quiet, and you never let on that you’ve heard what he said. He’s awl wrong, and he’ll have to give in, and I’ll be the winner, as you’ll see; but hold you your peace, neighbour, and here’s a gold guinea to you for your pains.’ Lord preserve us, I never airned a goold guinea as easy in my life! I wush there was mair on them coming a poor body’s way. I held my whisht, and the lads gaed their way; but eugh, eugh! eh, man, if I had but knawn! I would ne’er have been tramping this day o’er the very grund I ploughed, to work in that pit, dash her! and me aughty years of age and mair.”
“How, then, did it happen?” cried Horace, eagerly.
“But I’ll hev to be agooin,” said the pitman, lifting himself up with reluctance and difficulty—“the timekeeper yonder, he’s a pertickler man, and has nae consideration for an old body’s infirmities: though I’m wonderful comforted with the speerits, I’ll no deny. Eyeh! eyeh! the old Squire, he was a grand man, he was, as lang’s he had it, and threw his siller about like water, and was aye needing, aye needing, like them sort o’ men. Afore mony days, if ye’ll believe me, there was word of his own agent, that was Maister Pouncet, the ’torney in Kenlisle, buying some land of him, awl to serve the Squire, as the fowks said; but when I heard it was this land, ‘Ho, ho!’ says I to mysel’, ‘there’s more nor clear daylight in this job,’ says I. So I held my whisht, and waited to see; and sure enow, before long came down surveyors and engineers, and I know not all what, and the same lad, with the muckle mouth, that was now made partner to Mr. Pouncet; and that was the start o’ the pit, dash her! that’s cost me twenty years o’ my life and twa bonnie sons; and them’s the masters, blast them! that take their goold out o’t year after year, and wunna spare a penny-piece for the aged and frail. Eyeh, that’s them!—but it’s my belief I’ll see something happen to that lad with the muckle mouth before I die.”
“And what did your old Squire say, eh, when the land was found so rich?” said Horace; “did he try to break the bargain, and take it back again?”
“Him!” cried the decrepid old labourer, now once more halting along in the fresh sunshine, with his shadow creeping before him, and his “Davy” creaking from his bony finger—“him! a man that knawed neither care nor prudence awl his born days; and to go again his own ’torney that had done for him since ever he came to his fortin’,—not him! He said it was confoonded lucky for Pouncet, and laughed it off, as I hev heard say, and thought shame to let see how little siller he got for that land. He never had no time, nor siller nouther, to goo into lawsuits, and his own agent, as I tell you; besides that he was a simple man, was the Squire, and believed in luck more nor in cheating. Eyeh! eyeh! but I blamed aye the chield with the muckle mouth. He was the deevil that put harm into the t’other lawyer’s head; for wan man may be mair wicked nor anither, even amang ’torneys. It wasn’t lang after till he left this country. Eh, lad, yon man’s the deevil for cunning. I wouldna trust him with his own soul if he could cheat that—dash them a’! I mought have keeped on my kailyard, and seen my lads at the tail of the plough, if, instead of his pits and his vile siller, them fields had still been part o’ Tinwood Farm!”
And the poor old man relapsed out of the indignation and excitement into which the questions of Horace, his own recollections, and, above all, his “dram,” had roused him, into the same querulous discontented murmurs over his own condition which had first attracted the notice of his young companion. Horace sauntered by him with a certain scornful humour to the mouth of the pit—untouched by his misfortunes, only smiling at the miserable skeleton, with his boasted wisdom, his scrap of important unused knowledge, and his decrepid want and feebleness. He set his foot upon this new information with the confidence of a man who sees his way clear, and with a strange, half-devilish smile looked after the poor old patriarch, who had known it for twenty years and made nothing of it. The idea amused him, and the contrast: for pity was not in Horace Scarsdale’s heart.