WHEN Susan and Roger met again late in the day they had somewhat changed conditions. Lieutenant Musgrave—for that was now the rank of the young volunteer—had, to his own pleasurable consciousness, improved his personal appearance during his hour of seclusion. Though he was rather too tall for a rifleman, that excess of stature is a drawback easily sustained in general by those afflicted with it; and perhaps Roger had a little satisfaction in thinking that the dress became him tolerably well, in spite of his inches. It is to be feared that the thought did glance into his mind as he finished his toilette, that his own was such a figure as might catch a lady’s eye, especially while the placid firmament of Milnehill was disturbed by no apparition of a rival knight; and that the likelihood of spending some days under the same roof with Susan was, when he realized it, rather exhilarating to the young man’s spirits. Susan, however, was in a very different position. She had seen what she supposed to be a sudden chill of discomfort fall upon the stranger at sight of her. She had observed his silence, his fallen looks, his diminished brightness, and it was impossible to attribute this change to anything but her own presence. Susan was very much mortified by this supposed discovery. She had known herself to be unregarded and unloved for the most part of her life, but never before had she felt herself in the way; and the result was that a sentiment of injury, melancholy and heroical, arose in Susan’s heart. She was sad and dignified, when Roger appeared full of animation, and anxious to please. She thought he had recovered the first shock of seeing her, and was training himself into friendly behaviour; and she repulsed him as much as she could by her monosyllables and downcast eyes. After a little, he began to grow puzzled: he could not rouse her to interest, though he exerted all his powers; she was dull, saddened, and pre-occupied. Perhaps, after all, there were rivals to disturb the peaceable atmosphere at Milnehill.
Uncle Edward, who observed the two with quiet interest, and a little mingling of amusement, beheld the shadow, and was puzzled in his turn; for Susan hitherto had shown no lack of interest in Musgrave’s affairs. Colonel Sutherland’s anxiety, however, relieved itself by the instant despatch of Patchey with a note to the Colonel’s dear friend and ally, Mrs. Melrose, his sister-in-law, who was now his referee on all feminine topics. The tender-hearted old man concluded that Susan might possibly feel her position somewhat uncomfortable as hostess to the stranger, “especially if she likes him,” thought Uncle Edward; and, obedient to his summons, an hour or more before dinner arrived a Portobello “noddy,” containing Mrs. Melrose, her pretty maid, and her best cap. The old lady was almost as much disposed to make a pet of Susan as was Susan’s uncle, and the reproof which she administered to his solicitude was of the lightest.
“Here I am, Edward, you perceive,” said his old friend; “but why I should be sent for at this express rate is more than a quiet person like me can divine. Because Susan feels awkward at having a young man to entertain, and no other woman in the house? Nonsense! Susan is just the last girl in the world to be so foolish. What’s a young man more than any other person? It’s your punctilios, Edward, that put things into the bairns’ heads; but I’m here, for all that. If the truth must be told, I am growing very fond of that young creature myself.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Colonel Sutherland, conducting that short, bright, pleasant figure most carefully and gallantly through the garden; for Mrs. Melrose was older than the Colonel, and owned to a good many infirmities, and had almost given up walking by this time. Then he began to recommend Roger very specially to her notice; and then he had to hear Mrs. Melrose’s news; that the mail which came in yesterday had brought a joint letter from Charlie and his wife, and that the regiment was ordered to Outerabad, “where we were when my poor General got his first step,” said the old lady. “I hope it will be as fortunate with his son,” answered Uncle Edward; and so they entered the house, to receive Susan’s glad, astonished welcome. The advent of Mrs. Melrose almost delivered Susan from that rare fit of romantic and heroical sullenness. There was no necessity now for Mr. Musgrave being specially civil to herself. Now she had some one to talk to, to release “the gentlemen” from the imperative claims of politeness. She seized upon the old lady with all the fervour of pique, resolved to show Roger that if she was in his way, he was an object of great indifference to her; and succeeded so well in this laudable attempt, that before the two ladies left the dining-room poor Roger was as distrait and silent as ever. Susan’s cruel experiment, like the surprise of her first appearance, had puffed him out.
“But, my dear boy,” said Colonel Sutherland, “you must do something in this matter. I wrote to Armitage about it, but, considering how he managed matters when you went, I can’t say I have much confidence in him. And he is not married yet, the poor old sinner! My nephew, Musgrave, is—my nephew, as you said to-day, but I don’t know the boy at all. I don’t understand him, and therefore I don’t know what to think of this concealed matter, which evidently concerns yourself, whatever it is.”
Roger made no answer. He had not a vestige of belief in his heart that anything could be found out to his benefit, and he was consequently careless of it.
“What I should recommend you to do,” continued the Colonel, “would be to go at once to Kenlisle, to see this lawyer whom Sir John has written to, Mr. Pouncet. Most likely he had the management of your godfather’s affairs as well—and urge him to take all possible steps for hunting out the mystery.”
“The mystery!” cried Roger, with a momentary impatience; “I beg your pardon, Colonel, but what possible mystery can there be about such a history as ours in these days? My dear, good, excellent old godfather, my tenderest of friends and benefactors,” said the young man warmly, reddening with that deep consciousness of blame cast upon the dead, which made his language more fervent than was any way needful—“was an old-fashioned country gentleman, and lived to the full extent of his means. Why should not he?—he had no children to provide for. It is so usual a story, that any county in England could match it. He had a liberal hand while he lived, and when he died nothing was left. What possible mystery, what concealment or secret, could be here?”
“I cannot tell, indeed,” said the Colonel; “but on the other hand, what possible reason could induce Horace Scarsdale, who is penniless himself, to promise a pension to a countryman of the district in your name, for the sake of some discovery connected with you?”
Roger mused over this an instant with a troubled face.
“Perhaps,” he said at last slowly, not so much in pique as might have been supposed, but slightly inclining that way, with visions of unknown rivals crowding darkly before his eyes, “perhaps—I never wrote to ask if I should be welcome—perhaps while Miss Scarsdale is here—”
“Miss Scarsdale has nothing whatever to do with the subject. Why, Musgrave, man!” cried the Colonel, “what is the use of bringing Susan in? Susan is as my own child in my own house; think of your own interests, my dear young fellow, and leave Susan alone, though she is a very good girl.”
“A very good girl!” repeated Roger; “then you don’t mind us being together sometimes, Colonel, if she pleases,” added, with a blushing burst of frankness, the self-convicted lover.
The Colonel shook his head. “Oh, young fools, young fools!” groaned, not from the depths, but only from the surface of his heart, that bewildered veteran; “what’s to come of your being sometimes together? Not much increase to your purse, Musgrave, nor advantage to either of you. If you have begun to entertain such fantastic thoughts, your best plan is to think over what I am saying. There must be something, depend upon it, worth hearing, before my clever nephew, Horace, could make up his mind to offer an old countryman such a stipend as six-and-twenty pounds a-year.”
“Ah!” cried Roger; the young man was struck with momentary conviction, partly by the fact and partly by the argument. He made a hasty memorandum in his own mind, that he would certainly look into it; but his thoughts at the present moment did not very well bear such an interruption. “It looks as if there must be something in it; but, Colonel, won’t you postpone it till later?” he said, in a deprecatory tone; “I think, by this time, we ought to join the ladies. They’ll blame me already for detaining you. I know you never sit long over your wine.”
Once more the Colonel shook his head, but this time he smiled. He found the young man’s behaviour altogether so natural, that he could not criticize it severely; and perhaps, having once been young himself, was all the better pleased with Roger, that the youth had heart enough to be shaken entirely off his balance by this deepest of disturbing influences. They went across the hall together into the drawing-room, where Susan sat by the side of Mrs. Melrose, hearing the old lady’s stories. She had many a story in her mind that cheerful mother—a mother in everything, though she had but one child—many an exciting drama of life and sad domestic tragedy, brought out under yonder burning Eastern skies, lay within her memory; but it was not one of these to which Susan listened. It was to an account of Mrs. Melrose’s Indian establishment, when she lived at Outerabad, “where my poor General got his first step,” and where her son Charlie was now going. That practical and homely tale pleased Susan. She liked to hear of the economics of the young subaltern’s wife; how she managed to do without superfluous servants, and strenuously laboured at the mending of that strange little hole in the purse through which their money seemed always running. Her contrivances about dress, when she and her lieutenant had an invitation to the Colonel’s bungalow to dinner; the thrift with which this capable woman had managed that strange, half-savage, yet highly artificial and civilized household, with all its Anglo-Indian wants and luxuries. Susan was never tired of that long prolonged story, which always unfolded some new episode: “Did I ever tell you about so-and-so?” said the old lady, and forthwith ran into a variation which enlivened and animated the original strain. Susan was a capable woman, too, though she had not yet much tried her powers. She enjoyed hearing of these wonderful thrifts, and labours, and victories, as boys love stories of shipwrecks and hairbreadth escapes. “What I should have done myself!” ran through the whole like a golden thread. It roused Susan’s spirits and her heart—it was to her like the reading of a possible future, instead of a certain past. She did not think of the things dolorous and heavy which cheerful Mrs. Melrose dwelt on little. She did not pause to remember that the heroine of all that active existence was now an infirm old lady, dwelling alone. Susan only thought of the life, and the love, and the labour; the capable hands, the cheerful heart, the years and hours so well filled and liberal. The fashion of that existence charmed her congenial thoughts.
“For you see,” said Mrs. Melrose, after a long chapter of that history, which she meant to make an end of as soon as the gentlemen entered the room, “you see, Susan, we were poor then, the General and me.”
“But you were happy all the same, happier than if you had waited till you were rich,” cried Roger Musgrave, suddenly, in her ear.
“Happy!” cried the old lady, turning round upon him with an echo not to be described by words in her voice. Then she paused, with a humorous smile on her face; “I’m an old woman, and should be a good adviser; but I never was a good adviser, as your Uncle Edward will tell you. Now everybody knows that when two young fools marry upon nothing, it’s not only one of the greatest follies the world is acquainted with, but exceedingly wrong.”
Mrs. Melrose pronounced these words with great unction and emphasis. Could anybody doubt that she believed them thoroughly? But there was meanwhile a suspicious twinkle in her bright old eyes.
“And yet General Melrose was only a lieutenant,” said Roger, “when—”
“When I married him, blessings on him!” cried the old lady, “he was but an ensign—that I should dare say so before young people!—but you can make an example and a beacon of me, Susan, my dear. Yes, it was years and years long before he was General Melrose, Mr. Musgrave; such years! years of trouble and toil and misery and happiness. Ah! Edward, they’re gone and past, these years! Nothing but one thing will happen now to you and me, and that, please God, will give us back to them all.”
To them all! There was a silence in the room after these words. Tears sprang to the eyes of the young people in that tender, pitiful youth of theirs, which could not understand how to be content without happiness; but there were no tears in the old eyes which met in such a pathetic cheerful glance, and understood each other beyond all interpretation of words. Dear life, which they could still live cheerfully, all shorn and diminished as it was, for His sake who gave it, and out of the most natural humanity of their Christian hearts!—but dearer was the end and termination, the day of that holy death which should restore them all.
But the evening was not sad after that, as a vulgar fancy might suppose. The old people were very cheerful, brighter than youth itself in the serenity of their old age; and Mrs. Melrose, who had been considered a very clever woman all her life by half the Indian service, and who had more actual humour and appreciation of the same than all her three auditors put together, kept Roger and Susan breathless with her recollections, her anecdotes, her sallies of quiet fun. She consented to stay all night, at her brother-in-law’s request and Susan’s anxious entreaty, and took Roger entirely under her protection, and treated him “like a boy of her own.” “But I cannot understand,” said the old lady reprovingly, as she bade her brother good night, “when you spoke of Susan and her delicacies, why you did not say there was anything particular in the business, or that this was not any person, but the special young man.”
Was it the special young man?—the true knight? Susan asked herself no questions on the subject, but made great haste to get to bed and avoid speculation, which, seeing it was after twelve o’clock, a very late hour for Milnehill, was doubtless the most sensible thing she could have done.