The House on the Moor: Volume 3 by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXVI.

“AND so, hinny, you’re to be married, and set up in a house of your own; and, ’stead o’ solitude, and a wild moor, and ould Peggy, have all the county wishing ye joy. Eh, weel! I’m an ould fool, and nowght else: I think upon the mistress, and I canna forbear. The bride goes forth with joy and blessing, but the Lord alone He knows what will come to pass thereupon.”

And Peggy, who was standing in the old dining-room—that room so strangely thrilled through, warmed, and brightened with the new life—examining one after another the pretty things which already began to be prepared for Susan’s marriage, suddenly sunk down on a chair by the table, and covered her face, and sobbed aloud.

“But, Peggy, you should have a cheerful word for me,” said Susan—“we have had so much trouble. Things will never happen with me as they did with mamma. For, Peggy,” added the bride, with her honest eyes smiling frank and sure out of the warm blush that rose over her face, “we will trust and help each other through every trouble. Trouble never can be very heavy when there are two of us to bear the load.”

“The Lord knows, and He alone,” said the faithful servant of the house. “I’m ould, and my heart trembles; the like of me cannot see, Miss Susan. I look upon the bride-white, and there’s shadows o’ shrouds and widow’s mourning a’ covered ower and hidden in the bonnie folds. The Lord preserve ye from all ill and trouble that is beyond the strength of man!—and grant to me to depart and be at rest, before ever cloud or shadow comes upon the light o’ my ould eyes!”

Susan was not discouraged in her own undiscourageable hope and happiness even by these melancholy words; but she was grieved for Peggy, who, broken and nervous with her long solitude, was no longer like herself. She came round to the old woman’s side, and put her young arms, which had clung there so often, round Peggy’s neck.

“Do you know Horace is going to give me a fortune, Peggy?” said Susan. “Horace is different, don’t you think, since he has been ill? I thought it would have turned his head to be so rich—but he does not seem to care; he is so much quieter, older than he used to be. I did not suppose he would have felt so much for poor papa.”

Peggy said nothing—but she gave an emphatic shake of her head, and, diverted into a less pathetic channel of thought, dried her eyes. Peggy’s sentiments were changed. It was the younger generation who were now in the ascendant, and Peggy’s magnanimous instincts, falling to the weaker side, turned all her sympathy towards the dead.

“But he is changed, though you shake your head,” said Susan; “and I am to have a fortune—me! Everything is Uncle Edward’s doing. How I wondered when he brought me these India muslins, Peggy—do you remember? I thought you were all crazy when you spoke of me wearing them—and now look here; and I suppose,” said Susan, with womanful satisfaction and vanity, “we shall see the best people in the county at the Grange.”

“And only your right, too,” said Peggy, by way of interjection; for Susan, having fully launched herself, was quite qualified to keep up the discourse.

“Especially when Amelia Stenhouse marries Sir John. I wonder how she can marry that odd old man; and so pretty as she is too—don’t you think she is very, very pretty, Peggy?”

“‘Handsome is as handsome does,’” said Susan’s oracle, with great solemnity.

“Oh, to be sure; but one likes to be handsome all the same,” said Susan. “I don’t say I like Amelia out-and-out. I suppose she’s too grand and too accomplished, and too clever, and that sort of thing, for me; but she’s very nice to look at, Peggy; and when she marries Sir John——”

“When who marries Sir John?” asked Horace, abruptly. He had just come rather feebly into the room—convalescent, but not strong, his mind working out all the vigour which should have gone to the strengthening of his body. That he was changed was certain, but it was doubtful whether the change was so entirely for the better as his sister charitably supposed. He did not look much more amiable at the present moment; he came in with the sullen shade of old upon his face. He had heard part of Susan’s last words; but she did not know what a furious passion awoke in his heart when he asked, “Who marries Sir John?”

“Oh, it is Amelia, Horace—Amelia, Roger’s half sister; did not you know about it?” said Susan, innocently—“you, too, who have known them longer than I; it was settled last week.”

“Oh, was it?” said Horace, bitterly. He went out of the room the next moment, flinging down, half unawares, half consciously, a heap of his sister’s wedding preparations. It was natural that the sight of such things at such a time should gall the young man; the next moment they heard him up in his own room, making a great commotion there. Susan was a little startled and frightened in spite of herself. Horace took strange fancies now and then. He was rich now, and could do as he pleased. Sometimes Susan, all unaware of the canker there, imagined that his mind was a little affected. She could not imagine what freak possessed him now.

A little while after Horace came downstairs, dressed more carefully than she had yet seen him. He told her he was going away “to town”—which Susan supposed to mean to Kenlisle—and should walk to the nearest roadside public-house, where they kept a gig. He would send for his things, but might not see her for some time again, and so he held out a hot, trembling hand, and bade her “Good-bye—good-bye!” Susan tried some remonstrances, but he hurried out in the midst of them, and strode away across the moor in the bright August sunshine. His sister stood at the window watching him, as she had stood many a day before, till his figure disappeared among the distant saplings and dark gorse bushes. It was the last time that Horace Scarsdale trod the familiar heather of Lanwoth Moor.

That evening Roger’s mother came with him when he came on his daily visit to his affianced bride. They knew she was alone, and guessed she must be anxious. Horace had been at the Grange, where he saw only Amelia, and went away again in half-an-hour, leaving even that stout-hearted beauty, who was not too sensitive, fainting and overpowered by the violence of his farewell. That was the last any of the party saw of Horace for many a year. The marriages took place in due time, and all went well with the new households; but the unhappy heir of the Scarsdales went out and was lost in the world, and its great waves concealed him and his pleasures and wretchedness. He had put himself out of the reach of common blessings and sorrows, the dews and sunshine, of God’s every-day world. He had his fortune, his failure, his dead burden of guilt, to begin his life withal; and so carried out among men, and the bustle and commotion of the world, a second bitter chapter of that hereditary curse, which had made a recluse and wretched misanthrope of his father, and a dismal prison and place of bondage of the solitary house upon the moor.

THE END.