WHILE Horace made his beginning full of new emotions and interests at Harliflax, Susan entered into a kind of miraculous happiness and comfort, which her very brightest dreams had never ventured to imagine before. For none of the wonders of romance had happened to Susan; she had not “fallen in love,” nor entered even to the precincts of that charmed condition in which everything is possible to the youthful fancy. No gallant knight had dropped out of the skies or come across the moor, to transport her into that perennial garden of enchantment, which will always remain a refuge for young imaginations while the world lasts. Yet Susan, seated in Colonel Sutherland’s cosy dining-room, making tea at the round table, where the white tablecloth fell in fragrant shining folds over the crimson cover, and where all the agrémens of a Scotch breakfast showed themselves in dainty good order; with the windows open, the sun shining upon the garden, the birds singing, the sweetness of spring in the sweet morning air, which had found out all the hidden primroses and violets, and some precocious lilies of the valley beneath the trees, before it came in here to tell the secret of their bloom; and all those secondary delights, warmed and brightened by the face of love, beaming across that kindly board—the tender, fatherly face, indulgent and benign as the very skies—happy in all her pleasures, happy with a still dearer charm and unintended flattery in the very sight of her, and the consciousness of her presence; Susan did not know how to contain the joy of her heart. To think of Marchmain sitting here safe in Milnehill dining-parlour; to think of all her past life, with its melancholy solitude and friendlessness!—to think how little account anybody had ever made of her, whom all this bright house brightened to receive, and whom everybody here looked to as the crown of comfort and pledge of increased happiness! Susan had cried over it a dozen times during these first wonderful days—now she began to grow accustomed to her happiness. It touched her still with a sweet amazement of gratitude, in which there mingled a certain compunction. It seemed scarcely right to feel so happy when she could still return by a thought to that dreary moor and melancholy house, and remember how her father lived miserably by himself in his austere solitude, and that she was an outcast, banished from her natural home. But it was difficult to give importance to the passion of Mr. Scarsdale, and the contempt of Horace, in the sunshiny presence of Uncle Edward. The old man inclining his deaf ear towards her with that smile upon his face, put Susan’s troubles to flight in spite of herself; she could not entertain either pain or grief in those bright rooms, where she was installed so joyfully as mistress; she could not have the heart to spoil Uncle Edward’s pleasure by a sad look, even if she had been able to preserve sad looks through so much astonishing gladness of her own.
Everything was new to her in this new home. The friends who hastened to see her on the Colonel’s invitation, and whom he took her to see; the young people like herself, who were pleased to make Susan’s acquaintance, but of whose “education” and “accomplishments” Susan all unaccomplished and uninstructed stood in awe. The wonder of finding that her own ignorance, fresh and intelligent as it was, rather attracted than repelled many of her new friends; the very necessity of making an evening toilette, and having to interest herself in pretty fashions of evening dress; and to get Uncle Edward’s Indian muslins, in their impossible delicacy, the things that she had once wondered over as ornaments of her drawers, but beyond all mortal use, actually made into ordinary gowns, and to wear them!—everything bewildered Susan into additional happiness. And that breakfast-table, with its post arrival, its letters and news—the epistles of her young cousins, the bits of pleasant gossip from the Colonel’s old correspondents, all communicated to herself, with an evident pleasure in having her there to listen to them; the common family confidences and comforts which make up the daily life of most young people, made Susan’s cup run over with unanticipated refinements of delight. At first every additional touch of domestic happiness was too much for her composure, and the spring skies were not more showery in their joy than those blue eyes, which could scarcely be convinced to believe themselves or acknowledge the reality of the sunshine and light around; but before the first week was over, Susan had begun to wonder how she could have managed to exist through the past, and to feel as though she had lived only in those happy days, the first days she had spent in a home.
About the same day as that on which Horace set out for London, Susan sat making tea at Milnehill breakfast-table, while Uncle Edward read his letters opposite. One of these letters, as it happened, was from Roger Musgrave. Something had been doing among the Caffres, in which Roger had distinguished himself, and an account of the affair appeared that very morning in the Times, where a brief but flattering mention of the young volunteer delighted beyond measure his fast friend. Susan, it is impossible to deny, listened with unusual interest both to the letter and the newspaper report. It was wonderful how clearly she remembered Roger Musgrave, how he looked, and all about him. She even liked to continue the conversation in that channel, and keep her uncle from digressing to Ned or Tom, or old Sinclair of the Forty-second; and with this shy purpose suddenly bethought herself of Horace’s encounter with the old pitman, of which she had been a witness, but which happier events had driven until now out of her thoughts.
“Had Horace anything to do with Mr. Musgrave, uncle?” she asked, somewhat timidly.
“Eh? Horace? Not that I am aware of,” said the Colonel; “but your brother, my love, is inscrutable, and might have to do with the Rajah of Sarawak, for anything I know.”
“I never heard they were friends,” said Susan, musingly. “I wonder what Horace could mean? You would have thought he was managing something for Mr. Musgrave, to hear how he spoke to that old man; and he told me—oh!” cried Susan, stopping abruptly, growing very red, and looking somewhat scared, in Uncle Edward’s face.
“What, my dear child?” said the benign Colonel, with a smile.
“Oh, uncle! he told me not to tell you,” said Susan, with a mixture of fright and boldness. “It must have been something wrong.”
“Then perhaps you had better not tell me,” said Uncle Edward, rather gravely. “I should be sorry to have a suspicion of either Roger or Horace. Never tell anything that seems to be wrong until you are sure of it, Susan. It may be safe enough to praise upon slight grounds, but never, my dear, to blame.”
“That is how you treat me, Uncle Edward,” said Susan, looking up brightly with recovered courage—“but this is different. What could anybody have to tell Mr. Musgrave, uncle, which would be worth paying a pension or an annuity for?—ten shillings a-week the old man said; and he was going to Armitage Park, but Horace would not let him. Horace seemed to be managing it all, as if it was for the young Squire: he said so even in words. Uncle, I wonder what it could be?”
“A pension of ten shillings a-week!” exclaimed Colonel Sutherland. The old man reddened with a painful colour. Unsuspicious of evil as he was, he had lived long in the world, and knew its darker side. The first idea which occurred to him was that of some youthful vice which this payment was to hide; and he was grieved to his heart.
“It sounded like—” said Susan, who was perfectly ignorant of her auditor’s thoughts, and innocently went on pursuing her own—“it sounded like as if something had been found out about Mr. Musgrave’s property or something, and that it would do him good, and that he would be so thankful to hear it that he would give the money directly; and Horace must have thought so, too, for he promised to get it for the old man. I wonder what could have been found out; for all the land was sold—was it not, uncle?—and Mr. Musgrave was poor.”
“I doubt if he has ten shillings a-week for himself of his own,” said the Colonel, hastily.
“Then, uncle, something must have been found out!” cried Susan—“I am sure of it, from the way the old man spoke; and Horace promised to get him the pension, and would not let him go to Armitage. That was a little strange, wasn’t it?—because Sir John, you told me, uncle, was Mr. Musgrave’s great friend, and I never believed that Horace even knew him until that day.”
“Odd enough, to be sure. I did not know it either, Susan. They don’t look much like a pair of friends,” said the puzzled Colonel; “and your brother—hum—Horace is very clever, my dear,” said Uncle Edward, with a grieved look, and a slight sigh. He did not want to think any harm of his nephew, but the old man could not make the young schemer out.
“I hope, uncle, it is not anything very wrong,” said Susan, faltering a little.
“I hope not, my dear,” said the Colonel; but they concluded their breakfast much more silently than usual, neither of them looking very comfortable; and, for the first time, Susan was rather glad when the meal was over, and herself at liberty. She went out into the garden among the flowers, as was her wont, but even that sweet exhilarating spring atmosphere, the rustle of leaves and ripple of sound that gladdened the morning, did not withdraw her thoughts from that perplexing subject. The more she hoped that it was nothing wrong, the more settled became her conviction that it was, and that deceit, or treachery of some kind, was involved in the transaction. And then a battle ensued in her private heart. Roger Musgrave was nothing to Susan, and Horace was her only brother; was it her part to search into the secrets of her nearest relatives, in order to befriend a stranger? With an uneasy consciousness of undue interest in one so little known to her, Susan blushed, and shrank from this idea; yet her honest thoughts, once roused, were not to be put to rest even by a scruple of girlish delicacy. To see harm done, and stand by passive, was as impossible to this girl as to the strongest champion in existence. It was against her nature. She could not do it, were the wrong-doer her nearest and dearest friend.
An hour or two later Colonel Sutherland came into the drawing-room, where Susan sat at work, with her thoughts busy about this matter. The old soldier loitered about, poking his gray moustache into the pretty bookshelves, as though he had suddenly grown short-sighted, and impending with the stoop habitual to his deafness over Susan’s chair. He had something to say, but was reluctant to say it, lest he should wound, even by implication, the feelings of his young guest.
“Susan,” said the Colonel, at last, abruptly—he thought he spoke as if the subject had suddenly occurred to him, while, in reality, it was most distinctly visible that he had been pondering nothing else since he entered the room; “thinking over what you told me this morning, I rather think it might be as well to write to Armitage—eh? Very likely it is nothing, you know; but still, if any one in that district does know anything that might be of service to young Musgrave—why, my love, it seems as well that we should know.”
He looked at her doubtfully from under his gray eyebrows, laying a caressing hand upon her hair. He was afraid she would not like this proposal, and still more afraid that, alarmed in the quick and tender pride of family affection, she would guess and resent his suspicion of her brother. But Susan looked up quickly, without any shade of offence upon her face, which, however, had become very grave.
“I am afraid of Horace, uncle,” she said, simply and sadly; “he is my own brother, and it is dreadful to say so; but I am not sure of him, as you are of my cousins. Since I think of it, I am afraid it is something wrong.”
“Then you do not object, and I may write to Armitage?” said Uncle Edward. “Thank you, my dear child; perhaps we shall find it all a mistake, and Horace the most upright of us all. I trust so; he is very clever, Susan, and clever boys are sometimes tempted into scheming—eh? And besides, poor fellow, he has had little justice in his own life. I will write, then, my love, and I hope everything will come perfectly clear.”
So saying, the Colonel went away, to confide Susan’s story to Sir John Armitage, and beg his attention to it. To seek out “an old man,” who knew something to Roger’s advantage, without either name or place to trace him by, was rather a hard task to impose upon the indolent baronet; and so Susan thought as her uncle left her. But still, it was a satisfaction to have the letter written. It is always satisfactory to transfer a portion of one’s own personal uneasiness to somebody else. They hoped a little and wondered a great deal each in private, with very little communication on the subject, while they waited for Sir John’s reply; and if Roger had wanted anything before of the requisites necessary for a hero in Susan’s imagination, he had fully acquired it now. He was young, brave, handsome, generous, and perhaps he was injured—could any knight of romance require more?