That day was an important one to Roger Musgrave. To live in that Grange,
a great, empty, deserted house, where every desolate apartment echoed to
his footstep as if he were a dozen men, and which contained through all
its ample rooms nothing but a rude table and chair in the library, where
he took his solitary food, a truckle bed where he slept, and some homely
implements for poor old Sally in the kitchen, which the unfortunate
young man had redeemed out of his mother's twenty pounds--became at last
and once for all impossible to him. That day, setting out for the only
refuge of his idleness, a long walk, it had occurred to him to turn his
steps in the direction of Marchmain, more from a passing caprice than a
serious intention. His kind old Colonel had been there--and there was
the Colonel's niece, the pretty frank little girl, who had clapped her
hands at his boyish exploit a year ago. The gratified vanity of that
moment, his former curiosity to see Susan again, and her friendly
mention of him to her uncle, warmed the young man into more earnestness
as he approached the house. Seeing no one, and amazed at its utter
solitude and sadness, he had turned away disappointed, when their
meeting took place. Then, as we have already said, the young man hurried
home. When he arrived there he kept walking up and down the empty
library, till the old house rung again, and old Sally believed the young
squire was "a-gooin' out of his mind." But he was not doing any such
thing; he was only repeating to himself that it was impossible!--impossible!
that it was against nature, and a discredit to his own character; that
he could no longer wait for what other people were doing for him;
that this very day he must leave the Grange. What his meeting with
Susan had to do with hastening this resolution it is quite impossible
to tell; he did not know himself; but the conclusion was beyond
disputing. He felt a feverish restlessness possess him--he could
not remain even another night, though the morning certainly would
have seemed a wiser time for setting out upon his journey. He pushed
aside the chop which old Sally, with much care and all the skill her
old hands retained, had prepared for him, and began to write. He
wrote to his mother, who had recovered all her original place in his
affections, a short cheerful note, to say that he was going to London,
and would write to her from thence. Then he indited less easily a
letter to the Colonel, in which, with all the eloquence he possessed,
he represented the impossibility of remaining where he was. He
described, with natural pathos, the empty house, the desecrated home,
the listless life of idleness he was leading. He said, with youthful
inconsequence, strong in the feeling of the moment, that, thrown back
upon himself as he had been all these lonely days, he no longer cared
for rank, nor desired to keep up a pretence of superior station,
which he could not support. "In what am I better than a private
soldier?" he wrote, with all the swell and impulse of his full young
heart: "worse, in so far that I am neither trained to my weapons, nor
used to obedience--better in nothing but an empty name!" And with all
that facile philosophy with which young men comfort the bitterness of
their disappointments, the lad wrought himself up to a heroical pitch,
by asking himself and the Colonel why he should not serve his country
as well in the ranks as among their commanders. Why, indeed? The fever
of his excitement mounted into his brain. When he finished his letter
he was in all the fervour of that self-sacrificing sentiment which
is so dear to youth. He went upstairs and packed his clean linen--a
goodly store, all unlike the equipment of a private soldier--with some
few other necessaries, into a travelling-bag. Then he went down to the
great deserted kitchen, where poor old Sally sat "like a crow in the
mist" by the chimney corner, her morsel of attenuated fire gleaming
faintly across the cold floor. Sally got up and curtseyed when the
young master entered. She was a little old woman, bent and feeble,
but she had lived there almost all her life, and it would have broken
Sally's heart to be sent away from the Grange. She stood before him
with her withered hands crossed upon her white apron, wondering in
her dim thoughts whether there might be something to complain of in
the dinner she had prepared. Behind her spread all the hospitable
provisions of the rich man's kitchen, the arrangements which spoke of
liberal entertainment, assembly of guests above and crowd of servants
below; all black, cold, and desolate, unlighted save by the early
wintry twilight from the windows and the superannuated glimmer of
Sally's fire; and the emptiness and vacancy went with a chill and an
ache to Roger's heart.
"Sally," said the young man, courageously, "I shall not give you any
more trouble for a long time. You must keep the house as well as you
can, and make yourself as comfortable as possible. Don't make the old
place a show for strangers, now that it's desolate. See, Sally, here's
for your present needs, and when I am settled I will send you more."
"I allays said it," said the old woman, "ye can ask Betty Gilsland. I
said, says I, 'the young maister, take my word, 'll no bide here.' Ay,
ay, ay, I allays said it--and you see it's coomed true."
Saying these words, Sally went off into a feeble little outburst of
tears, and repeated her affirmation a third time, holding the money he
had given her in her hand as if she did not know what to do with it. At
last her ideas, such as they were, collected themselves. She made
another curtsey.
"And where are you a-gooing, maister?" she said, looking earnestly into
his face.
"To make my fortune, Sally," said the young man, with a smile which
trembled between boldness and tears.
"And Amen--and grit may the fortin' be!" cried the old woman. "Have ye
eaten your dinner?"
This was too much for the young man; he burst into a hysterical laugh,
grasped her withered hand, shook it rapidly, and hurried away. The poor
old body toiled up the stairs after him, to make sure that "the sneck
was in the door--for them young things are that careless!" said poor
old Sally; then she went back again to her kitchen, and looked at the
money, and, after an interval, perceiving what had happened, fell
a-sobbing and crying in her solitude, and praying "the Lord bless him!"
and "the Lord be gude to him!" as she rocked herself in her wooden
chair. He who, out of all that poverty and sadness, and stupor of old
age, heard these ejaculations, is no respecter of persons, and it was
not without a true benediction that Roger Musgrave left his home.
When he was out upon the high road he turned back to look at the Grange.
The evening was dark and favoured him. The day had been mild, and early
spring quickened and rustled among those trees, warming to the very tips
of their branches with that invisible and silent life which should
shortly make them green. There they stood clustering in mutual defence
against the night wind, with the high-pitched gable-roof of the old
house looking out from among them, and the black belt of firs behind
filling up the breaks in their softer outline. By-and-bye, as Roger
lingered in that last wistful look, he could see a small, unsteady light
wandering from window to window. It was poor old Sally shutting the
shutters, murmuring to herself that it was always so when the family
were from home. There was something in the action symbolical and
significant to Roger; it was the shutting up of the old house, the
closing of the old refuge, the audible and visible sentence forbidding
the return which up to that moment had been possible: he turned away
with tears in his eyes, slung his travelling-bag over his strong
shoulders, and setting his face to the wind, sped away through the dark
country roads to the little new-built railway town, with its inns and
labourers' cottages. It was quite dark when he got there; the lights
dazzled him, and the noise of the coffee-room into which he went filled
him with disgust in his exalted and excited state of feeling. Strangely
enough as it appeared to him, a recruiting party had possession of the
inn; a swaggering sergeant with parti-coloured ribbons went and came
between the coffee-room and the bar, where a batch of recruits were
drowning their regrets and compunctions in oceans of beer. Roger went
out, with a strange mixture of disgust and curiosity, to look at them.
He could not observe, and criticize, and despise as Horace Scarsdale
could have done; he found no amusement in the coarse self-reproach of
one, the sullen obstinacy of another, the reckless gaiety with which a
third put off his repentance till to-morrow. The din of their pretended
enjoyment was pathetic and melancholy to Roger; but, amid all, he could
not help the thought which occurred to him again and again--"Am I to be
the comrade of these unfortunate blockheads?--are these my
brothers-in-arms?"
And then, quick as thought, another picture presented itself to him. He
thought of the Colonel, with his kind solicitous face, his stoop of
attention, and the smile which lighted up his fatherly eyes when he
spoke of his boy, whom he should hope to see Roger's brother-in-arms.
For the moment he saw before him, not the flaring lights and clumsy
figures of this rude company, but the dim inn-parlour, with its poor
candles, and the benign old stranger with his paternal smile. The young
man could not bear it. He said to himself sternly, "This must not be!"
and dismissed the contrast which distracted him from his mind with a
violent effort. Then he made his way into the half-lighted
railway-station, where everything lay dark and silent, a stray porter
making ghostly appearance across the rails, and an abysm of darkness on
either side, out of which, and into which, now and then plunged the
red-eyed ogre of a passing train. In answer to his inquiries, he found
that the night-train to London stopped here to take up passengers in the
middle of the night. He made a homely supper in the inn, and then came
outside, to the station, to wait for it. There he paced up and down,
watching the coming and going of short trains here and there, the
hurried clambering up, and the more leisurely descent of rural
passengers, upon whom the light fell coldly as they went and came. The
roar and rustle with which some one-eyed monster, heard long before
seen, came plunging and snorting out of the darkness, and all the
rapid, shifting, phantasmagoria, of that new fashion of the picturesque
which belongs to modern times. The wind blew chill from the open
country, with a shrill and piercing concentration of cold through the
narrow bar of the little station. By-and-bye the lights diminished, the
noises stilled, nobody was left in the place but himself, a drowsy clerk
in the little office, and some porters sleeping on the benches. Roger,
for his part, could not sleep; he kept in motion, marching up and down
the short, resounding, wooden platform, urged by the midnight cold, and
by his thoughts, until his weary vigil was concluded by the arrival of
his train. Then he, too, plunged like everybody else into darkness, into
the mysterious midnight road, with dark London throbbing and shouting at
the end; into life and his fate.