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THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR
BY
THE AUTHOR OF
"MARGARET MAITLAND," "ADAM GRAEME,"
"THE LAIRD OF NORLAW,"
&c., &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1861.
_The right of Translation is reserved._
LONDON:
PRINTED BY R. BORN, GLOUCESTER STREET,
REGENT'S PARK.
PREFACE.
This book was overshadowed and interrupted by the heaviest grief. The
author says so, not to deprecate criticism, but to crave the tender
forbearance of her unknown friends.
THE HOUSE ON THE MOOR.
CHAPTER I.
In a gloomy room, looking out through one narrow window upon a moor, two
young people together, and yet alone, consumed the dreary hours of a
February afternoon. The scene within doors exhibited scarcely less
monotony and dreariness than did the moor without, which stretched black
and heavy to the hills under a leaden sky. The room was well-sized, and
lighted only by that one window, which was deeply sunk in the deep wall,
and hung with terrible curtains of red moreen, enough to kill what
little amount of light there was. A large dining-table, of cold,
well-polished mahogany, occupied the centre of the apartment--an
old-fashioned sideboard and mysterious bureau of the same character
stood out darkly from the walls--and hard, angular chairs furnished
forth the dining-room, as it was called--but which was, indeed,
drawing-room, study, boudoir, everything to the brother and sister who
held occupation of it now.
And here were none of those traces of feminine presence which one reads
of in books--no pretty things, no flowers, no embroideries, nothing to
cast a grace upon the dulness. Perhaps that might be partly Susan's
fault; but when one lives all one's life on the borders of Lanwoth Moor,
ten miles off from the humblest attempt at a town, without any money,
and seeing nobody to stir one's ambition, even a girl of seventeen may
be pardoned if she can make little brightness except that of her
presence in her shady place. To tell the truth, nobody made much
account of Susan; she was not expected to exert much influence on the
changeless atmosphere of Marchmain. No one supposed her to be the flower
of that solitude: any little embellishments which she tried were put
down ruthlessly; and the little girl had long ago learned, as the first
duties of womankind, to do as she was bid, and hold her peace. She was
seated now before the fire, making a little centre with her work upon
the cold glimmer of the uncovered table. She was very fair in her
complexion, with hair almost flaxen, white teeth, blue eyes, and a
pretty colour. She did not look intellectual, nor interesting, nor
melancholy; but sat leaning very closely over her work, because there
was not much light, and Horace stood full between her and what little
there was. She had a pair of scissors, a reel of cotton, and a paper of
buttons on the table before her; and on the back of her chair hang a
huge bag, made of printed cotton, which it was safe to believe was her
work-bag. There she sat, with a little firelight playing vainly upon her
dark woollen dress--a domestic creature, not very happy, but very
contented, dully occupied in the silence and the gray afternoon, living
a life against which her youth protested, but somehow managing to get on
with tolerable comfort, as women unawakened and undisturbed do.
Of a different character altogether was the other inmate of this room.
On the end of the table nearest the light lay a confusion of open books
and an old-fashioned inkstand, which two instruments of learning had, it
seemed, gone towards the composition of a German exercise, which
appeared, half finished, and with a big blot on the last word, between
them. Twenty times over, while that blurred page was being compounded,
the young student had flown at the fire in silent irritability, and
poked it half out; and he now stood in the recess of the window, between
the red curtains, blocking up the light, and looking out with angry eyes
upon the dim black blast of February rain which came with the darkness
from the hills. It was certainly a dismal prospect. The very shower was
not the hearty, violent shower which sweeps white over a landscape in
vehement sheets of water; it had not a characteristic of storm or
vitality about it; but, saturating, penetrating, invisible, went chill
to the heart of the sodden land, if heart was in that wild, low stretch
of blackened moss and heather, where nothing living moved. The young man
stood in the window, looking out with a vexation and dull rage
indescribable upon the falling night. He had this only in common with
Susan, that his features were cast in an unheroic type, and could only
have been handsome under the influence of good humour and good spirits,
two beneficent fairies unknown to that lowering face. Good health and
much exercise kept the colour on his cheeks and the light in his
eye--against his will, one was tempted to suppose. He was short-sighted,
and contracted his eyes in his gaze out, till the eyelids hung in heavy
folds over the stormy stare which he sent across the moor--and querulous
lines of discontent puckered the full youthful lips, which were made for
a sweeter expression. Weariness, disgust, the smouldering rage of one
oppressed, was in his face. He was not only in unnatural circumstances,
but somebody had injured him: he carried his head with all the loftiness
and superiority of a conscious victim; but it was evident that the
sentiment of wrong--just or unjust--poisoned and embittered all his
life.
"Rain!" he exclaimed, jerking the word out as if he threw something at
fate. "My luck!--not so much as the chance of a run on the moor!"
"Are you tired of your German already, Horace?" asked Susan, as he came
to the fire to make a last attempt upon its life--lifting up her
contented woman's face, not without the shadow of a smile upon it, to
her restless brother.
"Tired? D'ye think I'm a child or a girl like you? Do you think I can
spend my days over German exercises? What's the good of it? Have _I_ a
chance of ever using that or any other language, unless, perhaps, as a
beggar? Pshaw!--look after your work, and don't aggravate me."
"But it would please papa," said Susan, with some timidity, as if this
was rather a doubtful argument; "and then, perhaps he might be persuaded
to do what you wish, Horace, if you tried to please _him_."
"To please papa," said her brother, imitating her words with
contemptuous mockery, "is an inducement indeed. To please _him_! Why
should I please him, I should like to know? What has he ever done for
me? At least, I shan't cheat him with a false submission. I'd rather
chuck the lot of them into the fire, than have him suppose that I read
German, or anything else, for _his_ sake!"
"But oh, Horace, you would make me _so_ unhappy!" said Susan, with a
little unconscious gesture of entreaty, letting her work fall, and
clasping her hands as she looked up in his face.
"I suppose so," said the young man, with perfect indifference.
"And you don't care?" cried his sister, moved to a momentary overflow of
those sudden tears of mortification and injured affection which women
weep over such cool, conscious, voluntary disregard. "I would do
anything in the world for you, but you don't mind how I feel; and yet
there are only two of us in the world."
"So much the better," said Horace, throwing himself down in a chair
before the fire; "and as for those vain professions, what is the use of
them, I should like to know? What _could_ you do for me, if you were
ever so anxious? Anything in the world, in our circumstances, means
simply nothing, Susan. Oh! for heaven's sake, don't cry!--you're a good
girl, and sew on my buttons--but what, in the name of fortune, could
_you_ do? You know as well as I that it is only a fashion of words----"
"I did not mean it so," cried Susan, quickly--but stopping as suddenly,
cast a hurried, painful look at him, and dried her tears with a hasty
hand--the look which natural Truth casts upon that cruel, reasonable
fool, Wisdom, whom she cannot contest, yet knows in the wrong. A little
indignation burning up upon her ingenuous cheek helped the hurried hand
to dry the tears, and she returned to her work with a little tremble of
haste, such as a discussion with her brother very frequently threw Susan
into. She did not pretend to argue with him: she was not clever, but his
philosophy filled her with impatience. She "could not bear it." She felt
inclined to get up and seize hold of him, and try physical measures to
shake this arrogant pretence of truth out of him; for Susan, though she
could not argue, was not without a temper and opinion of her own.
Silence ensued. Susan made nervous haste with her needlework, and
stumbled over it in her little flutter of vexation; but Horace was too
much absorbed to notice this girlish show of feeling. When he had rocked
in his chair a little, placing one foot on the side of the old-fashioned
grate, he suddenly sprang up and thrust away his seat. "By George!"
cried Horace--but not as that exclamation is usually uttered, "I've not
got a friend in the world!--there isn't a man in existence, so far as I
know, that will do anything for me!"
"Oh, Horace!" said Susan, "think how much better off you are than some
people. Don't always make the worst of everything! Think of poor Roger
Musgrave at Tillington, who has neither father nor home--his godfather
dead without making any provision for him, and nothing to do and nobody
to look to, poor fellow--and breaking his heart for grief besides, and
Peggy says will either 'list or die!"
"And a very good alternative too," said Horace; "he's very well off for
a poor milk-and-water nobody--free! and able to 'list if he likes, or
die if he likes, without any one troubling their head about the matter.
As to home and father, I heartily wish he had my share of these precious
commodities. Do you think anywhere else a man like me would sell his
soul for a bed and a dinner? There! there! hold your tongue, or talk of
what you understand."
"What do I understand, I wonder," cried Susan, "sewing on your worship's
buttons? A man like you!--you are only nineteen after all, when the
truth is told."
"I am man enough to make my own way," said the youth, angrily; "it is
not a question of years or days, if indeed you were able to judge of it
at all, which you are not."
"If I were so very certain of my own strength," cried Susan, following
up her advantage, "I'd run away, if I did not care for home, or father,
or--or anybody. If I did not mind about duty or affection, or such
trifles, I'd go and make my own way, and not talk of it--I would! I know
something, though I'm not so wise as you. I think it's shocking to talk
discontent for ever, and gloom at everything. Why don't you go away?
Think of the great people in books, that go to London with sixpence in
their pockets, and turn out great merchants--or with a tragedy, and turn
out Dr. Johnson. Think of Chatterton, whom you were reading of. You are
better off a great deal than he!"
"Chatterton was a fool," said Horace. "I promise you I'll wait for the
tide, and not shoot myself when it's in the flow. I am much obliged for
your advice. I've neither a tragedy nor a sixpence that I can call my
own--but some of these days I'll go."
Pronouncing these words with slow and formal emphasis, as if he meant
something dreadful, Horace marched solemnly to his German exercise, and
sat down to it once more. The evening grew darker round the two; by
degrees Susan's head drooped down on her needlework, till you could see
that she had been seized by a womanish panic, and was secretly putting
up the linen on her knee to wipe her wet eyes. This terror and
compunction worked its way silently as the early wintry night came on.
By-and-by, through the quietness, which was broken only by Horace's pen,
the ashes from the grate, and a slow patter outside of the wet which
dropped from the eaves, there broke a little hurried, suppressed sob.
Then Susan's white work, more distinct than herself in the twilight,
went down suddenly upon the floor, and a darkling figure glided round to
Horace's side. "Oh, don't think of it any more!" cried Susan; "it was
only my ill-temper. Oh, Horace, never mind me!--don't think of it
again."
"Think of what?" said Horace, peevishly; "what on earth do you mean,
thrusting your arms about me? I did not ask to be petted, did I?--what
do you mean?"
"Oh, Horace--what we were saying," said his sister, with humility.
"What were we saying? Can I remember all the nonsense you talk?" cried
the young man, shaking off her arms with impatience--"can't you keep to
your own business, and let me alone? Oh, you wanted me to be Whittington
and the cat, didn't you?--thank you, that's not my vocation. Isn't it
bad enough I must stand your sauciness, without standing your
repentance--oh, for mercy's sake, go away!"
Susan went away without another word, gathered her work into her big
work-bag, and went out of the room, not without making it sufficiently
audible that she had closed the door.
"He's a coward! he does nothing but talk!" she said between her teeth,
as she went up the dark stairs; but nobody save herself knew that her
momentary passion had brought these words to Susan's lips, and ten
minutes after she would not have believed she had said them--nevertheless,
sometimes passion, unawares, says the truth.