The household of Marchmain consisted of four persons. The brother and
sister we have already seen, their father, and one female servant. In
this little interval of twilight, while Susan puts on her clean collar
for dinner, and which Horace, who would rather disarrange than improve
his dress, out of pure ill-humour and disrespect, spends in the dark,
staring into the fire with his head between his hands, we will explain
to our readers the economy of this singular household. At this hour all
is dark in the solitary house. Without, the chill invisible rain, the
great unbroken blackness of the moor and the night--within, an unlighted
hall and staircase, with a red glow of firelight at the end of a long
passage, betraying the kitchen, and a faint thread of light coming out
beneath a door opposite the dining-room. Thrift, severe and rigid,
reigns in this dwelling. In Mr. Scarsdale's own room a single candle
burns, when it is no longer possible to read without one; but there are
no lights in the family sitting-room till the dinner is placed on the
table, and Peggy has nothing but firelight in the kitchen, and Susan
puts on her collar by intuition upstairs. Everything is under inexorable
rule and law. The family have breakfast between nine and ten, sometimes
even later; for Mr. Scarsdale is not a man to modify his own habits for
any consideration of suitability. From that time till six o'clock, when
there is dinner, the young people see nothing of their father. He sits
with them in the evening, imposing silence by his presence; and that, so
far as family intercourse goes, is the chronicle of their life.
Let us enter at this door, which marks itself off from the floor of the
hall by that slender line of light. It has the same prospect as the
dining-room, when there is any daylight to see it; but it is smaller
than that gloomy apartment; two large bookcases, shut in by a brass
network, stand out with sharp and angular corners from the walls, no
attempt having been made to fill up the vacant space at either side of
them, or to harmonize these gaunt pieces of furniture with anything else
in the room. There are two or three chairs, which stand fixed and
immovable in corners, plainly testifying that nobody ever sits there;
and before the fire a library table, and in a round-backed elbow-chair
the father of the house. He sits there reading with a forlorn
persistence wonderful to see--reading for no purpose, reading with
little interest, yet turning page after page with methodical regularity,
and bending his lowering forehead on the book as if it were the business
of his life. He is dark, not so much in complexion as in sentiment--a
close, self-absorbed, impenetrable man. It is not difficult to perceive
that he is neither a student by ardent inclination, nor by profession a
searcher into books; but what is the secret of these solitary studies is
hard to discover. He sits with his head leaning upon one hand, and the
other turning the pages--sits often for hours in that one position. He
is scarcely ever stimulated into interest, and never owns the enlivening
touch of that zeal and curiosity which hunts for proofs or illustrations
of a favourite theory through a dozen volumes. There is no heap of
books by his side, but only one orderly volume, which is not of the
class of those fantastic delightful reverie books in which studious men
delight. The blank, straightforward manner in which he reads on comes to
be impressive in its singularity after a time. He seems to pursue this
occupation as a clerk keeps books, and counts his progress, you could
imagine, by the number of the pages he has read, and by no less tangible
criterion; and nothing moves the settled darkness of his uncommunicative
face.
Behind him, hung by the side of the window, in the worst light of the
room, is a portrait, a very common work, done by a mediocre painter, but
in all probability very like its original, for the face looks down
through the gloom with a real smile, which paint cannot give--a sweet,
home-like, domestic woman, such another as Susan will be when the years
and the hours have carried her into her own life. There can be no doubt
it is Susan's mother and this man's wife. There is no other picture in
the house, and he cares so little for anyone seeing this, that he has
hung it in the shadows of the red moreen curtains, where nobody can
distinguish the features. Most likely he knows the features well enough
to penetrate that darkness; for though he sits with his back to it most
usually, it is for his pleasure it is here.
Nobody knows anything about this man; he has not any family connection
whatever with the house or locality. Nobody can understand why of all
places in the world he should come here to the tumble-down old house on
the edge of the moor, which nobody else would live in. When he came, ten
years ago, the country people paid him visits--half in curiosity, half
in kindness--which were never returned, till at last society dropped
off entirely, even from the attempt to break upon his seclusion. To
account for his ungraciousness, rumours of great crimes and great
misfortunes were whispered about him; but as the novelty failed, these
sunk into abeyance; and it was tacitly understood or believed now that
the loss of a great lawsuit, which materially lessened his means, was
the cause of his withdrawal from the world. He was then but a young man,
scarcely forty; and if neither sport nor society had attractions for him
then, it was not to be supposed that his heart had expanded now. He
lived in a severe, rectangular, mathematical poverty, which calculated
every item, and left room for no irregularity. He kept his children
rigidly within the same bounds which confined himself. If they formed
acquaintances, it must needs have been at "kirk or market," in the roads
or the fields, for he strictly forbade them from either receiving or
accepting invitations; while for his own part he gave a certain cold
attention to their education as a duty, but spent as little time as
possible in their society. It is not surprising, under these
circumstances, that this gloomy and brooding man should have roused the
kindred temper of his son to a slight degree of desperation, or
succeeded in making the thraldom of his life very irksome to a youth who
was neither amiable nor submissive, to begin with. Mr. Scarsdale did not
even pretend a fatherly regard for Horace; all his life he had treated
the lad with a cutting and desperate civility, which would have pierced
a more sensitive child to the heart; and from his boyhood had given him
a certain position of equality and rivalship, totally contrary to the
relationship they really held, and which at once stimulated the pride
and raised the passions of the solitary youth. This unhappy state of
things had never come to a climax by any outburst of passion. Horace
might be as disrespectful, as sullen, as defiant as he pleased. His
father extorted a certain hard lineal obedience, but neither expected
nor seemed to wish for, reverence, love, or any filial sentiment; and
this aspect of affairs had become so habitual, that even Susan did not
observe it. Most likely she thought all fathers were more or less the
same; her whole heart of tenderness went back to her little recollection
of her mother--and Mr. Scarsdale was still human so far as Susan was
concerned. He was not kind certainly, but at least he seemed conscious
that he _was_ her father and she his child.
Notwithstanding his seclusion, his limited means, and morose habits, he
still bore the appearance, and something of the manners, of a
gentleman--something which even those neighbours whose kindnesses he had
repulsed acknowledged by an involuntary respect. When the half-hour
chimed from his clock on the mantel-piece--almost the only article of
luxury visible in the house--he closed his book as a labourer gives up
his work, pausing only to place a mark in the page, and, taking up his
candle, went solemnly upstairs. He was scarcely of middle size, but so
spare and erect that he seemed tall; thin almost to the point of
emaciation, with marked and prominent features, unlike either of his
children. Yet, strangely enough, though Horace's face resembled that of
his mother, the expression--the spiritual resemblance--was like this
dark and brooding face: possibly, the very pang and keenness of
opposition between the father and the son lay in their likeness. Mr.
Scarsdale carried his candle up the gloomy staircase, leaving his study
in darkness, to exchange his easy dressing-gown for a coat, and prepare
himself for dinner. Dinner for ten years, at least, had been to him a
solitary meal: during all that time his doors had never opened to admit
a stranger; but he never once failed in the customary punctilio, or
neglected to close his book when the timepiece chimed the half-hour.
Meanwhile, the preparations of the kitchen were coming to a climax. This
was the only cheerful place in the house. It had a large old-fashioned
chimney, with a settle in its warm corner, and the warmth centered in
that recess as in a chamber of light. Bundles of herbs were hung up to
dry over the mantel-shelf, where was a little oil-lamp attached to the
wall, but rarely lighted--so that the apartment itself, with its broad
but high window, its great wooden presses and tables, was but half seen
in the wavering light. There stood Peggy, putting on her "dinner cap."
Peggy was, at least, as tall as her master, and very little younger. She
was his foster-sister, attached all her life to his family, and knew the
secret of his retirement, if anybody did; but Peggy was of the faithful
type of ancient servants, and gave no sign. She had been comely in her
youth, and was still fresh-coloured and neat when she pleased--and she
did please at dinner-time. She had on a dark stuff gown, with a white
soft muslin handkerchief covering her neck under it, as is the fashion
with elderly women in the north country; a great white apron, and the
before-mentioned cap, which had pink ribbons in it. Peggy had rather a
large face, and features big and strong. Had she been born a lady, with
nothing to do, she would have been a strong-minded woman; but Providence
had been kinder to Peggy. As it was, she had her own opinions about most
things, and hesitated not at all to express her approbation and
disapprobation. She was, in short, very much what old servants were, as
we have said, a generation or two ago. But one thing was the pride of
Peggy's life: to have everything in perfect order for her master's
dinner, which was the event of the day to her; to feel convinced that
her cookery was as careful and delicate as if she had been attended by a
score of scullions; to do everything indeed, as far as it lay in one
pair of active hands and one vigorous brain to do, as perfectly as if a
whole establishment of servants waited on the comforts of "the
family"--was the ambition of Mr. Scarsdale's solitary waiting-woman. If
no one else felt the compliment, Peggy was continually flattered and
inspirited by her master's evening-coat.
And it was she, though nearly fifty, who did everything in the house, it
was she alone who knew the former history of "the family" which she
tended so carefully. If ever Mr. Scarsdale unbended his reserved soul
for a moment, it was Peggy who received the rare confidence. It was she
who had helped the inherent woman to come to feminine life in poor
little Susan's neglected education; and it was she, the only busy,
cheerful living inhabitant of the house, who now carried those slender
silver candlesticks into the dark dining-room, and disturbed Master
Horace in his reverie with the gleam of the unexpected light.