When Peggy re-entered the dining-room, she found poor Susan struggling
to restrain the sudden sobs of her distress and disappointment in
finding that her uncle was not to remain at Marchmain. He had not meant
to tell her at once, and even now he told her cheerfully, and without
offence, as if he had changed his intention for his own convenience
solely. He had just opened the carpet-bag, of which he had been so
careful on the journey, and was taking out a parcel very carefully and
elaborately packed up, which he proceeded at once to uncover. Susan
looked on, a little curious, but not much interested; she had no
conception what it was, or that she had any connection with it; and when
at last it was all unfolded, and spread out before her, she looked on
rather more interested, but no less wondering. What might Uncle Edward
be going to do with those snowy lengths of India muslin, the fragile
foundation of which was scarcely sufficient to bear the wreaths of
embroidery, which Susan had never seen anything like in her life, and
instantly longed, with a girlish instinct, to copy and emulate--pretty
collars, too, and cuffs, feminine articles which the Colonel could have
no possible use for; and wrapped up with these one or two unknown
articles, rich with that wonderful tiny mosaic work which embellishes
the card-cases and blotting-books of people who are fortunate enough to
have friends in India. Susan had a vague idea that one of these was a
card-case; it certainly was like something of her mother's which Peggy
preserved as a relic, and had promised to make over to her young
mistress when she was old enough to pay visits--an impossible age, which
Susan laughed to think of ever attaining at Marchmain. When he had
opened them all out upon the shining uncovered table, which reflected
the spotless whiteness of the muslin, the Colonel looked down at Susan
with a smile, bending his ear towards her, and looking for gratification
and pleasure in a face which was only admiring and puzzled. "Are you
pleased with them?" said Uncle Edward. "I puzzled my old brains to think
what you would like, and there you have the results of my
cogitations--not anything very extraordinary, but bought a good many
thousand miles off for you, when the only recollection I had of you was
that of a baby. I had to count the years very carefully, I assure you,
and was near committing myself, and losing credit for ever by bringing
you a little frock."
"But, uncle, do you mean they are for _me?_" cried Susan, in amazement.
"Eh? Precisely--for you," said the Colonel, who had not quite heard her
question, but understood her look. "There is but one woman in the
family, my dear child: you don't suppose that my boy Ned could wear
muslin, or that Tom knows how to use a fan? But eh?--what's happened?
Have I vexed you without knowing it, for a blundering old blockhead?
What's the matter, Susan? I'll toss them all into the fire rather than
make you cry."
"Oh, uncle, I can't help crying--then, I like to cry!" exclaimed Susan,
finding the old Colonel really concerned, and disposed to carry out his
threat. "To think they should be for _me_--to think you should have
thought of me in India! Do you suppose I could just say, 'Thank you?'
Nobody ever gave me anything all my life before--and oh, uncle, to take
the trouble of _thinking_ of me!"
"If that is a troublesome operation, I have taken a great deal of
trouble about you, one time and another, Susan," said Colonel
Sutherland. "Now, dry your eyes, my love, and tell me if you approve of
my taste. They are nothing extraordinary, you little goose--you will
make me ashamed of my bundle. Why, everybody brings such things from
India, and bring them very often to people they care much less about
than I do about my little niece. If I had been richer, you should have
seen what we can do in the East; but I just managed, you perceive, to
get you one shawl."
Which shawl the Colonel extricated accordingly, as he spoke. Poor Susan,
afraid he might think her foolish, managed to stop her crying, and
gazed--half with dismay, half with admiration--at all the pretty things
before her. What could _she_ do with them? Colonel Sutherland, it was
true, knew that she never was allowed to see anybody, or to make any
friends, but a fact which is alien to nature makes no impression upon a
natural mind. He could not remember or suppose that a young girl had no
possible use for the pretty, simple dress he had brought, and looked on
with a pleased face to see the effect of his gifts, as Susan began to
examine them. Peggy, going backward and forward, saw it was now time
enough for her to interpose, and, with a genuine woman's interest,
plunged into the delightful investigation, which Susan--flushed and
agitated quite out of her wont, and tremulous with many new
sensations--had just concluded, when Horace entered the room.
That room, all its life, had never looked so homelike, and the reason
was not explainable; for, except in the heap of litter at one end of the
table, and the old man eating his luncheon hard by, there was
absolutely no change upon the apartment. That soldier's face,
weatherworn and brown, full of command yet full of tenderness, with
grizzled hair and moustache, and erect soldierly _pose_, was not by any
means a common-place countenance, or one which could have passed unnoted
anywhere; but it was not even that which made the charm. It was the
bright, pleased look which the Colonel, as he sat, lifted upon the girl
before him--the amused, kind, tender smile which went over all his face
like sunshine--the kindly, homely inclination towards her of that deaf
ear--the care he took to hear all she said--the interest and indulgent
regard with which he followed her movements and listened to her words.
There was no criticism in those kind eyes--they were eyes accustomed to
give a genial interpretation of everything--and the light of them
changed the aspect of this dismal room. It did not even look so dark or
so stifling--the very mahogany brightened, and hearty blazes awoke in
the once-smouldering fire. Everything seemed to have become aware,
somehow, that living human love and kindness, indulgence, tenderness
were there.
Yes, indulgence--though, to be sure, it is very bad to spoil our
children; but what would not one give, when one grows old, for that
dear, lost indulgence of our youth, which will never come back to
us--that consciousness that there is one at least who will see
everything we do in the best light, and put the kindest construction
upon our failings, and think us cleverer and better, and fairer and
pleasanter, than we are and can be! Youth cannot thrive at all without
this sunshine; but heaven help us, how it dies and disappears out of the
noon of life! Susan had never once felt it before--the feeling came upon
her, as she met her uncle's eyes, that she had never really lived
before--that she was only awaking to find out what she herself was, and
what were the people around her. Somehow the dawning of a happiness
unthought of brought with it the sudden revelation of miseries which had
not struck her in all her past experience. Fathers, it became visible to
her in a moment, were not all like her father--homes were different from
this home--even Uncle Edward's presents helped that enlightenment. These
pretty things were common to girls of her own age, and in ordinary use
among them. Her uncle was even puzzled that she should look at them as
she did, and think them so beautiful, so wonderful, so much "too fine
for _me_!" And as Susan came to comprehend this, between the pleasure
and the pain, her cheeks flushed, her young limbs trembled, her heart
beat loud with strange emotion. Even that excitement helped the effect
of Uncle Edward's kind face in the room. This very confusion and
commotion was life.
When Horace appeared, wet as Susan had predicted he would be, and sulky
as he always was, the sudden gleam of warmth in the familiar apartment
penetrated even into his sullen heart. Its first result was the natural
one of making him feel more unhappy; but in another moment, and with
reflection, a change came upon Horace. He did not desire or care for the
kindness of his uncle. _He_ was not a domestic creature!--he longed to
escape from home, and was exceedingly indifferent as to what he should
have there, if he could but attain that desirable end. And Colonel
Sutherland appeared a very likely assistant to Horace--as, his deaf
uncle not having heard him enter, he stood for a moment looking at him
before he advanced. The young man, in his hard wisdom, perceived the
simplicity of the old man who sat unconscious before him. As far as he
could comprehend a spirit so different from his own, he read his nature
in the Colonel's face, and took up his part accordingly with cleverness
and dexterity. He advanced quickly to his uncle and held out his hand,
Susan watching him with an unusual anxiety which she could not explain
to herself.
"Uncle!--I need not ask who it is--uncle, welcome!" cried Horace, with a
heartiness unknown to him heretofore, and perhaps more reality in the
expression than he himself could have thought possible.
The Colonel rose with a little stumble of haste, putting his hand to his
ear. For the moment he was perplexed, and thought it a stranger; but
catching the sound of uncle, hailed his nephew with all the affectionate
sincerity of his unsuspicious heart. He shook both his hands as Horace's
hands had never been touched before; he looked in his face, too, as in
Susan's, to trace the lineaments of their mother, and called him "my
dear boy;" and shook his hands again with an effusion of satisfaction
and kindness. For Horace, so far as features went, _was_ somewhat like
his mother, and, with his smile and his smoothed-out brow, looked a very
different person from the Horace of every-day use and wont. "But will he
persevere?" said Susan to herself, with an ache of delight in her heart;
and "How to keep it up?" said Horace within his own saturnine spirit.
The uncle knew nothing of these secret questions--did not suspect for a
moment that the young man who met him so joyfully had changed his
manners for the occasion, and congratulated himself in his simple heart
that both the children had kept their hearts and feelings warm in their
solitude. The old man grew quite radiant and talkative. He who had
intended to leave Marchmain directly, sat still, opening out his honest
heart to the young people like a long absent father. He told them first
and principally about his boys, their cousins, whom they must
know--about the house he had got, which was exactly what he wanted, and
where he only wished he could have Susan to be "mistress and mair!" as
he broke out joyfully in his Scotch--about India, where almost all his
life had been spent, and which, with Edinburgh, and a peep of London,
made up the world to the veteran. And the light had actually begun to
wane in the short afternoon, when it suddenly occurred to Uncle Edward
that he was forgetting himself, and that he must face the blast again to
find his inn. A momentary austerity came into his face as he recollected
this, and, rising hastily, begged of Horace to show him or to tell him
the way to the nearest village. The nearest village worthy the name was
five miles off; there was a miserable little hamlet nearer, with a
miserable little public house, but that Uncle Edward shrugged his
shoulders at.
"Can Susan walk five miles in a good day?" said the Colonel, smiling.
"Then come along, my boy--we'll go there."