While the simple household at Milnehill felicitated itself on the
reality of the search about to be made, Mr. Pouncet's confidential clerk
left Kenlisle. Horace went slowly through the country, though he was not
looking for any one. He did his journey on foot, and did it by very slow
and gradual degrees--perhaps to favour slightly his worthy employer's
fiction of a search, but in reality playing with, resisting by fits, yet
always entertaining, the horrible attraction which drew him to
Marchmain. He had nothing to do there which could give him a pretence of
a lawful visit. The last time he had gone like a thief into his father's
house, anxious to search into the secrets there; this time how was he
going?--in pretended friendship, or in open war? He could not tell. He
only knew that a fascination too strong for him drew him on and on,
though he fluttered in many a circle, prolonging his way, like a charmed
bird, towards that house which contained the father of his life and the
obstacle to his happiness. As he walked sullenly through these
well-remembered paths, hovering round the borders of that moor which in
May, sunshine, and daylight, a man with such black thoughts might well
have feared to enter, he seemed to see perpetually before him, as in a
picture, that pale spare figure in the dressing-gown--that formal
attenuated man who sat by the polished dining-table, with his glass of
purple claret, his two tall candles, and his reading-desk. Was that
dismal existence life? Was there any pleasure in it to the forlorn
endurer of all these nights and days? Would there be any cruelty in
hastening his withdrawal from this bitter and impoverished existence?
The questions formed dimly, and died away without articulate answer in
the mind of his son. He wanted to persuade himself, as he gradually
neared the climax of his temptation and of his fate, that he came with
no object, but simply because curiosity drew him to the old house, to
see how things were going on there.
Horace came upon Marchmain from behind, on an afternoon of May. The moor
was no wilderness at that season. The whins were burning under the
sunshine, the heather blooming purple and fragrant, thrusting its
flowery spires against the foot that disturbed their growth; and the
young seedlings, sown here and there in little clumps, waved their
delicate young leaves to the soft air, and glittered in the light with a
genial spring triumph over the intractable soil. Even the dark moorburns
and rivulets of water in the deep cuttings caught a grace from the sky,
and brightened over their brown surface with a gleam of the blue heavens
and white clouds above. Everything was sweet, and bright, and hopeful in
that dull waste of unproductive soil, which at other times could look so
dreary. The clump of firs on the hill-top looked down wistfully, no
longer weird spies, but gentle gazers upon the changed scene. But no
change had passed upon Marchmain. The house, if any thing, was a little
more lonely than of old, betraying unconsciously that some of the little
life it had, had ebbed out of it. Susan's flowerpots stood naked in the
window, with withered stalks of plants, long since dead, standing up
dead and dismal from the dry mould in which they had once grown; left
here by Peggy as a grim reminder to her master of the daughter--the only
chance of love and kindness which he had remaining in the world--whom he
had thrust remorselessly away; and with that calm sky declining towards
evening, the sun slanting westward, the home-going hour lengthening its
shadows over the long stretches of moorland, where by-and-bye a few
labouring men should cross the sunlight to cottages clustered somewhere
on the road, hid in the lower nooks of the hills, few objects more
desolate and solitary than the house of Marchmain could have been
imagined. Human step or human shadow was not near. The undisturbed
heather almost brushed against the step of the door. In most of the
windows the blinds were down, as though the heart within was too sick to
bear the light. This was how Horace found the house which had nursed his
childhood and imprisoned his youth.
When the young man essayed to enter at the kitchen door, he found even
that entrance, once hospitably ajar, now closed and bolted. He had
scarcely courage to seek admittance boldly. He hovered about, making a
faint noise among the rustling herbage and broken stones, enough in that
solitude to bring Peggy peering to the kitchen window. Peggy had changed
for the worse, like the house. She looked, at last, as if patience and
strength were being exhausted out of her: her eyes were peevish and
dilated, with dark rings round them; and she looked out with a keen,
suspicious glance, as if even confidence in her own powers--that last
stronghold--was failing her. When she saw Horace, a softening sentiment
came over Peggy's face: she came softly to open the door to him, and
brought him into the kitchen, without a word either of welcome or
comment. Then she wheeled her own cushioned chair out of the immediate
range of the fire, and half led, half forced him into it. "You'll be
tired," said Peggy, under her breath, with a tear twinkling bright in
the corner of her eye. The surprise overcame her for the moment, and
made her forget the sad difference between Susan's brother and Susan
herself.
And Horace, too, for that instant was not like the Horace of old times.
He was subdued by his own thoughts. An involuntary tremor seized him, to
think of the dark purpose in his mind, and of why he had obtruded
himself into this melancholy-familiar house. He could have supposed that
his dreadful secret impulse--the horrible secret instruments he carried
about with him--were betrayed and visible to any eye that looked keenly
at him. But Peggy did not look keenly; she faltered with a real emotion
at the sight of him, and he trembled before her salutation with an
intense anguish and remorse, of which he could not have supposed
himself capable. Warnings sharp and terrible, of the remorse not to be
removed, which should cling for ever to the traces of the deed done; but
Horace shut his eyes to that consideration. In another moment he was
fully himself--recovered from his rare and strange qualm of
feebleness--pleased to find, in Peggy's softened mood, no suspicion of
him or his intentions, and resolved to make the most of that unusual
grace.
"I came to see how you were. How is _he_, Peggy?" said Horace, pointing
to the door which opened into the hall.
"Speak low!--oh! speak low, for your life!" cried Peggy, in a whisper.
"If he knowed I let you into this house he would murder me!"
"I should like to see him try," said Horace, grimly, with a smile over
the fantastic idea; _that_, indeed, would be a better mode of removing
this hindrance than any expedient he could devise. "He hates me so, does
he?" he added, with a white smile of enmity. He was glad to hear of
it--it spurred him to a passionate emulation in that unnatural art.
"'Tis himsel' he hates and mortifies--the Lord forgive him!" cried
Peggy. "Eyeh, Master Horry, if you knowed the wreck and the ruin that
the devil, and pride, and ill-will have made of that man!"
"I daresay he has not much pleasure in his life?" said Horace, half
interrogatively.
"Pleasure! I'm the auldest friend he has in this world, though I'm but a
servant," said Peggy, her eyes dilating still more with tears, which did
not flow, but only reddened and expanded the limits which they filled;
"but there's scarce an hour in the day, nor a day in the year, but I
would see him die sooner than live as he's living now."
"You speak," said Horace, playing with his own self-terror, and turning
a pale, ominous look upon her, before which she shrank instinctively,
"as if you thought it would be a charity to rid him of his life."
"Eh, Mr. Horry?--the Lord forgive ye! Would you put such an accursed
thought on me?" cried Peggy, with an ebullition of violence as tearful
and faltering as her kindness. "God help us, master and servant, two
lone people, without comfort in this world! But it would be a new sight,
and a strange sight, to see comfort come from _you_."
"Why, Peggy, you said as much," said Horace, with momentary weakness.
"Then, I tell you, sir, murder's no charity," said Peggy, sharply. "I've
little pleasure in my life by what I had in my young days, but I would
have died more cheerful then nor now; and the master takes grit care,
moor care nor I ever knew him take before, of his health and strength,
as behoves a man at his time of life. He's aye at his medicine-chest off
and on; and has the doors bolted and pistols in his room, for fear of
robbers, though I'm aye saying there's no robbers like to come here.
He's afflicted his flesh in the times that are past, but he's a careful
liver now."
"That he may keep me a little longer out of my inheritance," said
Horace, between his teeth.
Peggy stopped short in the middle of the kitchen, where she had been
hastily laying out a rapidly prepared meal for her master's son.
"Keepin' ye out of what?" she said solemnly, and with a scared look in
her eyes.
"Of my inheritance--it's no use humbugging me any longer," said
Horace--"I know it all."
Peggy set down the dish she had in her hands, dropped upon the stool
before the fire, and throwing her apron over her head, rocked herself
for a few moments back and forward, in silence.
"Amen! it ought to have comed sooner; it must have comed some time,"
said Peggy at last to herself; "but the Lord forgive me, didn't I say
and prophesy that when wance the bairns knowed it the end would come?
Oh, Mr. Horry! for the love of God and your mother, if you have any love
in you, go your ways, and tarry not a moment in this doomed house."
"You are not very charitable, Peggy," said Horace, who, by some
diabolical impulse, began to recover his spirits at this stage of the
interview; "especially as I presume your preparations were for me--and
I'm rather hungry. You can't surely refuse me a dinner, if it _is_ in
the kitchen, in my father's house?"
Peggy rose without a word, and placed bread and ale on the table beside
the little dish of meat which she had abstracted from her master's
dinner for his son's benefit.
"Eat, if ye can eat in this house and with sitch thoughts," said Peggy;
"but I crave of ye to give God thanks ere ye break the bread."
As Peggy stood over him, severe and disapproving, the remembrance of
many such scenes in his childhood came to the memory of Horace; scenes
in which Susan appeared, sweetly saying her child's grace, and he
himself rebelling and refusing, with Peggy standing by exactly as she
did now--her judicial eye fixed sternly on him. He was a man now, and
had bigger rebellions in hand. With a little sneer and levity in that
momentary diabolical exhilaration of spirits, he said the child's grace
which Peggy herself had taught him nearly twenty years ago. When he had
repeated the amen, his father's faithful servant turned away from him to
go about her needful business, for it was drawing near to Mr.
Scarsdale's dinner hour. But Horace put down his knife and fork upon his
plate with a shudder of self-horror--the food choked him--he could not
swallow the bread on which his lips, without any help from his heart,
had dared at that terrible moment to ask God's blessing. The time of
opportunity, which he tried to persuade himself he did not premeditate,
but which was forcing itself upon him, approached moment by moment. He
got up from the table with a nervous, imperceptible trembling, and went
to stand by the fire where Peggy was busy, and then to wander through
the apartment, always restlessly returning to that bright spot. An
impulse of flight seized him at one moment--at another, a wild thought
of thrusting himself into his father's very presence, by way of escaping
the devil within him, and rather getting into hot words and a violent
contest than this miserable guilt. But while he was at the height of his
horrible excitement, Peggy, calmly doing her usual business, went out of
the kitchen to spread the table in her master's lonely dining-room.
Horace, wild as in a fever, drew with trembling hands out of his pocket
one of his mysterious packets. He burst the paper open clumsily,
awkwardly, with fingers which seemed made of lead. A great shower of
white powder fell upon the floor at his feet, but none reached the dish
to which he supposed he had directed it. Trying to remedy this failure,
he was startled by a sound, as of Peggy's return. With a great start,
which spilt still more of that fatal dust, he thrust it back into his
breast, and in a horror of discovery snatched at something near him, he
could not see what it was, and swept into the fire that evidence of his
purpose. Having done, or thinking that he had done this, he threw the
cloth out of his hands into the fire, and rushed out of the room and the
house. As he escaped he saw somehow, by virtue of his passion and fever
of overpowering excitement, Peggy coming quietly with a napkin over her
arm, and her great white apron shining through the obscurity of the
narrow passage, into the kitchen. That home figure, in its everyday
occupation, struck him bitterly in his own tremor; he had failed, but
he was guilty. No harm to his father had the parricide left behind him,
but he was his father's murderer in his own heart; and all the world and
all its riches could never make of him again the same Horace Scarsdale
who scowled sullen but innocent upon that same Peggy, before the baleful
knowledge for which he thirsted had scorched all nature out of his
heart.