"And so, hinny, you're to be married, and set up in a house of your own;
and, 'stead o' solitude, and a wild moor, and ould Peggy, have all the
county wishing ye joy. Eh, weel! I'm an ould fool, and nowght else: I
think upon the mistress, and I canna forbear. The bride goes forth with
joy and blessing, but the Lord alone He knows what will come to pass
thereupon."
And Peggy, who was standing in the old dining-room--that room so
strangely thrilled through, warmed, and brightened with the new
life--examining one after another the pretty things which already began
to be prepared for Susan's marriage, suddenly sunk down on a chair by
the table, and covered her face, and sobbed aloud.
"But, Peggy, you should have a cheerful word for me," said Susan--"we
have had so much trouble. Things will never happen with me as they did
with mamma. For, Peggy," added the bride, with her honest eyes smiling
frank and sure out of the warm blush that rose over her face, "we will
trust and help each other through every trouble. Trouble never can be
very heavy when there are two of us to bear the load."
"The Lord knows, and He alone," said the faithful servant of the house.
"I'm ould, and my heart trembles; the like of me cannot see, Miss Susan.
I look upon the bride-white, and there's shadows o' shrouds and widow's
mourning a' covered ower and hidden in the bonnie folds. The Lord
preserve ye from all ill and trouble that is beyond the strength of
man!--and grant to me to depart and be at rest, before ever cloud or
shadow comes upon the light o' my ould eyes!"
Susan was not discouraged in her own undiscourageable hope and happiness
even by these melancholy words; but she was grieved for Peggy, who,
broken and nervous with her long solitude, was no longer like herself.
She came round to the old woman's side, and put her young arms, which
had clung there so often, round Peggy's neck.
"Do you know Horace is going to give me a fortune, Peggy?" said Susan.
"Horace is different, don't you think, since he has been ill? I thought
it would have turned his head to be so rich--but he does not seem to
care; he is so much quieter, older than he used to be. I did not suppose
he would have felt so much for poor papa."
Peggy said nothing--but she gave an emphatic shake of her head, and,
diverted into a less pathetic channel of thought, dried her eyes.
Peggy's sentiments were changed. It was the younger generation who were
now in the ascendant, and Peggy's magnanimous instincts, falling to the
weaker side, turned all her sympathy towards the dead.
"But he is changed, though you shake your head," said Susan; "and I am
to have a fortune--me! Everything is Uncle Edward's doing. How I
wondered when he brought me these India muslins, Peggy--do you remember?
I thought you were all crazy when you spoke of me wearing them--and now
look here; and I suppose," said Susan, with womanful satisfaction and
vanity, "we shall see the best people in the county at the Grange."
"And only your right, too," said Peggy, by way of interjection; for
Susan, having fully launched herself, was quite qualified to keep up the
discourse.
"Especially when Amelia Stenhouse marries Sir John. I wonder how she can
marry that odd old man; and so pretty as she is too--don't you think she
is very, _very_ pretty, Peggy?"
"'Handsome is as handsome does,'" said Susan's oracle, with great
solemnity.
"Oh, to be sure; but one likes to be handsome all the same," said Susan.
"I don't say I _like_ Amelia out-and-out. I suppose she's too grand and
too accomplished, and too clever, and that sort of thing, for me; but
she's very nice to look at, Peggy; and when she marries Sir John----"
"When who marries Sir John?" asked Horace, abruptly. He had just come
rather feebly into the room--convalescent, but not strong, his mind
working out all the vigour which should have gone to the strengthening
of his body. That he was changed was certain, but it was doubtful
whether the change was so entirely for the better as his sister
charitably supposed. He did not look much more amiable at the present
moment; he came in with the sullen shade of old upon his face. He had
heard part of Susan's last words; but she did not know what a furious
passion awoke in his heart when he asked, "Who marries Sir John?"
"Oh, it is Amelia, Horace--Amelia, Roger's half sister; did not you know
about it?" said Susan, innocently--"you, too, who have known them longer
than I; it was settled last week."
"Oh, was it?" said Horace, bitterly. He went out of the room the next
moment, flinging down, half unawares, half consciously, a heap of his
sister's wedding preparations. It was natural that the sight of such
things at such a time should gall the young man; the next moment they
heard him up in his own room, making a great commotion there. Susan was
a little startled and frightened in spite of herself. Horace took
strange fancies now and then. He was rich now, and could do as he
pleased. Sometimes Susan, all unaware of the canker there, imagined that
his mind was a little affected. She could not imagine what freak
possessed him now.
A little while after Horace came downstairs, dressed more carefully than
she had yet seen him. He told her he was going away "to town"--which
Susan supposed to mean to Kenlisle--and should walk to the nearest
roadside public-house, where they kept a gig. He would send for his
things, but might not see her for some time again, and so he held out a
hot, trembling hand, and bade her "Good-bye--good-bye!" Susan tried some
remonstrances, but he hurried out in the midst of them, and strode away
across the moor in the bright August sunshine. His sister stood at the
window watching him, as she had stood many a day before, till his figure
disappeared among the distant saplings and dark gorse bushes. It was
the last time that Horace Scarsdale trod the familiar heather of Lanwoth
Moor.
That evening Roger's mother came with him when he came on his daily
visit to his affianced bride. They knew she was alone, and guessed she
must be anxious. Horace had been at the Grange, where he saw only
Amelia, and went away again in half-an-hour, leaving even that
stout-hearted beauty, who was not too sensitive, fainting and
overpowered by the violence of his farewell. That was the last any of
the party saw of Horace for many a year. The marriages took place in due
time, and all went well with the new households; but the unhappy heir of
the Scarsdales went out and was lost in the world, and its great waves
concealed him and his pleasures and wretchedness. He had put himself out
of the reach of common blessings and sorrows, the dews and sunshine, of
God's every-day world. He had his fortune, his failure, his dead burden
of guilt, to begin his life withal; and so carried out among men, and
the bustle and commotion of the world, a second bitter chapter of that
hereditary curse, which had made a recluse and wretched misanthrope of
his father, and a dismal prison and place of bondage of the solitary
house upon the moor.
THE END.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
coucluded=> concluded {pg 57}
ceasless=> ceaseless {pg 78}
that be should take=> that he should take {pg 190}
onesself=> oneself {pg 192}
End of Project Gutenberg's The House on the Moor, v. 3/3, by Mrs. Oliphant