The House on the Moor (Vol. 1-3). Mrs. Oliphant
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conversation and society for that of his sister—Susan! a girl! who knew nothing, hoped nothing, desired nothing—a tame, contented woman! He found it hard to restrain himself under these circumstances, and called his uncle an old fool and an old trifler in his secret heart. Then Susan came downstairs, smiling and happy—her India shawl contrasting, perhaps, rather too strongly with her simple bonnet and dark merino gown, standing before her uncle to be admired, and turning round that he might see his present in all possible aspects. What trifling! what folly! what miserable vanity! But it pleased the two wonderfully, who stood there making a little sun-bright group of their own, the old man stooping over the girl, with his tender, indulgent smile, and the girl looking up to him in her unusual flutter of happy spirits. Perhaps it is true, after all, that common, every-day happiness—that dear solace of common life, which comes, when it does come, without asking—is made up of very trivial things; at all events, it was much more agreeable to look at them than at Horace, who loured behind them like a dark cloud, and turned away his head in disgust, and felt that it was all he could do to keep the sneer of scorn from his lip. In much the same condition he attended them to the door, and saw them drive away. Susan, wrapped up and covered over with shawls and cloaks of every description by her uncle’s careful hands, and with Peggy’s great black veil, embroidered with great flowers, like gigantic beetles, fastened over her bonnet; from the midst of all which unusual coverings the pretty face, smiling and blushing, radiant with pleasure and gratitude, looked out in its sweet colour and expression, with a simplicity of happiness quite beyond Horace’s frown to stifle or prevent. Somehow his sister’s face disgusted him that day: he stood looking after them, suffering his sneer to take form and remain, long after they were out of sight. He rose over them in his own mind with a contemptuous superiority, yet felt himself humbled and envious at sight of the happiness with which he had no sympathy, and which he did not understand. He did not wish to share it—it was something beneath his level. Yet the very power of being exhilarated by such trifles, and finding pleasure so independent of reasonable grounds, filled the young man with a certain envy, and humiliated his pride. Susan’s happiness did not give him a single throb of pleasure, yet it brightened his uncle’s face into quite a kindred light: it was altogether incomprehensible to Horace. He took refuge in silent contempt and sneers of unacknowledged mortification, disdaining the pleasure, yet galled in himself not to comprehend how it was.
CHAPTER XIV.
Meanwhile Colonel Sutherland and his niece drove along the bare and exposed moorland road with very different sentiments. Susan could not feel any cold, could not allow herself to suppose that any landscape more delightful or weather more entirely satisfactory was to be found anywhere in the world. She pitied the poor people shut up in a close carriage, whom they passed at a little distance from Marchmain. She appealed to her uncle if a gig was not of all other kinds of conveyance the most delightful. She listened to his stories of travel in India, with all its elephants and camels, and of the still more miraculous railway at home, with equal admiration and wonder, as things equally unlikely to come under her own observation, and enjoyed her present extraordinary felicity all the more from thinking how unlikely it was to occur again.
Everything concurred to put Susan in the highest spirits—her freedom, her kind protector, the novelty of her position, the wondering looks cast at her from the cottages they passed, the involuntary respect excited by her companion, the air, the sunshine—even the fine shawl, though it was entirely covered by her other wrappings and nobody could see it—all contributed towards the full and joyous satisfaction of her young mind. She put Peggy’s great old-fashioned veil, with its big beetles, up from her face—she was not afraid of the wind, or of taking cold, or of anything else in the world; and as the horizon gradually widened, and the road extended out of the immediate vicinity of her home, Susan’s delight increased. She declared the hills went faster than they did, and kept continually receding, and every new opening of the landscape increased her pleasure. The Colonel listened to all her admiring exclamations with a smiling face; he told her of his own neighbourhood, a fairer and richer country. He spoke of the visit she must make him shortly, and of all the places he should take her to. The wind blew cold in their faces, with by no means a balmy or genial breath; but then their hearts were so fortified with warm affections and honest happiness, that the cold did not hurt them. Little by little they fell into more particular conversation. Colonel Sutherland was interested and concerned about Horace, anxious to know how to help him; but he was not and could not be confidential with his nephew, whereas his heart flew open to Susan as at a touch of magic. He could not help speaking of everything which moved when he had gained her ear, and had her to himself alone. He had told her all about young Roger Musgrave before he was aware, and about Kennedy’s story, and his own vexation and annoyance to find that the young stranger had not dealt quite truly by him.
“But, uncle!—oh, Peggy knows all about him,” said Susan; “Peggy did not know he had any friends till just the other day. Perhaps he did not know himself—perhaps—I think, Uncle Edward, I would not believe he was wrong till he told you of it himself.”
“But if he is in the wrong, Susan, will he tell me of it himself?”
“Some people would not,” said Susan, gravely, “I know that; but yes, uncle, oh, yes, I am not afraid.”
“Perhaps you know him better than I do, my love,” said Uncle Edward, observing with a little curiosity the expression of Susan’s face.
“Yes, I think I saw him once,” said Susan. Then she added, with a little laugh—“I was very much frightened—I am afraid it was very wrong of him—he was actually fighting, uncle.”
“Fighting?—it was certainly very wrong,” said the Colonel; “but you laugh, you wicked little fairy—what was it about?”
“It was not so much fighting either,” said Susan—“it was punishing. It was gipsies, uncle—what the people here call muggers, you know. One of them was driving his little cart along the road with a poor wretched donkey, lashing it like a savage, and his poor wife came trudging after him, with her baby tied in a shawl on her back—and twice over he gave her a cut with his whip, to make her go faster. I could have beaten him myself—the great beast!” cried Susan. “Roger Musgrave was coming down the road; and, just as he met the muggers, that fellow pushed his wife out of the way so rudely, that she fell down, poor creature, and hurt herself. Mr. Roger had been watching them like me—he came up just then with a spring, and caught the mugger by his collar and his waist like this; and, before he had time to say a word, tossed him over the hedge—right over—where he rolled head-over-heels on the grass. You should have seen his face when he got up! I clapped my hands—I was so pleased. And Mr. Roger took off his hat to me,” said Susan, after a little pause, with a rising colour, “as you did, uncle, to-day.”
“It was very well done, I don’t doubt,” said Colonel Sutherland; “but, my dear child, that was not fighting.”
“Oh, no—not that!—but I liked it better than what came after,” said Susan. “The mugger scrambled through the hedge, and swore at Mr. Roger; and he took off his coat in a moment, and told him not to be a coward, to flog women and beasts, but to come on—and I was very much frightened; then the mugger’s wife, she came forward and swore too, and it was all very dreadful. I did not want to see them fight, and ran into a cottage—I rather think they did not fight at all, for the mugger was frightened too; but, however, that was the only time I ever saw Roger Musgrave; the people in the cottage told me who he was, and I liked him for punishing the man.”
“I daresay the fellow punished his wife and the donkey all the more, when they were out of sight,” said the Colonel; “but I confess I should have done it myself. Very well! I will put down in my books—my little Susan in favour of young Musgrave versus Sergeant Kennedy against. And so you only saw him that one time? Do you know anybody at all, you poor child?—have you ever had a companion in your life?”
“Not a companion,” said Susan; “but”—and she looked up in her uncle’s face—“you