Mrs. Oliphant

“ Eh, Susan?—what, not dressed yet, you fairy?—what is it now?”
“Oh, uncle!—I only wanted to ask, if you won’t be angry,” cried Susan, out of breath, “whether I should be too grand if I wore my shawl?”
The old man’s face brightened, and expanded all over with the simplest pleasure.
“Too grand!—you don’t drive with me every day, do you?” he said with a laugh, as he patted her cheek. “No—I should be quite mortified if I did not see you in your shawl; but make haste—think of the mare, and in a winter’s day remember there is no daylight to lose.” ”

“ It is hard to die in the middle of life, my dear child—yes, harder than in youth, for one’s children seem to have so much need of one. I have no doubt, before all was over, the Lord showed her something of his purpose in it, and comforted her soul; but I don’t wonder she seemed heart-broken. We will not speak any more of this, Susan. Horace is silent, you see, and is not interested, like you. He is thinking of his own concerns, as is natural to a young man—and all that is far and long past.”
“On the contrary, I am very much interested, uncle,” said Horace. ”

“ Perhaps this last rudeness might have roused the warlike blood of the old soldier, had not his eye at the moment lighted upon that portrait in the shadow of the curtain. That touch of old love and sorrow moved him in the midst of his resentment almost to tears. He had to pause before he could speak as calmly as he wished to speak. “I have never thought it my duty,” said Colonel Sutherland, “to interfere in any man’s house: I will not begin in yours—nor would I remain in it even for a night, but for recollections which neither you nor I can efface by any measure of hard words. ”

“ Love Susan found none in either of her two nearest relatives. She loved them by nature and custom; sometimes a terrible impatience of their discord seized her, and a momentary impulse of passion, to do something or say something which should stir this stagnant, stormy calm, or perhaps change the manner of their existence, had possessed her once or twice in her life; but the tender, anxious, intense love which cruelty cannot kill when it has once developed itself, never can develop itself without the stimulus and creating power of dear love from some one to begin with. ”

“ You would wish me to bring her ‘out,’ and give parties for her—perhaps you would like her to have a season in London?” said Scarsdale, with his trembling lip, and the forced smile of his passion—“is there anything else I can do for you?—for, as it happens, I choose to take Susan into my own hands.”
“I say nothing of Susan,” said the Colonel, gravely; “if you choose to debar the poor child from all the pleasures of her youth, it is not for me to interfere. She is in God’s hands, who will guide her better than either you or I. I come to you from your son. ”

“ The sudden impression produced upon him by the sight of this house made his cheek pale, and added a nervous trembling to the shiver of the cold; he got down, stumbling at the door, which the driver watched with undisguised curiosity, as if something unnatural and portentous was about to make its appearance—and, in his emotion, let the money fall out of the purse which he took out to pay his conductor. While he stooped to pick it up, the door opened hastily, and Peggy rushed forth and seized the carpet-bag. ”

“ You are not confined by locks and bars,” said Colonel Sutherland, disapprovingly; “why have you no inclinations? That dear child yonder, who has nobody in the world to speak to, has kept her heart as fresh as a May flower.”
“Susan?” said Horace, growing red; “you don’t compare me with Susan?—Susan’s a girl—she’s content—she’s very well off, so far as I can see—she’s in her natural vocation. Would you have me put on petticoats and sit down to patchwork?—As well do that as compare a man with a girl!” ”

“ But it did not occur to Horace that his uncle’s plain simplicity and truthfulness was, in fact, the only thing in the world which could not be dominated over by the most splendid superiority of intellect. He supposed it was only his own ignorance, and inexperience, and want of address—deficiencies mortifying enough to acknowledge certainly, but not so mortifying as the entire incapacity either to comprehend or to influence. He had time enough to think over all these things, as he made his way through the lonely, dreary country roads, and across the moor. ”

“ Anything in the world, in our circumstances, means simply nothing, Susan. Oh! for heaven’s sake, don’t cry!—you’re a good girl, and sew on my buttons—but what, in the name of fortune, could you do? You know as well as I that it is only a fashion of words——”
“I did not mean it so,” cried Susan, quickly—but stopping as suddenly, cast a hurried, painful look at him, and dried her tears with a hasty hand—the look which natural Truth casts upon that cruel, reasonable fool, Wisdom, whom she cannot contest, yet knows in the wrong. ”

“ A lonely house which no one else would live in, a seclusion which no stranger ever broke, young people shut out from the society of their fellows, and gloom and mystery upon the whole house! The Colonel wrapt his face once more in his cloak and subsided into deafness and silence, pondering painfully in his own mind what might be required of himself under such unexpected circumstances, and what he could do for the relief of Horace and Susan, whom in his kind heart he fondly called “the children.” ”

“ Scarsdale, and Horace made a stubborn bow and said, “Thank you.” Neither spoke the other’s name, neither even looked in the other’s face—yet, by that strange magic of antagonism, which is as strong as love, were aware, instinctively, of every movement, almost of every sentiment, which influenced each other’s conduct for the moment. But they had this little duel all to themselves—Susan, dulled by habit, and knowing that it had always been so, observed it not—Peggy, behind her master’s chair, saw everything, and said nothing. ”

“ No, I repeat he has no need for a profession—let him wait! I support him—is it not enough?”
“Too much!” cried Colonel Sutherland; “you must perceive that it would be ten times better for him to support himself, to labour for himself, instead of embittering his life in this forced idleness here. Why should he be a burden on you at all, at his years? Though he does not ultimately require a profession, to have one would be his salvation now. You are a hale and healthy man, in spite of all you do to yourself—you have twenty years to live before you attain the limited age of man. ”

“ But, for heaven’s sake, Robert Scarsdale, why is all this?—why do you meet me after this extraordinary fashion?—why do you shut yourself out from human sympathy?—why refuse yourself the comfort of your own children? As for myself, I am neither an enemy nor a stranger. Old ties and kindness have never died out of my recollection through all the sorrows and labours of my life, which have not been few. ”

“ There might be “talent,” but there was no candour in the countenance of Horace—what the lips might say, was the only index to what the head conceived or the heart felt. Colonel Sutherland turned away from him again with a little sigh. He was interested, his curiosity was awakened, and his paternal anxieties in full exercise; but somehow under all his heart whispered hesitations and inarticulate warnings to him. He had no experience in this unknown development of human nature. His own instincts said as much. But a man does not always give attention to those instinctive intimations. ”

“ Susan ran off again with flying feet, and the Colonel turned once more to his nephew. He could not help recognizing then something of the amazement, contempt, and derision which filled the mind of Horace. Uncle Edward was a little struck by his look—perhaps, even a little offended. He paused unconsciously to defend himself.
“You think that very trivial—eh, Horace?” said the Colonel. “Ah, my boy! one is heroical when one is young—one feels it grand to be superior, and despise the smaller matters of life; but at my age one learns that happiness itself is made up of trivial things.” ”

“ It was no great things of a dinner, being too ambitious by far for the occasion; but it was perhaps the very first meal in his life, at least since he came to years of self-knowledge, which Horace had eaten with freedom and pleasure. He thought of Marchmain, and the scene in the dining-room at that moment, where Peggy, in the ordinary course of events, would be about removing the cloth and setting on the table his father’s solitary glass and jug of claret, and smiled to think of Mr. Scarsdale’s silent rage at seeing his vacant place. ”

“ Susan was first frightened, then amused, at the extraordinary pantomime.
“Don’t shake your head off, however,” she cried, laughing. “But about Uncle Edward—you never will keep to the point, you troublesome Peggy! If he is an old man, what is he? Has he got any children?—where does he live?—do you know anything about him at all?”
“Not a mortal thing,” said Peggy, relieving herself by speaking loud. “Who can hear anything here, I would like to know? Not of my own brother, Miss Susan, let alone your mamma’s. But he’s coming, bless him! ”

“ You are very young, and I am not very old. We are tough, we old Indians; we wear a long time, and we shall meet, my dear child, I don’t doubt, many happy days.”
Susan looked up to him with inquiring eyes—with eyes, indeed, so full of inquiry that he thought she must have spoken, and put his hand to his ear. “No, uncle, I did not say anything,” cried Susan, touched by that gesture almost out of her self-possession. The poor girl turned away her head and rubbed her eyes with her trembling fingers, to send back the tears. When might eyes so tender shine in that forlorn solitude again? ”

“ 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! ”

“ The scene was dismal enough for anything: the exposed path across the moor—the black furze bushes and withered crackling heather—the slender saplings cowering together here and there in a little circle, where attempts had been made to naturalize them—and the great, monotonous, unbroken stretch of desert soil around, inspected from the lower heights by gaunt clumps of fir-trees, savage and melancholy anchorites, debarred from the change and variety, the autumn and the spring of common nature. Colonel Sutherland threw a shivering glance round him, and drew his cloak close about his throat. ”

“ She did not pretend to argue with him: she was not clever, but his philosophy filled her with impatience. She “could not bear it.” She felt inclined to get up and seize hold of him, and try physical measures to shake this arrogant pretence of truth out of him; for Susan, though she could not argue, was not without a temper and opinion of her own.
Silence ensued. Susan made nervous haste with her needlework, and stumbled over it in her little flutter of vexation; but Horace was too much absorbed to notice this girlish show of feeling. ”

“ Only last night the house had been undisturbed in its unchanging life; now everything was commotion, disturbance, new efforts and hopes, a changed aspect of existence: and all from the advent of that guileless old soldier, who, waking in the night with his twinges of rheumatism, his fears that his bed had not been aired, and his deeper perplexity and pain about his sister’s children, mixed these different troubles altogether, with a hazy mist of oppression and distress in his mind as he turned his head towards the wall, and sank into a heavy sleep. ”

“ Colonel Sutherland supposed Horace to be jealous, and was a little pained, but yet acknowledged a certain amount of nature in the feeling. He had no conception of the true state of the case—of the entire contempt his nephew felt for himself, and the angry and derisive wonder with which he perceived the importance given to Susan. It was not jealousy: Horace only could not comprehend how any man in his senses could resign his conversation and society for that of his sister—Susan! a girl! who knew nothing, hoped nothing, desired nothing—a tame, contented woman! ”

“ 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. ”