CHAPTER IX.
ESAU.
"To be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering."
"Now conscience wakes despair
That slumberd; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be."
It was the middle of February before Harry could leave Sandal-Side. He had remained there, however, only out of that deference to public opinion which no one likes to offend; and it had been a most melancholy and anxious delay. He was not allowed to enter the squire's room, and indeed he shrank from the ordeal. His mother and Charlotte treated him with a reserve he felt to be almost dislike. He had been so accustomed to consider mother-love sufficient to cover all faults, that he forgot there was a stronger tie; forgot that to the tender wife the husband of her youth—her lover, friend, companion—is far nearer and dearer than the tie that binds her to sons and daughters.
Also, he did not care to give any consideration to the fact, that both his mother and Charlotte resented the kind of daughter and sister he had forced upon them. So there was little sympathy with him at Seat-Sandal, and he fancied that all the gentlemen of the neighborhood treated him with a perceptible coolness of manner. Perhaps they did. There are social intuitions, mysterious in their origin, and yet hitting singularly near the truth. Before circumstances permitted him to leave Sandal-Side, he had begun to hate the Seat and the neighborhood, and every thing pertaining to it, with all his heart.
The only place of refuge he had found had been Up-Hill. The day after the catastrophe he fought his way there, and with passionate tears and complaints told Ducie the terrible story. Ducie had some memories of her own wilful marriage, which made her tolerant with Harry. She had also been accused of causing her mother's death; and though she knew herself to be innocent, she had suffered by the accusation. She understood Harry's trouble as few others could have done; and though a good deal of his evident misery was on account of his separation from Beatrice, Ducie did not suspect this, and really believed the young man to be breaking his heart over the results of his rash communication.
He was agreeably surprised, also, to find that Stephen treated him with a consideration he had never done when he was a dashing officer, with all his own small world at his feet. For when any man was in trouble, Steve Latrigg was sure to take that man's part. He did not ask too particularly into the trouble. He had a way of saying to Ducie, "There will be faults on both sides. If two stones knock against each other until they strike fire, you may be sure both of them have been hard, mother. Any way, Harry is in trouble, and there is none but us to stand up for him."
But in spite of Steve's constant friendship, and Ducie's never-failing sympathy, Harry had a bad six weeks. There were days during them when he stood in the shadow of death, with almost the horror of a parricide in his heart. Long, lonely days, empty of every thing but anxiety and weariness. Long, stormy days, when he had not even the relief of a walk to Up-Hill. Days in which strangers slighted him. Days in which his mother and Charlotte could not even bear to see him. Days in which he fancied the servants disliked and neglected him. He was almost happy one afternoon when Stephen met him on the hillside, and said, "The squire is much better. The doctors think he is in no immediate danger. You might go to your wife, Harry, I should say."