“And why?” said Horace, with a sceptical smile.
“My dear boy, sometime you will see all these circumstances more clearly,” said the Colonel, a little agitated; “take it for granted in the meantime, and remember that he is your father—and really this has little to do with the question after all. You must like something: he has not been kind, I grant; but even where the most perfect love exists between parents and children, a father is never all in all, either for good or evil, to his son.”
“No, uncle, but constant hate and enmity may kill the heart out of a man,” said Horace. “I am not a fool; I could learn anything if I set myself to it: do you decide for me.”
“I will then, my dear boy; and you will come to me to-morrow?” said the Colonel, faltering a little. “Come early, and I will walk back to Marchmain with you. Here is Susan ready. Are all the parcels safe? And you have spent a pleasant day, you fairy? Take care, Horace, that she does not catch cold.”
“Pleasant day? Oh, uncle, the very happiest day of all my life!” said Susan.
The old man led her out well pleased, involuntarily solacing himself, after her troublesome brother, with the sight of her fresh face. And Susan’s happiest day was quite over when she caught the last glimpse of his gray, uncovered head bowing to her from the inn-door. Horace had no kind talk or affectionate cares for his sister. The wind blew cold, and the evening began to gather damp over the fells. The two young people fell into perfect silence as they pursued the monotonous road, and there was no great comfort to be had in the idea of the welcome which waited them at home.
CHAPTER XVI.
WHEN Horace and Susan had left Tillington, the Colonel wrapt his great cloak round him, and went out to take a pondering, meditative walk, and think over all these concerns. This last conversation he felt had rather complicated his position, and changed a little the posture of affairs. It was now he who had to take the initiative—he who seemed to be sending Horace away, and deciding that it was his duty to follow a path of his own, and make his own career. This idea was the last which had occurred to him, when he met his nephew’s passionate complaints with his own good, sober, kind advice. Horace had, however, completely turned the tables upon him. He was no longer engaged to give merely a friendly assistance to the young man’s exertions, to help him by representing the case to his father, or by using such influence as he possessed to further his nephew’s wishes. Horace had skilfully managed to make it appear, even to Colonel Sutherland himself, that it was he who had suggested the necessity for leaving home—that it was he who must decide the manner of doing so, and that the whole responsibility of the matter would lie upon his shoulders. This was far from pleasant to the Colonel; he thought over the whole matter with a very troubled brow: why should he draw upon himself all the trouble and blame of such a proceeding?—undertake the painful task of an interview with Mr. Scarsdale—most likely fail to satisfy Horace himself, and possibly meet with severer reproach hereafter, when the young man came to know that secret which he made vain inquiries after now? The Colonel did not relish his position as he thought over it. It was not of his making. He had but replied, as his kindly nature could not help doing, by offers of assistance to the outcry of Horace’s impatience; and behold here was the result.
The very fact that something did exist which he knew, and which Horace did not know, embarrassed and straitened him further. But, at the same time, he had promised. Nothing but the agitation into which the young man had thrown him, by his sudden suggestion that the Colonel meant to accuse his father with breaking his mother’s heart, could have led Colonel Sutherland to make so rash an engagement. He had no reason to believe that this was the cause of Mrs. Scarsdale’s death. He knew she had been restrained, overruled, and chidden—but he knew also that to the end she loved, and made no complaint beside. For his own part, the circumstances of his sister’s death, which followed very quietly upon a singular misfortune to her husband, had filled Edward Sutherland with the deepest compassion and sympathy for his brother-in-law; and accordingly he was more shocked than he could explain by Horace’s sudden supposition, that it was Mr. Scarsdale’s unkindness which had killed his wife; and in the eager anxiety with which he entreated the youth to believe that this was not the case, he consented unawares to make himself the arbitrator of Horace’s fate—so far, at least, as that could be determined by its beginning. He had promised—that was indisputable; yet what right had he to take the first step in such a matter, or to urge upon a young man, in the very peculiar circumstances of Horace, the same personal labour which was necessary to his own sons? When the Colonel had come so far in his thoughts he paused with a sudden effort, and resolutely turned to the other side of the question.
“Ought I to stand by for fear of responsibility, or for the sake of my own pride, or for the risk of ingratitude, and see my sister’s son sink into ignorance and debasement, and end in being the autocrat of an ale-house?” he said to himself, and did all that was possible to change the current of his own thoughts. But it was not much easier to choose a profession for Horace, or to fix on what he ought to be. Colonel Sutherland had come to perceive that he did not understand his nephew, and that not a single feature of resemblance existed between them. He marched on upon the road with his steady soldier’s step, not perceiving how far he was going, nor how the night darkened—marching gradually into a more and more bewildering mist of thought. The village lay sheltered in a shallow valley, with low slopes ascending on every side towards a higher level of country, slopes much too gentle and gradual to have much affinity with the distant fells. Colonel Sutherland had nearly reached the top of one of these banks, when the toil of the ascent, which just there was steep, awakened him to a consciousness of where he was. He might have wandered for miles over the open country, but for the failure of wind and sensation of fatigue which seized him upon that brae. When he came to himself, wheeling about suddenly, he saw the lights of the village twinkling into the twilight a long way beneath him, and perceived, for the first time, how far he had come.