“Would it be better to-morrow?” said Colonel Sutherland. “No, Susan, especially after what you told me. I must not stay here longer than I can help, and I must see your father before I go; it is about Horace, my love. I have promised to speak of his wishes. I did not know,” cried Colonel Sutherland, with a little mortification, “that I should hurt his cause by pleading it; but I ought to see him at anyrate. No, I cannot submit to this without any appeal. I have lived in his house, and eaten his bread, and had never a moment’s dispute with him. It is impossible; there must be some mistake.”
And Colonel Sutherland went to the window, and stood looking out, with his eyebrows puckered, and his hands behind him; while Susan, drying her eyes again, went to stir the neglected fire. Everything was cold, meagre, uncomfortable, and the poor girl’s restless curiosity, eager to prove her devotion to himself, yet glancing now and then with terror at the door, as if she feared her father’s appearance, and a scene of strife, was not lost upon the Colonel. He stood for some time in silence, considering the whole matter, vexed, and mortified, and indignant, yet feeling more of honest pain for the position of the household, and for unfortunate recluse himself, than offence in his own person. Then, without saying anything to Susan, the old soldier marched silently towards the study-door. It was necessary now, to say what had to be said, at once.
CHAPTER XX.
MR. SCARSDALE was alone in the study, where he passed his recluse life. The fire burned low in the grate, the red curtains hung half over the window, the atmosphere was close and stifling. He sat in his usual seat, with the invariable book before him. But though it was hardly possible for him to be more pale, there was something in the colour of his face, in the rigidity of his attitude, which betrayed a smothered passion and excitement exceeding his wont. When Colonel Sutherland knocked at the door, he got up with a kind of convulsive haste, stepped towards it at one hasty stride, and opened it. He thought it might be Susan, returned to make her submission. When he saw his brother-in-law, Mr. Scarsdale gazed at him with undisguised amazement and a sullen rage. He stood facing the Colonel, holding the door, but without inviting or even permitting him to enter. “I have something important to say to you,” said the old soldier—“permit me to come in. I shall not detain you.” Then the recluse stepped back suddenly, opening the door wide, but without uttering a word. Colonel Sutherland went in, and the door was closed upon him; they stood opposite each other, looking in each other’s faces. The Colonel, with a grieved surprise and appeal in his look, the other with his head bent, and nothing but sullen, smothered passion in his face. Two men more unlike never stood together in this world. For the first moment not a word passed between them, but their looks, full of human motion and painful life, made the strangest contrast in the silence, with the motionless, dreary quiet of this stifling room.
After this pause, natural wonder and impatience seized the Colonel; he could not resist the impulse of trying to right himself—to right his brother-in-law—to recover if possible a natural position. “Robert!” he exclaimed, suddenly, with unpremeditated warmth and emotion, “why is this?—what have I done to you?—is there any reason why you cannot receive me as of old?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a formal inclination of his head. “My life and all my habits differ very widely from yours. I have long made a rule against admitting strangers into my house. My circumstances are peculiar, as you are aware—perhaps my dispositions are peculiar too.”
“But, for heaven’s sake!” cried the Colonel, who found this repulse not so decisive as he had feared—“why shut out me?”
Once more the solitary man bowed, with a sarcastic respect. “Again, I beg your pardon; but it does not follow,” said Mr. Scarsdale, with a smile, which would have been insulting, but that it trembled with unreasonable passion, “that a man’s own favourable opinion of himself is shared by all the world.”
The Colonel looked at him with a hasty, astonished glance, a look of compassion and surprise, which wounded the pride of his companion to the quick.
“Well, then,” cried the master of Marchmain, “I decline to receive you—your society is disagreeable to me. Is not that enough?”