At the same time, in spite of the deportment which displeased the Colonel, there were some traces of breeding, unconsciously to himself, in the speech and manner of Horace, which gained him acceptance among the people around him. He was not refined nor cultivated, nor accustomed to society; but though his sentiments might be vulgar enough, he himself was not so. His very rudeness was not the rudeness of a Kenlisle townsman; he was ignorant of that extraordinary junction of rural vanity and urban importance, which goes towards the making of the fashionable class of such a place. His father, whom Horace would not have imitated consciously on any account whatever, and who certainly bestowed no pains on his instruction, had notwithstanding known in his day a society and breeding much superior to anything in the little north-country town, and the atmosphere lingered still about Mr. Scarsdale, an imperceptible influence which had affected his son unawares. Then his very position, outcast from society as he had been brought up, gave him a certain superiority over the limited people to whom a local “circle” was the world, and an introduction to some certain house the highest point of ambition. Horace laughed aloud among his new associates at the idea of society in Kenlisle, and smiled to the same import with a silent contempt which was extremely superior and imposing in Mrs. Pouncet’s drawing-room, to which he was speedily admitted, in right of his mysterious “prospects.”
By dint of this contempt for the community in general, which everybody of course understood to bear exception for themselves, and of the singular and mysterious circumstances of his family, which began to be remembered and talked of; by his own arrogant philosophy, which imposed upon the inexperienced youths about him, and the subtle talents to which his employer bore witness, he grew rapidly into an object of interest and curiosity in the little town. No one could tell what sudden eminence he might spring into, upon some sudden discovery; nobody knew anything of him—no one was admitted to his confidence; he was the inscrutable personage of the place, and left the fullest ground for fancy, which, in the form of gossip, occupied itself mightily about the singular young man. All this involuntary homage was incense to Horace; he sneered at it, yet it pleased him. He was elated to find himself a person of importance, though he despised the community which honoured him; and between the honours of the little Kenlisle society, the pleasures deep down below the surface, which gave a black side to the humanity of even that secluded place, and the new sense of freedom, solitude, and self-government in this new life—the whole put together effaced from his mind for the time all that eagerness for his father’s secret which had preyed upon him when his life was idle and unoccupied, and when he sat by that father’s table every day. He had no responsibilities, no “ties,” and no heart to feel the want of affection. He abandoned himself, so far as he could abandon that self which was the only thing he never forgot, to all his new enjoyments. He was still young, absolute, and highflying, though his youth was neither innocent nor lovely; he forgot his deeply-laid projects for the moment, and stood still on his way, contenting himself with an importance, a mysterious superiority, a license of pleasure unknown to him before.
He was not an experienced schemer, bent upon the success of his plans, and deaf to the voices of the charmers. He was young, and, according to his fashion, he stood still and forgot his object in the pastimes of his youth.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THIS state of things went on for a longer time than Horace himself was aware of. He had no correspondence with Marchmain, nor indeed with any one. For though he wrote once to Colonel Sutherland, he had no present motive sufficient to keep up a correspondence with his uncle; and nearly a year had passed over his head before he recollected this unrecorded passage of time. At the end of this period, however, business brought a visitor to Kenlisle, and to Mr. Pouncet’s office, who was destined to have a most serious part in Horace Scarsdale’s future life.
This was Mr. Julius Stenhouse, the principal solicitor of an important county town in Yorkshire—a man who had been bred in Mr. Pouncet’s office, had suddenly, to everybody’s amazement, become his partner, and who, as suddenly, a few years after had left Kenlisle for his present residence. These events had all happened before Horace had any cognizance of the news of the district, and were consequently unknown to him until Mr. Stenhouse appeared. The stranger was a man of about fifty, with what people called an “extremely open manner,” and a frank wide smile, which betrayed two rows of the soundest teeth in the world, and gave a favourable impression to most people who had the honour of making Mr. Stenhouse’s acquaintance. This prepossession, however, as might be ascertained on inquiry, was not apt to last—everybody liked, at first sight, the candid lawyer; but he had few friends. Unlike the usual wont of a country town, nobody appeared anxious to claim the recognition of the new arrival. Far from being overwhelmed with hospitality, Mr. Pouncet had so much difficulty in making up a tolerable number of people to meet him at the one little dinner-party given in his honour, that Horace Scarsdale, for the first time, though he had long assisted at Mrs. Pouncet’s “evenings,” had the distinguished honour of an invitation.
Before this time, however, various circumstances had concurred to attract the attention of Horace towards Mr. Stenhouse. The extreme difference between his manners and his reputation, the mixture of repugnance and respect with which Mr. Pouncet treated him, the great reluctance which he showed to enter upon any private business with his visitor, and the mystery of the former partnership which had existed between them, roused the young man’s curiosity. Altogether, these new circumstances brought Horace to himself; he remembered that he was still only in an inferior position, with no avenue open as yet to fortune or importance. Running over everything in his mind, he perceived that he stood farther than ever from his father’s secret, and that no other means of advancing himself had as yet appeared; and with a certain instinctive and sympathetic attraction, his thoughts turned to Mr. Stenhouse. He bestowed his best attention upon him on every opportunity—he sought all the information he could procure about him, and about the connection subsisting between him and Mr. Pouncet. It appeared they were joint-proprietors of some coal-mines in the neighbourhood. What might a couple of attorneys have to do with coal-pits? Horace scented a mystery afar off, with an instinctive gratification. Did the mystery lie here?—and what was its importance, could it be found out?
Without knowing anything whatever on the subject, except the sole fact that Pouncet and Stenhouse were partners in this valuable piece of property, Horace set out very early one spring morning to inspect the ground, and see if anything could be discovered on the subject. It was, as it happened, the morning of the day on which he was to dine at Mr. Pouncet’s. Horace had been late, very late, the previous night. This early walk was of two uses—it restored his unsusceptible nerves to the iron condition which was natural to them, and it gave him a chance of finding out in his old fashion anything that there might be to find out. Horace neither knew the extent nor the value of the land possessed by Messrs. Pouncet and Stenhouse: he knew they drew very considerable revenues from it, but did not know how they had acquired it, nor from whom. He pushed briskly along the long country road, winding downwards to a lower level than that of Kenlisle, where once more the hawthorn hedges were greening, and the primrose-tufts unfolding at their feet.
The country looked cheerful and fresh in the early morning, with its few clumps of early trees here and there, in the tender glory of their buds, diversifying the deeper green of the fields. The smoke rose from the cottages, and the labouring men came trudging out from their doors, greeting one another as they passed with remarks upon the weather. By-and-by he came in sight of the village, with its irregular line of thatched and red-tiled houses, with the one blue-slated roof rising over them, which marked the place where an enterprising publican had swung his “Red Lion,” in well-justified dependence upon the “pitmen’s drouth.” Beyond, several tall shafts here and there scattered over the country gave note of the presence of the pits and their necessary machinery. Horace slackened his pace, and went sauntering through the village, keeping a wary eye around him. He had not gone very far when he perceived an old man limping out of a miserable little house near the end of the village, with a poor little cripple of a boy limping after him, in the direction of the coal-fields. Their lamps and the implements they carried pointed out clearly enough their occupation; and a certain dissatisfied, discontented look in the old man’s face made him a likely subject for Horace, who quickened his steps immediately to overtake the wayfarers. It required no great exercise of speed. The querulous, complaining jog with which the old man and his shadow went unsteadily across the sunshine, told its own tale—the very miner’s lamp, swinging from his finger by its iron ring, swung disconsolately, and with a grumble and crack, complaining audibly of the labour, which, to say the truth, was sufficiently unsuitable for the two who trudged along together, the crippled childhood and tottering age, to whose weakness belonged a milder fate. The old man’s face was contracted and small with age—the nose and chin drawn together, the cheeks still ruddy from a life of health, puckered up with wrinkles, and the very skull apparently diminished in size from the efforts of time. On he went, with his feeble limbs and stooping shoulders, the “Davy” suspended from his bony old fingers, and a complaint in every footstep, with his shadow all bent and crumpled up, an extraordinary spectrum moving before him along the sunny road. Horace, who gave him the usual rural salutation of “A fine morning,” received only a half-articulate groan in reply. The old pitman was not thinking of the fine morning, the sweet air, or the sunshine; but only of his own troubles and weaknesses, and himself.
“To them as has the strength it’s fine and fine enow,” he mumbled at last; “but an ould man as should be in his commforable bed—eugh-eugh! Needcessity’s sore upon the ould and frail.”