“To be sure—old Musgrave, of the Grange,” cried Horace, with a certain malice and spite, of which he himself was scarcely aware; for Roger Musgrave’s honest simplicity, which he scorned, yet felt galled and disconcerted by, had often humiliated and enraged the son of the recluse, who could take no equality with the young relative of the fox-hunting Squire. He listened more eagerly as this name came in—not with a benevolent interest, certainly; but the mystery grew more and more promising as it touched upon the history of a ruined man.
“About twenty year ago, I would say, as near as moight be, there was a couple o’ young chaps comed about here, for their holiday, as I aye thought to mysel’. The wan o’ them was uncommon outspoken in his manner, wan of them lads that’s friends with every stranger at the first word, with a muckle mouth and teeth—dash em!—that would crunch a man’s bones like a cannibal. T’other he was some kind of a student, aye fiddling about the grass and the rocks, and them kind o’ nonsense pastimes. I heard the haill business with my ain ears, so it’s no mystery to me. I was ploughing i’ the lang park belonging to Tinwood then, with the two o’ them somegate about the ploughtail, having their own cracks, with now and again a word to me—when all of a suddent the student, he stops, and he says out loud, ‘There’s coal here!’ I paid little attention till I saw them baith get earnest and red in the face, and down on their knees aprying into something I had turned up with my plough; and then I might have clean forgot it—for what was I heeding, coal or no coal?—when the t’other man, the lad with the muckle mouth, he came forrard, and says he, ‘Here’s my friend and me, we’ve made a wager about this land, but we’ll ne’er be able to settle it unless awl’s quiet, and you never let on that you’ve heard what he said. He’s awl wrong, and he’ll have to give in, and I’ll be the winner, as you’ll see; but hold you your peace, neighbour, and here’s a gold guinea to you for your pains.’ Lord preserve us, I never airned a goold guinea as easy in my life! I wush there was mair on them coming a poor body’s way. I held my whisht, and the lads gaed their way; but eugh, eugh! eh, man, if I had but knawn! I would ne’er have been tramping this day o’er the very grund I ploughed, to work in that pit, dash her! and me aughty years of age and mair.”
“How, then, did it happen?” cried Horace, eagerly.
“But I’ll hev to be agooin,” said the pitman, lifting himself up with reluctance and difficulty—“the timekeeper yonder, he’s a pertickler man, and has nae consideration for an old body’s infirmities: though I’m wonderful comforted with the speerits, I’ll no deny. Eyeh! eyeh! the old Squire, he was a grand man, he was, as lang’s he had it, and threw his siller about like water, and was aye needing, aye needing, like them sort o’ men. Afore mony days, if ye’ll believe me, there was word of his own agent, that was Maister Pouncet, the ’torney in Kenlisle, buying some land of him, awl to serve the Squire, as the fowks said; but when I heard it was this land, ‘Ho, ho!’ says I to mysel’, ‘there’s more nor clear daylight in this job,’ says I. So I held my whisht, and waited to see; and sure enow, before long came down surveyors and engineers, and I know not all what, and the same lad, with the muckle mouth, that was now made partner to Mr. Pouncet; and that was the start o’ the pit, dash her! that’s cost me twenty years o’ my life and twa bonnie sons; and them’s the masters, blast them! that take their goold out o’t year after year, and wunna spare a penny-piece for the aged and frail. Eyeh, that’s them!—but it’s my belief I’ll see something happen to that lad with the muckle mouth before I die.”
“And what did your old Squire say, eh, when the land was found so rich?” said Horace; “did he try to break the bargain, and take it back again?”
“Him!” cried the decrepid old labourer, now once more halting along in the fresh sunshine, with his shadow creeping before him, and his “Davy” creaking from his bony finger—“him! a man that knawed neither care nor prudence awl his born days; and to go again his own ’torney that had done for him since ever he came to his fortin’,—not him! He said it was confoonded lucky for Pouncet, and laughed it off, as I hev heard say, and thought shame to let see how little siller he got for that land. He never had no time, nor siller nouther, to goo into lawsuits, and his own agent, as I tell you; besides that he was a simple man, was the Squire, and believed in luck more nor in cheating. Eyeh! eyeh! but I blamed aye the chield with the muckle mouth. He was the deevil that put harm into the t’other lawyer’s head; for wan man may be mair wicked nor anither, even amang ’torneys. It wasn’t lang after till he left this country. Eh, lad, yon man’s the deevil for cunning. I wouldna trust him with his own soul if he could cheat that—dash them a’! I mought have keeped on my kailyard, and seen my lads at the tail of the plough, if, instead of his pits and his vile siller, them fields had still been part o’ Tinwood Farm!”
And the poor old man relapsed out of the indignation and excitement into which the questions of Horace, his own recollections, and, above all, his “dram,” had roused him, into the same querulous discontented murmurs over his own condition which had first attracted the notice of his young companion. Horace sauntered by him with a certain scornful humour to the mouth of the pit—untouched by his misfortunes, only smiling at the miserable skeleton, with his boasted wisdom, his scrap of important unused knowledge, and his decrepid want and feebleness. He set his foot upon this new information with the confidence of a man who sees his way clear, and with a strange, half-devilish smile looked after the poor old patriarch, who had known it for twenty years and made nothing of it. The idea amused him, and the contrast: for pity was not in Horace Scarsdale’s heart.
CHAPTER XIX.
AS he started on his rapid walk back to Kenlisle at a very brisk pace, for the distance was between four and five miles, and business hours were approaching, Horace put together rapidly the information he had obtained. Perhaps a mind of different calibre might have rejected the pitman’s inference, and benevolently trusted, with the defrauded Squire, that Pouncet and his partner were only “confoonded looky” in their land speculation—such things have happened ere now honestly enough. Horace, however, was not the man to have any doubt on such a subject. His mind glanced, with a realization of the truth, quick and certain as the insight of genius, along the whole course of the affair, which appeared to him so clear and evident. How cautious, slow Mr. Pouncet, in most matters a man of the usual integrity, had been pounced upon by the sudden demon which appeared by his side in the shape of his clever clerk: how his mind had been dazzled by all the sophisms that naturally suggested themselves on this subject: how he had been persuaded that it was a perfectly legitimate proceeding to buy from the needy Squire these lands which at present to all the rest of the world were only worth so little, and which concealed, with all the cunning of nature, the secret of their own wealth. The Squire wanted the money, and was disposed to sell this portion of his estate to any bidder; and even if he were aware of the new discovery, had he either money or energy to avail himself of it? Horace knew, as if by intuition, all the arguments that must have been used, and could almost fancy he saw the triumphant tempter reaping the early harvest of his knavery, and stepping into a share of his victim’s business, and of the new purchase which was made in their joint names. These coal-pits were now a richer and more profitable property than the whole of Mr. Pouncet’s business, satisfactory as his “connection” was; but Horace was very well able to explain to himself how it was that the career of Mr. Stenhouse at Kenlisle had been very brief, how all Mr. Pouncet’s influence had been exerted to further the views of his partner elsewhere, and how it happened that the stranger’s reception showed so much ceremonious regard and so little cordiality. With a certain sense of envy and emulation, the young man regarded this new comer, who held another man, repugnant and unwilling, fast in his gripe, and had him in his power. It is chacun a son gout in matters of ambition as well as in other matters. There was something intoxicating to the mind of Horace in this species of superiority. To have command secretly, by some undisclosable means, of another individual’s will and actions: to domineer secretly over his victim by a spell which he dared neither resist nor acknowledge; this was something more than a mere means of advancement; independent of all results, there was a fascination indescribable in the very sensation of this power.
And it was this power which he himself had acquired over these two men, so totally unlike each other, who would see him to-day, unsuspicious of his enlightenment, and this evening meet him at the social table, which already won such influence, put under a painful constraint. Horace exulted as he thought of it, and brushed past the early Kenlisle wayfarers with such a colour on his cheek, and a step so brisk and energetic, that not one of them believed the tales to his disadvantage, and furtive hints of having been seen in unnameable places, which began to be dropped about the little gossiping town. He had only time to make a hurried toilette, deferring to that more important necessity, the breakfast, which he had no leisure to take, and to hasten to “the office,” where he sat punctual and composed at his desk, for full two hours before his companion of the previous night appeared, nervous and miserable, at his post, with an aching head and trembling fingers. Horace glanced across with cool contempt at this miserable as he entered. He was conscious that he himself, in his iron force of youth and selfishness, looked rather better and more self-controlled than usual under the inspiration of his new knowledge, and he looked at his weaker compeer with a half-amused, contemptuous smile. This very smile and disdain had their effect on the little circle of spectators, who all observed it with an involuntary respect, and forgot to think what might be the heart and disposition of this lofty comrade of theirs, in admiring homage to the coolness of his insolence and the strength of his head.