The Ladies Lindores. Volume 3 of 3

Rintoul's feet, which had been going rapidly towards Dunearn, went on slower and slower. He came to a pause altogether about a mile from the town. Was it necessary to go any farther? What could he do to-day? Certainly there would be no advantage to Erskine in anything he did to-day. He turned round slowly, and went back towards Lindores. Walking that way, there was nothing but the long sweep of the landscape between him and Tinto, to which his eyes could not but turn as he walked slowly on. The flag was up again – a spot of red against the dull sky – and the house stood out upon its platform with that air of ostentation which fretted the souls of the surrounding gentry. Rintoul could not bear the sight of it: it smote him with a fierce impatience. Scarcely conscious that his movement of hot and hasty temper was absurd, he turned round again to escape it, and set his face towards the emblem of severe justice and the law, the tower of the Town House of Dunearn. When this second monitor made itself visible, a kind of dull despair took possession of him. His steps were hemmed in on every side, and there was no escape.

It was while he was moving on thus reluctantly, by a sort of vague compulsion, that he recognised, with amazement, Nora Barrington coming towards him. It was a piece of good fortune to which he had no right. She was the only creature in the world whose society could have been welcome to him. They met as they might have met in a fairy tale: fairy tales are not over, so long as people do meet in this way on the commonplace road. They had neither of them thought of any such encounter – he, because his mind was too dolorous and preoccupied for any such relief; she, because Rintoul seldom came into Dunearn, and never walked, so that no idea of his presence occurred to her. She was going to fulfil a commission of Miss Barbara's, and anxious if possible to see Edith, which was far more likely than Edith's brother. They were both surprised, almost beyond speech; they scarcely uttered any greeting. It did not seem strange, somehow, that Rintoul should turn and walk with her the way she was going, though it was not his way. And now a wonderful thing happened to Rintoul. His ferment of thought subsided all at once, – he seemed to have sailed into quiet seas after the excitement of the head-long current which had almost dashed him to pieces. He did not know what it meant. The storm ended, and there stole over him "a sound as of a hidden brook, in the leafy month of June." And Nora felt a softening of sympathetic feeling, she did not know why. She was sorry for him. Why should she have been sorry for Lord Rintoul? He was infinitely better off than she was. She could not account for the feeling, but she felt it all the same. She asked him first how Lady Caroline was – poor Lady Caroline! – and then faltered a little, turning to her own affairs.

"I hope I shall see Edith before I go away. Do you know when they are coming back? I am going home – very soon now," Nora said. She felt almost apologetic – reluctant to say it, – and yet it seemed necessary to say it. There were many people whom she might have met on the road to whom she would not have mentioned the fact, but it seemed incumbent upon her now.

"Going away! No, that you must not do – you must not do it! Why should you go away?" he cried.

"There are many reasons." Nora felt that she ought to laugh at his vehemence, or that, perhaps, she should be angry; but she was neither the one nor the other – only apologetic, and so sorry for him. "Of course I always knew I should have to go: though I shall always think it home here, yet it is not home any longer. It is a great pity, don't you think, to live so long in a place which, after all, is not your home?"

"I cannot think it a great pity that you should have lived here," he said. "The thing is, that you must not go. For God's sake, Nora, do not go! I never thought of that; it is the last drop. If you knew how near I am to the end of my strength, you would not speak of such a thing to me."

"Lord Rintoul! I – don't understand. What can it matter?" cried Nora, in her confusion. She felt that she should have taken a different tone. He had no right to call her Nora, or to speak as if he had anything to do with her coming or going. But the hurried tone of passion and terror in his voice overwhelmed her. It was as if he had heard of the last misfortune that could overwhelm a man.

"Matter! Do you mean to me? It may not matter to any one else; to me it is everything," he said, wildly. "I shall give in altogether. I shall not care what I do if you go away."

"Now, Lord Rintoul," said Nora, her heart beating, but trying to laugh as she best could, "this, you must know, is nonsense. You cannot mean to make fun of me, I am sure; but – I don't know what you mean. We had better say no more about it." Then she melted again. She remembered their last interview, which had gone to her heart. "I know," she said, "that you have been in a great deal of trouble."

"You know," said Rintoul, "because you feel for me. Nobody else knows. Then think what it will be for me if you go away – the only creature whom I dare to speak to. Nora, you know very well I was always fond of you – from the first – as soon as we met – "

"Don't, don't, Lord Rintoul! I cannot get away from you on this public road. Have some respect for me. You ought not to say such things, nor I to hear."

He looked at her, wondering. "Is it any want of respect to tell you that you are the girl I have always wanted to marry? You may not feel the same; it may be only your kindness: you may refuse me, Nora; but I have always meant it. I have thought it was our duty to do the best we could for the girls, but I never gave in to that for myself. My father has spoken of this one and that one, but I have always been faithful to you. That is no want of respect, though it is a public road. From the time I first knew you, I have only thought of you."

What an ease it gave him to say this! All the other points that had so occupied him before seemed to have melted away in her presence. If he had but some one to stand by him, – if he had but Nora, who felt for him always. It seemed that everything else would arrange itself, and become less difficult to bear.

As for Nora, she had known very well that Rintoul was, as he said, fond of her. It is so difficult to conceal that. But she thought he would "get over it." She had said to herself, with some little scorn, that he never would have the courage to woo a poor girl like herself, – a girl without anything. He had a worldly mind though he was young, and Nora had never allowed herself to be deluded, she thought.

"Don't you believe me?" he said, after a moment's pause, looking at her wistfully, holding out his hand.

"Yes, I believe you, Lord Rintoul," said Nora; but she took no notice of his outstretched hand, though it cost her something to be, as she said to herself, "so unkind." "I do believe you; but it would never be permitted, you know. You yourself would not approve of it when you had time to think; for you are worldly-minded, Lord Rintoul: and you know you ought to marry – an heiress – some one with money."

"You have a very good right to say so," he replied. "I have always maintained that for the girls: but if you had ever taken any notice of me, you would have found out that I never allowed it for myself. Yes, it is quite true I am worldly-minded; but I never meant to marry money. I never thought of marrying any one but you."

And now there was a pause again. He did not seem to have asked her any question that Nora could answer. He had only made a statement to her that she was the only girl he had ever wished to marry. It roused a great commotion in her breast. She had always liked Rintoul, even when his sisters called him a Philistine; and now when he was in trouble, under some mysterious shadow, she knew not why, appealing to her sympathy as to his salvation, it was not possible that the girl should shut her heart against him. They walked on together for a few yards in silence, and then she said, faltering, "I had better go back now – I – did not expect to – meet any one."

"Don't go back without saying something to me. Promise me, Nora, that you will not go away. I want you! I want you! Without you I should go all wrong. If you saw me sinking in the water, wouldn't you put out your hand to help me? – and that is nothing to what may happen. Nora, have you the heart to go back without saying anything to me?" cried Rintoul, once more holding out his hand.

There was nobody visible on the road, up or down. The turrets of Lindores peeped over the trees in the distance, like spectators deeply interested, holding their breath; at the other end the long thin tower of the Town House seemed to pale away into the distance. He looked anxiously into her face, as if life and death hung on the decision. They had come to a standstill in the emotion of the moment, and stood facing each other, trembling with the same sentiment. Nora held back still, but there was an instinctive drawing closer of the two figures – irresistible, involuntary.

"Your father will never consent," she said, with an unsteady voice; "and my father will never allow it against his will. But, Lord Rintoul – "

"Not lord, nor Rintoul," he said.

"You never liked to be called Robin," Nora said, with a half malicious glance into his face. But poor Rintoul was not in the humour for jest. He took her hand, her arm, and drew it through his.

"I cannot wait to think about our fathers. I have such need of you, Nora. I have something to tell you that I can tell to no one in the world but you. I want my other self to help me. I want my wife, to whom I can speak – "

His arm was quivering with anxiety and emotion. Though Nora was bewildered, she did not hesitate – what girl would? – from the responsibility thus thrust upon her. To be so urgently wanted is the strongest claim that can be put forth upon any human creature. Instinctively she gave his arm a little pressure, supporting rather than supported, and said "Tell me," turning upon him freely, without blush or faltering, the grave sweet face of sustaining love.

CHAPTER XXXIX

Rolls disappeared on the evening of the day on which he had that long consultation with Mr Monypenny. He did not return to Dalrulzian that night. Marget, with many blushes and no small excitement, served the dinner, which Bauby might be said to have cooked with tears. If these salt drops were kept out of her sauces, she bedewed the white apron which she lifted constantly to her eyes. "Maister John in jyal! and oor Tammas gone after him; and what will I say to his mammaw?" Bauby cried. She seemed to fear that it might be supposed some want of care on her part which had led to this dreadful result. But even the sorrow of her soul did not interfere with her sense of what was due to her master's guest. Beaufort's dinner did not suffer, whatever else might. It was scrupulously cooked, and served with all the care of which Marget was capable; and when it was all over, and everything carefully put aside, the women sat down together in the kitchen, and had a good cry over the desolation of the house. The younger maids, perhaps, were not so deeply concerned on this point as Bauby, who was an old servant, and considered Dalrulzian as her home: but they were all more or less affected by the disgrace, as well as sorry for the young master, who had "nae pride," and always a pleasant word for his attendants in whatever capacity. Their minds were greatly affected, too, by the absence of Rolls. Not a man in the house but the stranger gentleman! It was a state of affairs which alarmed and depressed them, and proved, above all other signs, that a great catastrophe had happened. Beaufort sent for the housekeeper after dinner to give her such information as he thought necessary; and Bauby was supported to the door by her subordinates, imploring her all the way to keep up her heart. "You'll no' let on to the strange gentleman." "Ye'll keep up a good face, and no' let him see how sair cast down ye are," they said, one at either hand. There was a great deal of struggling outside the door, and some stifled sounds of weeping, before it was opened, and Bauby appeared, pushed in by some invisible agency behind her, which closed the door promptly as soon as she was within. She was not the important person Beaufort had expected to see; but as she stood there, with her large white apron thrown over her arm, and her comely countenance, like a sky after rain, lighted up with a very wan and uncertain smile, putting the best face she could upon it, Beaufort's sympathy overcame the inclination to laugh which he might have felt in other circumstances, at the sight of her sudden entrance and troubled clinging to the doorway. "Good evening," he said, "Mrs – " "They call me Bauby Rolls, at your service," said Bauby, with a curtsey, and a suppressed sob. "Mrs Rolls," said Beaufort, "your master may not come home for a few days; he asked me to tell you not to be anxious; that he hoped to be back soon; that there was nothing to be alarmed about." "Eh! and was he so kind as think upon me, and him in such trouble," cried Bauby, giving way to her emotions. "But I'm no alarmt; no, no, why should I be?" she added, in a trembling voice. "He will be hame, no doubt, in a day or twa, as ye say, sir, and glad, glad we'll a' be. It's not that we have any doubt – but oh! what will his mammaw say to me?" cried Bauby. After the tremulous momentary stand she had made, her tears flowed faster than ever. "There has no such thing happened among the Erskines since ever the name was kent in the country-side, and that's maist from the beginning, as it's written in Scripture." "It's all a mistake," cried Beaufort. "That it is – that it is," cried Bauby, drying her eyes. And then she added with another curtsey, "I hope you'll find everything to your satisfaction, sir, till the maister comes hame. Tammas – that's the butler, Tammas Rolls, my brother, sir, if ye please – is no' at hame to-night, and you wouldna like a lass aboot to valet ye; they're all young but me. But if you would put out your cloes to brush, or anything that wants doing, outside your door, it shall a' be weel attended to. I'm real sorry there's no' another man aboot the house: but a' that women can do we'll do, and with goodwill." "You are very kind, Mrs Rolls," said Beaufort. "I was not thinking of myself – you must not mind me. I shall get on very well. I am sorry to be a trouble to you at such a melancholy moment." "Na, na, sir, not melancholy," cried Bauby, with her eyes streaming; "sin' ye say, and a'body must allow, that it's just a mistake: we manna be put aboot by suchlike trifles. But nae doubt it will be livelier and mair pleesant for yoursel', sir, when Mr John and Tammas, they baith come hame. Would you be wanting anything more to-night?" "Na, I never let on," Bauby said, when she retired to the ready support of her handmaidens outside the door – "no' me; I keepit a stout heart, and I said to him, 'It's of nae consequence, sir,' I said, – 'I'm nane cast down; it's just a mistake – everybody kens that; and that he was to put his things outside his door,' He got nothing that would go against the credit of the house out of me."

But in spite of this forlorn confidence in her powers of baffling suspicion, it was a wretched night that poor Bauby spent. John was satisfactorily accounted for, and it was known where he was; but who could say where Rolls might be? Bauby sat up half through the night alone in the great empty kitchen with the solemn-sounding clock and the cat purring loudly by the fire. She was as little used to the noises of the night as Lord Rintoul was, and in her agony of watching felt the perpetual shock and thrill of the unknown going through and through her. She heard steps coming up to the house a hundred times through the night, and stealing stealthily about the doors. "Is that you, Tammas?" she said again and again, peering out into the night: but nobody appeared. Nor did he appear next day, or the next. After her first panic, Bauby gave out that he was with his master – that she had never expected him – in order to secure him from remark. But in her own mind horrible doubts arose. He had always been the most irreproachable of men; but what if, in the shock of this catastrophe, even Tammas should have taken to ill ways? Drink – that was the natural suggestion. Who can fathom the inscrutable attractions it has, so that men yield to it who never could have been suspected of such a weakness? Most women of the lower classes have the conviction that no man can resist it. Heart-wrung for his master, shamed to his soul for the credit of the house, had Rolls, too, after successfully combating temptation for all his respectable life, yielded to the demon? Bauby trembled, but kept her terrors to herself. She said he might come back at any moment – he was with his maister. Where else was it likely at such a time that he should be?

But Rolls was not with his master. He was on the eve of a great and momentous act. There were no superstitious alarms about him, as about Rintoul, and no question in his mind what to do. Before he left Dalrulzian that sad morning, he had shaped all the possibilities in his thoughts, and knew what he intended; and his conversation with Mr Monypenny gave substance and a certain reasonableness to his resolution. But it was not in his nature by one impetuous movement to precipitate affairs. He had never in his life acted hastily, and he had occasional tremors of the flesh which chilled his impulse and made him pause. But the interval, which was so bitter to his master, although all the lookers-on congratulated themselves it could do him no harm, was exactly what Rolls wanted in the extraordinary crisis to which he had come. A humble person, quite unheroic in his habits as in his antecedents, it was scarcely to be expected that the extraordinary project which had entered his mind should have been carried out with the enthusiastic impulse of romantic youth. But few youths, however romantic, would have entertained such a purpose as that which now occupied Rolls. There are many who would risk a great deal to smuggle an illustrious prisoner out of his prison. But this was an enterprise of a very different kind. He left Mr Monypenny with his head full of thoughts which were not all heroic. None of his inquiries had been made without meaning. The self-devotion which was in him was of a sober kind, not the devotion of a Highland clansman, an Evan Dhu; and though the extraordinary expedient he had planned appeared to him more and not less alarming than the reality, his own self-sacrifice was not without a certain calculation and caution too.

All these things had been seriously weighed and balanced in his mind. He had considered his sister's interest, and even his own eventual advantage. He had never neglected these primary objects of life, and he did not do so now. But though all was taken into account and carefully considered, Rolls's first magnanimous purpose was never shaken; and the use he made of the important breathing-time of these intervening days was characteristic. He had, like most men, floating in his mind several things which he intended "some time" to do, – a vague intention which, in the common course of affairs, is never carried out. One of these things was to pay a visit to Edinburgh. Edinburgh to Rolls was as much as London and Paris and Rome made into one. All his patriotic feelings, all that respect for antiquity which is natural to the mind of a Scot, and the pride of advancing progress and civilisation which becomes a man of this century, were involved in his desire to visit the capital of his own country. Notwithstanding all the facilities of travel, he had been there but once before, and that in his youth. With a curious solemnity he determined to make this expedition now. It seemed the most suitable way of spending these all-important days, before he took the step beyond which he did not know what might happen to him. A more serious visitor, yet one more determined to see everything and to take the full advantage of all he saw, never entered that romantic town. He looked like a rural elder of the gravest Calvinistic type as he walked, in his black coat and loosely tied white neckcloth, about the lofty streets. He went to Holyrood, and gazed with reverence and profound belief at the stains of Rizzio's blood. He mounted up to the Castle and examined Mons Meg with all the care of a historical observer. He even inspected the pictures in the National Collection with unbounded respect, if little knowledge, and climbed the Observatory on the Calton Hill. There were many spectators about the streets who remarked him as he walked about, looking conscientiously at everything, with mingled amazement and respect; for his respectability, his sober curiosity, his unvarying seriousness, were remarkable enough to catch an intelligent eye. But nobody suspected that Rolls's visit to Edinburgh was the solemn visit of a martyr, permitting himself the indulgence of a last look at the scenes that interested him most, ere giving himself up to an unknown and mysterious doom.

On the morning of the 24th, having satisfied himself fully, he returned home. He was quite satisfied. Whatever might now happen, he had fulfilled his intention, and realised his dreams: nothing could take away from him the gratification thus secured. He had seen the best that earth contained, and now was ready for the worst, whatever that might be. Great and strange sights, prodigies unknown to his fathers, were befitting and natural objects to occupy him at this moment of fate. It was still early when he got back: he stopped at the Tinto Station, not at that which was nearest to Dalrulzian, and slowly making his way up by the fatal road, visited the scene of Torrance's death. The lodge-keeper called out to him, as he turned that way, that the road was shut up; but Rolls paid no heed. He clambered over the hurdles that were placed across, and soon reached the scene of the tragedy. The marks of the horse's hoofs were scarcely yet obliterated, and the one fatal point at which the terrified brute had dinted deeply into the tough clay, its last desperate attempt to hold its footing, was almost as distinct as ever.

The terrible incident with which he had so much to do came before him with a confused perception of things he had not thought of at the time, reviving, as in a dream, before his very eyes. He remembered that Torrance lay with his head down the stream – a point which had not struck him as important; and he remembered that Lord Rintoul had appeared out of the wood at his cry for help so quickly, that he could not have been far away when the accident took place. What special signification there might be in these facts Rolls was not sufficiently clear-headed to see. But he noted them with great gravity in a little notebook, which he had bought for the purpose. Then, having concluded everything, he set out solemnly on his way to Dunearn.

It was a long walk. The autumnal afternoon closed in mists; the moon rose up out of the haze – the harvest moon, with a little redness in her light. The landscape was dim in this mellowed vapour, and everything subdued. The trees, with all their fading glories, hung still in the haze; the river tinkled with a far-off sound; the lights in the cottages were blurred, and looked like huge vague lamps in the milky air, as Rolls trudged on slowly, surely, to the place of fate. It took him a long time to walk there, and he did not hurry. Why should he hurry? He was sure, went he ever so slowly, to arrive in time. As he went along, all things that ever he had done came up into his mind. His youthful extravagances – for Rolls, too, had once been young and silly; his gradual settling into manhood; his aspirations, which he once had, like the best; his final anchorage, which, if not in a very exalted post, nor perhaps what he had once hoped for, was yet so respectable. Instead of the long lines of trees, the hedgerows, and cottages which marked the road, it was his own life that Rolls walked through as he went on. He thought of the old folk, his father and mother; he seemed to see Bauby and himself and the others coming home in just such a misty autumn night from school. Jock, poor fellow! who had gone to sea, and had not been heard of for years; Willie, who 'listed, and nearly broke the old mother's heart. How many shipwrecks there had been among the lads he once knew! Rolls felt, with a warmth of satisfaction about his heart, how well it was to have walked uprightly, to have "won through" the storms of life, and to have been a credit and a comfort to all belonging to him. If anything was worth living for, that was. Willie and Jock had both been cleverer than he, poor fellows! but they had both dropped, and he had held on. Rolls did not want to be proud; he was quite willing to say, "If it had not been for the grace of God! – " but yet it gave him an elevating sense of the far superior pleasure it was to conquer your inclinations in the days of your youth, and to do well whatever might oppose. When the name of Rolls was mentioned by any one about Dunearn, it would always be said that two of them had done very well – Tammas and Bauby: these were the two. They had always held by one another; they had always been respectable. But here Rolls stopped in his thoughts, taking a long breath. After this, after what was going to happen, what would the folk say then? Would a veil drop after to-day upon the unblemished record of his life? He had never stood before a magistrate in all his days – never seen how the world looked from the inside of a prison, even as a visitor – had nothing to do, nothing to do with that side of the world. He waved his hand, as if separating by a mystic line between all that was doubtful or disreputable, and his own career. But now – Thus through the misty darkening road, with now a red gleam from a smithy, and now a softer glimmer from a cottage door, and anon the trees standing out of the mists, and the landscape widening about him, Rolls came on slowly, very seriously, to Dunearn. The long tower of the Town House, which had seemed to threaten and call upon Lord Rintoul, was the first thing that caught the eye of Rolls. The moon shone upon it, making a white line of it against the cloudy sky.