The day after John's incarceration was the funeral day at Tinto. The
whole country was moved by this great ceremonial. The funeral was to be
more magnificent than ever funeral had been before for hundreds of miles
around; and the number of the procession which followed the remains was
greater than that of any assembly known in the country since the '45,
when the whole district on one side or the other was "out." That
everybody concerned should have found it impossible to think of John in
the county jail, in face of the necessity of "showing respect" on this
great occasion to the memory of Torrance, was natural. It was, indeed,
out of the question to make any comparison between the two necessities.
After all, what did it matter for one day? Those who were out of prison,
and had never been in prison, and whose imagination was not affected
like John's by that atmosphere of restraint, did not see any great harm
that could happen. And the ceremony was one which could not be
neglected. A Scotch funeral is somewhat terrible to those who have been
accustomed to the pathetic and solemn ritual of the English Church; but
there was something, too, impressive to the imagination, in that silent
putting away of the old garment of humanity,--a stern submission, an
acceptance of absolute doom, which, if it suggested little consolation,
at least shed a wonderful awe on that conclusion no longer to be
disturbed by mortal prayers or hopes. But Dr Stirling, the parish
minister, was of the new school of the Scotch Church, and poor
Torrance's body became, as it were, the flag of a religious party as it
was laid in the grave. The great dining-room at Tinto, the largest room
in the county, was crowded with a silent assembly gathered round the
coffin while the first portion of the ceremony was carried out. It was
such a scene as would have filled the heart of the dead man with
exultation. Not one of the potentates of the county was absent; and
behind them, in close ranks, with scarcely standing-room, came the
smaller notabilities--bonnet lairds, village doctors, clergymen,
schoolmasters, lost in the sea of the tenantry behind. At the upper end
of the room, a very unusual group, stood the ladies. Lady Caroline in
her widow's weeds, covered with crape from head to foot, her tall
willowy figure drooping under the weight of those long clinging funeral
robes, her face perfectly pale and more abstract and high-bred than
ever, encircled by the whiteness of the cap--with her two little
children standing by, and her mother and sister behind to support
her--thrilled many an honest heart in the assembly. Women so seldom take
part in funeral ceremonies in Scotland, that the farmers and
country-folk were touched beyond measure by this apparition. It was
described in scores of sympathetic houses for long after: "A snowdrift
could not be whiter than the face of her; and the twa little bairns,
puir things, glowering frae them, the image of poor Tinto himsel'." If
there was any sceptic ready to suggest "that my leddy was never so happy
a wife to be sic a mournin' widow," the spectators had a ready answer:
"Eh, but she would be thinking to herself if I had maybe been a wee
better to him----" Thus the popular verdict summed up the troubled
story. Lady Caroline was pale enough for the _rôle_ of the most
impassioned mourner. She might have been chilled to stone by grief and
pain for anything that was apparent. She did not speak or take notice of
any one, as was natural. Even for her father she had not a word; and
when her little boy was led away to follow his father to the grave, she
sank into a chair, having, no doubt, the sympathetic bystanders thought,
done all that her strength was capable of. This roused a very warm
sympathetic feeling for Lady Car throughout all the country-side. If it
had not been just perhaps a love-match, she had done her duty by Tinto,
poor fellow! She had kept him in the right way as far as a woman could;
and what was scarcely to be expected, but pleased the lookers-on most of
all, she had presented an aspect of utter desolation at his funeral. All
that a widow could feel was in her face,--or so at least the bystanders
thought.
The solemn procession filed out of the room: little Tom Torrance
clinging to his grandfather's hand, looking out with big projecting eyes
like his father's upon all the wonderful scene, stumping along at the
head of the black procession. Poor little Tommy! he had a feeling of his
own importance more than anything else. His little brain was confused
and buzzing. He had no real association in his mind between the black
thing in front of him and papa; but he knew that he had a right to walk
first, to hold fast hold of grandpapa's finger, and keep with his little
fat legs in advance of everybody. It is difficult to say how soon this
sense of importance makes up for other wants and troubles. Tommy was
only four, but he felt it; and his grandfather, who was nearly fifteen
times as old, felt it too. He felt that to have this child in his hands
and the management of a great estate for so long a minority, was worth
something in the list of his ambitions; and thus they all went forth,
trooping into the long line of carriages that shone in the veiled
autumnal sunlight, up and down the avenue among the trees in endless
succession. Even to get them under way was no small matter; and at the
lodge gates and down the road there was almost as great a crowd of women
and poor people waiting to see them go by. John Tamson's wife, by whose
very cottage the mournful line passed, was full of tragic consciousness.
"Eh!" she said, with bated breath, "to think that yon day when our John
brought ben young Dalrulzian a' torn and disjasket to hae the dirt
brushed off o' him--that yon day was the beginning of a'----" "Hold your
tongue, woman," said John Tamson; "what has the ane to do with the
ither? Ye're pitting things thegither that hae nae natural sequence; but
ye ken naething of logic." "No' me," said the woman; "and I wuss that
poor young lad just kent as little. If he hadna been so book-learned he
would have been mair friendly-like with them that were of his ain kind
and degree." And as the black line went past, which after a while became
tedious, she recounted to her gossips once more the story which by this
time everybody knew, but all were willing to hear over again under the
excitement of this practical commentary. "Losh! would he leave him lying
there and never cry for help?" some of the spectators said. "It was
never our master that did that," said Peggy Blair from the Dalrulzian
lodge, who had declared boldly from the beginning that she "took nae
interest" even in this grand funeral. "And if it wasna your maister, wha
was it that came ben to me with the red moul on his claes and his coat
a' torn?" said Janet Tamson. "I wasna here and I canna tell," Peggy
said, hot and furious. "I would never say what might happen in a moment
if a gentleman was angry--and Pat Torrance had an awfu' tongue, as the
haill county kens--but leave a man groanin' at the fit o' a rock, that's
what our maister never did, if I were to die for't," the woman cried.
This made a little sensation among the beholders; but when it was
remarked that Dalrulzian was the only gentleman of the county who was
absent from the funeral, and half-a-dozen voices together proclaimed the
reason,--"He couldna be twa places at once; he's in the jyel for
murder," Peggy was quenched altogether. Grief and shame were too much
for her. She continued to sob, "No' our master!" till her voice ceased
to be articulate in the midst of her tears.
Dr Stirling was seated in full canonicals--black silk gown and cambric
bands--in one of the first carriages. It was he that his wife looked for
when the procession passed the manse; and she put on her black bonnet,
and covered herself with a veil, and went out very solemnly to the
churchyard to see the burial. But it was not the burial she thought of,
nor poor Tinto, nor even Lady Car, for whom all day she had been
uttering notes of compassion: it was the innovation of the funeral
service which occupied the mind of the minister's wife. With mingled
pride and trembling she heard her husband in the silence begin his
prayer by the side of the vault. It was a beautiful prayer--partly, no
doubt, taken from the English liturgy, for which, she said, "the Doctor
always had a high admiration;" but partly--"and that was far the
best"--his own. It was the first time anything of the kind had been done
in the county; and if ever there could be a funeral important enough for
the introduction of a new ceremonial to mark it, it was this one: but
what if the Presbytery were to take notice of the innovation? Perhaps
the thrill of excitement in her enhanced the sense of the greatness of
the step which the Doctor was taking, and his nobility in doing it. And
in her eyes no ritual could have been more imposing. There were a great
many of the attendants who thought it was "just Poppery," and a most
dangerous beginning; but they were all hushed and reverential while the
minister's voice went on.
When every one had left, and the house was perfectly silent after the
hum and sound of so many feet, Lady Car herself went forward to the
window and drew up the blind which covered it. The gloom disappeared,
and the noonday sunshine streamed in in a moment. It was premature, and
Lady Lindores was grieved that she had not been quick enough to
forestall her daughter; for it would have been better, she thought, if
her hand had been the first to let in the light, and not that of the
new-made widow. Carry went further, and opened the window. She stepped
out upon the heavy stone balcony outside, and received the light full
upon her, raising her head to it, and basking in the sunshine. She
opened her pale lips to draw in great draughts of the sweet autumn air,
and threw up her arms to the sunshine and to the sky. Lady Lindores
stepped out after her, laying her hand upon her arm, with some alarm.
"Carry--my darling, wait a little----" Carry did not make any reply. She
said, "How long is it, mother?" still looking up into the clear depths
of the sky. "How long is what, my love?" They were a strange group. A
spectator might have thought that the pale creature in the midst, so
ethereal, so wan, wrapped in mourning so profound, had gone distraught
with care; while her child at her feet sat on the carpet in front of the
window, the emblem of childish indifference, playing with her new
shoes, which glittered and pleased her; and the two attendant figures,
the anxious mother and sister, kept watch behind. In Carry the mystery
all centred; and even those two who were nearest to her were bewildered,
and could not make her out. Was she an Ophelia, moved out of her sweet
wits by an anguish beyond bearing? Was she a woman repentant, appealing
to heaven for forgiveness? Carry was none of these things. She who had
been so dutiful all her life, resisting nobody, fulfilling all
requirements to the letter, bearing the burden of all her
responsibilities without rebellion or murmur, had ceased in a moment to
consider outside necessities, even the decorum of her sorrowful
condition. She gave a long sigh, dismissing, as it were, a weight from
her breast. "It is five years and a half," she said. "I ought to
remember, I that have counted every day,--and now is it possible, is it
possible?"
"What, my dearest? Carry, come in; you are excited----"
"Not yet, mother. How soft the air is! and the sunshine flooding
everything. I have been shut up so long. I think the colours never were
so lovely before."
"Yes, my darling; you have been shut up for a whole week. I don't wonder
you are glad of the fresh air."
"A week!" Carry said. "Five years: I have got no good of the sunshine,
and never tasted the sweetness of the air, for five years. Let me feel
it now. Oh, how have I lived all this time! What a beautiful country it
is! what a glorious sky! and I have been in prison, and have never seen
them! Is it true? is it all over?--all, all?" She turned round and gazed
into the room where the coffin had been with a gaze full of meaning
which no one could mistake. _It_ was gone--all was gone. "You must not
be horrified, mother," she said. "Why should I be false now? I think if
it had lasted any longer I must have died or run away."
"Dear Carry, you would have done neither; you would have done your duty
to the end," her mother said, drawing Carry into her arms. "It is
excitement that makes you speak so."
"Not excitement, but deliverance," said Lady Car with solemnity. "Yes,
mother, you are right; I should have stood to the end; but do you think
that would have been a credit to me? Oh, you don't know how hard
falsehood is! Falsehood and slavery--they are the same thing; they make
your heart like iron: you have no feeling even when you ought perhaps to
have feeling. I am cruel now; I know you think I am cruel: but how can
one help it? slaves are cruel. I can afford to have a heart now."
"Come to your room, Carry. It is too dismal for you here."
"No, I don't think it is dismal. It is a fine handsome room--better than
a bedroom to sit in. It is not so much like a prison, and the view is
lovely. There is poor Edith looking at me with her pitiful face. Do you
think I ought to cry? Oh, I could cry well enough, if that were all--it
would be quite easy; but there is so much to smile about," said poor
Lady Car; then suddenly, leaning upon her mother's shoulder, she burst
into a flood of tears.
It was at this moment that the housekeeper came in, solemn in her new
mourning, which was almost as "deep" as Carry's, with a housemaid in
attendance, to draw up the blinds and see that the great room was
restored to order. The gentlemen were to return for the reading of the
will, and it was meet that all should be prepared and made ready. And
nothing could so much have touched the hearts of the women as to see
their mistress thus weeping, encircled in her mother's arms. "Poor
thing! he was not over good a man to her; but there's nae rule for
judging marriet folk. It's ill to hae and waur to want with them.
There's naebody," said the housekeeper, "but must respect my lady for
her feeling heart." Lady Caroline, however, would not take the credit of
this when she had retired to a more private room. She would not allow
her mother and sister to suppose that her tears were tears of sorrow,
such as a widow ought to shed. "You were right, mother--it is the
excitement," she avowed; "every nerve is tingling. I could cry and I
could laugh. If it had not been for your good training, mamma, I should
have had hysterics; but that would be impossible to your daughter. When
shall I be able to go away? I know: I will not go sooner than is right.
I will do nothing I ought not to do;--but you could say my nerves are
shattered, and that I want rest."
"And very truly, Carry," said Lady Lindores; "but we must know first
what the will is. To be sure, your fortune is secured. You will be well
off--better than any of us; but there may be regulations about the
children--there may be conditions."
"Could the children be taken from me?" Carry said, but not with any
active feeling; her powers of emotion were all concentrated on one
thought. Lady Lindores, who was watching her with all a mother's anxious
criticism, fearing to see any failure of right sentiment in her child,
listened with a sensation of alarm. She had never been contented with
herself in this particular. Carry's children had been too much the
children of Pat Torrance to awaken the grandmother's worship, which she
thought befitting, in her own heart. She felt a certain repulsion when
she looked at these black-browed, light-eyed creatures, who were their
father's in every feature--not Carry's at all. Was it possible that
Carry, too, felt the same? But by-and-by Carry took up that little
stolid girl on whom Lady Lindores could not place her tenderest
affections, do what she would, and pressed her pale cheek against that
undisturbed and solid little countenance. The child's face looked bigger
than her mother's, Lady Lindores thought--the one all mind and feeling,
the other all clay. She went and gave little Edith a kiss in her
compunction and penitence for this involuntary dislike; but fortunately
Carry herself was unconscious of it, and caressed her babies as if they
were the most delicate and beautiful in the world.
Carry was not present at the reading of the will. She shrank from it,
and no one insisted. There were father and brother to look after her
interests. Rintoul was greatly shaken by the events of the day. He was
ghastly pale, and very much excited and agitated. Whatever his sister
might do, Rintoul certainly exhibited the truest sentiment. Nobody had
given him credit for half so much feeling. He carried back his little
nephew asleep after the long drive home, and thrust him into Carry's
arms. "I am not much of a fellow," he said, stooping over her, with a
voice full of emotion, "but I'll do a father's part to him, if I'm good
enough for it, Carry." Carry by this time was quite calm, and wondered
at this exhibition of feeling, at which Lady Lindores shed tears, though
in her heart she wondered too, rejoicing that her inward rebellion
against Torrance's children was not shared by her son. "Robin's heart
was always in the right place," she said, with a warmth of motherly
approval, which was not diminished by the fact that Rintoul's emotion
made her still more conscious of the absence of "right feeling" in
herself. There was not much conversation between the ladies in the small
morning room to which they had withdrawn--a room which had never been
used and had no associations. Carry, indeed, was very willing to talk;
but her mother and sister did their best, with a natural prejudice and
almost horror of the manner in which she regarded her own circumstances,
to keep her silent. Even Edith, who would have dissolved the marriage
arbitrarily, did not like to hear her sister's cry of satisfaction over
the freedom which death had brought her. There was something impious and
cruel in getting free that way. If it had been by a divorce or
separation, Edith would have been as glad as any; but she was a girl
full of prejudices and superstitions, and this candour of Carry's was a
thing she shrank from as an offence to human nature. She kept
behind-backs, often with her little niece on her knee, but sometimes by
herself, keeping very quiet, revolving many thoughts in her heart; while
Lady Lindores kept close to Carry, like a sick-nurse, keeping watch over
all her movements. It was dusk when the reading of the will was over,
and the sound in the house of footsteps going and coming began to cease.
Then Lord Lindores came in with much subdued dignity of demeanour, like
an ambassador approaching a crowned head. He went up to Carry, who lay
back in a great easy-chair beside the fire with her hands clasped,
pursuing the thoughts which she was not permitted to express, and gave
her a formal kiss on the forehead: not that he was cold or unsympathetic
as a father, but he had been a little afraid of her since her marriage,
and she had not welcomed the condolences he had addressed to her when he
saw her first after Tinto's death.
"My dear," he said, "this is not a moment for congratulations: and yet
there is something to a woman in having earned the entire confidence of
her husband, which must be a subject of satisfaction----"
Carry scarcely moved in her stillness. She looked at him without
understanding what he meant. "It would be better, perhaps," she said,
"father, not to speak of the circumstances."
"I hope I am not likely to speak in a way that could wound your
feelings, Carry. Poor Patrick--has done you noble justice in his will."
A hysterical desire to laugh seized poor Lady Car. Lord Lindores himself
was a little confused by the name he had coined on the spot for his dead
son-in-law. He had felt that to call him Torrance would be cold, as his
wish was to express the highest approval; and Pat was too familiar. But
his "Poor Patrick" was not successful. And Carry knew that, even in the
midst of her family, she must not laugh that day, whatever might happen.
She stopped herself convulsively, but cried, "Papa, for heaven's sake,
don't talk to me any more!"
"Do you not see, Robert, that she is exhausted?" said Lady Lindores.
"She thinks nothing of the will. She is worn out with--all she has had
to go through. Let her alone till she has had time to recover a little."
His wife's interposition always irritated Lord Lindores. "I may surely
be permitted to speak to Carry without an interpreter," he said,
testily. "It is no doubt a very--painful moment for her. But if anything
could make up----Torrance has behaved nobly, poor fellow! It must be
gratifying to us all to see the confidence he had in her. You have the
control of everything during your boy's minority, Carry. Everything is
in your hands. Of course it was understood that you would have the
support of your family. But you are hampered by no conditions: he has
behaved in the most princely manner; nothing could be more gratifying,"
Lord Lindores said.
Carry sat motionless in her chair, and took no notice--her white hands
clasped on her lap; her white face, passive and still, showed as little
emotion as the black folds of her dress, which were like a tragic
framework round her. Lady Lindores, with her hand upon the back of her
daughter's chair, came anxiously between, and replied for her. She had
to do her best to say the right thing in these strange circumstances--to
be warmly gratified, yet subdued by the conventional gloom necessary to
the occasion. "I am very glad," she said--"that is, it is very
satisfactory. I do not see what else he could have done. Carry must have
had the charge of her own children--who else had any right?--but, as you
say, it is very gratifying to find that he had so much confidence----"
Lord Lindores turned angrily away. "Nerves and vapours are out of place
here," he said. "Carry ought to understand--but, fortunately, so long as
I know what I am about--the only one among you----"
At this Carry raised herself hastily in her chair. She said "Papa,"
quickly, with a half gasp of alarm. Then she added, without stopping,
almost running her words into each other in her eagerness, "They are my
children; no one else has anything to do with them; I must do
everything--everything! for them myself; nobody must interfere."
"Who do you expect to interfere?" said her father, sternly. He found
himself confronting his entire family as he turned upon Carry, who was
so strangely roused and excited, sitting up erect in her seat, clasping
her pale hands. Rintoul had gone round behind her chair, beside his
mother; and Edith, rising up behind, stood there also, looking at him
with a pale face and wide-open eyes. It was as if he had made an attack
upon her--he who had come here to inform her of her freedom and her
rights. This sudden siding together of all against one is bitter, even
when the solitary person may know himself to be wrong. But Lord Lindores
felt himself in the right at this moment. Supposing that perhaps he had
made a mistake in this marriage of Carry's, fate had stepped in and made
everything right. She was nobly provided for, with the command of a
splendid fortune--and she was free. Now at least his wisdom ought to be
acknowledged, and that he had done well for his daughter. But
notwithstanding his resentment, he was a little cowed "in the
circumstances" by this gathering of pale faces against him. Nothing
could be said that was not peaceful and friendly on the day that the
dead had gone out of the house.
"Do you think I am likely to wish to dictate to her," he said, with a
short laugh, "that you stand round to defend her from me? Carry, you are
very much mistaken if you think I will interfere. Children are out of my
way. Your mother will be your best adviser. I yield to her better
information now. You are tired, you are unhappy--you are--left
desolate----"
"Oh, how do you dare to say such words to me?" cried Carry, rising,
coming forward to him with feverish energy, laying her hands upon his
shoulders, as if to compel him to face her, and hear what she had to
say. "Don't you know--don't you know? I was left desolate when you
brought me here, five years--five dreadful years ago. Whose fault is
that? I am glad he is dead--glad he is dead! Could a woman be more
injured than that? But now I have neither father nor mother," she cried.
"I am in my own right; my life is my own, and, my children; I will be
directed no more."
All this time she stood with her hands on his shoulders, grasping him
unconsciously to give emphasis to her words. Lord Lindores was startled
beyond measure by this personal contact--by the way in which poor Carry,
always so submissive, flung herself upon him. "Do you mean to use
violence to me? do you mean to turn me out of your house?" he said.
"Oh, father!--oh, father! how can I forgive you?" Carry cried, in her
excitement and passion; and then she dropped her hands suddenly and
wept, and begged his pardon like a child. Lord Lindores was very glad to
take advantage of this sudden softening which he had so little expected.
He kissed her and put her back in her chair. "I would recommend you to
put her to bed," he said to his wife; "she has been overdone." And he
thought he had got the victory, and that poor Carry, after her little
explosion, was safe in his hands once more. He meant no harm to Carry.
It was solely of her good and that of her children that he thought. It
could do no harm either to the one or the other if they served his aims
too. He drove home with his son soon after, leaving his wife behind him:
it was proper that Carry should have her mother and sister with her at
so sad a time. And the house of Tinto, which had been so dark all these
nights, shone demurely out again this evening, at a window here and
there,--death, which is always an oppression, being gone from it, and
life resuming its usual sway. The flag still hung half-mast high,
drooping against the flagstaff, for there was no wind. "But I'm
thinking, my lord, well put it back to-morrow," said the butler as he
stood solemnly at the carriage-door. He stood watching it roll down the
avenue in that mood of genial exhaustion which makes men communicative.
"It's a satisfaction to think all's gane well and everybody satisfied,"
he said to his subordinate; "for a death in a family is worse to manage
than ony other event. You're no' just found fault with at the moment,
but it's minded against you if things go wrong, and your 'want o'
feelin'.' My lady will maybe think it want o' feelin' if I put up the
flag. But why should I no'? For if big Tinto's gane, there's wee Tinto,
still mair important, with all the world before him. And if I let it be,
they'll say it's neglect."
"My lady will never fash her head about it," said the second in command.
"How do you ken? Ah, my lad, you'll find a change. The master might give
you a damn at a moment, but he wasna hard to manage. We'll have all the
other family, _her_ family, to give us our orders now."