Old Rolls went up the road which led by the Scaur. It was shorter than
the formal avenue, and less in the way of more important visitors. He
was much distressed and "exercised in his mind" about the agitated
appearance of his master--his torn sleeve, and clothes stained with the
soil. He pondered much on the sight as he walked up the road. John was
not a man given to quarrelling, but he would seem to have been engaged
in some conflict or other. "A runaway horse! where would he get a
runaway horse at Tinto?" Rolls said to himself; "and Tinto was a man
very likely to provoke a quarrel." He hurried on, feeling that he was
sure to hear all about it, and much concerned at the thought that any
one belonging to himself should bring discredit on the house in this
way. But whether it was an excited fancy, or if there was some echo in
the air of what had passed before, it seemed to Rolls that he heard, as
he proceeded onwards, the sound of voices and conflict. "Will he have
been but one among many?" he said within himself. "Will they be
quarrelling on?--and me an unprotected man?" he added, with a prudent
thought of his own welfare. Then Rolls heard a wonderful concussion in
the air--he could not tell what, and then a solemn stillness. What was
the meaning of this? It could have nothing to do with John. He turned up
the narrow road down which John Erskine had once driven his dogcart, and
which Torrance continually rode up and down. When he came to the opening
of the Scaur, and saw the daylight breaking clear from the shadow of the
over-reaching boughs, Rolls stood still for a moment with consternation.
Broken branches, leaves strewn about, the print of the horse's hoofs all
round the open space as if he had been rearing wildly, showed marks of a
recent struggle,--he thought of his master, and his heart sank. But it
was some time before his fears went any further. Where had the other
party to the struggle gone? Just then he thought he heard a sound,
something like a moan in the depths below. A terrible fear seized the
old man. He rushed to the edge of the cliff, and gazed over with
distracted looks. And then he gave utterance to a cry that rang through
the woods: "Wha's that lying doun there?" he cried. Something lay in a
mass at the bottom of the high bank, red and rough, which descended to
the water's edge--something, he could scarcely tell what, all heaped
together and motionless. Rolls had opened his mouth to shout for help
with the natural impulse of his horror and alarm, but another thought
struck him at the moment, and kept him silent. Was it his master's
doing? With a gasp of misery, he felt that it must be so; and kneeling
down distracted on the edge of the Scaur, catching at the roots of the
trees to support himself, he craned over to see what it was, who it was,
and whether he could do anything for the sufferer, short of calling all
the world to witness this terrible sight. But the one explanation Rolls
gave seemed to thrill the woods. He felt a hand touch him as he bent
over the edge, and nearly lost his precarious footing in his terror.
"Is't you, sir, come to look at your handiwork?" he said, solemnly
turning upon the person whom he supposed to be his master. But it was
not his master. It was Lord Rintoul, as pale as death, and trembling.
"What--what is it?" he asked, scarcely able to articulate, pointing
vaguely below, but averting his eyes as from a sight he dared not look
at. Divided between the desire of getting help and of sparing his
master, Rolls drew back from the Scaur and returned to his habitual
caution. "I canna tell you what it is, my lord," he said; "it's somebody
that has fallen over the Scaur, for all that I can see. But how that
came about is mair than I can tell. We maun rouse the place," said the
old man, "and get help--if help will do any good."
"Help will do no good now," cried Rintoul in his excitement. "Nobody
could fall from that height and live. Does he move?--look--or the
horse?" His tongue, too, was parched, and clung to the roof of his
mouth.
"The horse! then your lordship kens wha it is? Lord in heaven preserve
us! no' Tinto himsel'?"
Rintoul's dry lips formed words two or three times before they were
audible. "No one--no one but he--ever rides here."
And then the two stood for a horrible moment and looked at each other.
Rintoul was entirely unmanned. He seemed to quiver from head to foot;
his hat was off, his countenance without a tinge of colour. "I have
never," he said, "seen--such an accident before----"
"Did ye see it?" Rolls cried anxiously; and then the young man faltered
and hesitated.
"Heard it. I--meant to say--I heard the horse rearing--and then the
fall----"
He looked intently at the old man with his haggard eyes as if to
ask--what? Poor old Rolls was trembling too. He thought only of his
young master--so kind, so blameless,--was his life to be thus
associated with crime?
"We must go and get help, my lord," said Rolls, with a heavy sigh.
"However it happened, that must be our duty. No doubt ye'll have to give
a true account of all ye've seen and all ye've heard. But in the
meantime we must cry for help, let them suffer that may."
* * * * *
While this scene was proceeding so near her, Carry, upon the other side
of the great house, had retired to her room in the weariness that
followed her effort to look cheerful and do the honours of her table.
She had made that effort very bravely, and though it did not even
conceal from Millefleurs the position of affairs, still less deceive her
own family, yet at least it kept up the appearance of decorum necessary,
and made it easier for the guests to go through their part. The meal,
indeed, was cheerful enough; it was far too magnificent, Torrance having
insisted, in spite of his wife's better taste, on heaping "all the
luxuries of the season" upon the table at which a duke's son was to sit.
The absence of the host was a relief to all parties; but still it
required an effort on the side of Carry to overcome the effect of the
empty chair in front of her, which gave a sense of incongruity to all
the grandeur. And this effort cost her a great deal. She had gone into
her room to rest, and lay on a sofa very quiet in the stillness of
exhaustion, not doing anything, not saying anything, looking wistfully
at the blue sky that was visible through the window, with the soft
foliage of some birch-trees waving lightly over it--and trying not to
think. Indeed, she was so weary that it was scarcely necessary to try.
And what was there to think about? Nothing could be done to deliver
her--nothing that she was aware of even to mend her position. She was
grateful to God that she was to be spared the still greater misery of
seeing Beaufort, but that was all. Even heaven itself seemed to have no
help for Carry. If she could have been made by some force of unknown
agency to love her husband, she would still have been an unhappy wife;
but it is to be feared, poor soul, that things had come to this pass
with her, that she did not even wish to love her husband, and felt it
less degrading to live with him under compulsion, than to be brought
down to the level of his coarser nature, and take pleasure in the chains
she wore. Her heart revolted at him more and more. In such a terrible
case, what help was there for her in earth or heaven? Even had he been
reformed--had he been made a better man--Carry would not have loved him:
she shrank from the very suggestion that she might some time do so.
There was no help for her; her position could not be bettered anyhow.
She knew this so well, that all struggle, except the involuntary
struggle in her mind, which never could intermit, against many of the
odious details of the life she had to lead, had died out of her. She had
given in to the utter hopelessness of her situation. Despair is
sometimes an opiate, as it is sometimes a frantic and maddening poison.
There was nothing to be done for her,--no use in wearying Heaven with
prayers, as some of us do. Nothing could make her better. She had given
in utterly, body and soul, and this was all that was to be said. She lay
there in this stillness of despair, feeling more crushed and helpless
than usual after the emotions of the morning, but not otherwise
disturbed,--lying like a man who has been shattered by an accident, but
lulled by some anodyne draught--still, and almost motionless, letting
every sensation be hushed so long as nature would permit, her hands
folded, her very soul hushed and still. She took no note of time in the
exhaustion of her being. She knew that when her husband returned she
would be sent for, and would have to re-enter the other world of eternal
strife and pain; but here she was retired, as in her chapel, in
herself--the sole effectual refuge which she had left.
The house was very well organised, very silent and orderly in general,
so that it surprised Lady Caroline a little, in the depth of her quiet,
to hear a distant noise as of many voices, distinct, though not loud--a
confusion and far-away Babel of outcries and exclamations. Nothing could
be more unusual; but she felt no immediate alarm, thinking that the
absence of her husband and her own withdrawal had probably permitted a
little outbreak of gaiety or gossip down-stairs, with which she did not
wish to interfere. She lay still accordingly, listening vaguely, without
taking much interest in the matter. Certainly something out of the way
must have happened. The sounds had sprung up all at once--a hum of many
excited voices, with sharp cries as of dismay and wailing breaking in.
At last her attention was attracted. "There has been some accident," she
said to herself, sitting upright upon her sofa. As she did this she
heard steps approaching her door. They came with a rush, hurrying along,
the feet of at least two women, with a heavier step behind them: then
paused suddenly, and there ensued a whispering and consultation close to
her door. Carry was a mother, and her first thought was of her children.
"They are afraid to tell me," was the thought that passed through her
mind. She rose and rushed to the door, throwing it open. "What is it?
Something has happened," she said,--"something you are afraid to tell
me. Oh, speak, speak!--the children----"
"My leddy, it's none of the children. The children are as well as could
be wished, poor dears," said her own maid, who had been suddenly
revealed, standing very close to the door. The woman, her cheeks blazing
with some sudden shock, eager to speak, yet terrified, stopped short
there with a gasp. The housekeeper, who was behind her, pushed her a
little forward, supporting her with a hand on her waist, whispering
confused but audible exhortations. "Oh, take heart--oh, take heart. She
must be told. The Lord will give you strength," this woman said. The
butler stood solemnly behind, with a very anxious, serious countenance.
To Carry all this scene became confused by wild anxiety and terror.
"What is it?" she said; "my mother? some one at home?" She stretched out
her hands vaguely towards the messengers of evil, feeling like a victim
at the block, upon whose neck the executioner's knife is about to fall.
"Oh, my leddy! far worse! far worse!" the woman cried.
Carry, in the dreadful whirl of her feelings, still paused bewildered,
to ask herself what could be worse? And then there came upon her a
moment of blindness, when she saw nothing, and the walls and the roof
seemed to burst asunder, and whirl and whirl. She dropped upon her knees
in this awful blank and blackness unawares, and then the haze dispelled,
and she saw, coming out of the mist, a circle of horror-stricken pale
faces, forming a sort of ring round her. She could do nothing but gasp
out her husband's name--"Mr Torrance?" with quivering lips.
"Oh, my lady! my lady! To see her on her knees, and us bringin' her such
awfu' news! But the Lord will comfort ye," cried the housekeeper,
forgetting the veneration due to her mistress, and raising her in her
arms. The two women supported her into her room, and she sat down again
upon the sofa where she had been sitting--sitting, was it a year
ago?--in the quiet, thinking that no change would ever come to
her,--that nothing, nothing could alter her condition--that all was over
and finished for her life.
And it is to be supposed that they told poor Carry exactly the truth.
She never knew. When she begged them to leave her alone till her mother
came, whom they had sent for, she had no distinct knowledge of how it
was, or what had happened; but she knew _that_ had happened. She fell
upon her knees before her bed, and buried her head in her hands,
shutting out the light. Then she seized hold of herself with both her
hands to keep herself (as she felt) from floating away upon that flood
of new life which came swelling up all in a moment, swelling into every
vein--filling high the fountain of existence which had been so feeble
and so low. Oh, shut out--shut out the light, that nobody might see!
close the doors and the shutters in the house of death, and every
cranny, that no human eye might descry it! After a while she dropped
lower, from the bed which supported her to the floor, prostrating
herself with more than oriental humbleness. Her heart beat wildly, and
in her brain there seemed to wake a hundred questions clanging like
bells in her ears, filling the silence with sound. Her whole being, that
had been crushed, sprang up like a flower from under a passing foot. Was
it possible?--was it possible? She pulled herself down, tried by
throwing herself upon her face on the carpet, prostrating herself, body
and soul, to struggle against that secret voiceless mad exultation that
came upon her against her will. Was he dead?--was he dead? struck down
in the middle of his days, that man of iron? Oh, the pity of it!--oh,
the horror of it! She tried to force herself to feel this--to keep down,
down, that climbing joy in her. God in heaven, was it possible? she who
thought nothing could happen to her more.