"You may well be tired of us; a house of mourning," said Lord Lindores, with a smile of benevolent meaning. "It was not for this you came into those wilds."
"They are far from being wilds: I have enjoyed myself very much," said little Millefleurs. "All has been new; and to see a new country, don't you know, is always the height of my ambition. But such a thing might happen as that I wasn't wanted. When a lady means to have anything to say to a fellow, I have always heard she lets him know. To say nothing is, perhaps, as good a way of saying no as any. It may be supposed to save a man's feelings – "
"Am I to understand that you have spoken to my daughter, Millefleurs?"
"I have never had the chance, Lord Lindores. On the very evening, you will remember, when I hoped to have an explanation, this unfortunate accident happened. I am very sorry for the gentleman whom, in the best of circumstances, I can never now hope to call my brother-in-law; but the position is perhaps a little awkward. Lady Edith is acquainted with my aspirations, but I – know nothing; don't you know?" said the little Marquis. He had his hand upon his plump bosom, and raised himself a little on one foot as he spoke. "It makes a fellow feel rather small – and, in my case, that isn't wanted," he added, cheerfully. Nothing less like a despairing lover could be imagined; but though he resembled a robin-redbreast, he was a man quite conscious of the dignities of his position, and not to be played with. A cold chill of alarm came over Lord Lindores.
"Edith will return to-morrow, or next day," he said; "or if you choose to go to Tinto, her mother regards you so much as a friend and favourite, that she will receive you gladly, I am sure. Go, then – "
"No," said Millefleurs, shaking his head, "no, that would be too strong. I never saw the poor fellow but once or twice, and the last time I had the misfortune to disagree with him; no – I can't convey myself to his house to learn if I'm to be taken or not. It is a droll sort of experience. I feel rather like a bale of goods, don't you know, on approval," he said with a laugh. He took it with great good-humour; but it was possible that even Millefleurs's good-humour might be exhausted.
"I undertake for it that you shall not have to wait much longer," said Lord Lindores.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Rintoul had bad nights, and could not sleep. He had been in such constant movement that day that he was fatigued, and had hoped for rest; but after tossing on his uneasy bed, he got up again, as for several nights past he had been in the habit of doing, and began to pace up and down his room. The house was all buried in repose and silence – the woods rustling round, the river flowing, the silence outside tingling with the never altogether hushed movements of nature; but indoors nothing stirring – all dark; nothing but the heavy breath of sleep within the thick old walls. The fire was dying out on the hearth; the candles, which he lighted hastily, did not half light the room, but rather cleared a little spot in the darkness, and left all else in gloom. A nervous tremor was upon the young man, – he to whom nerves had been all folly, who had scoffed at them as affectation or weakness; but he had no longer that command of himself of which he had once been proud. His mind strayed involuntarily into thoughts which he would fain have shut out. They dwelt upon one subject and one scene, which he had shut his mind to a hundred times, only to feel it the next moment once more absorbing every faculty. His shadow upon the window paced up and down, up and down. He could not keep quiet. He did not care to have the door of his room behind him, but kept it in sight as if he feared being taken at a disadvantage. What did he fear? he could not tell. Imagination had seized hold upon him – he who had never known what imagination was. He could not rest for it. The quiet was full of noises. He heard the furniture creaking, as it does at night, the walls giving out strange echoes; and never having kept any vigil before, thought that these strange voices of the night had to do with himself, and in his soul trembled as if he had been surrounded by enemies or spies searching his inmost thoughts.
Thus he walked up and down the room, keeping his face to the door. Did he expect any one, anything to come in? No, no; nothing of the kind. But it is certain that sometimes along the long passage he heard sounds as of a horse's hoofs. He knew it was nonsense. It was the sound of the river, to which he was perfectly accustomed; but yet it sounded somehow like a horse's hoofs. He never would have been surprised at any moment to see the door pushed open and something come in. He knew it was ridiculous, but still he could not help the feeling. And the silence of the house was a pain to him beyond telling. One of these nights one of the servants had been ill, and Rintoul was glad. The sense that some one was waking, moving about, was a relief. It seemed somehow to give him a sort of security, – to deliver him from himself. But while he thus felt the advantage of waking humanity near him, he was thankful beyond description that the society of the house was diminished – that his mother and Edith were away. He knew that they must have found him out – if not what was in his mind, at least that there was something on his mind. During the last twenty-four hours particularly they would have been worse spies than the trees and the winds. How could he have kept himself to himself in their presence, especially as they would have besieged him with questions, with incitements to do something. They would have assumed that they knew all about it in their ignorance. They! They were always assuming that they knew. There was a fierce momentary satisfaction in Rintoul's mind to think how completely out they would be, how incapable of understanding the real state of the case. They thought they knew everything! But he felt that there was a possibility that he might have betrayed himself in the very pleasure he would have had in showing them that they knew nothing. And it was better, far better, that they should be out of the way.
He did not, however, yield to this fever of the mind without doing what he could manfully to subdue it. He made a great effort now to fix his mind upon what his father had said to him – but the names of Millefleurs and Lady Reseda only swept confusedly through his brain like straws upon the surface of the stream. Sometimes he found himself repeating one of them vaguely, like a sort of idiotical chorus, while the real current of his thoughts ran on. Lady Reseda, Lady Reseda: what had she to do with it? – or Millefleurs, Millefleurs! – they were straws upon the surface, showing how rapidly the torrent ran, not anything he could catch hold of. There was one name, however, round which that dark current of his thoughts eddied and swirled as in a whirlpool – the name of John Erskine. There could not be any doubt that he had something to do with it. He had thrust himself into a matter that did not concern him, and he was paid for his folly. It was not his place to stand up for Carry, to resent her husband's rudeness – what had he to do with it? He was an intrusive, officious fool, thrusting himself into other people's business. If he brought himself into trouble by it, was that Rintoul's fault? Was he bound to lay himself open to a great deal of annoyance and embarrassment in order to save John Erskine from the consequences of his own folly? This was the question that would not let him rest. Nothing Rintoul had been a party to had compromised John Erskine. It was all his own doing. Why did he, for his pleasure, take the Scaur road at all? Why did he stop and quarrel, seeing the other was excited? Why rush down in that silly way with his coat torn to make an exhibition of himself? All these things were folly, – folly beyond extenuation. He ought to have known better; and whatever followed, was it not his own fault?
Along with this, however, there were other thoughts that flashed at Rintoul, and would not let him carry on steadily to the conclusion he desired. There are some things that are permissible and some that are not permissible. A gentleman need not betray himself: it is not indispensable that he should take the world into his confidence, if any accident happens to him, and he gets himself into trouble; but he must not let another get into trouble for him, – that comes into the category of the "anything disgraceful" which Lord Lindores was assured his son had never been guilty of. No! he had never done anything disgraceful. How was he to escape it now? And then, looking back upon all the circumstances, Rintoul sadly perceived what a fool he had been not to put everything on a straightforward footing at once. He reflected that he could have given almost any account of the occurrence he pleased. There was nobody to contradict him: and all would have been over without complication, without any addition from the popular fancy. It seemed to him now, reflecting upon everything, all the details that had filled him with an unreflecting panic then, that nothing could have been easier than to explain the whole matter. But he had lost that good moment, and if he made the confession now, every false conception which he had feared would be realised. People would say, If this was all, why make any mystery about it? Why expose another to disgrace and suffering? Rintoul had not intelligence enough, though he had always plumed himself on his common-sense, to thread his way among those conflicting reasonings. He grew sick as the harpies of recollection and thought rushed upon him from all quarters. He had no power to stand against them, – to silence her who cried, "Why did you not do this?" – while he held at bay the other who swooped down upon him, screaming, "How could you do that?" When it grew more than he could bear he retreated to his bed, and flung himself exhausted upon it, throwing out his arms with the unconscious histrionic instinct of excitement, appealing to he knew not what. How could he do this thing? How could he leave it undone? Rintoul in his despair got up again and found an opiate which had been given him when he had toothache, long ago, in days when toothache was the worst torture he knew. He swallowed it, scarcely taking the trouble to mark how much he was taking, though the moment after he took a panic, and got up and examined the bottle to assure himself that all was right. It was nearly daybreak by the time that this dose sent him to sleep, – and he scarcely knew he had been asleep, so harassing were his dreams, till he came to himself at last, to find that it was eleven o'clock in a dull forenoon, his shutters all open, and the dim light pouring in. The horrors of waking when the mind is possessed by great misery is a well-worn subject, – everybody knows what it is to have Care seated by his bedside, ready to pounce upon him when he opens his eyes; but Rintoul had scarcely escaped from that dark companion. She had been with him in his dreams: he felt her grip him now, with no surprise, if with a redoublement of pain.
It was nearly mid-day when he got down-stairs, and he found nobody. His father was out. Millefleurs was out. His breakfast was arranged upon a little table near the fire, his letters laid ready, the county newspaper – a little innocent broadsheet – by his plate. But he could not take advantage of any of these luxuries; he swept his letters into his pocket, flung the paper from him, then reflected that there might be something in it, and picked it up again with trembling hands. There was something in it. There was an account of the private examination before the sheriff of Mr John Erskine of Dalrulzian on suspicion of being concerned in the death of the late lamented Mr Torrance of Tinto. "From circumstances which transpired," the sheriff, the newspaper regretted to say, had thought it right to relegate Mr Erskine to Dunnottar jail, there to await the result of a more formal inquiry, to be held on the 25th at Dunearn. "We have little fear that a gentleman so respected will easily be able to clear himself," it was added; and "a tribute of respect to the late Patrick Torrance, – a name which, for genial bonhomie and sterling qualities, will long be remembered in this county," wound up the paragraph. The greater portion of its readers, already acquainted with the news by report, read it with exclamations of concern, or cynical rustic doubt whether John Erskine was so much respected, or Pat Torrance as sure of a place in the county's memory, as the 'Dunearn Sentinel' said; but all Rintoul's blood seemed to rush to his head and roar like a torrent in his ears as he read the paragraph. He could hear nothing but that rushing of excitement and the bewildered half-maddened thoughts which seemed to accompany it. What was he to do? What was he to do?
There was a little interval, during which Rintoul literally did not know what he was doing. His mind was not prepared for such an emergency. He tossed about like a cork upon the boiling stream of his own thoughts – helpless, bewildered, driven hither and thither. He only came to himself when he felt the damp air in his face, and found himself setting out on foot on the road to Dunearn: the irregular lines of the housetops in front of him, the tall tower of the Town House pointing up to the dull skies, standing out from the rest of the buildings like a landmark to indicate what route he was to take. When he caught sight of that he came violently to himself, and began at once to recover some conscious control over his actions. The operations of his mind became clear to him; his panic subsided. After all, who could harm John Erskine? He had been very foolish; he had exposed himself to suspicion; but no doubt a gentleman so respected would be able to clear himself – a gentleman so respected. Rintoul repeated the words to himself, as he had repeated the names of Millefleurs and Lady Reseda the night before. And what would it matter to John Erskine to put off till the 25th his emancipation and the full recognition of his innocence? If he had a bad cold, it would have the same result – confinement to the house, perhaps to his room. What was that? Nothing: a trifling inconvenience, that any man might be subject to. And there could be no doubt that a gentleman so respected – There would be evidence that would clear him: it was not possible that any proof could be produced of a thing that never happened; and the whole county, if need be, would bear witness to John Erskine's character – that he was not quarrelsome or a brawler; that there was no motive for any quarrel between him and —
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.