"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——