The Laird returned into the room with Roderick, and it was well that he did so. But for his sturdy arm the young man would have fallen; and, as it was, he dropped breathless and trembling into the nearest chair. Weakened by his illness, the agitation had nearly overcome him, and, but for the salutary presence of the Laird, might have found some hysterical mode of relief. As it was, the pain in his side had returned with renewed violence, he gasped for breath, and, with the Laird's assistance, had to throw himself on his bed.
He, who believed he had been striving after so lofty an ideal, who had been leading, and as he fondly hoped with some success, the majority of his flock towards the same high standard, to be thus cast down! What must his walk and conversation really have been, notwithstanding his approving conscience, that he should so lightly have been suspected of such abominable hypocrisy and vulgar debauchery? He groaned as he thought of it; his temples burned, and, despite the presence of a stranger, the tears at last oozed abundantly through the fingers which he had pressed against his eyes.
The Laird flourished his large silk handkerchief, bepatterned over in yellow and crimson like a small carpet. He coughed, he blew his nose like a trumpet, and then he crumpled up the handkerchief and mopped his eyelids in a very suspicious way. 'Hoots! Mr. Roderick!' he said, while he laid his enormous paw as tenderly on the young man's forehead as Mary might have done. 'Never mind, man! A set of born idiots! But you answered them well, lad, and nobody with any sense that knows you will care a snap o' the thumb for all their havers. Keep up your heart, man! There's nobody whose good opinion is worth the having will think a bit the worse of you. Just leave them alone, and if their whole case does na fall to pieces like a girdless tub, my name's no James Sangster! A set o' senseless pridefu' bodies! that dinna ken which end o' them's uppermost for pure conceit!'
Mary came in presently, and behind her was Captain Kenneth. He had ridden over to enquire for his old friend Roderick (that was how he worded it), and arrived just after the 'deputation' had been admitted to the study. Mary received him, and led him for the present 'ben the house,' where Eppie, and the baby, and herself were holding a little conclave of their own. The conference in the adjoining room naturally furnished a subject of conversation. Mary was indignant and bitter, but not very precise; and Kenneth imagined that Roderick had become unhinged in his theology, and was being set up as a mark to sling at by all the orthodox in the parish, and expressed himself more freely than reverently on polemical hair-splitting, even girding somewhat at the Headship, the pet doctrine of the Free Church, but here Eppie's patience broke down.
'It's naething o' the kind, sir!' she cried; 'Mister Brown's as sound as a bell on a' p'ints o' doctrine, an' nane has ever ventured to say the contrar. It's a daftlike story o' ill livin' 'at they're wantin' to pruive on him, an' they canna do 't, an' sae they hae come here til himsel', to gar him confess an' save mair fash. I hae heard my granny tellin' the gate they gaed to wark wi' the wutches lang syne, hoo they garred them confess whether they wad or no, an' I'm thinkin' gin they daured, they'd be for tryin' sic like on him. Drobbin' him wi' prins, an' what no. But it's a terrible daftlike haver, an I'm thinkin', sir, ye'll hae heard tell o't afore noo.'
Captain Drysdale had not heard of it, but Eppie very speedily made him acquainted with the whole story, while Mary and the baby were out looking at his horse tethered to a post hard by.
Kenneth's entrance brought composure alike to Roderick and the Laird, both from necessitating more self-control, and also from the satisfaction of seeing that not quite all the world had turned their backs on him. Roderick could not speak above a whisper, but the Laird gave a very full account of the late visitation.
'There is one point, Captain Drysdale,' he added after a lengthy narrative, 'on which you may be able to throw light. One of the points they made against him was that this story of his exploits had originally come from Inchbracken.'
'I cannot imagine how that could be. Ah!' he added after a pause, 'it must be one of my uncle's heavy jokes! I do remember, now I think of it, his telling us how he had met Roderick carrying home a baby, and the clumsy joke he made over it. You know my uncle is a very good fellow, but he can scarcely be called a wit, though he would vastly like to be thought one, and when by any chance he has struck out some little smartness he will repeat it till every one for ten miles round has heard it. I remember it perfectly now, and Tibbie Tirpie's name got into the conversation about that same time somehow, and so the servants combined the two. Oh, Rod! He will be so awfully sorry. But this poor little baby who has been the innocent cause of all the annoyance. Such a pretty little thing it is too! How did you come by it?'
Roderick was lying on the bed, calmer now, and soothed by the friendly sympathy of his two friends, but his voice was weak and the pain in his side made speaking irksome. He looked to Mary, and she repeated to Kenneth the story of the shipwreck and the finding of the baby.