The Ladies Lindores. Volume 3 of 3. Oliphant Margaret
is nothing to prevent bail being accepted?" he said, with an eagerness he could not disguise.
"I will see about it," Mr Monypenny said. But the good agent went away with a dissatisfied countenance; and with a feeling that he must break through the walls or the barred window, must make his escape somehow – could not, would not, endure this extraordinary intolerable new thing – John Erskine heard the key turn in his door, and was left shut up with the paraffin-lamp, flaming and smelling more than ever, a prisoner and alone. Whether it was more ludicrous or more terrible, this annoying impossible farce-tragedy, it was hard to say.
CHAPTER XXXVI
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