“That is all very well on our side, but on the other—I tell you, I will permit no trifling, Edith. He has a right to a favourable answer, and he must have it—”
“Never, never! if I have been wrong, I will ask his pardon—”
“You will accept him in the first place,” said Lord Lindores, sternly.
“I will never accept him,” Edith said.
Her father, wound up to that pitch of excitement at which a man is no longer master of what he says, took a few steps about the room. “Your sister said the same,” he cried, with a short laugh, “and you know what came of that.”
It was an admission he had never intended to make—for he did not always feel proud of his handiwork—but it was done now, and could not be recalled. Edith withdrew even from the mantelpiece on which she had leant. She clasped her hands together, supporting herself. “I am not Carry,” she said, in a low tone, facing him resolutely as he turned back in some alarm at what he had been betrayed into saying. He had become excited, and she calm. He almost threatened her with his hand in the heat of the moment.
“You will obey your parents,” he cried.
“No, papa,” she said.
He remembered so well, too well, what Carry had done in the same circumstances—she had wept and pleaded. When he demanded obedience from her she had not dared to stand against him. He recollected (too well for his own comfort sometimes) every one of those scenes which brought her to submission. But Edith did not weep, and was not shaken by that final appeal. She was very pale, and looked unusually slight and young and childlike standing there with her hands clasped, her steadfast eyes raised, her little mouth close—so slight a thing, not stately like Carry. He was confounded by a resistance which he had not foreseen, which he could not have believed in, and stood staring at her, not knowing what next to say and do. Matters were at this point when all at once there arose a something outside the room, which not even the solid closed doors and heavy curtains could keep out—not positive noise or tumult, but something indescribable—a sensation as of some unknown dread event. Ordinarily all was still in the well-ordered house, and my lord’s tranquillity as completely assured as if he had been Prime Minister. But this was something that was beyond decorum. Then the door was hastily opened, and Rintoul ghastly, his face grey rather than pale, his hair hanging wildly on his forehead, came into the room.
XXVIII
This extraordinary interruption put a stop at once to the struggle between the father and daughter. They both came to a sudden pause, not only in their conversation, but in their thoughts, which were suspended instantly by the breaking in of something more urgent. “What is it? What has happened?” they both cried in a breath; and Edith, after a moment, added, “Carry—there is something wrong with Carry,” scarcely aware what she said.
Rintoul came to the table on which stood a crystal jug of water. He filled himself out a large glass and drank it. He was in a tremor which he attempted to conceal from them, though with no success. Then he said, “There is nothing the matter with Carry; but a dreadful accident has happened,”—and stopped, his mouth being parched, his very articulation difficult.
“What is it? what is it? The children?—”
Rintoul turned his face away from Edith and directed himself towards his father. He made a great effort over himself, as if what he had to say was almost beyond his powers. Then he said with a strange hoarseness of voice, “Torrance—has been killed.”
“Torrance!—killed! Good God! Rintoul.”
“It is so. Instantaneous, they say. He cannot have suffered much, thank God.”
Rintoul was not emotional or used to show very much feeling, but the lines of his face were drawn and his lips quivered as he spoke.
“Killed! But how did it happen? where? Was it accident, or—For heaven’s sake tell us all!” cried his father. Edith stood by struck dumb, yet with a host of sudden rising thoughts, or rather images, in her breast. It was to her sister that her mind suddenly reverted, with a perception of everything involved so clear and vivid that her very spirit was confused by the distinctness of her sight.
“Accident,” said Rintoul almost with a stammer, stumbling on the word. “He must have been riding home by the Greenlaws road, which was his favourite way. He and his horse were found at the foot of the Scaur. The brute must have reared and lost its footing. The ground was soft with the rain. That’s all that anyone knows.”
“And he is dead? Good God!”
A shiver came over Rintoul. Who would have thought he had so much feeling? and concerning Torrance, whom he had never been able to endure. “It’s dreadful,” he said in a low tone; “but it’s true. One moment never to be recalled, and that big fellow with all his strength—O Lord, it’s terrible to think of it. It has taken all the strength out of me.”
Edith hurried to him, trembling herself, to clasp his arm in hers and soothe her brother. She was almost too much excited and agitated to be aware that he repulsed her, though unconsciously, but this increased the general impression of pain and horror on her mind. There was so strong a thrill of agitation in him that he could not bear to be touched or even looked at. He put her away, and threw himself down into the nearest chair. A hundred questions were on the lips of both; but he looked as if he had said all that was possible—as if he had no power to add anything. Lord Lindores, after the first pause of horror, of course pursued his inquiries, and they gathered certain details as to the way of finding “the body,” and the manner
