“Yon! What was death? I don’t understand you,” John cried, in wonder and alarm. “Quick, quick! tell me what you mean.”
“It’s but ower easy to tell;—yon was death. He’s never stirred. Horse and man one heap, and no’ a breath or a tremble in it. It’s easy—easy to tell.”
“Good God! Rolls, what do you mean? Not—not the Scaur—not—”
“That’s what I mean,” Rolls replied almost sternly. “A bonnie morning’s work. Just Tinto, poor fellow, with all his faults, and, maybe, the drink in him that made it easy. Dead—dead.”
There was a sort of guttural sob in the old man’s voice. His heart was wrung, not for Tinto, but with a deeper and closer horror. But John neither thought nor understood this. He fell back a step and leaned against the wall in horror and bewilderment. “Good God!” he repeated with pale lips, with that instinctive appeal which we make without knowing it in the face of every mystery. Under any circumstances, the suddenness and terribleness of the event would have appalled him; but now, at this moment, with Beaufort under his roof!—he could only gasp for breath—he could not speak. And he was not aware how eagerly Rolls was noticing every look and gesture, and how his agitation struck the old servant to the heart. He asked a few further questions in profound horror and dismay, then went back to his friend with a ghastly countenance, shaken to the bottom of his heart. The very consciousness that behind this sudden and terrible death stood life, added to the effect. He went back to tell Beaufort of it. That was indeed his first intention, but second thoughts presented to him the embarrassing nature of such a communication at the very moment of his friend’s arrival. Beaufort did not notice—being occupied with his supper—the pallor and agitation which had produced so great an effect upon old Rolls. But after a while, as John said nothing, he turned half round and said, “I hope nothing serious has happened to the mare—”
“The mare—Oh yes, it was something very serious—not to be made a jest of. A fatal accident has happened—to one of my neighbours. It is appalling in any case to hear of anything so sudden; but what makes it worse is, that I spent some part of today in his company. It is not above four or five hours since I parted with him. We had even a little altercation,” said John, with a slight shudder. “There’s a bitter lesson for you! To quarrel with a man without a thought of any harm, and a little while after to hear that he is dead, with an unkind thought of you in his heart, and you with hard thoughts of him!”
Beaufort answered gravely and sympathetically as became such an announcement. “Was he a man you liked? Was he a friend?”
“No: neither a friend nor a man I liked, but young and strong; such a frame of a man!—worth you and me put together; and to think that in a moment—”
“How did it happen?” Beaufort asked.
“I scarcely asked. He must have fallen, he and his horse, down a precipice—the Scaur—a place he had often been cautioned against, I believe. Good heavens! to think of it! I thought he must have gone over as we spoke.”
And John got up and walked about the room in his excitement. This interrupted altogether the lively flow of conversation with which they had begun the evening. There were one or two attempts made to resume it. But Erskine relapsed in a few moments either into exclamations of dismay, or into restless and uncomfortable silence of thought. The fact was, not only that Torrance’s sudden death had startled his imagination and awoke some compunctions in his mind, as in that of Lady Lindores, but that it opened to him a whole confusing sea of speculations and possibilities. It was extraordinary that on the very day which should see this happen, Beaufort had arrived. And what would Lady Caroline now say—she who, with such self-betraying emotion, had entreated John to keep his friend away? What might happen now were they to meet? John shrank from the suggestion as from an impiety, and yet it would come back. It was evident to Beaufort that his friend was out of sorts and profoundly agitated. He withdrew early to his room, pleading that he was tired, to leave John to himself. It did not concern him (Beaufort) to be sure, but it must, he felt, touch Erskine more than he was willing to show. And it was a relief to John to be alone. His mind, left to itself, pursued the question, not so much of the dead as of the living. He did not call back Rolls to question him on the accident as he had intended to do; for it was Carry he thought of, not poor Torrance, after the first moment. What would Carry do? What would she think when she found, in the first moment of her freedom, Beaufort so near? The idea overwhelmed him. There seemed a certain indelicacy and precipitancy in the thought. He had risen in his restlessness and opened the window, as he had been in the habit of doing, to breathe the freshness of the night air, when Rolls came in, pale, and with a harassed stealthy look. He came up to his master, and seeing that he was not observed, touched him on the arm. “If you are going out, sir, to take a walk—or that,” he said, with quivering lips, “I’ve brought you a coat and some haps—”
John looked at him with surprise. The old man was grey and ghastly; his lip quivered. He had a dark coat carefully folded over his arm, several comforters and a plaid. There was a tremor in his whole figure, and his eyes had a wild look
