“Oh ay,” said Bauby, smiling broadly over all her beaming face, “he’s just my brother—a’body kens that—and a real good brother Tammas has aye been to me.”
John was at his wits’ end. He began the story a dozen times over, and softened and broke it up into easy words, as if he had been speaking to a child. At last it gradually dawned upon Bauby, not as a fact, but as something he wanted to persuade her of. It was a shock, but she bore it nobly. “You are meaning to tell me, sir, that it was Tammas—our Tammas—that killed Pat Torrance, yon muckle man? Na—it’s just your joke, sir. Gentlemen will have their jokes.”
“My joke!” cried John in horror; “do you think it is anything to joke about? I cannot understand it any more than you can. But it is fact;—it is himself that says so. He got hold of the bridle—”
“Na, Mr. John; na, na, sir. What is the good of frightening a poor lone woman? The like of that could never happen. Na, na.”
“But it is he himself who has said it; no one else could have imagined it for a moment. It is his own story—”
“And if it is,” said Bauby—“mind ye, Mr. John, I ken nothing about it; but I ken our Tammas—if it is, he’s just said it to save—ithers: that’s the way of it. I ken him and his ways—”
“To save—others?” The suggestion bewildered John.
“Oh ay—it’s just that,” said Bauby again. She dried her eyes carefully with her apron, pressing a tear into each corner. “Him pit forth his hand upon a gentleman, and a muckle man like Pat Torrance, and a muckle beast! Na, na, Mr. John! But he might think, maybe, that a person like him, no’ of consequence—though he’s of awfu’ consequence to me,” said Bauby, almost falling back into tears. She made an effort, however, and recovered her smile. “It’s just a thing I can very weel understand.”
“I think you must be out of your mind,” cried her master. “Such things are not done in our day. What! play with the law, and take upon him another man’s burden? Besides,” said John, impatiently, “for whom? In whom could he be so much interested as to play such a daring game?”
“Oh ay, sir, that’s just the question,” Bauby said composedly. From time to time she put up her apron. The shock she had received was comprehensible, but not the consolation. To follow her in this was beyond her master’s power.
“That is the question indeed,” John said gravely. “I think you must be mistaken. It is very much simpler to suppose what was the case—that he gripped at the brute’s bridle to save himself from being ridden down. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that I did not do it myself.”
“I’m thinking sae, sir,” said Bauby, drily; and then she relapsed for a moment to the darker view of the situation, and rubbed her eyes with her apron. “What will they do with him?—is there much they can do with him?” she said.
She listened to John’s explanations with composure, broken by sudden relapses into emotion; but, on the whole, she was a great deal more calm than John had expected. Her aspect confounded her master: and when at last she made him another curtsey, and folding her plump arms, with her apron over them, announced that “I maun go and see after my denner,” his bewilderment reached its climax. She came back, however, after she had reached the door, and stood before him for a moment with, if that was possible to Bauby, a certain defiance. “You’ll no’ be taking on another man,” she said, with a half-threatening smile but a slight quiver of her lip, “the time that yon poor lad’s away?”
This encounter was scarcely over when he had another claim made upon him by Beaufort, who suddenly rushed in, breathless and effusive, catching him by both hands and pouring forth congratulations. It was only then that it occurred to John as strange that Beaufort had not appeared at Dunearn, or taken any apparent interest in his fate; but the profuse explanations and excuses of his friend had the usual effect in directing his mind towards this dereliction from evident duty. Beaufort overflowed in confused apologies. “I did go to Dunearn, but I was too late; and I did not like to follow you to your aunt’s, whom I don’t know; and then—and then—The fact is, I had an engagement,” was the end of the whole; and as he said this, a curious change and movement came over Beaufort’s face.
“An engagement! I did not think you knew anybody.”
“No—nor do I, except those I have known for years.”
“The Lindores?” John said hastily—“they were all at Dunearn.”
“The fact is—” Here Beaufort paused and walked to the fire, which was low, and poked it vigorously. He had nearly succeeded in making an end of it altogether before he resumed. “The fact is,”—with his back to John—“I thought it only proper—to call—and make inquiries.” He cleared his throat, then said hurriedly, “In short, Erskine, I have been to Tinto.” There was a tremulous sound in his voice which went to John’s heart. Who was he that he should blame his brother? A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.
“Déjà!” was all that John said.
“Déjà—yes; perhaps I ought to have waited. But when you reflect how long—how long it is: and all that has happened, and what we both have suffered—”
“Do you mean that you have gone over all that already?” John asked, amazed. But Beaufort made him no reply. The fumes of that meeting were still in his head, and all that he had said and all that had been said to him. The master of the house was scarcely out of it, so to speak; his shadow was still upon the great room, the staircases, and passages; but Carry
