Rolls disappeared on the evening of the day on which he had that long consultation with Mr Monypenny. He did not return to Dalrulzian that night. Marget, with many blushes and no small excitement, served the dinner, which Bauby might be said to have cooked with tears. If these salt drops were kept out of her sauces, she bedewed the white apron which she lifted constantly to her eyes. "Maister John in jyal! and oor Tammas gone after him; and what will I say to his mammaw?" Bauby cried. She seemed to fear that it might be supposed some want of care on her part which had led to this dreadful result. But even the sorrow of her soul did not interfere with her sense of what was due to her master's guest. Beaufort's dinner did not suffer, whatever else might. It was scrupulously cooked, and served with all the care of which Marget was capable; and when it was all over, and everything carefully put aside, the women sat down together in the kitchen, and had a good cry over the desolation of the house. The younger maids, perhaps, were not so deeply concerned on this point as Bauby, who was an old servant, and considered Dalrulzian as her home: but they were all more or less affected by the disgrace, as well as sorry for the young master, who had "nae pride," and always a pleasant word for his attendants in whatever capacity. Their minds were greatly affected, too, by the absence of Rolls. Not a man in the house but the stranger gentleman! It was a state of affairs which alarmed and depressed them, and proved, above all other signs, that a great catastrophe had happened. Beaufort sent for the housekeeper after dinner to give her such information as he thought necessary; and Bauby was supported to the door by her subordinates, imploring her all the way to keep up her heart. "You'll no' let on to the strange gentleman." "Ye'll keep up a good face, and no' let him see how sair cast down ye are," they said, one at either hand. There was a great deal of struggling outside the door, and some stifled sounds of weeping, before it was opened, and Bauby appeared, pushed in by some invisible agency behind her, which closed the door promptly as soon as she was within. She was not the important person Beaufort had expected to see; but as she stood there, with her large white apron thrown over her arm, and her comely countenance, like a sky after rain, lighted up with a very wan and uncertain smile, putting the best face she could upon it, Beaufort's sympathy overcame the inclination to laugh which he might have felt in other circumstances, at the sight of her sudden entrance and troubled clinging to the doorway. "Good evening," he said, "Mrs——" "They call me Bauby Rolls, at your service," said Bauby, with a curtsey, and a suppressed sob. "Mrs Rolls," said Beaufort, "your master may not come home for a few days; he asked me to tell you not to be anxious; that he hoped to be back soon; that there was nothing to be alarmed about." "Eh! and was he so kind as think upon me, and him in such trouble," cried Bauby, giving way to her emotions. "But I'm no alarmt; no, no, why should I be?" she added, in a trembling voice. "He will be hame, no doubt, in a day or twa, as ye say, sir, and glad, glad we'll a' be. It's not that we have any doubt—but oh! what will his mammaw say to me?" cried Bauby. After the tremulous momentary stand she had made, her tears flowed faster than ever. "There has no such thing happened among the Erskines since ever the name was kent in the country-side, and that's maist from the beginning, as it's written in Scripture." "It's all a mistake," cried Beaufort. "That it is—that it is," cried Bauby, drying her eyes. And then she added with another curtsey, "I hope you'll find everything to your satisfaction, sir, till the maister comes hame. Tammas—that's the butler, Tammas Rolls, my brother, sir, if ye please—is no' at hame to-night, and you wouldna like a lass aboot to valet ye; they're all young but me. But if you would put out your cloes to brush, or anything that wants doing, outside your door, it shall a' be weel attended to. I'm real sorry there's no' another man aboot the house: but a' that women can do we'll do, and with goodwill." "You are very kind, Mrs Rolls," said Beaufort. "I was not thinking of myself—you must not mind me. I shall get on very well. I am sorry to be a trouble to you at such a melancholy moment." "Na, na, sir, not melancholy," cried Bauby, with her eyes streaming; "sin' ye say, and a'body must allow, that it's just a mistake: we manna be put aboot by suchlike trifles. But nae doubt it will be livelier and mair pleesant for yoursel', sir, when Mr John and Tammas, they baith come hame. Would you be wanting anything more to-night?" "Na, I never let on," Bauby said, when she retired to the ready support of her handmaidens outside the door—"no' me; I keepit a stout heart, and I said to him, 'It's of nae consequence, sir,' I said,—'I'm nane cast down; it's just a mistake—everybody kens that; and that he was to put his things outside his door,' He got nothing that would go against the credit of the house out of me."
But in spite of this forlorn confidence in her powers of baffling suspicion, it was a wretched night that poor Bauby spent. John was satisfactorily accounted for, and it was known where he was; but who could say where Rolls might be? Bauby sat up half through the night alone in the great empty kitchen with the solemn-sounding clock and the cat purring loudly by the fire. She was as little used to the noises of the night as Lord Rintoul was, and in her agony of watching felt the perpetual shock and thrill of the unknown going through and through her. She heard steps coming up to the house a hundred times through the night, and stealing stealthily about the doors. "Is that you, Tammas?" she said again and again, peering out into the night: but nobody appeared. Nor did he appear next day, or the next. After her first panic, Bauby gave out that he was with his master—that she had never expected him—in order to secure him from remark. But in her own mind horrible doubts arose. He had always been the most irreproachable of men; but what if, in the shock of this catastrophe, even Tammas should have taken to ill ways? Drink—that was the natural suggestion. Who can fathom the inscrutable attractions it has, so that men yield to it who never could have been suspected of such a weakness? Most women of the lower classes have the conviction that no man can resist it. Heart-wrung for his master, shamed to his soul for the credit of the house, had Rolls, too, after successfully combating temptation for all his respectable life, yielded to the demon? Bauby trembled, but kept her terrors to herself. She said he might come back at any moment—he was with his maister. Where else was it likely at such a time that he should be?
But Rolls was not with his master. He was on the eve of a great and momentous act. There were no superstitious alarms about him, as about Rintoul, and no question in his mind what to do. Before he left Dalrulzian that sad morning, he had shaped all the possibilities in his thoughts, and knew what he intended; and his conversation with Mr Monypenny gave substance and a certain reasonableness to his resolution. But it was not in his nature by one impetuous movement to precipitate affairs. He had never in his life acted hastily, and he had occasional tremors of the flesh which chilled his impulse and made him pause. But the interval, which was so bitter to his master, although all the lookers-on congratulated themselves it could do him no harm, was exactly what Rolls wanted in the extraordinary crisis to which he had come. A humble person, quite unheroic in his habits as in his antecedents, it was scarcely to be expected that the extraordinary project which had entered his mind should have been carried out with the enthusiastic impulse of romantic youth. But few youths, however romantic, would have entertained such a purpose as that which now occupied Rolls. There are many who would risk a great deal to smuggle an illustrious prisoner out of his prison. But this was an enterprise of a very different kind. He left Mr Monypenny with his head full of thoughts which were not all heroic. None of his inquiries had been made without meaning. The self-devotion which was in him was of a sober kind, not the devotion of a Highland clansman, an Evan Dhu; and though the extraordinary expedient he had planned appeared to him more and not less alarming than the reality, his own self-sacrifice was not without a certain calculation and caution too.
All these things had been seriously weighed and balanced in his mind. He had considered his sister's interest, and even his own eventual advantage. He had never neglected these primary objects of life, and he did not do so now. But though all was taken into account and carefully considered, Rolls's first magnanimous purpose was never shaken; and the use he made of the important breathing-time of these intervening days was characteristic. He had, like most men, floating in his mind several things which he intended "some time" to do,—a vague intention which, in the common course of affairs, is never carried out. One of these things was to pay a visit to Edinburgh. Edinburgh to Rolls was as much as London and Paris and Rome made into one. All his patriotic feelings, all that respect for antiquity which is natural to the mind of a Scot, and the pride of advancing progress and civilisation which becomes a man of this century, were involved in his desire to visit the capital of his own country. Notwithstanding all the facilities of travel, he had been there but once before, and that in his youth. With a curious solemnity he determined to make this expedition now. It seemed the most suitable way of spending these all-important days, before he took the step beyond which he did not know what might happen to him. A more serious visitor, yet one more determined to see everything and to take the full advantage of all he saw, never entered that romantic town. He looked like a rural elder of the gravest Calvinistic type as he walked, in his black coat and loosely tied white neckcloth, about the lofty streets. He went to Holyrood, and gazed with reverence and profound belief at the stains of Rizzio's blood. He mounted up to the Castle and examined Mons Meg with all the care of a historical observer. He even inspected the pictures in the National Collection with unbounded respect, if little knowledge, and climbed the Observatory on the Calton Hill. There were many spectators about the streets who remarked him as he walked about, looking conscientiously at everything, with mingled amazement and respect; for his respectability, his sober curiosity, his unvarying seriousness, were remarkable enough to catch an intelligent eye. But nobody suspected that Rolls's visit to Edinburgh was the solemn visit of a martyr, permitting himself the indulgence of a last look at the scenes that interested him most, ere giving himself up to an unknown and mysterious doom.
On the morning of the 24th, having satisfied himself fully, he returned home. He was quite satisfied. Whatever might now happen, he had fulfilled his intention, and realised his dreams: nothing could take away from him the gratification thus secured. He had seen the best that earth contained, and now was ready for the worst, whatever that might be. Great and strange sights, prodigies unknown to his fathers, were befitting and natural objects to occupy him at this moment of fate. It was still early when he got back: he stopped at the Tinto Station, not at that which was nearest to Dalrulzian, and slowly making his way up by the fatal road, visited the scene of Torrance's death. The lodge-keeper called out to him, as he turned that way, that the road was shut up; but Rolls paid no heed. He clambered over the hurdles that were placed across, and soon reached the scene of the tragedy. The marks of the horse's hoofs were scarcely yet obliterated, and the one fatal point at which the terrified brute had dinted deeply into the tough clay, its last desperate attempt to hold its footing, was almost as distinct as ever.
The terrible incident with which he had so much to do came before him with a confused perception of things he had not thought of at the time, reviving, as in a dream, before his very eyes. He remembered that Torrance lay with his head down the stream—a point which had not struck him as important; and he remembered that Lord Rintoul had appeared out of the wood at his cry for help so quickly, that he could not have been far away when the accident took place. What special signification there might be in these facts Rolls was not sufficiently clear-headed to see. But he noted them with great gravity in a little notebook, which he had bought for the purpose. Then, having concluded everything, he set out solemnly on his way to Dunearn.
It was a long walk. The autumnal afternoon closed in mists; the moon rose up out of the haze—the harvest moon, with a little redness in her light. The landscape was dim in this mellowed vapour, and everything subdued. The trees, with all their fading glories, hung still in the haze; the river tinkled with a far-off sound; the lights in the cottages were blurred, and looked like huge vague lamps in the milky air, as Rolls trudged on slowly, surely, to the place of fate. It took him a long time to walk there, and he did not hurry. Why should he hurry? He was sure, went he ever so slowly, to arrive in time. As he went along, all things that ever he had done came up into his mind. His youthful extravagances—for Rolls, too, had once been young and silly; his gradual settling into manhood; his aspirations, which he once had, like the best; his final anchorage, which, if not in a very exalted post, nor perhaps what he had once hoped for, was yet so respectable. Instead of the long lines of trees, the hedgerows, and cottages which marked the road, it was his own life that Rolls walked through as he went on. He thought of the old folk, his father and mother; he seemed to see Bauby and himself and the others coming home in just such a misty autumn night from school. Jock, poor fellow! who had gone to sea, and had not been heard of for years; Willie, who 'listed, and nearly broke the old mother's heart. How many shipwrecks there had been among the lads he once knew! Rolls felt, with a warmth of satisfaction about his heart, how well it was to have walked uprightly, to have "won through" the storms of life, and to have been a credit and a comfort to all belonging to him. If anything was worth living for, that was. Willie and Jock had both been cleverer than he, poor fellows! but they had both dropped, and he had held on. Rolls did not want to be proud; he was quite willing to say, "If it had not been for the grace of God!——" but yet it gave him an elevating sense of the far superior pleasure it was to conquer your inclinations in the days of your youth, and to do well whatever might oppose. When the name of Rolls was mentioned by any one about Dunearn, it would always be said that two of them had done very well—Tammas and Bauby: these were the two. They had always held by one another; they had always been respectable. But here Rolls stopped in his thoughts, taking a long breath. After this, after what was going to happen, what would the folk say then? Would a veil drop after to-day upon the unblemished record of his life? He had never stood before a magistrate in all his days—never seen how the world looked from the inside of a prison, even as a visitor—had nothing to do, nothing to do with that side of the world. He waved his hand, as if separating by a mystic line between all that was doubtful or disreputable, and his own career. But now——Thus through the misty darkening road, with now a red gleam from a smithy, and now a softer glimmer from a cottage door, and anon the trees standing out of the mists, and the landscape widening about him, Rolls came on slowly, very seriously, to Dunearn. The long tower of the Town House, which had seemed to threaten and call upon Lord Rintoul, was the first thing that caught the eye of Rolls. The moon shone upon it, making a white line of it against the cloudy sky.
Mr Monypenny was at dinner with his family. They dined at six o'clock, which was thought a rather fashionable hour, and the comfortable meal was just over. Instead of wine, the good man permitted himself one glass of toddy when the weather grew cold. He was sitting between the table and the fire, and his wife sat on the other side giving him her company and consolation,—for Mr Monypenny was somewhat low and despondent. He had been moved by Sir James Montgomery's warm and sudden partisanship and belief of John Erskine's story; but he was a practical man himself, and he could not, he owned, shaking his head, take a sensational view. To tell him that there should have been just such an encounter as seemed probable—high words between two gentlemen—but that they should part with no harm done, and less than an hour after one of them be found lying dead at the bottom of the Scaur—that was more than he could swallow in the way of a story. To gain credence, there should have been less or more. Let him hold his tongue altogether—a man is never called upon to criminate himself—or let him say all. "Then you must just give him a word, my dear, to say nothing about it," said Mrs Monypenny, who was anxious too. "But that's just impossible, my dear, for he blurted it all out to the sheriff just as he told it to me." "Do you not think it's a sign of innocence that he should keep to one story, and when it's evidently against himself, so far as it goes?" "A sign of innocence!" Mr Monypenny said, with a snort of impatience. He took his toddy very sadly, finding no exhilaration in it. "Pride will prevent him departing from his story," he said. "If he had spoken out like a man, and called for help like a Christian, it would have been nothing. All this fuss is his own doing—a panic at the moment, and pride—pride now, and nothing more."
"If ye please," said the trim maid who was Mr Monypenny's butler and footman all in one—the "table-maid," as she was called—"there's one wanting to speak to ye, sir. I've put him into the office, and he says he can wait."
"One! and who may the one be?" said Mr Monypenny.
"Weel, sir, he's got his hat doon on his brows and a comforter aboot his throat, and he looks sore for-foughten, as if he had travelled all the day, and no' a word to throw at a dog; but I think it's Mr Rolls, the butler at Dalrulzian."
"Rolls!" said Mr Monypenny. "I'll go to him directly, Jeanie. That's one thing off my mind. I thought that old body had disappeared rather than bear witness against his master," he said, when the girl had closed the door.
"But oh, if he's going to bear witness against his master, it would have been better for him to disappear," said the sympathetic wife. "Nasty body! to eat folk's bread, and then to get them into trouble."
"Whesht with your foolish remarks, my dear: that is clean against the law, and it would have had a very bad appearance, and prejudiced the Court against us," Mr Monypenny said as he went away. But to tell the truth, he was not glad; for Rolls was one of the most dangerous witnesses against his master. The agent went to his office with a darkened brow. It was not well lighted, for the lamp had been turned down, and the fire was low. Rolls rose up from where he had been sitting on the edge of a chair as Mr Monypenny came in. He had unwound his comforter from his neck, and taken off his hat. His journey, and his troubled thoughts, and the night air, had limped and damped him; the starch was out of his tie, and the air of conscious rectitude out of his aspect. He made a solemn but tremulous bow, and stood waiting till the door was closed, and the man of business had thrown himself into a chair. "Well, Rolls—so you have come back!" Mr Monypenny said.
"Ay, sir, I've come back. I've brought you the man, Mr Monypenny, that did yon."
"Good Lord, Rolls! that did what? You take away my breath."
"I'll do it more or I'm done. The man that coupit yon poor lad Tinto and his muckle horse ower the brae."
Mr Monypenny started to his feet. "Do you mean to tell me—Lord bless us, man, speak out, can't ye! The man that——Are ye in your senses, Rolls? And who may this man be?"
"You see before you, sir, one that's nae better than a coward. I thought it would blow by. I thought the young master would be cleared in a moment. There was nae ill meaning in my breast. I did the best I could for him as soon as it was done, and lostna a moment. But my courage failed me to say it was me——"
"You!" cried Monypenny, with a shout that rang through the house.
"Just me, and no other; and what for no' me? Am I steel and airn, to take ill words from a man that was no master of mine? Ye can shut me up in your prison—I meant him no hairm—and hang me if you like. I'll no' let an innocent man suffer instead of me. I've come to give myself up."