sake, what is the panel? and what connection is there between poor Torrance and – "
"Sir," said Mr Monypenny, sternly, "this is no time for jests; the panel is a Scotch law term, meaning the defender; or what you call the defendant in England. It's a terrible loss to a young man to be unacquainted even with the phraseology of his own country."
"That is very true," John said, with a laugh; "but at least it is no fault of mine. Well, suppose I am the panel, as you say – that does not make me a vulgar brawler, does it, likely to display hostile intentions in that way? You may be sure no man can say of me that I threatened to have it out with Pat Torrance – "
"It was inadvertent – it was inadvertent," said Mr Monypenny, waving his hand, with a slight flush of confusion; "I daresay you never said Pat – but what has that to do with it? – you know my meaning. Is there any one that can be produced to say – "
"I have quarrelled with Torrance almost as often as I have met him," said John, with obstinate decision. "I thought him a bully and a cad. If I did not tell him so, it was out of regard for his wife, and he was at liberty to find out my sentiments from my looks if it pleased him. I have never made the least pretence of liking the man."
Mr Monypenny went on shaking his head. "All this is bad," he said, "bad! – but it does not make a quarrel in the eye of the law," he added, more cheerfully; and he went on putting a variety of questions, of which John grew very weary. Some of these questions seemed to have very little bearing upon the subject; some irritated him as betraying beyond all a persistent doubt of his own story. Altogether, the first dreary afternoon in confinement was not made much more endurable by this visit. The room in which John had been placed was like the parlour of a somewhat shabby lodging-house – not worse than he had inhabited many a time while travelling. But the idea that he could not step outside, but was bound to this enclosure, was first ludicrous, and then intolerable. The window was rather higher than usual, and there were bars across it. When it became dark, a paraffin-lamp, such as is now universal in the country – smelling horribly, as is, alas! too universal also – was brought in, giving abundance of light, but making everything more squalid than before. And as Mr Monypenny made his notes, John's heart sank, and his impatience rose. He got up and began to pace about like a wild beast in a cage, as he said to himself. The sensation was more extraordinary than can be imagined. Not to be able, whatever might happen, to leave this shabby room. Whosoever might call to you, whatsoever might appeal to you, to be fixed there, all your impulses checked, impotent, unable for the first time in your life to do what you had done every day of your life, to move out and in, to and fro as you pleased! John felt that if he had been a theatrical felon in a play, manacled and fettered, it would have been easier, more comprehensible. But to know that these four walls were his absolute boundaries, and that he could not go beyond them, was more astounding than any other sensation that had ever happened to him in his life. And when Mr Monypenny, with his careful brow, weighted with doubts and fears, unable to clear his countenance from the disapprobation that clouded it, got up to take his leave, and stood holding his client's hands, overwhelmed with sympathy, vexation, dissatisfaction, and pity, the impatience and bitter sense of the intolerable in John's mind could scarcely be restrained. "Whatever there may be more to say, whatever may come to your mind, you have but to send me a word, and I'll be at your call night or day," Mr Monypenny said.
"It is very unlikely that I should have anything more to say," said John; "but must I stay here?" It seemed incredible to him that he should be left even by his own "man of business." He had seen Beaufort go away with a sort of contemptuous certainty of speedy liberation; but Mr Monypenny had said nothing about liberation. "Surely there 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
