The Ladies Lindores by Margaret Oliphant

It is a strange experience for a man whose personal freedom has never been restrained to find himself in prison. The excitement and amazement of the first day made it something so exceptional and extraordinary, that out of very strangeness it was supportable: and Erskine felt it possible to wind himself up to the necessity of endurance for one night. But the dead stillness of the long, long morning that followed, was at once insupportable and incomprehensible to him. What did it mean? He saw the light brighten in his barred window, and persuaded himself, as long as he could, that it was as yet too early for anything to be done; but when he heard all the sounds of life outside, and felt the long moments roll on, and listened in vain for any deliverance, a cold mist of amazement and horror began to wrap John's soul. Was he to be left there? to lie in jail like any felon, nobody believing him, abandoned by all? He could not do anything violent to relieve his feelings; but it was within him to have dashed everything wildly about the room -- to have flown at the window and broken it to pieces -- to have torn linen and everything else to shreds. He stood aghast at himself as this wild fury of impatience and misery swept over him. He could have beaten his head against the wall. To sit still, as a man, a gentleman, is compelled to do, restraining himself, was more hard than any struggles of Hercules. And those slow sunny moments stole by, each one of them as long as an hour. The sun seemed to be stationary in the sky: the forenoon was a century. When he heard someone at last approaching, he drew a long breath of satisfaction, saying to himself that now at last the suspense would be over. But when it proved to be Miss Barbara with her arms full of provisions for his comfort, her maid coming after, bearing a large basket, it is impossible to describe the disappointment, the rage that filled him. The effort to meet her with a smile was almost more than he was capable of. He did it, of course, and concealed his real feelings, and accepted the butter and eggs with such thanks as he could give utterance to; but the effort seemed almost greater than any he had ever made before. Miss Barbara, for her part, considered it her duty to her nephew to maintain an easy aspect and ignore the misery of the situation. She exerted herself to amuse him, to talk as if nothing was amiss. She told him of Tinto's grand funeral, with which the whole countryside was taken up. "Everybody is there," Miss Barbara said, with some indignation -- "great and small, gentle and simple, as if auld Torrance's son was one of the nobles of the land."

"They care more for the dead than the living," John said, with a laugh. It was well to laugh, for his lip quivered. No doubt this was the reason why no one had leisure to think of him. And his heart was too full of his own miseries to be capable of even a momentary compassion for the fate of Torrance -- a man not very much older than himself, prosperous and rich and important -- snatched in a moment from all his enjoyments. He had been deeply awed and impressed when he heard of it first; but by this time the honours paid to the dead man seemed to John an insult to his own superior claims -- he who was living and suffering unjustly. To think that those who called themselves his friends should have deserted him to show a respect which they could not feel for the memory of a man whom they had none of them respected while he lived! He was no cynic, nor fond of attributing every evil to the baseness of humanity, but he could not help saying now, between his closed teeth, that it was the way of the world.