“Oh, we can put up with your dress,” said Mr. Meredith, putting on a heartiness that was scarcely natural to him. “We can be tolerant on that point. I will give orders directly about your rooms. Alice is not well enough to see visitors, and your coats do not matter to her,” he went on with a little laugh; not that he was merry, poor man, but that, like all the rest, he was agitated, and did not know how to give it vent. As for Alice, she did not say anything, but she turned her soft eyes upon Colin with a look that seemed to caress him and his dusty vestments. If he had been in the roughest peasant’s dress, it would not have made any difference to Alice. Her soft, tranquil eyes rested upon him with that content and satisfaction which convey the highest compliment that eyes of woman can make to man. When he was there she had no longer any occasion to look into the world, or seek further, and she could not but smile at the idea that his dusty coat mattered anything. Thus it was that everything was settled before Colin knew what was being done. The sun was still high in the heavens when he found himself established at Holmby, by Alice’s side, an inmate of her father’s house; he who had got up that morning with the idea that he was entirely sundered from his old ties, and that nothing in the world was so impossible as such a return upon the past. Even now, when ithad taken place, he could not believe it was true, but sat as in a dream, and saw the fair shadow of the Alice of Frascati moving and speaking like a phantom. Would it remain for ever, looking at him with the soft eyes which he felt ashamed to meet, and to which he could make so little response? A kind of despair came over Colin as the slow afternoon waned, and the reality of the vision began more and more to force itself upon him. Everything was so frightfully true and natural, and in reason. He had to baffle not only the eyes of Alice, but those of Lauderdale, who, he felt sure by instinct, was watching him, though he never could catch him in the act, and put him down as of old by the broad, full, half-defiant look which he had learned was his best shield against all question. Lauderdale had grown too skilful to subject himself to that repulse; and yet Colin knew that his friend observed his smallest action, and heard every word he was saying, however distant he might be. And thus the day passed on in a kind of distracting vision; and they all dined and talked, and looked, as it is the duty of any party of people in England to look, exactly as if they had been all their lives together, and it was the most natural thing in the world.
Theevening passed on, Colin could not very well tell how; and he began to see a prospect of escaping a little, and gaining a moment’s breathing time, to realize, if he could, the astonishing revolution which had taken place. Alice, who was an invalid, retired early; and after that the conversation flagged, and the three men who had so little in common, and who had been, on the sole occasion which had brought them into contact with each other before, so entirely in opposition, found it hard to know what to say, so as to cultivate all the friendly feelings that were possible and dissipate the disagreeable reminiscences. Mr. Meredith betook himself to the only subject that seemed to him practicable—his son’s book, which Colin had edited so carefully; but then it is already known to the readers of this history that Colin’s opinions were by no means those of the “Voice from the Grave.” And then the young man was burning to escape—to get out of doors and feel the wind on his face, and endeavour in the silence and darkness to realize his position. He had toescape not only from Mr. Meredith, who watched him with the anxiety of a man who fears to see his last hope escape him, but also from Lauderdale, who was concerned less for Alice than for Colin, and whose anxiety, now that his mind had been fully awakened, was as great that Colin should not risk his own happiness, as was Mr. Meredith’s anxiety that the happiness of Alice should be secured. Of the two, it was the latter whom Colin could meet with most ease; for it was in no way necessary that he should open his heart to a man who sought him only as he might have sought a physician; and, indeed, there was a certain relief to his mind in the expression of some irritation and resentment towards Mr. Meredith, who had once insulted him, and was friendly now only from the most interested motives. When he at last found it possible to leave the room, and had actually opened the door to escape into the open air, it was Mr. Meredith who detained him. “Pardon me,” he said; “but, if you would but give me five minutes in my own room—I have a great deal to say to you.” Colin was obliged to yield, though his impatience was unspeakable; and he followed Mr. Meredith into the library, which, like all the other rooms in the house, was but partially lighted. Here Alice’s father gave his guest a chair with solemnity, as for an important conference; and this was more than Colin’s powers of self-restraint could bear.
“I must ask you to pardonme,” he said, putting his hand on the back of the chair. “You will, perhaps, understand that all that has happened to-day has disturbed my calculations a little. A man cannot go back four years of his life in so unexpected a way without feeling a little off his equilibrium. May I ask you to postpone till to-morrow what you have to say?”
“Only a moment—only three words,” said Mr. Meredith; “I hope you have forgiven me for the mistake which I have regretted ever since. I meant no slight to you, whom I did not know. I was naturally excited to find my daughter in such circumstances; and, Mr. Campbell, I am sure you are generous; you will not let a mere mistake prejudice you against me.”
“It was not a mistake,” said Colin coldly; “you were right enough in everything but the motives you imputed to me; and I am almost as poor a man now as I was then, with very little chance of being richer—I may say with no chance,” he went on, with a certain pleasure in exaggerating his disadvantages. “A Scotch minister can make no advance in his profession. Instead of finding fault with what you did then, I feel disposed to bid you weigh well the circumstances now.”
Mr. Meredith smiled, with a little air of protection, and drew a long breath of relief. “Alice will have enough for both,” he said; “and Providence has taught me by many severe lessons the vanity of riches. She will have enough for both.”
It was at this moment that all the bitterness of the sacrifice he was making rushed upon Colin’s mind—rushed upon him like a flood, quenching even the natural courtesy of his disposition, and giving him a certain savage satisfaction in wreaking his vengeance upon the rich man, whose riches he despised, and whose money smelt of spoliation and wrong. All the silent rage against his fate which possessed Colin—all the reluctance and disappointment which a higher principle kept in abeyance in presence of the innocent Alice—blazed up against her father in a momentary glare which appalled the victim. Colin might give up his ideal and his dreams for tender friendship and honour and compassion; but the idea of any sordid inducement mingled with these motives drove him the length of passion. It was, however, not with any noisy demonstration, but in a white heat of bitterness and angry resistance that he spoke.
“It will be better that we should understand each other clearly on this point,” said Colin. “I am not your judge, to say you have done well or ill; but it is a matter on which I may be permitted to have my own opinion. I will not accept a shilling of your fortune. If Alice is content to have me as I am, she shall have all the care, all the tenderness that I can give her; but—pardon me, it is necessary to speak plainly—I will take nothing from you.”
Colin stood up with his hand on the back of his chair, and delivered his charge full into the breast of his unsuspecting opponent. Perhaps it was cruel; but there are circumstances under which it is a relief to be cruel to somebody, and the pain in his soul found for itself a certain expression in these words. As for the unhappy victim who received them, the sense of surprise almost deadened the effect for the moment; he could not believe that he had heard rightly. Mr. Meredith was of the Low Church, and was used to say every day that wealth was vanity, and that the true treasure had to be laid up above; but still experience had not shown him that poor young priests of any creed were generally so far moved by these sentiments as to despise the fortune which a wife might bring them. He was so much amazed that he gave a gasp of consternation at the young man who thus defied him, and grew not pale but grey with an emotion which was more wonder than anger. Mr. Meredith wasnot a bad man, notwithstanding that he had ruined several households, and made himself rich at other people’s expense; and, even had he felt the full force of the insult personally, his anxiety about Alice would have made him bear it. That fatherly dread and love made him for the moment a great deal more Christian than Colin, who had thus assaulted him in the bitterness of his heart.
“Mr. Campbell,” he replied, when he had sufficiently recovered himself to speak, “I don’t know what you have heard about me. I don’t mean to enter upon any defence of myself. My poor boy, I know, misunderstood some transactions, not knowing anything about business. But, so far as I can see, that matters very little between you and me. I have explained to you that my conduct in reference to yourself was founded on a mistake. I have expressed my gratitude to you in respect to my son; and now, if we are to be more closely connected——”
“That depends upon Miss Meredith,” said Colin, hastily. “You have opened your doors to me voluntarily, and not by my solicitation; and now it is toherthat I have a right to address myself. Otherwise it would have been better if you had not asked me to come here.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Meredith. He thought he saw a doubtful gleam in Colin’s eye, and an accent of repugnance in his voice, and he trembled to the bottom of his heart lest perhaps, after all, he might lose this chance of preserving his daughter. “Yes, yes,” he said with a smile, which it cost him a little trouble to assume, and which looked horribly out of place to Colin; “I ought to have learned by this time that it does not do to interfere between lovers. I allow that it lies entirely between her and you.”
He might have said a great deal more if his young hearer would have given him time; but Colin was only too glad to escape. The word “lovers” which Mr. Meredith used, the smile which he was so far from meaning, the lighter tone which belied his feelings quite as much as Colin’s, drove the young man half frantic with impatience and disgust. At last he managed to get his will, and escaped out of doors, with the cigar which was an excuse for his thoughts. The night was dark, and agitated by a ghostly wind, and the country, utterly unknown, which lay round the house in the darkness, and which neither memory nor imagination presented to the mind of the stranger, increased the natural effect of the gloom and the solitude. He went down through the long straight opening of the avenue,which was a little less black than the surrounding world, with a sensation of loneliness which was as strange as it was painful. He did not seem to know himself or his life henceforward any more than he knew the wild, strange country over which the night and the wind ruled supreme. It seemed to him as if the solace of friendship, the consolation of sympathy, were all ended for ever; he could not talk, even to those who were most dear to him, of his betrothed, or of his marriage—if, indeed, that was what it must come to. He had walked up and down the avenue two or three times, from one end to another, before even a little coherence came to his thoughts. All was so strange and unbelievable as yet; so like a trick of magic played upon him by some malign magician. He was not capable of thinking; but everything passed before him like a vision, appearing and disappearing out of the darkness. His old freedom, his impulses of revolution, the force and fulness of life with which he was young enough to sport, even in its most serious strength, and all the sweet wealth of imagination that had lain hoarded up for him among the clouds—these were things that belonged to yesterday. To-night it was another world that seemed to lie before him in the gloom, a separate sphere from the actual world in which he was standing. Vague limitations and restrictions which he could not identify were awaiting him; and he saw no way of escaping, and yet did not know how he was to bear the future thraldom.
As this ferment calmed down a little, Colin began to think of Alice, sweet and patient, and dutiful as she always was. He even resented, for her sake, his own indifference and repugnance, and said bitterly to himself that it was hard that such a woman should be accepted as a necessary burden, and not longed for as a crown of blessing; but yet, with all that, he could not cheat his own heart, or persuade himself that he wanted to marry her, or that it was less than the sacrifice of all his individual hopes to enter again upon the old relationship, and fulfil the youthful bond. When, however, he attempted to ask himself if he could escape, the same heart which sank at the thought of this bond baffled and stopped him in his question. He would not harmher, should it kill him.
“He loved her with all love, except the loveOf men and women when they love the best.”
“He loved her with all love, except the loveOf men and women when they love the best.”
“He loved her with all love, except the loveOf men and women when they love the best.”
And it was he himself who had knitted in youthful generosity and indiscretion the chain that now lay on his limbs like iron. Alice had done nothing unmaidenly, nothing that in all honourand delicacy she ought not to have done. To be sure, another man as honourable as Colin might have given her to understand, or permitted her to find out, the change which had taken in his sentiments. But Colin could not even assert with any truth that his sentiments had changed. For he was almost as conscious that she was not the woman of his imagination when he led her home from the ilex avenue on the day which determined their fortunes as he was now after the long separation which had not broken the link between them. He had known in his heart that it was not broken, even when he had most felt his freedom; and now what could he do? Perhaps that morning, after the carriage had passed him, after the little cry of recognition which convinced his heart, but which his mind could still have struggled against, he might have turned back as he had once thought of doing, and fled ignominiously. But that moment was past, and there was nothing to be done but accept the results of his own youthful rashness. Such were the thoughts that went through his mind as he walked up and down the avenue between the two long lines of trees, hearing the wind roar among the branches overhead, and feeling that henceforward there must always be a secret in his heart, something which nobody must discover, a secret which neither now nor any time could be breathed into any sympathetic ear. This sense of something to conceal weighed harder upon Colin than if it had been a crime—for there is no crime so terrible but a human creature may entertain the hope some time of relieving his mind of it, and breathing it into the ear of some confidant, consecrated either by love or religion, who will not shrink from him in consequence of that revelation. The sting of Colin’s burden was that he could never relieve himself of it, that all the questions raised by it must absolutely confine themselves to his own mind, and must lie unnamed and even unsuggested between him and those friends from whom he had never hidden anything but this.
All this he revolved in his mind as he contemplated his position. So far from seeking sympathy, it would be his business to refuse and ignore it, should it be given by any implication, and to seek congratulations, felicitations, instead. All this he was going to do for Alice’s sake; and yet he did not love Alice. He looked up at a faintly-lighted window, where there seemed to be a shaded light as in an invalid’s room, and thought of her with a mixture of bitterness and sweetness, of tender affection and unconquerable reluctance, of loyalty almost fantastic and the most painful sense of hardship, which it would beimpossible to describe. She, for her part, was lying down to rest with her heart full of the sweetest content and thankfulness, thinking with thoughts so different from his how her life had changed since the morning, and how the almost-forgotten sunshine had come back again, to remain for ever. This was how Alice was looking at the matter, and Colin knew it in his heart. If she could but wake out of that soft paradise to see the darkness and the turmoil in his mind! But that was what she must never find out.
And thus Colin made up his mind, if he could ever be said to have had any doubt in his mind, as to what was to be done. He did not even cheat himself by the hope that anything could happen to deliver him. It was Providence, as Alice had said. Perhaps it might come darkly into the young man’s mind to wonder whether those severe lessons which Mr. Meredith said he had had in his family—whether all those fatal losses and sorrows which Alice regarded with awe, yet with a certain devout admiration as God’s mysterious way of bringing about her own happiness, could be designed to effect an end which did not make him happy; for, in such a question, personal content or dissatisfaction has a great deal to do with the way in which a man regards the tenor of Providence. Had he been as happy as Alice was, perhaps he too would have concluded that this was but another instance how all things work together for good. But, as he was not happy, he plunged into a world of more painful questions, and returned again as before, after his favourite speculations had beguiled him for a little out of the immediate matter in hand, to realize, as if by a flash of lightning, all the facts of the case, and all the necessities before him. There may be many people who will condemn Colin both for remaining indifferent to Alice, and for remaining faithful to her in his indifference. But this is not a defence nor eulogium of him, but simply a history. It was thus his mind acted under the circumstances. He could conduct himself only according to his own nature; and this is all that there is to say.
All this time Lauderdale was standing at his window, watching in the darkness for an occasional glimpse of something moving among the trees. He had put out his light by instinct, that Colin might not think he was being watched. He kept looking out upon the wild tree-tops swaying about in the wind, and upon the wilder clouds, dashed and heaped about the sky, with a great sadness in his heart. Colin’s nature was not like his; yet by dint of a sympathy which had been expanding andgrowing with the young man’s growth, and a knowledge of him and his ways, which no one in the world possessed to the same extent, Lauderdale had very nearly divined what was in his friend’s heart. He divined at the same time that he must never divine it, nor betray by word or look that such an idea had ever entered his mind. And that was why he put his light out, and, watching long till Colin had come in, said his prayers in the dark, and went to rest without seeking any communication with him, though his heart was yearning over him. It was Colin, and not Lauderdale, who was the hero of that silent struggle. Yet perhaps there was no single pang in the young man’s suffering so exquisite as that which thrilled through his companion as he resigned himself to an appearance of repose, and denied himself so much as a look at his friend, to whom he had been like a father. At such a moment a look might have been a betrayal; and now it was Lauderdale’s business to second Colin’s resolution—to avoid all confidence, and to save him even from himself.
Afterthis agitated night the morning came, as morning has a knack of coming, with that calm freshness andinsouciancewhich exasperates a mind in distress. What does Nature care about what happened last night or may happen to-morrow? If she had disturbed herself for such trifles, she must have died of it in her first thousand years. The new day, on the contrary, was as gay and as easy in her mind as if in all the world there were no painful puzzles awaiting her, and no inheritance of yesterday to be disposed of. Somehow the sight of that fresh and joyous light recalled to Colin the looks of the fair spring mornings in Italy, which used to burst in upon Arthur’s deathbed with what always seemed to him a look of careless surprise and inquiry. But Alice for her part found a tender sweetness in the new day. All that was bright in nature came and paid court to her by reason of her happiness—for there is no fairweather friend so frank in her intruded intentions as Nature, though it is happiness and not grandeur to which she attaches herself. Alice went down to breakfast that morning, which she had not been able to do for a long time. She had laid aside her black dress byinstinct, and put on a white one, which had nothing but its black ribbons to mark it as mourning; and there was a little delicate colour on her cheek, and her eyes, though a little too large and clear, had a glimmer of sunshine in them, like the light in a dewdrop. Colin would have been hardhearted indeed, had he refused to be moved by that tender revival of health and hope, which was owing to him solely; and his friends are aware that Colin was not hardhearted. He was, perhaps, even more thoughtful of her, more devoted to her, than he would have been had the timidity of real love been upon him. When the breakfast was over—and naturally there was still a certain embarrassment upon the party so abruptly united, and made up of elements so unlike each other—Colin and Alice were left together. He proposed to her to go out, and they went out, for Alice had forgotten all about the precautions which the day before were so necessary for her. They went into the avenue, where the daylight and the sunshine had tamed down the wind into a cheerful breeze. Nothing of the landscape outside was to be seen from that sheltered enclosure—no more than could have been seen through the close shade of the ilexes at Frascati, which they were both thinking of as they strayed along under the shadow of the trees; but the stately elms and green transparent lime leaves which shadowed the avenue of Holmby were as unlike as could be supposed to the closely woven sombre green which shut out the overwhelming sunshine in the grounds of the Villa Conti. Here the sun was very supportable, to say the truth; there was no occasion to shut it out, and even when a great tree came in the way, and interfered with it, a little shiver came over Alice. And yet it was June, the same month in which they had wandered through the ilex cloister, and watched the span of blue sky blazing at the end, the only indication visible that the great shining glowing world lay outside. Colin was so full of recollections, so full of thoughts, that at first he could find but little to say; and, as for Alice, her content did not stand in need of any words to express it. Nor could any words have expressed, on the other hand, the profound remorseful tenderness, almost more tender than love itself, with which Colin bent over her, and held her supported on his arm.
“Do you remember the ilexes in the Villa Conti?” he said. “It was about this time, was it not?”
“It was on the second of June,” said Alice, hastily. She was half vexed that the day had not been marked by him as by her.“Oh, yes, I remember every twig, I think,” she said, with a smile. “The second of June was on a Sunday this year. I think I cried nearly all day, for it seemed as if you never would come. And not to know where you were, or how you were, all these four dreary, dreary years!——”
What could Colin do? He pressed the hand that clung to his arm, and answered as he best could, touched ever more and more with that tenderness of remorse towards the woman who loved him. “You know it was not any fault of mine. It was your father who sent me away.”
“Yes, I know,” said Alice; “it was that always that kept me up, for I knewyouwould not change. Poor papa! he has had such dreadful lessons. Mrs. Meredith, you know, and the poor little children! I used to think, if God would only have taken me, and left them who were so happy——”
And here there was a little pause, for Alice had some tears to brush away, and Colin, ever more and more touched, could not but offer such consolations as were natural under the circumstances. And it was Alice who resumed at length, with the simple certainty natural to her mind.
“I see now that it was all for the best,” she said; “God has been so good to us. Oh, Colin, is it not true about His mysterious ways?—and that everything works together for good, though it may seem hard at the time.”
Perhaps Colin found it difficult to answer this question; perhaps, not being absorbed by his own happiness, he could not but wonder over again if poor Mrs. Meredith and her children who were dead, would have seen that working of Providence in the same light as Alice did. But then this was not a subject to be discussed between two lovers; and, if it was not Providence who had seized upon him in the midst of his thoughtless holiday, and brought him back to the bonds of his youth, and changed all his prospects in the twinkling of an eye, what was it? Not the heathen Fate, taking a blind vengeance upon Folly, which was a harder thing to think of than the ways, however mysterious, of God. These were not thoughts to be passing through a man’s mind at such a moment; and Colin avoided the answer which was expected of him, and plunged into more urgent affairs.
“I must go away,” he said; “do not look reproachful, Alice. I do not mean to continue my holiday after this. It seems to me we have waited a great deal too long already,” Colin went on with a smile, which he felt to be forced, but which had no such effect upon Alice. “Now that the obstacles are removed I cannot consent to any longer delay; and you know I have a house to take you to now, which I had not in the old times.”
“You had always Ramore,” said Alice; and the way in which she said it proved to him still once more that, though he had put her out of his mind, Alice had forgotten nothing he had ever said to her. She spoke of the farmer’s homely house not as of a place which she heard some vague talk of so many years ago, but as a home for which she had been longing. “And your mother!” said Alice; “if you had the most beautiful house in the world, I want you to take me there first of all; I want you to take me to her.”
It will be seen from this that Alice did not think there was anything to be deprecated in Colin’s haste. She accepted it as most reasonable, and the thing that was to be looked for. She thought it natural that he should be reluctant to lose sight of her again, as she, for her part, was very reluctant to lose sight of him; and thus they went on to make all their necessary arrangements. In this close and tender interview, as he saw ever more and more how Alice depended upon him, how real the link between them had been to her even during those long years of separation, and how, in her perfect good faith and simplicity, she considered him, and all belonging to him, as hers, Colin himself came to consider it the most natural and unquestionable conclusion. The pain in his heart softened, his reluctance seemed to melt away. Alice had more beauty at this time of her life than ever she had had before. Her weakness, and the charm of that hidden love which had been so long working in her, and which had now brightened into the fullest blossom, had given an expression hitherto wanting to her eyes. She was more individual and distinct by right of having kept and hoarded that individual attachment in her heart, in defiance of everything that could be done against it; and now in Colin’s presence, believing as she did with that confidence which can be born only of love, in his entire interest in everything connected with her, her timidity disappeared, and she hourly gained interest and character. All this had its effect upon Colin so long as the two were together straying through the avenue, crossing the bars of shade and the rays of sunshine, listening to the birds singing overhead and to the rustle of the summer leaves. But it was harder work when they went indoors again, when Mr. Meredith’s anxious face appeared, and the grave countenance of Lauderdale, carefully cleared of all anxiety, and become, so far as that was possible, altogether inexpressive. Colin was of so uncertain a mood thatthe very absence of all question in Lauderdale’s eyes jarred upon him, though he could not have borne to be interrogated. He was high-fantastical beyond all previous precedent at that moment; and the readers of this history are aware that already, at various periods of his life, it had happened to him to be fantastical enough. The conversation and confidences of the avenue broke clean off when the party were all assembled within. Alice could not say anything before her father of her weariness and waiting, or it would have sounded like a reproach; and Colin, for his part, could not utter a word about his intentions or prospects to any ears but hers. He could speak to her, and she, who accepted everything said without any question, found nothing wanting in his words; and that was already a new link between them; but before her father and his own friend he was dumb. He could not even talk to Lauderdale as he had talked to him four years ago at Frascati; and yet he resented that Lauderdale did not ask him any questions. From which it will be seen that nothing could well be less manageable and reasonable than the state of Colin’s mind at this moment, when the most important decision of his life was being made.
That evening it was he who sought an interview with Mr. Meredith. It was very clear, in every point of view, that everything should be arranged with the least delay possible. “I have served half as long as Jacob did,” Colin said, with a smile, which, however, was far from being the radiant smile of a happy lover; and Alice’s father, who was not by any means so confident of Colin’s love as Alice was, was so much concerned that his daughter should not lose the happiness which meant not only happiness but life and strength as well, that he did not venture to make any objections. Neither did the poor man resent the insult, when Colin repeated with mildness, yet with steadiness, his determination to receive nothing from him. Alice had something of her own, which came to her from her mother, the little revenue which Arthur had once had his share of, and on which the two had lived at Frascati: but beyond that, Colin, always superlative, would have none of the rich man’s fortune, which was soiled, as he thought, with fraud and cruelty. Whether this accusation was just or unjust, poor Mr. Meredith, who was a kind father, swallowed it without saying anything, and consented to all his future son-in-law’s requirements. Colin had made up his mind to leave Holmby at once, to hasten back to Afton, and make all the preparations necessary to receive his bride; and the marriage was fixed totake place very shortly—in August, when Colin could take up again his broken thread of holiday. All this was arranged between the two as an absolute matter of business, requiring no expression of sentiment. If Mr. Meredith thought the young man a little cold and stern, and swallowed that sentiment as he had swallowed the other, after all, perhaps, it was best that in discussing what was a business matter even a bridegroom should talk in a business way. And, then, Alice was unquestionably satisfied, and had regained some colour on her cheek, and some elasticity in her step. She had never been consumptive, like Arthur. Her illness was a kind of hopelessness, a lingering languor, which was quite as capable of killing her as if it had been a legitimate disease; and this was a malady from which, to all appearance, only Colin and a happy life could deliver her. Under these circumstances, therefore, it was natural that Mr. Meredith, though a little wounded, and even a little alarmed, by the new son-in-law, who meant to have everything his own way, consented to his wishes, being anxious, above all things, to preserve his daughter. He caressed and petted Alice all the more when his consent had been made known to her, with a kind of faint idea, in his ignorance, that all the indulgences which had surrounded her would be at an end when she put herself under the power of this abrupt and imperious young man. As for Alice, she looked from her father to her betrothed with a serenity and confidence so profound that it went to Colin’s heart. “She has been used to be taken care of all her life,” her father said, as fathers generally say, but with an odd forgetfulness, for the moment, that Colin knew something about that. “I hope you will be very good to her.”
Alice opened her soft lips at this, to give vent to a little ring of laughter so soft that it did not wound even the fantastical delicacy of her Bayard. To doubt Colin seemed to her not so much wrong as absurd, out of all reason. She said, half under her breath, “He has taken care of me before now”—and, to relieve herself of that which she could not express to her father without blaming him, it was to Lauderdale she turned. “You made me feel as if I were a princess,” she said to him, and held out her hand to the friend who was looking on with an anxiety so intense that it precluded speech. As for Colin, in the high state of irritation in which he was, the very silence with which Lauderdale pressed the little hand of Alice between his own aggravated and exasperated him. Why did not he say something? Why did he not look him, the bridegroom, straightin the eyes, and ask, “Are not you happy?” Had he done so, Colin would have taken it as the direst and most unpardonable offence; but, in the disturbed state of his heart and mind, he resented the very absence of the question. A man must have some one to bear the brunt of his discontent when things go wrong with him, and in the meantime there was nobody but Lauderdale to take this necessary part.
Accordingly, when all was settled, and when it was finally arranged that Colin should leave Holmby next morning and make haste home, to commence his preparations, it was of his own accord that he invited Lauderdale to join him in the avenue for half an hour’s talk. The wind had fallen, and the night was very still, but it was almost as dark as on the previous evening, and the gloom had this advantage, that they could not see each other’s faces, which was all the better under the circumstances. They had walked almost all the length of the avenue before Colin spoke, and then it was to this effect.
“Lauderdale, look here. I am going home, and leaving you in the lurch. We are not going to Windermere together, as we meant to do. You see, I have things more important in hand. What I want to say is, that you are not to think yourself bound by me. I see no reason why you should return because a—a good fortune so unexpected has come to me.”
“Do you mean that you want me to go my ways?” said Lauderdale. “With me there is little need to speak in parables. Say plain out if you would rather be your lane. I am no a man to take offence—not from you.”
“Good heavens!” said Colin, in his impatience, “why should you or any one take offence? What I tell you is the plainest statement of the case. I have to go home, but you are not obliged to go home. And why should you break off your excursion for me?”
“If I was minding about the excursion,” said Lauderdale, “I would go on. You aye make so much account of yourselves, you callants. As for Windermere, I’m no bigoted, but if it’s mair worth seeing than our ain lochs it would be a wonder to me. I’m no for parting company. It’s aye been my way of thinking, that even a railroad, seen with four een, was better than the bonniest country in the world, seen with two only. We’ll go hame, Colin, if you have no objections, you and me.”
And then there was a silence, and the two friends went on together side by side in the darkness, without a word to each other. Between them the ordinary words of congratulationwould have sounded like mockery, and the one divined too clearly the condition of the other to know what to say. Lauderdale, however, knew Colin so well that he knew silence to be as dangerous as speech.
“I have an awfu’ desire in my mind,” he said at length; “no doubt it’s daftlike, but that is no extraordinary. I would like to do something with my hands to please her, now we’ve found her. I’m no rich, and, what’s an awful deal worse, I’m no much for anything but talk—and maybe she has an inkling of that. What was that yon lad Browning says about Raphael’s sonnets and Dante’s picture? I’m of that opinion mysel’. I would like to do something with my hands that was nae fit work for the like of me, just to please her; if it was naething better than the things they whittle with their knives away yonder among the Alps,” said Lauderdale; and even in the darkness Colin could see the little flourish of his arm with which he had the habit of indicating the never-to-be-forgotten region “away yonder.” “Have patience a moment till I’ve done speaking,” he went on; “I’ve been thinking I would like to take a good day’s work at the Manse garden. It’s as innocent a thing in its way to plant flowers as to write verses. So I’m saying I’ll go home with you, if you’ve nae objections,” said Lauderdale. He came to a conclusion so suddenly, that Colin, who had gradually yielded to the influence of the familiar tranquillising voice, came to a sudden pause when he stopped short. Lauderdale paused too in his walk when his friend did so, though without knowing why. It was indifferent to him whether he kept walking or stood still; his mind went on pursuing its leisurely meditations all the same.
But Colin’s heart was full. He grasped Lauderdale’s arm without knowing it, with that sudden impulse of saying something which sometimes comes upon people who must not say what is in their hearts. “Come!” he said, with a little choking in his voice, “we will do that day’s work together; for I suppose there never was gain, however great, but had loss in it,” said Colin. Perhaps he did not know very well himself what he meant, but even these vague words were a little ease to him in their way. And then they went indoors, and the long day came to an end.
This was how the holiday excursion terminated. They left Holmby next morning, and went home again; neither one nor the other thinking any more of the Church Reformation, or of the “Tracts for the Times.” When Colin found his MS. in his writing-case when he opened it on the night of his arrival atRamore to write to Alice, he looked at it with a little wonder, as if it had been a fossil of an early formation unexpectedly disinterred among the fragments of daily use and wont. And then he returned it to his pocket, with something that looked like a very clumsy attempt at a smile. There are points of view from which a good-sized tree or a shepherd’s cottage may blot out a mountain; and everybody knows how easily that is accomplished on the moral horizon, where a tiny personal event can put the greatest revolution in the background. It would be too long to tell the wonder and admiration and perplexed joy of the Mistress when she heard of the accident which had put an end to her son’s journey. Her joy was perplexed, because there was always a shadow which she could not decipher upon Colin’s countenance; and, even if her mother’s pride would have permitted her to consult Lauderdale on such a subject, or to suffer either him or herself to suppose for a moment that he could know more about her boy than she did, Lauderdale’s lips were sealed. Colin stayed only a night at Ramore to let his family know what was going to happen, and then he hurried to Afton, still accompanied by his friend. They talked of almost everything in the world during that journey, except of the preparations they were going to make, and the change that was to follow; but Colin’s great ambition, and the important changes he meant to work in his native Church and country, had little part in their discussions. At such a moment, when it is next to impossible to a man to talk of what he is thinking of, it is such a wonderful relief for him to escape into metaphysics; and, fortunately, in that department of human investigation, there are still so many questions to discuss.
Ifthis had been anything but a true history, it would have been now the time for Alice Meredith to overhear a chance conversation, or find a dropped letter, which would betray to her Colin’s secret; but this is not an accident with which the present historian can give interest to his closing chapter, because, in the first place, it did not happen; and, in the second, if a second should be thought necessary, because Colin had never confided his secret either to writing or to any mortal ear—which is of allways of securing a private matter the most certain. He thought to himself, with a certain inexpressible content, as he put his manse in order to receive her, that never to any living creature, never even to the air that might have repeated the matter, had he so much as whispered what was the real foundation of the old betrothals, which were now about to be carried out. He had never been so near telling it as on the night before Alice reappeared in his life—that moment when the words were half formed on his lips, and nothing but a chivalrous, visionary sense of the respect he owed to a woman had prevented him putting an end to Lauderdale’s recollections by a confession which would have closed his friend’s lips for ever. Fortunately he had been saved from that danger; and now no one, even in the depths of his heart, could say or feel that Alice had been ever regarded by her husband otherwise than as the chosen of a man’s heart, the companion of his existence, should be regarded. He had by times a hard enough struggle during these intervening weeks, when he took refuge in his study at Afton, in the midst of the disorganized house, where things were being prepared for the arrival of his wife; and in her garden, where Lauderdale had done more than a day’s work, and had, indeed, taken the charge of re-arrangement into his hands. But the garden, in those lingering, never-ending summer twilights, full of northern sweetness, was too much for Colin; when the early stars came out on the skirts of the slow departing day, they seemed to cast reproachful glances at him, as if he had abandoned that woman in the clouds. He used to go in with a sigh, and shut himself up in his study, and light his candles; and then, after all, it was a great good fortune that she had never come down out of the wistful distance, and walked upon the common soil, and looked him in the face. As for Alice, if anybody had betrayed to her the exact state of affairs, if she had been made aware of this mysterious and invisible rival, towards whom, in the depths of his heart, Colin sighed, the chances are that she would only have laughed, in the supreme security of her ignorance. She could no more have understood the rivalry there was in that dream than she could have comprehended any other or better description of love than that which her betrothed gave her. For the fact is, that nobody need in the least bemoan Alice, or think that her position was one to call for sympathy. She was perfectly content, knowing so little of Colin’s heart as she did, and she would still have been perfectly content had she known it much more profoundly. If he had regarded her as he couldhave regarded his ideal woman, Alice would not have understood, and probably even would have been embarrassed and made uneasy by, such devotion. She had all that she had ever dreamed of in the way of love. Her ideal, such as it was, was fully realized. Colin’s tenderness, which had so much remorse in it, was to Alice the most perfect of all manifestations of attachment. When his heart was full of compunctions for not giving her enough, hers was swelling with the sweetest pride and satisfaction in receiving so much. It even seemed to her odd by times how a man so superior should be so fond of her, as she said to herself, in her innocence: for, to be sure, Arthur, though he was not equal to Colin, had given but a very limited consideration to his little sister. And her sense of the difference between Arthur’s estimation of her and the rank she held with her betrothed was like the sweetest flattery to her mind. And Alice had reason in these conclusions of hers. She described Colin’s affection perfectly well in her simple words. It was as true to say he was fond of her, as it was that he did not love her according to his estimate of love. But then his estimate of love was not hers, and she was entirely content.
Thus it came about that these two were married after all the long delay and separation. Alice recovered her health by magic as soon as she began to be happy. And Mr. Meredith, notwithstanding that he smarted a little under the affront put upon him by his new son-in-law, in that singular and quite original development of disinterestedness, which Alice’s father, being Low Church, could not but think most unlike a clergyman—was yet so exhilarated by the unrivalled success of his expedient to save his daughter, that all the lesser annoyances were swallowed up. And then he had always the little one remaining, whom he could make an heiress of. It was a quiet wedding—for the Merediths were comparatively strangers in Westmoreland—but, at the same time, it was not in the least a sad one, for Mr. Meredith did not think of weeping, and there was nobody else to take that part of the business. Alice had only her little sister to leave, who was too much excited and delighted with all the proceedings, and with her own future position as Miss Meredith, to be much overcome by the parting. It was, indeed, a beginning of life almost entirely without drawbacks to the bride. She had nothing much to regret in the past, no links of tender affection to break, and no sense of a great blank left behind, as some young women have. On the contrary, all that was dark and discouraging was left behind. The most exquisite moments of her life, the winter shehad spent in Frascati under the tender and chivalrous guardianship of the companions who had devoted all their powers to console and amuse Arthur’s sister, seemed but an imperfect rehearsal, clouded with pain and sorrow, for the perfect days that were to come. “I wish for nothing but Sora Antonia to bid God bless us,” she said with the tears of her espousals in her eyes. And it was the best thing Alice could have said. The idyll for which Colin felt himself so poor a hero now, had existed, in a way, among the pale olive-groves, on the dear Alban hills. “Dio te Benedica!” he said, as he took away his bride from her father’s door. It meant more than a blessing, when he said it as Sora Antonia might have said it, in that language which was consecrated to them both by love and death.
The scene and the circumstances were all very different when a few weeks later Colin took his bride to the Holy Loch. It was evening, but perhaps Colin had not time for the same vivid perceptions of that twilight and peaceful atmosphere which a few months before had made him smile, contrasting it with the movement and life in his own mind. But perhaps this was only because he was more occupied by external matters; by Alice at his side, to whom he had to point out everything; and by the greetings and salutations of everybody who met him. As for Alice herself, in her wistfulness and happiness, with only one anxiety remaining in her heart—just enough to give the appealing look which suited them best to her soft eyes—she was as near beautiful as a woman of her unimposing stature and features could be. She was one of those brides who appeal to everybody, in the shy radiance of their gladness, to share and sympathize with them. There are some people whose joy is a kind of affront and insult to the sorrowful; but Alice was not one of these. Perhaps at this supreme hour of her life she was thinking more of the sad people under the sun—the mourners and sufferers—than she had done when she used to lie on her sofa at Holmby, and think to herself that she never would rise from it, and that he never would come. The joy was to Alice like a sacrament, which it was hard to think the whole world could not share; and, as her beauty was chiefly beauty of expression, this tender sentiment shed a certain loveliness over her face as she stood by Colin’s side, with her white veil thrown back, and the tender countenance, which was veiled in simplicity, and required no other covering, turned towards Ramore. Her one remaining anxiety was, that perhaps Colin’s mother might not respond to the longing affection that was in her heart—might not take toher, as she said; and this was why her eyes looked so appealing, and besought all the world to love her. When it came to the moment, however—when Colin lifted her out upon the glistening beach, and put her hand into that of his father, who was waiting there to receive them, Alice, as was her nature, recovered her composure. She held up her soft cheek to Big Colin of Ramore, who was half abashed by the action, and yet wholly delighted, although in Scotch reserve he had contemplated nothing more familiar than a hearty clasp of her hand. She was so fair a woman to his homely eyes, and looked so like a little princess, that the farmer had scarcely courage to take her into his arms, or, as he himself would have said, “use so much freedom” with such a dainty little lady. But Alice had something more important in her mind than to remark Big Colin’s hesitation. “Where is she?” she cried, appealing to him first, and then to her husband; “where is she, Colin?” And then they led her up the brae to where the Mistress, trembling and excited, propped herself up against the porch. Alice sprang forward before her escort, when she saw this figure at the door. She left Colin’s arm as she had never left it before, and threw herself upon his mother. She took this meeting into her own hands, and accomplished it her own way, nobody interfering. “Mamma,” said Alice, “I should have come to you four years ago, and they have never let me come till now. I have been longing for you all this time. Mamma, kiss me, and say you are glad, for I love you dearly!” cried Alice. As for the Mistress, she could not make any reply. She said “my darling!” faintly, and took the clinging creature to her bosom. And this was how the meeting took place, for which Alice had been longing, as she said, for four long years.
When they took the bride into the homely parlour of Ramore, and placed her on the old-fashioned sofa, beside the Mistress, it was not without a little anxiety that Colin regarded his wife, to see the effect made upon her by this humble interior. But, to look at Alice, nobody could have found out that she had not been accustomed to Ramore all her life, or that the Mistress was not her own individual property. It even struck Colin with a curious sense of pleasure, that she did not say “mother,” as making a claim onhismother for his sake, but claimed her instantly as her own, as though somehow her claim had been nearest. “Sometimes I thought of running away and coming to you,” said Alice, as she sat by the Mistress’s side, in radiant content and satisfaction; and it would be vain to attempt to describe the admiration and delight of the entire household with Colin’s little tender bride.
As for the Mistress, when the first excitement was over, she was glad to find her boy by himself for a moment, to bid God bless him, and say what was in her heart—“If it wasna that she’s wiled the heart out of my breast,” said Mrs. Campbell, putting up her hand to her shining eyes. “Eh, Colin, my man, thank the Lord; it’s like as if it was an angel He had sent you out of heaven.”
“She will be a daughter to you, mother,” said Colin, in the fulness of his heart.
But at this two great tears dropped out of Mrs. Campbell’s eyes. “She’s sweet and bonnie; eh, Colin, she’s bonnie and sweet! but I’m an awfu’ hardhearted woman,” said the Mistress. “I cannot think ony woman will ever takethatplace; I’m aye so bigoted for my ain; God forgive me; but her that is my Colin’s wife has nae occasion for ony other name,” she said with a tender artifice, stooping over her boy and putting back those great waves of his hair which were the pride of her heart. “And I have none of my ain to go out of my house a bride,” the Mistress added, under her breath, with one great sob. Colin could not tell why his mother should say such words at such a moment. But perhaps Alice, though she was not so clever as Colin, had she been there, might have divined their meaning after the divination of the heart.
It is hard to see what can be said about a man after he is married, unless he quarrels with his wife and makes her wretched and gets into trouble, or she does as much for him. This is not a thing which has happened, or has the least chance of happening, in Colin’s case. Not only did Alice receive a very flattering welcome in Afton, and, what was still more gratifying, in St. Rule’s, where, as most people are aware, very good society is to be found; but she did more than that, and grew very popular in the parish, where, to be sure, no curate could have been more serviceable. She bad undoubted Low Church tendencies, which helped her on with many of the people; and in conjunction with these she had little High Church habits, which were very quaint and captivating in their way; and, all unconscious as she was of Colin’s views in respect to Church reformation, Alice was “the means,” as she herself would have said, of introducing some edifying customs among the young people of the parish, which she and they were equally unaware were capable of having been interpreted to savour of papistry, had the power and inclinations of the Presbytery been in good exercise as of old. As for Colin, he was tamed down in his revolutionary intentions withoutknowing how. A man who has given hostages to society, who has married a wife—and especially a wife who does not know anything about his crotchets, and never can clearly understand why the bishop (seeing that there certainly is a bishop in the kingdom of Fife, though few people pay any attention to him) does not come to Afton and confirm the catechumens—is scarcely in a position to throw himself headlong upon the established order of things and prove its futility. No. I. of the “Tracts for the Times” got printed certainly, but it was in an accidental sort of way; and, though it cannot be said to have been without its use, still the effect was transitory, in consequence of the want of continuous effort. No doubt it made a good deal of sensation in the Scotch papers, where, as such of the readers of this history as live North of the Tweed may recollect, there appeared at one time a flood of letters signed by parish ministers on the subject. But then, to be sure, it came into the minds of sundry persons that the Church of Scotland had thoughts of going back to the ante-Laudian times in robes of penitence, to beg a prayer-book from her richer sister—which was not in the least Colin’s intention, and roused his national spirit. For we have already found it necessary to say that the young man, notwithstanding that he had many gleams of insight, did not always know what he would be at, or what it was precisely that he wanted. What he wanted, perhaps, was to be catholic and belong to Christendom, and not to shut himself up in a corner, and preach himself and his people to death, as he once said. He wanted to keep the Christian feasts, and say the universal prayers, and link the sacred old observances with the daily life of his dogmatical congregation, which preferred logic. All this, however, he pursued in a milder way after that famous journey to Windermere, upon which he had set out like a lion, and from which he returned home like a lamb. For it would be painful to think that this faithful but humble history should have awakened any terrors in the heart of the Church of Scotland in respect to the revolutionary in her bosom; and it is pleasant to be able to restore the confidence, to a certain extent, of the people and presbyters of that venerable corporation. Colin is there, and no doubt he has his work to do in the world; but he is married and subdued, and goes about it quietly like a man who understands what interests are involved; and up to the present moment he has resisted the urgent appeals of a younger brotherhood, who have arisen since these events, to continue the publication of the “Tracts for the Times.”
It is at this point that we leave Colin, who has entered on a period of his life which is as yet unfinished, and accordingly is not yet matter for history. Some people, no doubt, may be disposed to ask, being aware of the circumstances of his marriage, whether he was happy in his new position. He was as happy as most people are; and, if he was not perfectly blessed, no unbiassed judge can refuse to acknowledge that it was his own fault. He was young, full of genius, full of health, with the sweetest little woman in the kingdom of Fife, as many people thought, for his wife, and not even the troublesome interpellations of that fantastic woman in the clouds to disturb his repose. She had waved her hand to him for the last time from among the rosy clouds on the night before his marriage day; for if a man’s marriage is good for anything, it is surely good against the visitings of a visionary creature who had refused to reveal herself when she had full time and opportunity to do so. And let nobody suppose that Colin kept a cupboard with a skeleton in it to retire to for his private delectation when Alice was sleeping, as it is said some people have a habit of doing. There was no key of that description under his pillow; and yet, if you will know the truth, there was a key, but not of Bluebeard’s kind. It was a key that opened the innermost chamber, the watch-tower and citadel of his heart. So far from shutting it up from Alice, he had done all that tender affection could do to coax her in, to watch the stars with him and ponder their secrets; but Alice had no vocation for that sort of recreation. And the fact was, that from time to time Colin went in and shut the door behind him, and was utterly alone underneath the distant wistful skies. When he came out, perhaps his countenance now and then was a little sad; and perhaps he did not see so clear as he might have done under other circumstances. For Colin, like Lauderdale, believed in thequattr’ occhi—the four eyes that see a landscape at its broadest and heaven at its nearest. But then a man can live without that last climax of existence when everything else is going on so well in his life.
THE END.
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