“Comeaway into the fire; it’s bonnie weather, but it’s sharp on the hillside,” said the mistress of Ramore. “I never wearied for you, Colin, so much as I’ve done this year. No that there was ony particular occasion, for we’ve a’ been real weel, and a good season, and baith bairns and beasts keeping their health; but the heart’s awfu’ capricious, and canna hear reason. Come in bye to the fire.”
“There’s been three days of east wind,” said the farmer, who had gone across the loch to meet his son, and bring him home in triumph, “which accounts for your mother’s anxiety, Colin. When there’s plenty of blue sky, and the sun shining, there’s naething she hasna courage for. What’s doing inGlasgow? or rather what’s doing at the college? or maybe, if you insist upon it, what are you doing? for that’s the most important to us.”
To which Colin, who was almost as shy of talking of his own achievements as of old, gave for answer some bald account of the winding up of the session, and of his own honours. “I told you all about it in my last letter,” he said, hurrying over the narrative; “there was nothing out of the common. Tell me rather all the news of the parish. Who is at home and who is away, and if any of the visitors have come yet?” said the lad, with a conscious tremor in his voice. Most likely his mother understood what he meant.
“It’s ower early for visitors yet,” she said, “though I think for my part there’s nothing like the spring, with the days lengthening, and the light aye eking and eking itself out. To be sure, there’s the east winds, which are a sore drawback, but they have nae great effect on the west coast. The castle woods are wonderful bonnie, Colin; near as bonnie as they were last year, when a’ thae bright English bairnies made the place look cheerful. I wonder the Earl bides there so seldom himself. He’s no rich, to be sure, but it’s a moderate kind of a place. If I had enough money I would rather live there than in the Queen’s palace, and so the minister says. You’ll have to go down to the manse the morn, and tell him a’ about your prizes, Colin,” said his proud mother, looking at him with beaming eyes. She put her hand upon her boy’s shoulder, and patted him softly as he stood beside her. “He takes a great interest in what you’re doing at the college,” she continued; “he says you’re a credit to the parish, and so I hope you’ll aye be,” said Mrs. Campbell. She had not any doubt on the subject so far as her own convictions went.
“He does not know me,” said the impatient Colin; “but I’ll go to the manse to-morrow if you like. It’s halfway to the castle,” he said, under his breath, and then felt himself colour, much to his annoyance, under his mother’s eyes.
“There’s plenty folk to visit,” said the farmer. “As for the castle, it’s out of our way, no to say it looked awfu’ doleful the last time I was by. The factor would get it but for the name of the thing. We’ve had a wonderful year, take it a’thegither, and the weather is promising for the season. If you’re no over-grand with all your honours, I would be glad of your advice, as soon as you’ve rested, about the Easter fields. I’m thinking of some changes, and there’s nae time to lose.”
“If you would but let the laddie take breath!” said the farmer’s wife. “New out of all his toils and his troubles, and you canna refrain from the Easter fields. It’s my belief,” said the mistress, with a little solemnity, “that prosperity is awfu’ trying to the soul. I dinna think you ever cared for siller, Colin, till now; but instead of rejoicing in your heart over the Almighty’s blessing, I hear nothing, from morning to night, but about mair profit. It’s no what I’ve been used to,” said Colin’s mother, “and there’s mony a thing mair important that I want to hear about. Eh! Colin, it’s my hope you’ll no get to be over-fond of this world!”
“If this world meant no more than a fifty pound or so in the bank,” said big Colin, with a smile; “but there’s no denying it’s a wonderful comfort to have a bit margin, and no be aye from hand to mouth. As soon as your mother’s satisfied with looking at you, you can come out to me, Colin, and have a look at the beasts. It’s a pleasure to see them. Apart from profit, Jeanie,” said the farmer, with his humorous look, “if you object to that, it’s grand to see such an improvement in a breed of living creatures that you and me spend so much of our time among. Next to bonnie bairns, bonnie cattle’s a reasonable pride for a farmer, no to say but that making siller in any honest way is as laudable an occupation as I ken for a man with a family like me.”
“If it doesna take up your heart,” said the mistress. “But it’s awfu’ to hear folk how they crave siller for siller’s sake; especially in a place like this, where there’s aye strangers coming and going, and a’ body’s aye trying how much is to be got for everything. I promised the laddies a holiday the morn to hear a’ Colin’s news, and you’re no to take him off to byres and ploughed land the very first day;—though I dinna say but I would like him to see Gowan’s calf,” said the farmer’s wife, yielding a little in her superior virtue. As for Colin, he sat very impatiently through this conversation, vainly attempting to bring in the question which he longed, yet did not like, to ask.
“I suppose the visitors will come early, as the weather is so fine?” he ventured to say as soon as there was a pause.
“Oh, ay, the Glasgow folk,” said Mrs. Campbell; and she gave a curious inquiring glance at her son, who was looking out of the window with every appearance of abstraction. “Do you know anybody that’s coming, Colin?” said the anxious mother; “some of your new friends?” And Colin was so sensible of her look, though his eyes were turned in exactlythe opposite direction, that his face grew crimson up to the great waves of brown hair which were always tumbling about his forehead. He thrust his heavy lovelocks off his temples with an impatient hand, and got up and went to the window that his confusion might not be visible. Big Colin of Ramore was at the window too, darkening the apartment with his great bulk, and the farmer laid his hand on his son’s shoulder with a homely roughness, partly assumed to conceal his real feeling.
“How tall are you, laddie? no much short of me now,” he said. “Look here, Jeanie, at your son.” Then the mistress put down her work, and came up to them, defeating all Colin’s attempts to escape her look; but in the meantime she, too, forgot the blushes of her boy in the pleasant sight before her. She was but a little woman herself, considered in the countryside rather too soft and delicate for a farmer’s wife; and with all the delicious confidence of love and weakness, the tender woman looked up at her husband and her son.
“Young Mr. Frankland’s no half so tall as Colin,” said the proud mother; “no that height is anything to brag about unless a’ things else is conformable. He’s weel enough, and a strong-built callant, but there’s a great difference; though, to be sure, his mother is just as proud,” said the mistress, bearing her conscious superiority with meekness; “it’s a grand thing that we’re a’ best pleased with our ain.”
“When did you see young Frankland?” said Colin, hastily. The two boys had scarcely met since the encounter which had made a link between the families without awaking very friendly sentiments in the bosoms of the two persons principally concerned.
“That’s a thing to be discussed hereafter,” said the farmer of Ramore. “I didna mean to say onything about it till I saw what your inclinations were, but women-folk are aye hasty Sir Thomas has made me a proposition, Colin. He would like to send you to Oxford with his own son if you and me were to consent. We’re to gie him an answer when we’ve made up our minds. Nae doubt he has heard that you were like enough to be a creditable protejee,” said Big Colin, with natural complacency. “A lad of genius gies distinction to his patron—if ye can put up with a patron, Colin.”
“Canyou?” cried his son. The lad was greatly agitated by the question. Ambitious Scotch youths of Colin’s type, in the state of discontent which was common to the race, had come to look upon the English universities as the goal of all possiblehopes. Not that Colin would have confessed as much had his fate depended on it—but such was the fact notwithstanding. Oxford, to his mind, meant any or every possibility under heaven, without any limit to the splendour of the hopes involved. A different kind of flush, the glow of eagerness and ambition, suddenly covered his face. But joined with this came a tumult of vague but burning offence and contradiction. While he recognised the glorious chance thus opened to him, pride started up to bolt and bar those gates of hope. He turned upon his father with something like anger in his voice, with a tantalizing sense of all the advantages thus flourished wantonly, as he thought, before his eyes. “Couldyouput up with a patron?” he repeated, looking almost fiercely in the farmer’s face; “and if not, why do you ask me such a question?” When he came to think of it, Colin felt injured by the suggestion. To be offered the thing of all others he most desired in the world, by means which made it impossible to accept the offer would have been galling enough under any circumstances; but just now, at this crisis of his youthful ambition and excitement, such a tantalizing glimpse of the possible and the impossible was beyond bearing. “Are we his dependents that he makes such an offer to me?” said the exasperated youth; and Big Colin himself looked on with a little surprise at his son’s excitement, comprehending only partially what it meant.
“I’ll no say I’m fond of patronage,” said the farmer, slowly; “neither in the kirk nor out of the kirk. It’s my opinion a man does aye best that fights his own way; but there’s aye exceptions, Colin. I wouldna have you make up your mind in any arbitrary way. As for Sir Thomas, he has aye been real civil and friendly—no one of your condescending fine gentlemen—and the son—”
“What right have I to any favour from Sir Thomas?” cried Colin. “He is nothing to me. I did no more for young Frankland than I would have done for any dog on the hillside,” he continued, with a contemptuous tone; and then his conscience reproved him. “I don’t mean to say anything againsthim. He behaved like a man, and saved himself,” said Colin, with haughty candour. “As for all this pretence of rewarding me, it feels like an insult. I want nothing at their hands.”
“There’s no occasion to be violent,” said the farmer. “I dinna expect that he’ll use force to make you accept his offer, which is weel meant and kind, whatever else it may be. I canna say I understand a’ this fury on your part; and there’s no goodthat I can see in deciding this very moment and no other. I would like you to sleep upon it and turn it over in your mind. Such an offer doesna come every day to the Holy Loch. I’m no the man to seek help,” said Big Colin, “but there’s times when it’s more generous to receive than to give.”
The mistress had followed her son wistfully with her eyes through all his changes of countenance and gesture. She was not simply surprised like her husband, but looked at him with unconscious insight, discovering by intuition what was in his heart—something, at least, of what was in his heart—for the anxious mother too was mistaken, and rushed at conclusions which Colin himself was far from having reached.
“There’s plenty of time to decide,” said the farmer’s wife; “and I’ve that confidence in my laddie that I ken he’ll do nothing from a poor motive, nor out of a jealous heart. There never were ony sulky ways, that ever I saw, in ony bairn of mine,” said Mrs. Campbell; “and if there was one in the world that was mair fortunate than me, I wouldna show a poor spirit towards him, because he had won. Whiles it’s mair generous to receive than to give, as the maister says; and whiles it’s mair noble to lose than to win,” said the mistress, with a momentary faltering of emotion in her voice. She thought the bitterness of hopeless love was in her boy’s heart, and that he was tempted to turn fiercely from the friendship of his successful rival. And she lifted her soft eyes, which were beaming with all the magnanimous impulses of nature, to Colin’s face, who did not comprehend the tenderness of pity with which his mother regarded him. But, at least, he perceived that something much higher and profounder than anything he was thinking of was in the mistress’s thoughts; and he turned away somewhat abashed from her anxious look.
“I am not jealous that I am aware of,” said Colin; “but I have never done anything to deserve this, and I should prefer not to accept any favours from—any man,” he concluded abruptly. That was how they left the discussion for that time at least. When the farmer went out to look after his necessary business, his wife remained with Colin, looking at him often, as she glanced up from her knitting, with eyes of wistful wonder. Had she been right in her guess, or was it merely a vague sentiment of repulsion which kept him apart from young Frankland? But all the mother’s anxiety could not break through the veil which separates one mysterious individuality from another. She read his looks with eager attention, half right and halfwrong, as people make out an unfamiliar language. He had drifted off somehow from the plain vernacular of his boyish thoughts, and she had not the key to the new complications. So it was with a mixed and doubtful joy that the mistress of Ramore, on the first night of his return, regarded her son.
“And I suppose,” said Colin, with a smile dancing about his lips, “that I am to answer this proposal when they come to the castle? And they are coming soon as they expected last year? or, perhaps, they are there now?” he said, getting up from his chair again and walking away towards the door that his mother might not see the gleam of expectation in his face.
“But, Colin, my man,” said the mistress, who did not perceive the blow she was about to administer, “they’re no coming to the castle this year. The young lady that was delicate has got well, and they’re a’ in London and in an awfu’ whirl o’ gaiety like the rest of their kind; and Lady Mary, the earl’s sister, is to have the castle with her bairns; and that’s the way Sir Thomas wants our answer in a letter, for there’s none of the family to be here this year.”
It did not strike the mistress as strange that Colin made no answer. He was standing at the door looking out, and she could not see his face. And when he went out of doors presently, she was not surprised—it was natural he should want to see everything about the familiar place; and she called after him to say that, if he would wait a moment, she would go herself and show him Gowan’s calf. But he either did not hear her, or, at least, did not wait the necessary moment; and when she had glanced out in her turn, and had perceived with delight that the wind had changed, and that the sun was going down in glorious crimson and gold behind the hills, the mistress returned with a relieved heart to prepare the family tea. “It’ll be a fine day to-morrow,” she said to herself, rejoicing over it for Colin’s sake; and so went in to her domestic duties with a lightened heart.
At that moment Colin had just pushed forth into the loch, flinging himself into the boat anyhow, disgusted with the world and himself and everything that surrounded him. In a moment, in the drawing of a breath, an utter blank and darkness had replaced all the lovely summer landscape that was glowing by anticipation in his heart. In the sudden pang of disappointment, the lad’s first impulse was to fling himself forth into the solitude, and escape the voices and looks which were hateful to him at that moment. Nor was it simple disappointment thatmoved him; his feelings were complicated by many additional shades of aggravation. It had seemed so natural that everything should happen this year as last year, and now it seemed such blind folly to imagine that it could have been possible. Not only were his dreams all frustrated and turned to nothing, but he fell ever so many degrees in his own esteem, and felt so foolish and vain and blind, as he turned upon himself with the acute mortification and sudden disgust of youth. What an idiot he had been! To think she would again leave all the brilliant world for the loch and the primroses, and those other childish delights on which he had been dwelling like a fool! Very bitter were Colin’s thoughts, as he dashed out into the middle of the loch, and there laid up his oars and abandoned himself to the buffetings of excited fancy. What right had he to imagine that she had ever thought of him again, or to hope that such a thread of gold could be woven into his rustic and homely web of fate? He scoffed at himself, as he remembered, with acute pangs of self-contempt, the joyous rose-coloured dreams that had occupied him only a few hours ago. What a fool he was to entertain such vain, complacent fancies! He, a farmer’s son, whose highest hope must be, after countless aggravations and exasperations, to get “placed” in a country church in some rural corner of Scotland. And then Colin recalled Sir Thomas Frankland’s proposal, and took to his oars again in a kind of fury, feeling it impossible to keep still. The baronet’s kind offer looked like an intentional insult to the excited lad. He thought to himself that they wanted to reward him somehow by rude, tangible means, as if he were a servant, for what Colin proudly and indignantly declared to himself was no service—certainly no intentional service. On the whole, he had never been so wretched, so downcast, so fierce and angry and miserable, in all his life. If he could but, by any means, by any toil, or self-denial, or sacrifice, get to Oxford, on his own account, and show the rich man and his son how little the Campbells of Ramore stood in need of patronage! All the glory had faded off the hills before Colin bethought himself of the necessity of returning to the homely house which he had greeted with so much natural pleasure a few hours before. His mother was standing at the door looking out for him as he drew towards the beach, looking at him with eyes full of startled and anxious half-comprehension. She knew he was disturbed somehow, and made guesses, right in the main, but all wrong in the particulars, which were, though he tried hard to repress all signs of it,another exasperation to Colin. This was how the first evening of his return closed upon the student of Ramore. He could not take any pleasure just then in the fact of being at home, nor in the homely love and respect and admiration that surrounded him. Like all the rest of the world, he neglected the true gold lying close at hand for the longing he had after the false diamonds that glittered at a distance. It was hard work for him to preserve an ordinary appearance of affection and interest in all that was going on, as he sat, absent and preoccupied, at his father’s table. “Colin’s no like you idle laddies; he has ower much to think of to laugh and make a noise, like you,” the mistress said with dignity, as she consoled the younger brothers, who were disappointed in Colin. And she half believed what she said, though she spoke with the base intention of deluding “the laddies,” who knew no better. The house, on the whole, was rather disturbed than brightened by the return of the firstborn, who had thus brought a foreign element into the household life. Such was the inauspicious beginning of the holidays, which had been to Colin, for months back, the subject of so many dreams.
Itwas some time before Colin recovered his composure, or found it possible to console himself for the failure of his hopes. He wrote a great deal of poetry in the meantime—or rather of verses which looked wonderfully like poetry, such as young men of genius are apt to produce under such circumstances. The chances are, that if he had confided them to any critic of a sympathetic mind, attempts would have been made to persuade Colin that he was a poet. But luckily Lauderdale was not at hand, and there was no one else to whom the shy young dreamer would have disclosed himself. He sent some of his musings to the magazines, and so added a little excitement and anxiety to his life. But nobody knew Colin in that little world where, as in other worlds, most things go by favour, and impartial appreciation is comparatively unknown. The editors most probably would have treated their unknown correspondent in exactly the same manner had he been a young Tennyson. As it was, Colin did not quite know what to think about his repeated failuresin this respect. When he was despondent he became disgusted with his own productions, and said to himself that of course such maudlin verse could be procured by the bushel, and was not worthy of paper and print. But in other moods the lad imagined he must have some enemy who prejudiced the editorial world, and shut against him the gates of literary fame. In books all the heroes, who could do nothing else, found so ready a subsistence by means of magazines, that the poor boy was naturally puzzled to find that all his efforts could not gain him a hearing. And it began to be rather important to him to find something to do. During the previous summers Colin had not disdained the farm and its labours, but had worked with his father and brothers without any sense of incongruity. But now matters were changed. Miss Matty, with her curls and her smiles, had bewitched the boy out of his simple innocent life. It did not seem natural that the hand which she consented to touch with her delicate fingers should hold the plough or the reaping hook, or that her companion in so many celestial rambles should plod through the furrows at other times, or go into the rough drolleries of the harvest field.
Colin began to think that the life of a farmer’s son at Ramore was inconsistent with his future hopes, and there was nothing else for it but teaching, since so little was to be made of the magazines. When he had come to himself and began to see the surrounding circumstances with clearer eyes, Colin, who had no mind to be dependent, but meant to make his own way as was natural to a Scotch lad of his class, bethought himself of the most natural expedient. He had distinguished himself at college, and it was not difficult to find the occupation he wanted. Perhaps he was glad to escape from the primitive home, from the mother’s penetrating looks, and all the homely ways of which the ambitious boy began to be a little impatient. He had come to the age of discontent. He had begun to look forward no longer to the vague splendours of boyish imagination, but to elevation in the social scale, and what he heard people call success in life. A year or two before it had not occurred to Colin to consider the circumstances of his own lot;—his ambition pointed only to ideal grandeur, unembarrassed by particulars—and it was very possible for the boy to be happy, thinking of some incoherent greatness to come, while engaged in the humblest work, and living in the homeliest fashion. But the time had arrived when the pure ideal had to take to itself some human garments, and when the farmer’s son became aware that a scholarand a gentleman required a greater degree of external refinement in his surroundings. His young heart was wounded by this new sense, and his visionary pride offended by the thought that these external matters could count for anything in the dignity of a man. But Colin had to yield like every other. He loved his family no less, but he was less at home among them. The inevitable disruption was commencing, and already, with the quick insight of her susceptible nature, the mistress of Ramore had discovered that the new current was setting in, that the individual stream of Colin’s life was about to disengage itself, and that her proud hopes for her boy were to be sealed by his separation from her. The tender-hearted woman said nothing of it, except by an occasional pathetic reflection upon things in general, which went to Colin’s heart, and which he understood perfectly; but perhaps, though no one would have confessed as much, it was a relief to all when the scholar-son, of whom everybody at Ramore was so proud, went off across the loch, rowed by two of his brothers, with his portmanteau and the first evening coat he had ever possessed, to Ardmartin, the fine house on the opposite bank, where he was to be tutor to Mr. Jordan’s boys, and eat among strangers the bread of his own toil.
The mistress stood at the door shading her eyes with her hand, and looking after the boat as it shot across the bright water. Never at its height of beauty had the Holy Loch looked more fair. The sun was expanding and exulting over all the hills, searching into every hollow, throwing up unthought-of tints, heaps of moss, and masses of rock, that no one knew of till that moment; and with the sunshine went flying shadows that rose and fell like the lifting of an eyelid. The gleam of the sun before she put up her hand to shade her face fell upon the tear in the mistress’s eye, and hung a rainbow upon the long lash, which was wet with that tender dew. She looked at her boys gliding over the loch through this veil of fairy colours, all made out of a tear, and the heart in her tender bosom beat with a corresponding conjunction of pain and happiness. “He’ll never more come back to bide at home like his father’s son,” she said to herself, softly, with a pang of natural mortification; “but, eh, I’m a thankless woman to complain, and him so weel and so good, and naething in fant but nature,” added the mother, with all the compunction of true love; and so stood gazing till the boat had gone out of hearing, and had begun to enter that sweet shadow of the opposite bank, projected far into the loch, which plunged the whole landscape into a dazzling uncertainty,and made it a doubtful matter which was land and which was water. Colin himself, touched by the loveliness of the scene, had paused just then to look down the shining line to where this beatified paradise of water opened out into the heaven of Clyde. And to his mother’s eyes gazing after him, the boat seemed to hang suspended among the sweet spring foliage of the Lady’s Glen, which lay reflected, every leaf and twig, in the sweeter loch. When somebody called her indoors she went away with a sigh. Was it earth, or a vision of Paradise, or “some unsubstantial fairy place?” The sense of all this loveliness struck intense, with almost a feeling of pain, upon the gentle woman’s poetic heart.
And it was in such a scene that Colin wrote the verses which borrowed from the sun and the rain prismatic colours like those of his mother’s tears, and were as near poetry as they could possibly be to miss that glory. Luckily for him he had no favourite confidant at hand to persuade him that he was a poet; so the verse-making did him nothing but good, providing a safety-valve for that somewhat stormy period of his existence.
Mr. Jordan was very rich and very liberal, and, indeed, lavish of the money which had elevated him above all his early friends and associations. He had travelled, he bought pictures, he prided himself upon his library, and he was very good to his young tutor, who, he told everybody, was “a lad of genius;” and though naturally, even with all this, Colin’s existence was not one of unmingled bliss, the change was good for him. As soon as he had left Ramore he began to look back to it with longing, as was natural to his years. The sense that he had that home behind him, with everybody ready to stand by him whatever trouble he might fall into, and every heart open to hear and sympathize in all the particulars of his life, restored the young man all at once to content and satisfaction with the homely household that loved him. When he was there life looked gray and sombre in all its sober-coloured garments; but when he looked across the loch at the white house on the hillside, that little habitation had regained its ideal character. He had some things to endure, as was natural, that galled his high spirit, but, on the whole, he was happier than if he had still been at Ramore.
And so the summer passed on. He had sent his answer to Sir Thomas without any delay—an answer in which, on the whole, his father concurred—written in a strain of lofty politeness which would not have misbecome a young prince. “He was destined for the Church of Scotland,” Colin wrote, “andsuch being the case, it was best that he should content himself with the training of a Scotch university. Less perfect, no doubt,” the boy had said, with a kind of haughty humility; “but, perhaps, better adapted to the future occupations of a Scotch clergyman.” And then he went on to offer thanks in a magnificent way, calculated to overwhelm utterly the good-natured baronet, who had never once imagined that the pride of the farmer’s son would be wounded by his proposal. The answer had been sent, and no notice had been taken of it. It was months since then, and not a word of Sir Thomas Frankland or his family had been heard about the Holy Loch. They seemed to have disappeared altogether back again into their native firmament, never more to dazzle the eyes of beholders in the west country. It was hard upon Colin thus to lose, at a stroke, not only the hope on which he had built so securely, but at the same time a great part of the general stimulation of his life. Not only the visionary budding love which had filled him with so many sweet thoughts, but even the secret rivalry and opposition which no one knew of, had given strength and animation to his life—and now both seemed to have departed together. He mused over it often with wonder, asking himself if Lauderdale was right; if it was true that most things come to nothing; and whether meetings and partings, which looked as if they must tell upon life for ever and ever, were, after all, of not half so much account as the steady routine of existence? The youth perplexed himself daily with such questions, and wrote to Lauderdale many a long mysterious epistle which puzzled his anxious friend, who could not make out what had set Colin’s brains astray out of all the confident philosophies of his years. When the young man, in his hours of leisure, climbed up the woody ravine close by, to where the burn took long leaps over the rocks, flinging itself down in diamonds and showers of spray into the heart of the deep summer foliage in the Lady’s Glen, and from that height looked down upon the castle on the other side, seated among its lawns and trees on the soft promontory which narrowed the entrance of the loch, Colin could not but feel the unexpected void which was suddenly made in his life. The Frankland family had been prominent objects on his horizon for a number of years. In disliking or liking, they had been always before him; and even at his most belligerent period, there was something not disagreeable to the lad’s fancy, at least, in this link of connexion with a world so different from his own—a world in which, however commonplace might be the majorityof the actors, such great persons as were to be had in the age might still be found. And now they had gone altogether away out of Colin’s reach or ken; and he was left in his natural position nowise affected by his connexion with them. It was a strange feeling, and notwithstanding the scorn with which he rejected the baronet’s kindness and declined his patronage, much disappointment and mortification mingled with the sense of surprise in Colin’s mind. “It is all as it ought to be,” he said to himself many times as he pondered over it; but, perhaps, if it had been quite as he expected, he would not have needed to impress that sentiment on his mind by so many repetitions. These reflections still recurred to him all the summer through whenever he had any time to himself. But Colin’s time was not much at his own disposal. Nature had given to this country lad a countenance which propitiated the world. Not that it was handsome in the abstract, or could bear examination feature by feature; but there were few people who could resist the mingled shyness and frankness of the eyes with which Colin looked out upon the miraculous universe, perceiving perpetual wonders. The surprise of existence was still in his face, indignant though he would have been had anybody told him so; and tired people of the world, who knew better than they practised, took comfort in talking to the youth, who, whatever he might choose to say, was still looking as might be seen, with fresh eyes at the dewy earth, and saw everything through the atmosphere of the morning. This unconscious charm of his told greatly upon women, and most of all upon women who were older than himself. The young ladies were not so sure of him, for his fancy was preoccupied; but he gained many friends among the matrons whom he encountered, and generally was a popular individual. And then hospitality reigns paramount on those sweet shores of the Holy Loch. Mr. Jordan filled his handsome house with a continual succession of guests from all quarters; and as neither the host nor hostess was in the least degree amusing, Colin’s services were in constant requisition. Sometimes the company was good, often indifferent; but, at all events, it occupied the youth, and kept him from too much inquisition into the early troubles of his own career.
His life went on in this fashion until September brought sportsmen in flocks to the heathery braes of the loch. Colin, whose engagement was but a temporary one, was beginning to look forward once again to his old life in Glasgow—to the close little room in Donaldson’s Land, and the long walks and longertalks with Lauderdale, which were almost his only recreation. Perhaps the idea was not so agreeable to him as in former years. Somehow, he was going back with a duller idea of existence, with no radiance of variable light upon his horizon; and in the absence of that fairy illumination the natural circumstances became more palpable, and struck him with a sense of their poverty and meanness such as he had never felt before. He had to gulp down a little disgust as he thought of his attic, and even, in the involuntary fickleness of his youth, was not quite so sure of enjoying Lauderdale’s philosophy as he had been for all those bygone years.
He was in this state of mind when he heard of a new party of visitors who were to arrive the day after at Ardmartin—a distinguished party of visitors, fine people, whom Mr. Jordan had met somewhere in the world, and who had deigned to forget his lack of rank, and even of interest, in his wealth, and his grouse, and the convenient situation of his house; for Colin’s employer was not moderately rich—a condition which does a man no good in society—but had heaps upon heaps of money, or was supposed to have it, which comes to about the same, and was respected accordingly. Colin listened but languidly to the scraps of talk he heard about these fine people. There was a dowager countess among them, whose name abstracted the lady of the house from all other considerations. As for Colin, he was still too young to care for dowagers; he heard without hearing of all the preparations that were to be made, and the exertions that were thought necessary in order to make Ardmartin agreeable to so illustrious a party, and paid very little attention to anything that was going on, hoping within himself to make his escape from the fuss of the reception, and have a little time to himself. On the afternoon on which they were expected he betook himself to the hills, as soon as his work with his pupils was over. It had been raining as usual, and everything shone and glistened in the sun, which blazed all over the braes with a brightness that did not neutralize the chill of the season. The air was so still that Colin heard the crack of the sportsmen’s guns from different points around him, miles apart from each other, and could even, on the height where he stood, make out the throb of the little steamer which was progressing through the loch at his feet, reflected to the minutest touch, from its pennon of white steam at the funnel to the patches of colour among its passengers on the deck, in the clear water over which it glided. The young man pursuedhis walk till the shadows began to gather, and the big bell of Ardmartin pealed out its summons to dress into all the echoes as he reached the gate. The house looked crowded to the very door, where it had overflowed in a margin of servants, some of whom were still unloading the last carriage as Colin entered. He pursued his way to his own room languidly enough, for he was tired, and he was not much interested in anything he personally was likely to hear or see.
But as he went up the grand staircase, he passed a door which was ajar, and from which came the sound of an animated conversation. Colin started as if he had received a blow, as one of these voices fell on his ear. He came to a dead pause in the gallery upon which this room opened, and stood listening, unconscious of the surprised looks of somebody’s maid, who passed him with her lady’s dress in her arms, and looked very curiously at the tutor. Colin stopped short and listened, suddenly roused up to a degree of interest which brought the colour to his cheek and the light to his eye. He thought all the ladies of the party must be there, so varied was the pleasant din and so many the voices; but he had been standing breathless, in the most eager pose of listening, for nearly half the time allowed for dressing, before he heard again the voice which had arrested him. Then, when he began to imagine that it must have been a dream, the sound struck his ear once more—a few brief syllables, a sweet, sudden laugh, and again silence. Was ithervoice? or was it only a trick of fancy? While he stood lingering, wondering, straining his ear for a repetition of the sound, the door opened softly, and various white figures in dressing-gowns flitted off upstairs and downstairs, some of them uttering little exclamations of fright at sight of the alarming apparition of a man. It was pretty to see them dispersing, like so many white doves, from that momentary confabulation; butshewas not among them. Colin went up to his room and dressed with lightning speed, chafing within himself at the humble place which he was expected to take at the table. When he went into the dining-room, as usual, all the rest of the party were taking their places. The only womankind distinctly within Colin’s sight was a lady of fifty, large enough to make six Matildas. He could not seeherthough he strained his eyes up and down through the long alley of fruits and flowers. Though he was not twenty, and had walked about ten miles that afternoon over the wholesome heather, the poor young fellow could not eat any dinner. He had been placed besidea heavy old man to amuse him, whom his employer thought might be useful to the young student; but Colin had not half a dozen words to spend upon any one. Wasshehere? or was it mere imagination which brought down to him now and then, through the pauses of the conversation, a momentary tone that was like hers? When the ladies left the room the young man rushed, though it was not his office, to open the door for them. Another moment and Colin was in paradise—the paradise of fools. How was it possible that he could have been deceived? The little start with which she recognised him, the movement of surprise which made her drop her handkerchief and brought the colour to her cheek, rapt the lad into a feeling more exquisite than any he had known all his life. She smiled; she gave him a rapid, sweet look of recognition, which was made complete by that start of surprise. She was here, under the same roof—she whom he had never hoped to see again. Colin fell headlong into the unintended snare. He sat pondering over her look and her startled gesture all the tedious time, while the other men drank their wine, without being at all aware what divine elixir was inhiscup. Her look of sweet wonder kept shining ever brighter and brighter before his imagination. Was it wonder only, or some dawning of another sentiment? If she had spoken, the spell might have been less powerful. A crowd of fairy voices kept whispering all manner of delicious follies in Colin’s ear, as he sat waiting for the moment when he could follow her. Imagination did everything for him in that moment of expectation and unlooked-for delight.
Mr. Jordanhad invited a large party of people to meet the Dowager Countess; but the greatness of the leading light, which was to illustrate his house, had blinded him to the companion stars that were to twinkle in her company. The principal people about had consented graciously to be reviewed by her ladyship, who, once upon a time, had been a very great lady and fashionable potentate. A very little fashion counts for much on the shores of the Holy Loch, and the population was moved accordingly. But the young ladies, who accompanied the dowager,were less carefully provided for. When Miss Frankland, who was unquestionably the beauty of the party, cast a glance of careless but acute observation round her, after all the gentlemen had returned to the drawing-room, she saw nobody whom she cared to distinguish by her notice. Most of the men about had a flavour of commerciality in their talk, or their manner, or their whiskers. Most of them were rich, some of them were very well bred and well educated, though the saucy beauty could not perceive it; but there was not an individual among them who moved her curiosity or her interest, except one who stood rather in the background, and whose eyes kept seeking her with wistful devotion.
Colin had improved during the last year. He was younger than Miss Frankland, a fact of which she was aware, and he was at the age upon which a year tells mightily. Looking at him in the background, through clouds of complacent people who felt themselves Colin’s superiors, even an indifferent spectator might have distinguished the tall youth, with those heaps of brown hair overshadowing the forehead which might have been apostrophized as “domed for thought” if anybody could have seen it; and in his eyes that gleam of things miraculous, that unconscious surprise and admiration which would have given a touch of poetry to the most commonplace countenance. But Miss Matty was not an indifferent spectator. She was fond of him in her way as women are fond of a man whom they never mean to love—fond of him as one is fond of the victim who consents to glorify one’s triumph. As she looked at him, and saw how he had improved, and perceived the faithful allegiance with which he watched every movement she made, the heart of the beauty was touched. Worship is sweet, even when it is only a country boy who bestows it—and perhaps this country boy might turn out a genius or a poet. Not that Matilda cared much for genius or poetry, but she liked everything which bestows distinction, and was aware that in the lack of other titles, a little notability, even in society, might be obtained if one was wise, and knew how to manage it, even by such means. And besides all this, honestly and at the foundation, she was fond of Colin. When she had surveyed all the company, and had made up her mind that there was nobody there in the least degree interesting, she held up her fan with a pretty gesture, calling him to her. The lad made his way through the assembly at that call with a smile and glow of exultation which it is impossible to describe. His face was lighted up with a kind of celestial intoxication. “Who is thatvery handsome young man?” the Dowager Countess was moved to remark as he passed within her ladyship’s range of vision, which was limited, for Lady Hallamshire was, like most other people, shortsighted. “Oh, he is not a handsome young man, he is only the tutor,” said one of the ladies of the Holy Loch; but, notwithstanding, she too looked after Colin, with aroused curiosity. “I suppose Matty Frankland must have met him in society,” said the Dowager, who was the most comfortable ofchaperones, and went on with her talk, turning her eyeglass towards her pretty charge. As for the young men, they stared at Colin with mingled consternation and wrath. What was he? a fellow who had not a penny, a mere Scotch student, to be distinguished by the prettiest girl in the room? for the aspiring people about the Holy Loch, as well as in the other parts of Scotland, had come to entertain that contempt for the national universities and national scholarship which is so curious a feature in the present transition state of the country. If Colin had been an Oxford man the west-country people would have thought it quite natural, but a Scotch student did not impress them with any particular respect.
“I am so glad to meet you again!” said Matty, with the warmest cordiality, “but so surprised to see you here. What are you doing here? why have you come away from that delicious Ramore, where I am sure I should live for ever and ever if it were mine? What have you been doing with yourself all this time? Come and tell me all about it; and I do so want to know how everything is looking at that dear castle and in our favourite glen. Don’t you remember that darling glen behind the church, where we used to gather basketfuls of primroses—and all the lovely mosses? I am dying to hear about everything and everybody. Do come and sit down here, and tell me all.”
“Where shall I begin?” said Colin, who, utterly forgetful of his position, and all the humilities incumbent on him in such an exalted company, had instantly taken possession of the seat she pointed out to him, and had placed himself according to her orders directly between her and the company, shutting her into a corner. Miss Matty could see very well all that was going on in the drawing-room, but Colin had his back to the company, and had forgotten everything in the world except her face.
“Oh, with yourself, of course,” said Matty. “I want to know all about it; and, first of all, what are you doing among these sort of people?” the young lady continued, with a littlenod of her head towards the assembled multitude, some of whom were quite within hearing.
“These sort of people have very little to say to me,” said Colin, who suddenly felt himself elevated over their heads; “I am only the tutor;” and the two foolish young creatures looked at each other, and laughed, as if Colin of Ramore had been a prince in disguise, and his tutorship an excellent joke.
“Oh, you are only the tutor?” said Miss Matty—“that is charming. Then one will be able to make all sorts of use of you. Everybody is allowed to maltreat a tutor. You will have to row us on the loch, and walk with us to the glen, and carry our cloaks, and generally conduct yourself as becomes a slave and vassal. As for me, I shall order you about with the greatest freedom, and expect perfect obedience,” said the beauty, looking with her eyes full of laughter into Colin’s face.
“All that goes without saying,” said Colin, who did not like to commit himself to the French. “I almost think I have already proved my perfect allegiance.”
“Oh, you were only a boy last year,” said Miss Matty, with some evanescent change of colour, which looked like a blush to Colin’s delighted eyes. “Now you are a man and a tutor, and we shall behave to you accordingly. How lovely that glen was last spring, to be sure,” continued the girl, with a little quite unconscious natural feeling; “do you remember the day when it rained, and we had to wait under the beeches, and when you imagined all sorts of things in the pattering of the shower? Do you ever write any poetry now? I want so much to see what you have been doing—since—” said the siren, who, half-touched by nature in her own person, was still perfectly conscious of her power.
“Since!” Colin repeated the word over to himself with a flush of happiness which, perhaps, no real good in existence could have equalled. Poor boy! if he could but have known what had happened “since” in Miss Matty’s experience—but, fortunately, he had not the smallest idea what was involved in the season which the young lady had lately terminated, or in the brilliant winter campaign in the country, which had brought adorers in plenty, but nothing worthy of the beauty’s acceptance, to Miss Matty’s feet. Colin thought only of the beatific dreams, the faithful follies which had occupied his own juvenile imagination “since.” As for the heroine herself, she looked slightly confused to hear him repeat the word. She had meant it to produce its effect, but then she was thinking solely of a malecreature of her own species, and not of a primitive, innocent soul like that which looked at her in a glow of young delight out of Colin’s eyes. She was used to be admired and complimented, and humoured to the top of her bent, but she did not understand being believed in, and the new sensation somewhat flattered and embarrassed the young woman of the world. She watched his look, as he replied to her, and thereby added doubly, though she did not mean it, to the effect of what she had said.
“I never write poetry,” said Colin, “I wish I could—I know how I should use the gift; but I have a few verses about somewhere, I suppose, like everybody else. Last spring I was almost persuaded I could do something better; but that feeling lasts only so long as one’s inspiration lasts,” said the youth, looking down, in his turn, lest his meaning might be discovered too quickly in his eye.
And then there ensued a pause—a pause which was more dangerous than the talk, and which Miss Matty made haste to break.
“Do you know you are very much changed?” she said. “You never did any of this society-talk last year. You have been making friends with some ladies somewhere, and they have taught you conversation. But, as for me, I am your early friend, and I preferred you when you did not talk like other people,” said Miss Matty, with a slight pout. “Tell me who has been forming your mind?”
Perhaps it was fortunate for Colin at this moment that Lady Hallamshire had become much bored by the group which had gathered round her sofa. The dowager was clever in her way, and had written a novel or two, and was accustomed to be amused by the people who had the honour of talking to her. Though she was no longer a leader of fashion, she kept up the manners and customs of that remarkable species of the human race, and when she was bored, permitted her sentiments to be plainly visible in her expressive countenance. Though it was the member for the county who was enlightening her at that moment in the statistics of the West Highlands, and though she had been in a state of great anxiety five minutes before about the emigration which was depopulating the moors, her ladyship broke in quite abruptly in the midst of the poor-rates with a totally irrelevant observation—
“It appears to me that Matty Frankland has got into another flirtation; I must go and look after her,” said the Dowager; and she smiled graciously upon the explanatory member, andleft him talking, to the utter consternation of their hostess. Lady Hallamshire thought it probable that the young man was amusing as well as handsome, or Matty Frankland, who was a girl of discretion, would not have received him into such marked favour. “Though I daresay there is nobody here worth her trouble,” her chaperone thought as she looked round the room; but anyhow a change was desirable. “Matty, mignonne, I want to know what you are talking about,” she said, suddenly coming to anchor opposite the two young people; and a considerable fuss ensued to find her ladyship a seat, during which time Colin had a hundred minds to run away. The company took a new centre after this performance on the part of the great lady, and poor Colin, all at once, began to feel that he was doing exactly the reverse of what was expected of him. He got up with a painful blush as he met Mr. Jordan’s astonished eye. The poor boy did not know that he had been much more remarked before: “flirting openly with that dreadful little coquette Miss Frankland, and turning his back upon his superiors,” as some of the indignant bystanders said. Even Colin’s matronly friends, who pitied him and formed his mind, disapproved of his behaviour. “She only means to make a fool of you, and you ought not to allow yourself to be taken in by it,” said one of these patronesses in his ear, calling him aside. But Fate had determined otherwise.
“Don’t go away,” said Lady Hallamshire. “I like Matty to introduce all her friends to me; and you two look as if you had known each other a long time,” said the dowager, graciously; for she was pleased, like most women, by Colin’s looks. “One would know him again if one met him,” she added, in an audible aside; “he doesn’t look exactly like everybody else, as most young men do. Who is he, Matty?” And Miss Frankland’schaperoneturned the light of her countenance full upon Colin, quite indifferent to the fact that he had heard one part of her speech quite as well as the other. When a fine lady consents to enter the outer world, it is to be expected that she should behave herself as civilized people do among savages, and the English among the other nations of the world.
“Oh, yes! we have known each other a long time,” said Matty, partly with a generous, partly with a mischievous, instinct. “My uncle knows Mr. Campbell’s father very well, and Harry and he and I made acquaintance when we were children. I am sure you must have heard how nearly Harry was drowned once when we were at Kilchurn Castle. It was Mr. Campbell who saved his life.”
“Oh!” said Lady Hallamshire; “but I thought that was”—and then she stopped short. Looking at Colin again, her ladyship’s experienced eye perceived that he was not arrayed with that perfection of apparel to which she was accustomed; but at the same moment her eye caught his glowing face, half pleased, half haughty with that pride of lowliness which is of all pride the most defiant. “I am very glad to make Mr. Campbell’s acquaintance,”—she went on so graciously that everybody forgot the pause. “Harry Frankland is a very dear young friend of mine, and we are all very much indebted to his deliverer.”
It was just what a distinguished matron would have said in the circumstances in one of Lady Hallamshire’s novels; but, instead of remaining overcome with grateful confusion, as the hero ought to have done, Colin made an immediate reply.
“I cannot take the credit people give me,” said the lad, with a little heat. “He happened to get into my boat when he was nearly exhausted—that is the whole business. There has been much more talk about it than was necessary. I cannot pretend even to be a friend of Mr. Frankland,” said Colin, with the unnecessary explanatoriness of youth, “and I certainly did not save his life.”
With which speech the young man disappeared out of sight amid the wondering assembly, which privately designated him a young puppy and a young prig, and by various other epithets, according to the individual mind of the speaker. As for Lady Hallamshire, she was considerably disgusted. “Your friend is original, I dare say; but I am not sure that he is quite civil,” she said to Matty, who did not quite know whether to be vexed or pleased by Colin’s abrupt withdrawal. Perhaps on the whole the young lady liked him better for having a mind of his own, notwithstanding his devotion, and for preferring to bestow his worship without the assistance of spectators. If he had been a man in the least eligible as a lover, Miss Frankland might have been of a different opinion; but, as that was totally out of possibility, Matty liked, on the whole, that he should do what was ideally right, and keep up her conception of him. She gave her head a pretty toss of semi-defiance, and went across the room to Mrs. Jordan, to whom she was very amiable and caressing all the rest of the evening. But she still continued to watch with the corner of her eye the tall boyish figure which was now and then to be discerned in the distance, with those masses of brown hair heaped like clouds upon the forehead, which Colin’s height made visible over the heads of many very superior people.She knew he was watching her and noted every movement she made, and she felt a little proud of the slave, who, though he was only the tutor and a poor farmer’s son, had something in his eyes which nobody else within sight had any inkling of. Matty was rather clever in her way, which was as much different from Colin’s as light from darkness. No man of a mental calibre like hers could have found him out; but she had a little insight, as a woman, which enabled her to perceive the greater height when she came within sight of it. And then poor Colin, all unconsciously, had given her such an advantage over him. He had laid his boy’s heart at her feet, and, half in love, half in imagination, had made her the goddess of his youth. If she had thought it likely to do him any serious damage, perhaps Matty, who was a good girl enough, and was of some use to the rector and very popular among the poor in her own parish, might have done her duty by Colin, and crushed this pleasant folly in the bud. But then it did not occur to her that a “friendship” of which it was so very evident nothing could ever come, could harm anybody. It did not occur to her that an ambitious Scotch boy, who knew no more of the world than a baby, and who had been fed upon all the tales of riches achieved and glories won which are the common fare of many a homely household, might possibly entertain a different opinion. So Matty asked all kinds of questions about him of Mrs. Jordan, and gave him now and then a little nod when she met his eye, and generally kept up a kind of special intercourse far more flattering to the youth than ordinary conversation. Poor Colin neither attempted nor wished to defend himself. He put his head under the yoke, and hugged his chains. He collected his verses, poor boy! when he went to his own room that night—verses which he knew very well were true to her, but in which it would be rather difficult to explain the fatal stroke—the grievous blow on which he had expatiated so vaguely that it might be taken to mean the death of his lady rather than the simple fact that she did not come to Kilchurn Castle when he expected her. How to make her understand that this was the object of his lamentations puzzled him a little; for Colin knew enough of romance to be aware that the true lover does not venture to address the princess until he has so far conquered fortune as to make his suit with honour to her and fitness in the eyes of the world.
It was thus that the young tutor sat in his bare little room out of the way, and, with eyes that glowed over his midnight candle, looked into the future, and calculated visionary dates atwhich, if all went with him as he hoped, he might lay his trophies at his lady’s feet. It is true that Matty herself fully intended by that time to have daughters ready to enter upon the round of conquest from which she should have retired into matron dignity; but no such profanity ever occurred to Colin. Thus the two thought of each other as they went to their rest—the one with all the delusions of heroic youthful love, the other with no delusions at all, but a half gratitude, half affection—a woman’s compassionate fondness for the man who had touched her heart a little by giving her his, but whom it was out of the question ever to think of loving. And so the coils of Fate began to throw themselves around the free-born feet of young Colin of Ramore.
Lady Hallamshirewas a woman very accessible to a little judicious flattery, and very sensible of good living. She liked Mr. Jordan’s liberal house, and she liked the court that was paid to her; and was not averse to lengthening out her visit, and converting three days into a fortnight, especially as her ladyship’s youngest son, Horace Fitz-Gibbon, who was a lieutenant in the navy, was expected daily in the Clyde—at least his ship was, which comes to the same thing. Horace was a dashing young fellow enough, with nothing but his handsome face (he had his mother’s nose, as everybody acknowledged, and, although now a dowager, she had been a great beauty in her day), and the honourable prefix to his name to help him on in the world. Lady Hallamshire had heard of an heiress or two about, and her maternal ambition was stimulated; and, at the same time, the grouse were bewitching, and the cookery most creditable. The only thing she was sorry for was Matty Frankland, her ladyship said, who never could stay more than a week anywhere, unless she was flirting with somebody, without being bored. Perhaps the necessary conditions had been obtained even at Ardmartin, for Matty bore up very well on the whole. She fulfilled the threat of making use of the tutor to the fullest extent; and Colin gave himself up to the enjoyment of his fool’s paradise without a thought of flying from the dangerous felicity. They climbed the hills together, keeping far in advance of theircompanions, who overtook them only to find the mood change, and to leave behind in the descent the pair of loiterers, whose pace no calls nor advices, nor even the frequent shower, could quicken; and they rowed together over the lovely loch, about which Matty, having much fluency of language, and the adroitness of a little woman of the world in appropriating other people’s sentiments, showed even more enthusiasm than Colin. Perhaps she too enjoyed this wonderful holiday in the life which already she knew by heart, and found no novelty in. To be adored, to be invested with all the celestial attributes, to feel herself the one grand object in somebody’s world, is pleasant to a woman. Matty almost felt as if she was in love, without the responsibility of the thing, or any need for troubling herself about what it was going to come to. It could come to nothing—except an expression of gratitude and kindness to the young man who had saved her cousin’s life. When everything was so perfectly safe, there could be no harm in the enjoyment; and the conclusion Matty came to, as an experimental philosopher, was, that to fall in love really, and to accept its responsibilities, would be an exciting but highly troublesome amusement. She could not help thinking to herself how anxious she should be about Colin if such a thing were possible. How those mistakes which he could not help making, and which at present did not disturb her in the least, would make her glow and burn with shame, if he were really anything to her. And yet he was a great deal to her. She was as good as if she had been really possessed by that love on which she speculated, and almost as happy; and Colin was in her mind most of the hours of the day, when she was awake, and a few of those in which she slept. The difference was, that Matty contemplated quite calmly the inevitable fact of leaving Ardmartin on Monday, and did not think it in the least likely that she would break her heart over the parting; and that, even in imagination, she never for a moment connected her fate with that of her young adorer.
But as for the poor youth himself, he went deeper and deeper into the enchanted land. He went without any resistance, giving himself up to the sweet fate. She had read the poems of course, and had inquired eagerly into that calamity which occupied so great a part in them, and had found out what it was, and had blushed (as Colin thought), but was not angry. What could a shy young lover, whose lips were sealed by honour, but who knew his eyes, his actions, his productions to be alike eloquent, desire more? Sometimes Lady Hallamshire consentedto weigh down the boat, which dipped hugely at the stern under her, and made Colin’s task a hard one. Sometimes the tutor, who counted for nobody, was allowed to conduct a cluster of girls, of whom he saw but one, over the peaceful water. Lessons did not count for much in those paradisaical days. Miss Frankland begged holidays for the boys; begged that they might go excursions with her, and make pic-nics on the hill-side, and accompany her to all sorts of places, till Mrs. Jordan was entirely captivated with Matty. She never saw a young lady so taken up with children, the excellent woman said; and prophesied that Miss Matty would make a wonderful mother of a family when her time came. As for the tutor, Mrs. Jordan too took him for a cipher, and explained to him how improving it was for the boys to be in good society, by way of apologizing to Colin. At length there occurred one blessed day in which Colin and his boys embarked with Miss Frankland alone, to row across to Ramore. “My uncle has so high an opinion of Mr. Campbell,” Matty said very demurely; “I know he would never forgive me if I did not go to see him.” As for Colin, his blessedness was tempered on that particular occasion by a less worthy feeling. He felt, if not ashamed of Ramore, at least, apologetic of it and its accessories, which apology took, as was natural to a Scotch lad of his years, an argumentative and defiant tone.
“It is a poor house enough,” said Colin, as he pointed it out, gleaming white upon the hill-side, to Miss Matty, who pretended to remember it perfectly, but who after all had not the least idea which was Ramore—“but I would not change with anybody I know. We are better off in the cottages than you in the palaces. Comfort is a poor sort of heathen deity to be worshipped as you worship him in England. As for us, we have a higher standard,” said the lad, half in sport and more than half in earnest. The two young Jordans after a little gaping at the talk which went over their heads (for Miss Matty was wonderfully taken up with the children only when their mother was present), had betaken themselves to the occupation of sailing a little yacht from the bows of their boat, and were very well-behaved and disturbed nobody.
“Yes,” said Matty, in an absent tone. “By the way, I wish very much you would tell me why you rejected my uncle’s proposal about going to Oxford. I suppose youhavea higher standard; but then they say you don’t have such good scholars in Scotland. I am sure I beg your pardon if I am wrong.”
“But I did not say you were wrong,” said Colin, who, however, grew fiery red, and burned to prove his scholarship equal to that of any Eton lad or Christ-church man. “They say, on the other side, that a man may get through without disgrace, in Oxford or Cambridge, who doesn’t know how to spell English,” said the youth, with natural exasperation—and took a few long strokes which sent the boat flying across the summer ripples, and consumed his angry energy. He was quite ready to sneer at Scotch scholarship in his own person, when he and his fellows were together, and even to sigh over the completer order and profounder studies of the great Universities of England; but to acknowledge the inferiority of his country in any particular to the lady of his wishes, was beyond the virtue of a Scotchman and a lover.
“I did not speak of stupid people,” said Miss Matty; “and I am sure I did not mean to vex you. Of course I know you are so very clever in Scotland; everybody allowsthat. I love Scotland so much,” said the politic little woman; “but then every country has its weak points and its strong points; and you have not told me yet why you rejected my uncle’s proposal. He wished you very much to accept it; and so did I,” said the siren, after a little pause, lifting upon Colin the half-subdued light of her blue eyes.
“Why did you wish it?” the lad asked, as was to be expected, bending forward to hear the answer to his question.
“Oh, look there! little Ben will be overboard in another minute,” said Matty, and then she continued lower, “I can’t tell you, I’m sure; because I thought you were going to turn out a great genius, I suppose.”
“But you don’t believethat?” said Colin; “you say so only to make the Holy Loch a little more like Paradise; and that is unnecessary to-day,” the lad went on, glancing round him with eyes full of the light that never was on sea or land. Though he was not a poet, he had what was almost better, a poetic soul. The great world moved for him always amid everlasting melodies, the morning and the evening stars singing together even through the common day. Just now his cup was about running over. What if, to crown all, God, not content with giving him life and love, had indeed visibly to the sight of others, if not to his own, bestowed genius also, the other gift most prized of youth. Somehow, he could not contradict that divine peradventure, “If it were so,” he said under his breath, “if it were so!” and the other little soul opposite, who had lost sight of Colin at thatmoment, and did not know through what bright mists he was wandering, strained her limited vision after him, and wondered and asked what he meant.
“If it were so,” said Matty, “what then?” Most likely she expected a compliment—and Colin’s compliments being made only by inference, and with a shyness and an emotion unknown to habitual manufacturers of such articles, were far from being unpleasant offerings to Miss Matty, who was slightlyblaséof the common coin.
But Colin only shook his head, and bent his strong young frame to the oars, and shook back the clouds of brown hair from his half-visible forehead. The boat flew like a swallow along the crisp bosom of the loch. Miss Matty did not quite know what to make of the silence, not being in love. She took off her glove and held her pretty hand in the water over the side of the boat, but the loch was cold, and she withdrew it presently. What was he thinking of, she wondered? Having lost sight of him thus, she was reluctant to begin the conversation anew, lest she might perhaps say something which would betray her non-comprehension, and bring her down from that pedestal which, after all, it was pleasant to occupy. Feminine instinct at last suggested to Matty what was the very best thing to do in the circumstances. She had a pretty voice, and perfect ease in the use of it, and knew exactly what she could do, as people of limited powers generally can. So she began to sing, murmuring to herself at first as she stooped over the water, and then rising into full voice. As for Colin, that last touch was almost too much for him; he had never heard her sing before, and he could not help marvelling as he looked at her why Providence should have lavished such endowments upon one, and left so many others unprovided—and fell to rowing softly, dropping his oars into the sunshine with as little sound as possible, to do full justice to the song. When Matty had come to the end she turned on him quite abruptly, and, almost before the last note had died from her lips, repeated her question. “Now tell me why did you refuse to go to Oxford?” said the little siren, looking full into Colin’s face.
“Because I can’t be dependent upon any man, and because I had done nothing to entitle me to such a recompense,” said Colin, who was taken by surprise; “you all make a mistake about that business,” he said, with a slight sudden flush of colour, and immediately fell to his oars again with all his might.
“It is very odd,” said Miss Matilda. “Why don’t you likeHarry? He is nothing particular, but he is a very good sort of boy, and it is so strange that you should have such a hatred to each other—I mean to say,heis not at all fond ofyou,” she continued, with a laugh. “I believe he is jealous because we all talk of you so much; and it must be rather hard upon a boy after all to have his lifesaved, and to be expected to be grateful; for I don’t believe a word you say,” said Miss Matty. “I know the rights of it better than you do—youdidsave his life.”
“I hope you will quite release him from the duty of being grateful,” said Colin; “I don’t suppose there is either love or hatred between us. We don’t know each other to speak of, and I don’t see any reason why we should be fond of each other;” and again Colin sent the boat forward with long, rapid strokes, getting rid of the superfluous energy which was roused within by hearing Frankland’s name.
“It is very odd,” said Matty again. “I wonder if you are fated to be rivals, and come in each other’s way. If I knew any girl that Harry was in love with, I should not like to introduce you to her,” said Miss Matty, and she stopped and laughed a little, evidently at something in her own mind. “How odd it would be if you were to be rivals through life,” she continued; “I am sure I can’t tell which I should most wish to win—my cousin, who is a very good boy in his way, or you, who puzzle me so often,” said the little witch, looking suddenly up into Colin’s eyes.
“How is it possible I can puzzle you?” he said; but the innocent youth was flattered by the sense of superiority involved. “There can be very little rivalry between an English baronet and a Scotch minister,” continued Colin. “We shall never come in each other’s way.”
“Andmustyou be a Scotch minister?” said Miss Matty, softly. There was a regretful tone in her voice, and she gave an appealing glance at him, as if she were remonstrating against that necessity. Perhaps it was well for Colin that they were so near the shore, and that he had to give all his attention to the boat, to secure the best landing for those delicate little feet. As he leaped ashore himself, ankle-deep into the bright but cold water, Colin could not but remember his boyish scorn of Henry Frankland, and that dislike of wet feet which was so amusing and wonderful to the country boy. Matters were wonderfully changed now-a-days for Colin; but still he plunged into the water with a certain relish, and pulled the boat ashore with a sense of his strength and delight in it which at sucha moment it was sweet to experience. As for Miss Matty, she found the hill very steep, and accepted the assistance of Colin’s arm to get over the sharp pebbles of the beach. “One ought to wear strong boots,” she said, holding out the prettiest little foot, which indeed had been perfectly revealed before by the festooned dress, which Miss Matty found so convenient on the hills. When Colin’s mother saw from her window this pair approaching alone (for the Jordan boys were ever so far behind, still coquetting with their toy yacht), it was not wonderful if her heart beat more quickly than usual. She jumped, with her womanish imagination, at all kinds of incredible results, and saw her Colin happy and great, by some wonderful conjunction of his own genius and the favour of others, which it would have been hopeless to attempt any comprehension of. The mistress altogether puzzled and overwhelmed Miss Matty by the greeting she gave her. The little woman of the world looked in utter amazement at the poor farmer’s wife, whom she meant to be very kind and amiable to, but who to her consternation, took the superior part by right of nature; for Mrs. Campbell, being possessed by her own idea, was altogether obtuse to her visitor’s condescensions. The parlour at Ramore looked dingy certainly after the drawing-rooms of Ardmartin, and all the business of the farm was manifestly going on as usual; but even Colin, sensitive as he had become to all the differences of circumstances, was puzzled, like Matty, and felt his mother to have suddenly developed into a kind of primitive princess. Perhaps the poor boy guessed why, and felt that his love was elevating not only himself but everybody who belonged to him; but Miss Matty, who did not understand how profound emotion could affect anybody’s manners, nor how her young admirer’s mother could be influenced by his sentiments, was entirely in the dark, and could not help being immensely impressed by the bearing and demeanour of the mistress of Ramore.