“Papa has come to fetch me,” wrote Alice. “Oh, Colin, my heart is broken! He says we are to go instantly, without a moment’s delay; and he would not let me write even this if he knew. Oh, Colin, after all your goodness and kindness, and love that I was not worthy of!—oh, why did anybody ever interfere? I do not know what I am writing, and I am sure you will never be able to read it. Never so long as I live shall I think one thought of anybody but you; but papa would not let me speak to you—would not wait to see you, though I told him you were coming. Oh Colin, good-bye, and do not think it is me—and tell Mr. Lauderdale I shall never forget his kindness. I would rather, far rather, die than go away. Always, always, whatever any one may say, your own poor Alice, who is not half nor quarter good enough for you.”
“Papa has come to fetch me,” wrote Alice. “Oh, Colin, my heart is broken! He says we are to go instantly, without a moment’s delay; and he would not let me write even this if he knew. Oh, Colin, after all your goodness and kindness, and love that I was not worthy of!—oh, why did anybody ever interfere? I do not know what I am writing, and I am sure you will never be able to read it. Never so long as I live shall I think one thought of anybody but you; but papa would not let me speak to you—would not wait to see you, though I told him you were coming. Oh Colin, good-bye, and do not think it is me—and tell Mr. Lauderdale I shall never forget his kindness. I would rather, far rather, die than go away. Always, always, whatever any one may say, your own poor Alice, who is not half nor quarter good enough for you.”
Such was the hurried utterance of her disappointment and despair which Alice had left behind her ere she was forced away; but Sora Antonia held another document of a more formal description, which she delivered to Lauderdale with a long preface, of which he did not understand a word. He opened it carelessly; for, the fact being apparent, Lauderdale, who had no hand in the business on his own account, was sufficiently indifferentto any compliments which the father of Alice might have to pay to himself.
“Mr. Meredith regrets to have the sentiments of gratitude with which he was prepared to meet Mr. Lauderdale, on account of services rendered to his son, turned into contempt and indignation by the base attempt on the part of Mr. Lauderdale’s companion to ensnare the affections of his daughter. Having no doubt whatever that when removed from the personal coercion in which she has been held, Miss Meredith will see the base character of the connexion which it has been attempted to force upon her, Mr. Meredith will, in consideration of the services above mentioned, take no legal steps for the exposure of the conspiracy which he has fortunately found out in time to defeat its nefarious object; but begs that it may be fully understood that his leniency is only to be purchased by an utter abstinence from any attempt to disturb Miss Meredith, or bring forward the ridiculous pretensions of which she is too young to see the utterly interested and mercenary character.”
“Mr. Meredith regrets to have the sentiments of gratitude with which he was prepared to meet Mr. Lauderdale, on account of services rendered to his son, turned into contempt and indignation by the base attempt on the part of Mr. Lauderdale’s companion to ensnare the affections of his daughter. Having no doubt whatever that when removed from the personal coercion in which she has been held, Miss Meredith will see the base character of the connexion which it has been attempted to force upon her, Mr. Meredith will, in consideration of the services above mentioned, take no legal steps for the exposure of the conspiracy which he has fortunately found out in time to defeat its nefarious object; but begs that it may be fully understood that his leniency is only to be purchased by an utter abstinence from any attempt to disturb Miss Meredith, or bring forward the ridiculous pretensions of which she is too young to see the utterly interested and mercenary character.”
A man does not generally preserve his composure unabated after reading such an epistle, and Lauderdale was no more capable than other men of dissembling his indignation. His face flushed with a dark glow, more burning and violent than anything that had disturbed his blood for years; and it was as well for the character of the grave and sober-minded Scotsman that nobody but Sora Antonia was present to listen to the first exclamation that rose to his lips. Sora Antonia herself was in a state of natural excitement, pouring forth her account of all that had happened with tears and maledictions, which were only stopped by Colin’s shout from the foot of the staircase for his friend. The impatient youth came rushing upstairs when he found no immediate response, and swept the older man with him like a whirlwind. “Another time, another time,” he cried to Sora Antonia, “I must go first and bring the Signorina back,” and Colin picked up both the letters, and rushed down, driving Lauderdale before him to the carriage which he had already brought to the door; and they were driving off again, whirling down hill towards the Campagna, before either had recovered the first shock of this unlooked-for change in all their plans. Then it was Lauderdale who was the first to speak.
“You are going to bring the Signorina back,” he said with a long breath. “It’s a fool’s errand, but I’ll no say but I’ll gowith you. Colin, it’s happened as was only natural. The father has got better, as I said he would. I’m no blaming the father”—
“Not afterthis?” said Colin, who had just read in a blaze of indignation Mr. Meredith’s letter.
“Hout,” said the philosopher, “certainly not after that;” and he took it out of Colin’s hand and folded it up and tore it into a dozen pieces. “The man kens nothing of me. Callant,” said Lauderdale, warming suddenly, “there is but one person to be considered in this business. You and me can fend for ourselves. Pain and sorrow cannot but come on her as things are, but nothing is to be done or said that can aggravate them, or give her more to bear. You’re no heeding what I say. Where are you going now, if a man might ask?”
“I am going to claim my bride,” said Colin, shortly. “Do you imagine I am likely to abandon her now?”
“Colin,” said his friend anxiously, “you’ll no get her. I’m no forbidding you to try, but I warn you not to hope. She’s in the hands of her natural guardian, and at this moment there’s nae power on earth that would induce him to give her to you. He’s to be blamed for ill speaking, but I’m no clear that he’s to be blamed for this.”
“I wish you would not talk,” said Colin roughly, and opened Alice’s little letter again, and read it and put it to his lips. If he had never been impassioned before he was so now; and so they went on, dashing across the long level Campagna roads, where there was nothing to break the sunshine but here and there a nameless pile of ruins.
The sunshine began to fall low and level on the plain before they reached the gates. “One thing at least is certain—he cannot take her out of Rome to-night,” said Colin. It was almost the only word that was spoken between them until they began their doubtful progress from one hotel to another, through the noisy resounding streets.
“Nowwe have found them let me face them by myself,” said Colin, to whom the interval of silence and consideration had been of use. They were both waiting in the hall of one of the hotels facing towards the Piazza del Popolo, to which they hadat last tracked Mr. Meredith, and Lauderdale acquiesced silently in Colin’s decision. The young man had already sent up his card, with a request that he might see not Alice but her father. After a considerable time, the servant who had taken it returned with an abrupt message that Mr. Meredith was engaged. When he had sent up a second time, explaining that his business was urgent, but with the same effect, Colin accompanied his third message with a note, and went with his messenger to the door of the room in which his adversary was. There could be no doubt of the commotion produced within by this third application. Colin could hear some one pacing about the room with disturbed steps, and the sound of a controversy going on, which, though he was too far off to hear anything that was said, still reached him vaguely in sound at least. When he had waited for about five minutes, the clergyman, whom he had not in the least thought of or expected to see, made his appearance cautiously at the door. He did not attempt to admit the young man, but came up to him on tiptoe, and took him persuasively, almost caressingly, by the arm. “My good friend, my excellent young friend,” said the puzzled priest, with a mixture of compunction and expostulation which in other circumstances would have amused Colin, “let us have a little conversation. I am sure you are much too generous and considerate to add to the distress of—of——” But here the good man recollected just in time that he had pledged himself not to speak of Alice, and made a sudden pause. “There in that room,” he went on, changing his tone, and assuming a little solemnity, “is a sorrowful father, mourning for his only son, and driven almost out of his senses by illness and weakness, and a sense of the shameful way in which his daughter has been neglected—not his fault, my dear Mr Campbell. You cannot have the heart to increase his sufferings by claims, however well founded, which have been formed at a time——”
“Stop,” said Colin, “it is not my fault if he has not done his duty to his children; I have no right to bear the penalty. He has cast the vilest imputations upon me—”
“Hush, hush, I beg of you,” said the clergyman, “my excellent young friend—”
Colin laughed in spite of himself. “If I am your excellent friend,” he said, “why do you not procure me admission to tell my own story? Why should the sight of me distress your sorrowing father? I am not an ogre, nor an enemy, but his son’s friend; and up to this day, I need not remind you,” saidthe young man with a rising colour, “the only protector, along with my friend Lauderdale, whom his daughter has had. I do not say that he may not have natural objections to give her to a poor man,” said Colin, with natural pride; “but, at all events, he has no reason to hurry her away by stealth, as if I had not a right to be told why our engagement is interrupted so summarily. I will do nothing to distress Alice,” the young man went on, involuntarily lingering by the door, which was not entirely closed; “but I protest against being treated like a villain or an adventurer—”
“Hush, hush, hush,” cried the unlucky peacemaker, putting out his hand to close the unfastened door; and before he could do so, Mr. Meredith appeared on the threshold, flushed and furious. “What are you else, sir, I should like to know,” cried the angry British father, “to drag an unprotected girl into such an entanglement without even a pretence of consulting her friends; to take advantage of a deathbed for your detestable fortune-hunting schemes? Don’t answer me, sir! Have you a penny of your own? have you anything to live on? That’s the question. If it was not for other considerations, I’d indict you. I’d charge you with conspiracy; and even now, if you come here to disturb my poor girl——. But I promise you, you shall see her no more,” the angry man continued. “Go, sir, and let me hear no more of you. She has a protector now.”
Colin stood a moment without speaking after Mr. Meredith has disappeared, closing the door violently after him.
“I have not come to distress Alice,” said the young man. He had to repeat it to himself to keep down the hot blood that was burning in his veins; and as for the unfortunate clergyman, who was the immediate cause of all this, he kept his position by the door in a state of mind far from enviable, sorry for the young man, and ashamed of the old one, and making inarticulate efforts to speak and mediate between them. But the conference did not last very long outside the closed door. Though it did not fortunately occur to Colin that it was the interference of his present companion which had originated this scene, the young man did not feel the insult the less from the deprecatory half-sympathy offered to him. “It is a mistake—it is a mistake,” said the clergyman, “Mr. Meredith will discover his error. I said I thought you were imprudent, and indeed wrong; but I have never suspected you of interested motives—never since my first interview with the young lady;—but think of her sufferings, my dear young friend; think of her,” said the mediator, whowas driven to his wits’ end. As for Colin, he calmed himself down a little by means of pacing about the corridor—the common resource of men in trouble.
“Poor Alice,” he said, “if I did not think of her, do you think I should have stood quietly to be insulted? But look here—the abuse of such a man can do no harm to me, but he may kill her. If I could see her it might do some good.—Impossible? Do you suppose I mean to see her clandestinely, or to run away with her, perhaps? I mean,” said Colin, with youthful sternness, “that if I were permitted to see her I might be able to reconcile her a little to what is inevitable. Of course he is her father. I wish her father were a chimney-sweep instead;—but it is she I have to think of. Will you try to get me permission to see her?—only for ten minutes, if you like—in your presence, if that is necessary; but I must say one word to her before she is carried away.”
“Yes, yes, it is very natural—very natural,” said the peace-maker; “I will do all I can for you. Be here at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning; the poor dear young lady must have rest after her agitation. Don’t be afraid; I am not a man to deceive you; they do not leave till the afternoon for Civita Vecchia. You shall see her; I think I can promise that. I will take the responsibility on myself.”
Thus ended Colin’s attempt to bring back the Signorina, as he said. In the morning he had reached the hotel long before the hour mentioned, in case of an earlier departure; but everything was quiet there, and the young man hovered about, looking up at the windows, and wondering which might be the one which inclosed his little love, with sentiments more entirely lover-like than he had ever experienced before. But, when the hour of his appointment came, and he hurried into the hotel, he was met by the indignant clergyman, who felt his own honour compromised, and was wroth beyond measure. Mr. Meredith had left Rome at dawn of day, certainly not for Civita Vecchia, leaving no message for any one. He had pretended, after hot resistance, to yield to the kind-hearted priest’s petition, that the lovers might say farewell to each other, and this was the way he had taken of balking them. It was now the author of the original mischief who felt himself insulted and scorned, and his resentment and indignation were louder than Colin’s, whose mind at first lost itself in schemes of following, and vain attempts to ascertain the route the party had taken. Lauderdale, coming anxious but steady to the scene of action half an hour afterwards, found his friend absorbed in this inquiry, and balancing all the chances between the road by Perugia and the road by Orvieto, with the full intention of going off in pursuit.
It was then his careful guardian’s turn to interfere. He led the youth away, and pointed out to him the utter vanity of such an undertaking. Not distance or uncertainty of road, but her father’s will, which was likely to be made all the more rigorous by pursuit, parted Alice from her young protector and bridegroom; and if he followed her to the end of the world, this obstacle would still remain as unremoveable as ever. Though he was hot-headed and young, and moved by excitement, and indignation, and pity, to a height of passion which his love for Alice by itself would never have produced, Colin still could not help being reasonable, and he saw the truth of what was said to him. At the same time, it was not natural that the shock which was so great and sudden should be got over in a moment. He felt himself insulted and outraged, in the first place; and the other side of the question was almost equally mortifying; for he knew the relief that would be felt by all his friends when the sudden end of his unwelcome project was made known to them. The Ramore household had given a kind of passive acquiescence in what seemed inevitable—but Colin was aware they would all be very glad at home when the failure was known—and it was a failure, howsoever the tale might be told. Thus the original disappointment was aggravated by stings of apprehended ridicule and jocular sympathy, for to no living soul, not even to his mother, would Colin have confessed how great a share in his original decision Alice’s helpless and friendless position had, nor the sense of loss and bondage with which he had often in his secret heart regarded the premature and imprudent marriage which he had lived to hear stigmatised as the scheme of a fortune-hunter. It was thus that the very generosity of his intentions gave an additional sting at once to the insult and the sympathy. After a day or two, his thoughts of Alice as the first person to be considered, and the deep sense of the terrible calamity it was to her, yielded a little to those thoughts of himself and all the humiliating accompaniments of a change so unlooked for. During this period his temper became, even by Lauderdale, unbearable; and he threw aside everything he was doing, and took to silence and solitary rambles, in utter disgust with the shortsightedness and injustice of the world.
But after that unhappy interval it has to be confessed thatthe skies suddenly cleared for Colin. The first symptom of revival that happened to him came to pass on a starry, lovely May night, when he had plunged into the darkness of the lonely quarter about the Colosseum alone, and in a state of mind to which an encounter with the robbers supposed to haunt these silent places would have been highly beneficial. But it chanced that Colin raised his moody eyes to the sky, suddenly and without any premeditation, and saw the moon struggling up through a maze of soft white clouds, parting them with her hands as they threw themselves into baffling airy masses always in her way; and suddenly, without a moment of preface, a face—the face—the image of the veiled woman, who was not Alice, and to whom he had bidden farewell, gleamed out once more through the clouds, and looked Colin in the eyes, thrilling him through and through with a guilty astonishment. The moment after was the hardest of all Colin’s struggle; and he rushed home after it tingling all over with self-contempt and burning indignation, and plunged into a torrent of talk when he found his friend, by way of forgetting himself, which struck Lauderdale with the utmost surprise. But next day Colin felt himself somehow comforted without knowing how; and then he took to thinking of his life, and work which now, even for the sake of Alice, if nothing else, he must pursue with determined energy; and then it seemed to him as if every moment was lost that kept him away from home. Was it for Alice? Was it that he might offer her again the perfected mind and settled existence to which his labours were to lead him? He said so to himself as he made his plans; but yet unawares a vision of deeper eyes came gleaming upon him out of the clouds. And it was with the half-conscious thrill of another existence, a feeling as of new and sweeter air in the sails, and a widening ocean under the keel, that Colin rose up after all those varying changes of sentiment were over, and set his face to the north once more.
“It’s awfu’ strange to think it’s the last time,” said Lauderdale, as they stood together on the Pincian Hill, and watched the glowing colours of the Roman sunset. “It’s little likely that you and me will ever see St. Peter yonder start up black into the sun like that, another time in our lives. It’s grander than a’ their illuminations, though it’s more like another kind of spirit than an angel. And this is Rome! I dinna seem ever to have realized the thought before. It’s awfu’ living and life-like, callant, but it’s the graves we’ll mind it by. I’m no meaning kings and Cæsars. I’m meaning them that come andnever return. Testaccio’s hidden out of sight, and the cypress trees,” said the philosopher; “but there’s mony an eye that will never lose sight of them even at the other end of the world. I might have been going my ways with an awfu’ different heart, if it hadna been for the mercy of God.”
“Then you thought I should die?” said Colin, to whom, in the stir of his young life, and the words were solemn and strange to say; “and Godismerciful—yet Meredith is lying yonder, though not me.”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, and then there was a long pause. “I’m no offering ony explanation,” said the philosopher. “It’s a question between a man and his Maker—spirit to spirit. It’s an awfu’ mystery to us, but it maun be made clear and satisfying to them that go away. For me, I’ll praise God,” he said abruptly, with a harsh ring in his voice; and Colin for the first time knew assuredly that his faithful guardian had thought nothing better than to bring him here to die. They went into the church on the hill, where the nuns were singing their sweet vespers, as they descended for the last time through the dusky avenues, listening as they went to the bells ringing the Ave Maria over all the crowded town; and there came upon Colin and his friend in different degrees that compunction of happiness which is the soul of thanksgiving. Others,—how many!—have stood speechless in dumb submission on that same spot and found no thanks to say; and it was thus that Colin, after all the events that made these four months so important in his life, entered upon a new period of his history, and took his farewell of Rome.
“It’shard to ken what to say,” said the Mistress, going to the window for the hundredth time, and looking out wistfully upon the sky which shone dazzling over the Holy Loch with the excessive pathetic brightness of exceptional sunshine. “I canna make out for my part if he’s broken-hearted or no, and a word wrong just at a moment like this would be hard on the callant. It’s a wonderful mercy it’s such a bonnie day. That’s aye a blessing both to the body and the mind.”
“Well, it’s you that Colin takes after,” said the farmer ofRamore, with an undertone of dissatisfaction; “so there’s no saying but what the weather may count for something. I’ve lost understanding for my part of a lad that gangs abroad for his health, and gets himself engaged to be married. In my days, when marriage came into a man’s head, he went through with it, and there was an end of the subject. For my part, I dinna pretend to understand your newfangled ways.”
“Eh, Colin, dinna be so unfeeling,” said the Mistress, roused to remonstrance. “You were like to gang out of your mind about the marriage when you thought it was to be; and now you’re ready to sneer at the poor laddie, as if he could help it. It’s hard when his ain friends turn against him after the ingratitude he’s met wi’, and the disappointment he’s had to bear.”
“You may trust a woman for uphaudin’ her son in such like nonsense,” said big Colin. “The only man o’ sense among them that I can see was yon Mr. Meredith that took the lassie away. What the deevil had Colin to do with a wife, and him no a penny in his pouch? But in the meantime yonder’s the steamboat, and’ I’m gaun down to meet them. If I were you I would stop still here. You’re no that strong,” said the farmer, looking upon his wife with a certain secret tenderness. “I would stop still at hame if I were you. It’s aye the best welcome for a callant to see his mother at her ain door.”
With which big Colin of Ramore strode down to the beach, where his sons were launching their own boat to meet the little steamer by which Colin was coming home. His wife looked after him with mingled feelings as he went down the brae. He had been a little hard upon Colin for these six months past, and had directed many a covert sarcasm at the young man who had gone so far out of the ordinary course as to seek health in Italy. The farmer did not believe in any son of his needing such an expedient; and, in proportion as it seemed unnecessary to his own vigorous strength, and ignorance of weakness, he took opportunity for jeers and jests which were to the mother’s keen ears much less good-natured than they seemed to be. And then he had been very angry on the receipt of Colin’s letter announcing his intended marriage, and it was with difficulty Mrs. Campbell had prevented her husband from sending in return such an answer as might have banished Colin for ever from his father’s house. Now all these clouds had blown past, and no harm had come of them, and he was coming home as of old. His brothers were launching the boat on the beach, andhis father had gone down to meet the stranger. The Mistress stood at her door, restraining her eagerness and anxiety as best she could, and obeying her husband’s suggestion, as women do so often, by way of propitiating him, and bespeaking tenderness and forbearance for her boy. For indeed the old times had passed away, with all their natural family gladness, and union clouded by no sense of difference. Now it was a man of independent thoughts, with projects and pursuits of his own differing from theirs, and with a mind no doubt altered and matured by those advantages of travel which the Mistress regarded in her ignorance with a certain awe, who was coming back to Ramore. Colin had made so many changes, while so few had occurred at home; and even a bystander, less anxious than his mother, might have had reason to inquire and wonder how the matured and travelled son would look upon his unprogressive home.
It was now the end of September, though Colin had left Rome in May; but then his Scholarship was intended to give him the advantage of travel, and specially that peculiar advantage of attendance at a German University which is so much prized in Scotland. He had accordingly passed the intervening months in a little German town, getting up the language and listening to lectures made doubly misty by imperfect understanding of the tongue. The process left Colin’s theological ideas very much where it found them—which is to say, in a state of general vagueness and uncertainty; but then he had always the advantage of being able to say that he studied at Dickofptenberg. Lauderdale had left his friend, after spending, not without satisfaction, his hundred pounds, and was happily re-established in the “honourable situation” which he had quitted on Colin’s account; and the young man was now returning home alone, to spend a little time with his family before he returned to his studies. The Mistress watched him land from the boat, with her heart beating so loudly in her ears that no other sound was audible; and Colin did not lose much time in ascending the brae where she stood awaiting him. “But you should not have left your father,” Mrs. Campbell said, even in the height of her happiness. “He’s awfu’ proud to see you home, Colin, my man!” Big Colin, however, was no way displeased in his own person by his son’s desertion. He came up leisurely after him, not without a thrill of conscious satisfaction. The farmer was sufficiently disposed to scoff aloud at his son’s improved looks, at his beard, and his dress, and all the little particulars which made a visible difference between the present Colin and the awkwardcountry lad of two years ago; but in his heart he made involuntary comparisons, and privately concluded that the minister’s son was far from being Colin’s equal, and that even the heir and pride of the Duke would have little to boast of in presence of the farmer’s son of Ramore. This—though big Colin would not for any earthly inducement have owned the sentiment—made him regard his son’s actions and intentions unawares with eyes more lenient and gracious. No contemptible weakness of health or delicacy of appearance appeared in the sunburnt countenance, so unexpectedly garnished by a light-brown, crisp, abundant beard—a beard of which, to tell the truth, Colin himself was rather proud, all the more as it had by rare fortune escaped that intensification of colour which is common to men of his complexion. The golden glitter which lighted up the great waves of brown hair over his forehead had not deepened into red on his chin, as it had done in Archie’s young but vigorous whiskers. His complexion, though not so ruddy as his brother’s, had the tone of perfect health and vigour, untouched by any shade of fatigue, or weakness. He was not going to be the “delicate” member of the family, as the farmer, with a certain contempt, had foreboded; for, naturally, to be delicate included a certain weakness of mind as well as of body to the healthful dwellers in Ramore.
“You’ll find but little to amuse you here after a’ your travels,” the farmer said. “We’re aye busy about the beasts, Archie and me. I’ll no say it’s an elevating study, like yours; but it’s awfu’ necessary in our occupation. For my part, I’m no above a kind o’ pride in my cattle; and there’s your mother, she’s set her shoulder to the wheel and won a prize.”
“Ay, Colin,” said the Mistress, hastening to take up her part in the conversation, “it’s aye grand to be doing something. And it’s no’ me but Gowan that’s won the prize. She was aye a weel-conditioned creature, that it was a pleasure to have onything to do with; but there’s plenty of time to speak about the beasts. You’re sure you’re weel and strong yourself, Colin, my man? for that’s the first thing now we’ve got you hame.”
“There doesna look much amiss with him,” said the farmer, with an articulate growl. “Your mother’s awfu’ keen for somebody to pet and play wi’; but there’s a time for a’ thing; and a callant, even, though he’s brought up for a minister, maun find out when he’s a man.”
“I should hope there was no doubt of that,” said Colin. “I’m getting on for two-and-twenty, mother, and strong enoughfor anything. Thanks to Harry Frankland for a splendid holiday; and now I mean to settle down to work.”
Here big Colin again interjected an inarticulate exclamation. “I ken little about your kind of work,” said the discontented father; “but, if I were you, when I wanted a bit exercise I would take a hand at the plough, or some wise-like occupation, instead of picking fools out of canals—or even out of lochs, for that matter,” he added, with a subdued thrill of pride. “Sir Thomas is aye awfu’ civil when he comes here; and, as for that bonnie little creature that’s aye with him, she comes chirping about the place with her fine English, as if she belonged to it. I never can make out what she and your mother have such long cracks about.”
“Miss Frankland?” said Colin, with a bright look of interest. The Mistress had been so much startled by this unexpected speech of her husband, that she turned round upon Colin with an anxious face, eager to know what effect an intimation so sudden might have upon him. For the farmer’s wife believed in true love and in first love with all her heart, and had never been able to divest herself of the idea that it was partly pique and disappointment in respect to Miss Matty which had driven her son into so hasty an engagement. “Is she still Miss Frankland?” continued the unsuspicious Colin. “I thought she would have been married by this time. She is a little witch,” the young man said with a conscious smile—“but I owe her a great many pleasant hours. She was always the life of Wodensbourne. Were they here this year?” he asked; and then another thought struck him. “Hollo! it’s only September,” said Colin; “I ought to ask, Are they here now?”
“Oh, ay, Colin, they’re here now,” said the Mistress, “and couldna be more your friends if you were one of the family. I’m no clear in my mind that thae two will ever be married. No that I ken of any obstacle—but, so far as I can see, a bright bonny creature like that, aye full of life and spirit, is nae match for the like of him.”
“I do not see that,” said the young man who once was Matty Frankland’s worshipper. “She is very bright, as you say; but he is the more honest of the two. I used to be jealous of Harry Frankland,” said Colin, laughing; “he seemed to have everything that was lacking to me; but I have changed my mind since then. One gets to believe in compensations,” said the young man; and he shut his hand softly where it rested on the table, as if he felt in it the tools which a dozen HarryFranklands could have made no use of. But this thought was but dimly intelligible to his hearers, to one of whom, at least, the word “jealous” was limited in its meaning; and, viewed in this light, the sentiment just expressed by Colin was hard to understand.
“I’m no fond of what folk call compensations,” said the Mistress. “A loss is aye a loss, whatever onybody can say. Siller that’s lost may be made up for, but naething more precious. It’s aye an awful marvel to me that chapter about Job getting other bairns to fill the place o’ the first. I would rather have the dead loss and the vacant place,” said the tender woman, with tears in her eyes, “than a’ your compensations. One can never stand for another—it’s awfu’ infidelity to think it. If I canna have happiness, I’ll be content with sorrow; but you’re no to speak of compensations to me.”
“No,” said Colin, laying his hand caressingly on his mother’s; “but I was not speaking of either love or loss. I meant only that for Harry Frankland’s advantages over me, I might, perhaps, have a little balance on my side. For example, I picked him out of the canal, as my father says,” the young man went on laughing; “but never mind the Franklands; I suppose I shall have to see them, as they are here.”
“Weel, Colin, you can please yourself,” said his father. “I’m no a man to court the great, but an English baronet, like Sir Thomas, is aye a creditable acquaintance for a callant like you; and he’s aye awfu’ civil as I was saying; but the first thing to be sure of is what you mean to do. You have had the play for near a year, and it doesna appear to me that tutorships, and that kind of thing, are the right training for a minister. You’ll go back to your studies, and go through with them without more interruptions, if you’ll be guided by me.”
But at this point Colin paused, and had a good many explanations to give. His heart was set on the Balliol scholarship, which he had once given up for Matty’s sake; and now there was another chance for him, which had arisen unexpectedly. This it was which had hastened his return home. As for his father, the farmer yielded with but little demur to this proposal. A clear Scotch head, even when it begins to lose its sense of the ideal, and to become absorbed in “the beasts,” seldom deceives itself as to the benefits of education; and big Colin had an intense secret confidence in the powers of his son. Honours at Oxford, in the imagination of the Scotch farmer, were a visionary avenue leading to any impossible altitude. He made a littleresistance for appearance sake, but he was in reality more excited by the idea of the conflict—first, for the scholarship itself; then for all possible prizes and honours to the glory of Scotland and Ramore—than was Colin himself.
“But after a year’s play you’re no qualified,” he said, with a sense of speaking ironically, which was very pleasant to his humour. “A competition’s an awfu’ business; your rivals that have aye been keeping at it will be better qualified than you.”
At which Colin smiled, as his father meant him to smile, and answered, “I am not afraid,” more modestly a great deal than the farmer in his heart was answering for him; but then an unexpected antagonist arose.
“I dinna pretend to ken a great deal about Oxford,” said the Mistress, whose brow was clouded; “but it’s an awfu’ put-off of time as far as I can see. I’m no fond of spending the best of life in idle learning. Weel, weel, maybe its no idle learning for them that can spare the time; but for a lad that’s no out of the thought of settling for himself and doing his duty to his fellow-creatures—I was reading in a book no that long ago,” said Colin’s mother, “about thae fellowships and things; and of men so misguided as to stay on and live to be poor bachelor bodies, with their Greek and their Latin, and no mortal use in this world. Eh, Colin, laddie, if that was a’ that was to come of you!—”
“You’re keen to see your son in a pulpit, like the rest of the silly women,” said the farmer; “for my part, I’m no that bigoted to the kirk; if he could do better for himsel’——”
But at this juncture the Mistress got up with a severe countenance, laying aside the stocking she was knitting. “Oh, Colin, if you wouldn’t be so worldly!” cried the anxious mother. “I’m no one that’s aye thinking of a callant bettering himself. If he’s taken arles in one service, would you have him desert and gang over to another? I canna bear for my part to see broken threads; be one thing or be another, but dinna melt away and be nothing at a’,” the indignant woman concluded abruptly, moving away to set things in order in the room before they all retired for the night. It was the faint, far-off, and impossible idea of her son settling down into one of the Fellowships of which Mrs. Campbell had been reading which moved her to this little outburst. Her authority probably was some disrespectful novel or magazine article, and this was all the respect she had, in her ignorance, for the nurseries of learning.
Her husband got up in his turn with mingled complacency and derision, as came natural to him. “Leave the callant tohimself, Jeanie. He kens what he’s doing; that’s to say, he has an awfu’ ambition considering that he’s only your son, and mine,” said big Colin of Ramore; and he went out to take a last look at his beasts with a thrill of secret pride which he would not for any reward have expressed in words. He was only a humble Westland farmer looking after his beasts, and she was but his true wife, a helpmeet no way above her natural occupations; but there was no telling what the boy might be, though he was only “your son and mine.” As for Colin the younger, he went up to his room half an hour later, after the family had made their homely thanksgiving for his return, smiling in himself at the unaccountable contraction of that little chamber, which he had once shared with Archie without finding it too small. Many changes and many thoughts had come and gone since he last lay down under its shelving roof. Miss Matty who had danced away like a will-o’-the-wisp, leaving no trace behind her; and Alice who had won no such devotion, yet whose soft shadow lay upon him still; and then there was the death-bed of Meredith, and his own almost death-bed at Wodensbourne, and all the thoughts that belonged to these. Such influences and imaginations mature a man unawares. While he sat recalling all that had passed since he left this nest of his childhood, the Mistress tapped softly at his door, and came in upon him with wistful eyes. She would have given all she had in the world for the power of reading her son’s heart at that moment, and, indeed, there was little in it which Colin would have objected to reveal to his mother. But the two human creatures were constrained to stand apart from each in the bonds of their individual nature—to question timidly and answer vaguely, and make guesses which were all astray from the truth. The Mistress came behind her son and laid one hand on his shoulder, and with the other caressed and smoothed back the waves of brown hair of which she had always been so proud. “Your hair is just as long as ever, Colin,” said the admiring mother; “but it’s no a’ your mother’s now,” she said with a soft, little sigh. She was standing behind him that her eyes might not disconcert her boy, meaning to woo him into confidence and the opening of his heart.
“I don’t know who else cares for it,” said Colin; and then he too was glad to respond to the unasked question. “My poor Alice,” he said; “if I could but have brought her to you, mother—She would have been a daughter to you.”
Mrs. Campbell sighed. “Eh, Colin, I’m awfu’ hard-hearted,” she said; “I canna believe in ony woman ever takingthatplace; I’m awfu’ bigoted to my ain. But she would have been dearly welcome for my laddie’s sake; and I’m real anxious to hear how it a’ was. It was but little you said in your letters; and a’ this night I’ve been wanting to have you to mysel’, and to hear all that there was to say.”
“I don’t know what there is to say,” said Colin; “I must have written all about it. Her position, of course, made no difference to my feelings,” he went on, rather hotly, like a man who in his own consciousness stands somewhat on his defence; “but it made us hasten matters. I thought if I could only have brought her home to you——”
“It was aye you for a kind thought,” said the Mistress; “but she would have had little need of the auld mother when she had the son; and Colin, my man, is it a’ ended now?”
“Heaven knows!” said Colin with a little impatience. “I have written to her through her father, and I have written to her direct, and all that I have had from her is one little letter, saying that her father had forbidden all further intercourse between us, and bidding me farewell; but——”
“But,” said the Mistress, “it no of her own will; she’s faithful in her heart? And if she’s true to you, you’ll be true to her? Isna that what you mean?”
“I suppose so,” said Colin; and then he made a little pause. “There never was any one so patient and so dutiful,” he said. “When poor Arthur died, it was she who forgot herself to think of us. Perhaps even this is not so hard upon her as one thinks.”
“Eh, but I was thinking first of my ain, like a heartless woman as I am,” said his mother. “I was thinking it was hard onyou.”
He did not turn round his face to her as she had hoped; but her keen eyes could see the heightened colour which tinged even his neck and his forehead. “Yes,” said Colin; “but for my part,” he added, with a little effort, “it is chiefly Alice I have been thinking of. It may seem vain to say so—but she will have less to occupy her thoughts than I shall have, and—and the time may hang heavier. You don’t like me to go to Oxford, mother?” This question was said with a little jerk, as of a man who was pleased to plunge into a new subject; and the Mistress was far too close an observer not to understand what her son meant.
“I like whatever is good for you, Colin,” she said; “but it was aye in the thought of losing time. I’m no meaning realloss of time. I’m meaning I was thinking of mair hurry than there is. But you’re both awfu’ young, and I like whatever is for your good, Colin,” said the tender mother. She kept folding back his heavy locks as she spoke, altogether disconcerted and at a loss, poor soul; for Colin’s calmness did not seem to his mother quite consistent with his love; and the possibility of a marriage without that foundation was to Mrs. Campbell the most hideous of all suppositions. And then, like a true woman as she was, she went back to her little original romance, and grew more confused than ever.
“I’m maybe an awfu’ foolish woman,” she said, with an attempt at a smile, which Colin was somehow conscious of, though he did not see it, “but, even if I am, you’ll no be angry at your mother. Colin, my man, maybe it’s no the best thing for you that thae folk at the castle should be here?”
“Which folk at the castle?” said Colin, who had honestly forgotten for the moment. “Oh, the Franklands! What should it matter to me?”
This time he turned round upon her with eyes of unabashed surprise, which the Mistress found herself totally unprepared to meet. It was now her turn to falter, and stammer, and break down.
“Eh, Colin, it’s so hard to ken,” said the Mistress. “The heart’s awfu’ deceitful. I’m no saying one thing or another; for I canna read what you’re thinking, though you are my ain laddie; but if you were to think it best no to enter into temptation—”
“Meaning Miss Matty?” said Colin; and he laughed with such entire freedom that his mother was first silenced and then offended by his levity. “No fear of that, mother; and then she has Harry, I suppose, to keep her right.”
“I’m no so clear about that,” said Mrs. Campbell, nettled, notwithstanding her satisfaction, by her son’s indifference; “he’s away abroad somewhere; but I would not say but what there might be another,” she continued, with naturalesprit du corps, which was still more irritated by Colin’s calm response,—
“Or two or three others,” said the young man; “but, for all that, you are quite right to stand up for her, mother; only I am not in the least danger. No, I must get to work,” said Colin; “hard work, without any more nonsense; but I’d like to show those fellows that a man may choose to be a Scotch minister though he is Fellow of an English college—”
The Mistress interrupted her son with the nearest approachto a scream which her Scotch self-control would admit of. “A Fellow of an English college,” she said in dismay, “and you troth-plighted to an innocent young woman that trusts in you, Colin! That I should ever live to hear such words out of the mouth of a son of mine!”
And, notwithstanding his explanations, the Mistress retired to her own room, ill at ease, and with a sense of coming trouble. “A man that’s engaged to be married shouldna be thinking of such an awfu’ off-put of time,” she said to herself; “and ah, if the poor lassie is aye trusting to his coming, and looking for him day by day!” This thought took away from his mother half the joy of Colin’s return. Perhaps her cherished son, too, was growing “worldly,” like his father, who thought of the “beasts” even in his dreams. And, as for Colin himself, he, too, felt the invisible curb upon his free actions, and chafed at it in the depths of his heart when he was alone. With all this world of work and ambition before him, it was hard to feel upon his proud neck that visionary rein. Though Alice had set him free in her little letter, it was still in her soft fingers that this shadowy bond remained. He had not repudiated it, even in his most secret thoughts; but, as soon as he began to act independently, he became conscious of the bondage, and in his heart resented it. If he had brought her home, as he had intended, to his father’s house, his young dependent wife, he probably would have felt much less clearly this sense of having forestalled the future, and mortgaged his very life.
TheBalliol Scholarship was, however, too important a reality to leave the young candidate much time to consider his position—and Colin’s history would be too long, even for the patience of his friends, if we were to enter into this part of his life in detail. Everybody knows he won the scholarship; and, indeed, neither that, nor his subsequent career at Balliol, are matters to be recorded, since the chronicle has been already made in those popular University records which give their heroes a reputation, no doubt temporary, but while it lasts of the highest possible flavour. He had so warm a greeting from Sir Thomas Frankland that it would have been churlish on Colin’s part had he declinedthe invitations he received to the Castle, where, indeed, Miss Matty did not want him just at that moment. Though she was not the least in the world in love with him, it is certain that between the intervals of her other amusements in thatgenre, the thought of Colin had often occurred to her mind. She thought of him with a wonderful gratitude and tenderness sometimes, as of a man who had actually loved her with the impossible love—and sometimes with a ring of pleasant laughter, not far removed from tears. Anything “between them” was utterly impossible, of course—but, perhaps, all the more for that, Miss Matty’s heart, so much as there was remaining of it, went back to Colin in its vacant moments, as to a green spot upon which she could repose herself, and set down her burden of vanities for the time. This very sentiment, however, made her little inclined to have him at the Castle, where there was at present a party staying, including, at least, one man of qualifications worthy a lady’s regard. Harry and his cousin had quarrelled so often that their quarrel at last was serious, and the new man was cleverer than Harry, and not so hard to amuse; but it was difficult to go over the well-known ground with which Miss Frankland was so familiar in presence of one whom she had put through the process in a still more captivating fashion, and who was still sufficiently interested to note what she was doing, and to betray that he noted it. Colin, himself, was not so conscious of observing his old love in her new love-making as she was conscious of his observation; and, though it was only a glance now and then, a turn of the head, or raising of the eyes, it was enough to make her awkward by moments, an evidence of feeling for which Miss Matty could not forgive herself.
Thus it happened that Colin was not thrown into temptation in the way his mother dreaded. The temptation he was thrown into was one of a much more subtle character. He rushed at his work, and the preparations for his work, with all the energy of his character; he felt himself free to follow out the highest visions of life that had formed themselves among his youthful dreams. He thought of the new study on which he was about to enter, and the honours upon which he already calculated in his imagination, as but stepping stones to what lay after, and offered himself up with a certain youthful effusion and super-abundance to his Church and his country, for which he had assuredly something to do more than other men. And then, when Colin had got so far as this, and was tossing his young head proudly in the glory of his intentions, there came a littlestart and shiver, and that sense of the curb, which had struck him first after his confidence with his mother, returned to his mind. But the bondage seemed to grow more and more visionary as he went on. Alice had given him up, so to speak; she was debarred by her father from any correspondence with him, and might, for anything Colin knew, gentle and yielding as she was, be made to marry some one else by the same authority; and, though he did not discuss the question with himself in words, it became more and more hard to Colin to contemplate the possibility of having to abridge his studies and sacrifice his higher aims to the necessity of getting “settled in life.” If he were “settled in life” to-morrow, it could only be as an undistinguished Scotch minister, poor, so far as money was concerned, and with no higher channel either to use or fame; and, at his age, to be only like his neighbours was of all things the most irksome to him.
Those neighbours, or at least the greater part of them, were good fellows enough in their way. So far as a vague general conception of life and its meaning went, they were superior as a class in Colin’s opinion to that other clerical class represented by the gentle curate of Wodensbourne, whose soul was absorbed in the restoration of his Church, and the fit states of mind for the Sundays after Trinity; but there were also particulars in which, as a class, they were wonderfully inferior to that mild and gentlemanly Anglican. As for Colin, he had not formed his ideal on any curate, or even bishop, of the wealthier Church. Like other fervent young men, an eager discontent with everything he saw lay at the bottom of his imaginations; and it was the development of Christianity—“more chivalrous, more magnanimous, than that of modern times”—that he thought of. A dangerous condition of mind, no doubt; and the people round him would have sneered much at Colin and his ambition had he put it into words; but, after all, it was an ideal worth contemplating which he presented to himself.
In the midst of such thoughts, and of all the future possibilities of life, it was a little hard to be suddenly stopped short, and reminded of Mariana in her moated grange, sighing, “He does not come.” If he did come, making all the unspeakable sacrifices necessary to that end, as his mother seemed to think he should, the probabilities were that the door of the grange would be closed upon him; and who could tell but that Alice, always so docile, might be diverted even from the thought of him by some other suitor presented to her by herfather? Were Colin’s hopes to be sacrificed to her possible faith, and the possible relenting of Mr. Meredith? And, alas! amid all the new impulses that were rising within him, there came again the vision of that woman in the clouds, whom as yet, though he had been in love with Matty Frankland, and had all but married Alice Meredith, Colin had never seen. She kissed her shadowy hand to him by times out of those rosy vapours that floated among the hills when the sun had gone down, and twilight lay sweet over the Holy Loch—and beckoned him on, on, to the future and the distance where she was. When the apparition had glanced out upon him after this old fashion, Colin felt all at once the jerk of the invisible bridle on his neck, and chafed at it; and then he shut his eyes wilfully, and rushed on faster than before, and did his best to ignore the curb. After all, it was no curb if it were rightly regarded. Alice had released, and her father had rejected him, and he had been accused of fortune-hunting, and treated like a man unworthy of consideration. So far as external circumstances went, no one could blame him for inconstancy, no one could imagine that the engagement thus broken was, according to any code of honour, binding upon Colin; but yet—
This was the uncomfortable state of mind in which he was when he finally committed himself to the Balliol Scholarship, and thus put off that “settling in life” which the Mistress thought due to Alice. When the matter was concluded, however, the young man became more comfortable. At all events, until the termination of his studies, no decision, one way or other, could be expected from him; and it would still be two years before Alice was of the age to decide for herself. He discussed the matter—so far as he ever permitted himself to discuss it with any one—with Lauderdale, who managed to spend the last Sunday with him at Ramore. It was still only October but winter had begun betimes, and a sprinkling of snow lay on the hills at the head of the loch. The water itself, all crisped and brightened by a slight breeze and a frosty sun, lay dazzling between its banks, reflecting every shade of colour upon them—the russet lines of wood with which their little glens were outlined, and the yellow patches of stubble, or late corn, still unreaped, that made lights of the landscape, and relieved the hazy green of the pastures, and the brown waste of withered bracken and heather above. The wintry day, the clearness of the frosty air, and the touch of snow on the hills, gave to the Holy Loch that touch of colour which is the only thing everwanting to its loveliness; a colour cold, it is true, but in accordance with the scene. The waves came up with a lively cadence on the beach, and the wind blew showers of yellow leaves in the faces of the two friends as they walked home together from church. Sir Thomas had detained them in the first place, and after him the minister, who had emerged from his little vestry in time for half an hour’s conversation with his young parishioner, who was something of a hero on the Holy Loch—a hero, and yet subject to the inevitable touch of familiar depreciation which belongs to a prophet in his own country. The crowd of church-goers had dispersed from the roads when the two turned their faces towards Ramore. Perhaps by reason of the yew-trees under which they had to pass, perhaps because this Sunday, too, marked a crisis, it occurred to both of them to think of their walk through the long ilex avenues of the Frascati villa, the Sunday after Meredith’s death. It was Lauderdale, as was natural, who returned to that subject the first.
“It’s a wee hard to believe that it’s the same world,” he said, “and that you and me are making our way to Ramore, and not to yon painted cha’amer, and our friend, with her distaff in her hand. I’m whiles no clear in my mind that we were ever there.”
At which Colin was a little impatient, as was natural. “Don’t be fantastic,” he said. “It does not matter about Sora Antonia; but there are other things not so easily dropped;” and here the young man paused and uttered a sigh, which arose half from a certain momentary longing for the gentle creature to whom his faith was plighted, and half from an irksome sense of the disadvantages of having plighted his faith.
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, “I’m no fond myself of dropping threads like that. There’s nae telling when they may be joined again, or how; but if it’s ony comfort to you, Colin, I’m a great believer in sequences. I never put ony faith in things breaking off clean in an arbitrary way. Thae two didna enter your life to be put out again by the will of an old fool of a father. I’ll no say that I saw the requirements of Providence just as clear as you thought you did, but I canna put faith in an ending like what’s happened. You and her are awfu’ young. You have time to wait.”
“Time to wait,” repeated Colin in his impatience; “there is something more needed than time. Mr. Meredith has returned me my last letter with a request that I should nottrouble his daughter again. You do not think a man can go on in the face of that?”
“He’s naething but a jailor,” said Lauderdale; “you may be sure thatsheis neither art nor part in that. When the time comes we’ll a’ ken better; and here, in the meantime, you are making another beginning of your life.”
“It appears to me I am always making beginnings,” said Colin. “It was much such a day as this when Harry Frankland fell into the loch—that was a kind of beginning in its way. Wodensbourne was a beginning, and so was Italy—and now—It appears life is made up of such.”
“You’re no so far wrong there,” said Lauderdale; “but it’s grand to make the new start like you, with a’ heaven and earth on your side. I’ve kent them that had to set their face to the brae with baith earth and heaven against them—or so it seemed. It’s ill getting new images,” said the philosopher meditatively. “I wonder who it was first found out that life was a journey. It’s no an original idea nowadays, but its aye awfu’ true. A man sets out with a hantle mair things than he needs,impedimentaof a’ kinds; but he leaves the maist of them behind afore he’s reached the middle of the road. You’ve an awfu’ body of opinions, callant, besides other things to dispose of. I’m thinking Oxford will do you good for that. You’re no likely to take up with their superfluities, and you’ll get rid of some of your ain.”
“I don’t know what you call superfluities,” said Colin. “I don’t think I am a man of many opinions. A few things are vital and cannot be dispensed with—and these you are quite as distinct upon as I can be. However, I don’t go to Oxford to learn that.”
“I’m awfu’ curious to ken in a general way,” said Lauderdale, “what you are going to Oxford to learn. You’re no a bad hand at the classics, callant. I would like to ken what it was that you were meaning to pay three good years of life to learn.”
Upon which Colin laughed, and felt without knowing why, a flush come to his cheek. “If I should prefer to win my spurs somewhere else than at home,” said the young man lightly, “should you wonder at that? Beside, the English universities have a greater reputation than ours—and in short——”
“For idle learning,” said Lauderdale with a little heat; “not for the science of guiding men, which, so far as I can see, is what you’re aiming at. No that I’m the man to speak ony blasphemy against the dead languages, if the like of that wasto be your trade; but for a Scotch parish, or maybe a Scotch presbytery—or in the course of time, if a’ goes well, an Assembly of the Kirk——”
“Stuff!” cried Colin; “What has that to do with it? Besides,” the young man said with a laugh, half of pride, half of shame, “I want to show these fellows that a man may win their honours and carry them back to the old Church, which they talk about in a benevolent way, as if it was in the South Sea Islands. Well, that is my weakness. I want to bring their prizes back here, and wear them at home.”
“The callant’s crazy,” said Lauderdale, but the idea was sufficiently in accord with his national sentiments to be treated with indulgence; “it might maybe be spoiling the Egyptians,” he added grimly, “but, as for ony good to us—You’re like a’ young creatures, callant; you’re awfu’ fond of theimpedimenta. But you may change your mind two or three times over between this and that.”
“You have very little respect for my constancy, Lauderdale,” said Colin; and then he felt irritated with himself for the word he had used. “In what respect do you suppose I can change my mind?” he asked with a little impatience; and Colin lifted his eyes full upon his friend’s face, as he had learned to do when there was question of Alice—though certainly it could not be supposed that there was any question of Alice in the present case.
“Whisht, callant,” said Lauderdale; “I’ve an awfu’ trust in your constancy. It’s one o’ the words I like best in the English language, or in the Scotch either for that matter. It’s a kind of word that canna be slipped over among a crowd, but craves full saying and a’ its letters sounded. As I was saying,” he continued, changing his tone, “I’m a great believer in sequences; there’s mony new beginnings, but there’s nae absolute end short of dying, which is aye an end for this world, so far as a man can see. And, next to God and Christ, which are the grand primitive necessities, without which no man can take his journey, I’m aye for counting true love and good faith. I wouldna say but what a’ the rest were more or lessimpedimenta,” said Lauderdale; “but that’s no the question under discussion. You might change your mind upon a’ the minor matters, and no be inconstant. For example, you might be drawn to the English kirk after three years; or you might come to think you were destined for nae kirk at all, but for other occupations in this world; and, as for me, I wouldna blame you. As long as you’re trueto your Master—and next to yoursel’—and next to them that trust you,” said Colin’s faithful counsellor; “and of that I’ve no fear.”
“I did not think of setting the question on such a solemn basis,” said Colin with an amount of irritation which annoyed himself, and which he could not subdue; “however, time will show; and here we are at Ramore.” Indeed he was rather glad to be so near Ramore. This talk of constancy exasperated him, he could not tell how; for, to be sure, he meant no inconstancy. Yet, when the sunset came again, detaching rosy cloudlets from the great masses of vapour, and shedding a mist of gold and purple over the hills—and when those wistful stretches of “daffodil sky” opened out over the western ramparts of the Holy Loch—Colin turned his eyes from the wonderful heavens as if from a visible enemy. Was not she there as always, that impossible woman, wooing him on into the future, into the unimaginable distance where somewhere she might be found any day waiting him? He turned his back upon the west, and went down of his own will to the dark shade of the yew-trees, which were somehow like the ilex alleys of the sweet Alban hills; but even there he carried his impatience with him, and found it best on the whole to go home and give himself up to the home talk of Ramore, in which many matters were discussed unconnected with the beasts, but where this one fundamental question was for the present named no more.
Colin’scareer at Oxford does not lie in the way of his present historian, though, to be sure, a few piquant particulars might be selected of the way in which a pair of young Scotch eyes, with a light in them somewhat akin to genius, but trained to see the realities of homely life on the Holy Loch, regarded the peculiar existence of the steady, artificial old world, and the riotous but submissive new world, which between them form a university. Colin who, like most of his countrymen, found a great deal of the “wit” of the community around him to be sheer nonsense, sometimes agreeable, sometimes much the reverse, had also like his nation a latent but powerful sense of humour, which, backedby a few prejudices, and stimulated a little by the different manners current in the class to which he himself belonged, revealed to him many wonderful absurdities in the unconscious microcosm which felt itself a universe;—a revelation which restored any inequality in the balance of affairs, and made the Scotch undergraduate at his ease in his new circumstances. For his own part, he stood in quite a different position from the host of young men, most of them younger than himself, by whom he found himself surrounded. They were accomplishing without any very definite object the natural and usual course of their education—a process which everybody had to go through, and which, with more or less credit, their fathers, brothers, friends, and relatives had passed through before them. Life beyond the walls of the University had doubtless objects more interesting than the present routine; but there was no such immediate connexion between those objects and that routine as Colin had been accustomed to see in his Scotch college.
As for Colin himself, he was aiming at a special end, which made his course distinct for him among his more careless companions; he was bent on the highest honours attainable by hard work and powers much above the average; and this determination would have acted as a moral shield to him against the meaner temptations of the place, even if he had not already been by disposition and habits impervious to them. The higher danger—the many temptations to which Colin, like other young men, was exposed, of contenting himself with a brilliant unproductive social reputation—was warded off from him by the settled determination with which he entered upon his work. For Scotch sentiment is very distinct on this question; and Colin understood perfectly that, if he returned with only a moderate success, hisAlma Materwould be utterly disgusted with her pet student, and his reputation would fall to a considerably lower ebb than if he had been content to stay at home. He came upon that tranquil academic scene in the true spirit of an invader; not unfriendly—on the contrary, a keen observer of everything, an eager and interested spectator of all the peculiar habitudes of the foreign country—but chiefly bent upon snatching the laurel, as soon as that should be possible, and carrying home his spoil in triumph. He entered Oxford, in short, as the Czar Peter, had he been less a savage, might have been supposed to establish himself in the bosom of the homely English society of his time, seeing, with eyes brightened by curiosity and the novelty of the spectacle, various matters in a ridiculous lightwhich were performed with the utmost gravity and unconsciousness by the accustomed inhabitants; and, on the other hand, discovering as many particulars from which he might borrow some advantage to his own people. Certainly, Czar Peter, who was at once an absolute monarch and the most enlightened man of his nation, stood in a somewhat different position from the nameless Scotch student, between whom and other Scotch students no ordinary observer could have discovered much difference; but the aspirations of young men of Colin’s age are fortunately unlimited by reason, and the plan he had conceived of working a revolution in his native Church and country, or, at least, aiming at that to the highest extent of his powers, was as legitimate, to say the least, as the determination to make a great fortune, with which other young men of his nation have often confronted the world.
Colin frequented the Oxford churches as he had frequented those in Rome, with his paramount idea in his mind, and listened to the sermons in them with that prevailing reference to the audience which he himself looked forward to, which gave so strange an aspect to much that he heard. To be sure, it was not the best way to draw religious advantage for himself from the teachings he listened to; but yet the process was not without its benefits to the predestined priest. He seemed to himself to be looking on while the University preacher delivered his dignified periods, not to the actual assembly, but to a shrewd and steady Scotch congregation, not easily moved either to reverence or enthusiasm, and with a national sense of logic. He could not help smiling to himself when, in the midst of some elaborate piece of reasoning, the least little step aside landed the speaker upon that quagmire of ecclesiastical authority which with Colin’s audience would go far to neutralize all the argument. The young man fancied he could see the elders shake their heads, and the rural philosophers remark to each other, “He maun have been awfu’ ill off for an argument afore he landed upon yon.” And, when the preacher proceeded to “our Church’s admirable arrangements,” and displayed with calm distinctness the final certainty that perfection had been absolutely attained by that venerated mother, the young Scotchman felt a prick of contradiction in his heart on his own account as well as that of his imaginary audience. He thought to himself that the same arguments employed on behalf of the Church of Scotland would go a long way towards unsettling the national faith, and smiled within himself at the undoubting assumption which hiscontradictory northern soul was so far from accepting. He was not a bad emblem of his nation in this particular, at least. He consented without a remonstrance to matters of detail, such as were supposed, by anybody who had curiosity enough to inquire into the singular semi-savage religious practices of Scotland, to be specially discordant to the ideas of his country; but he laughed at “our Church’s admirable arrangements” in such a manner as to set the hair of the University on end. The principles of apostolic succession and unbroken ecclesiastical descent produced in this daring young sceptic, not indignation nor argument, which might have been tolerated, but an amused disregard which was unbearable. He was always so conscious of what his Scotch audience, buried somewhere among the hills in the seclusion of a country parish, would think of such pretensions, and laughed not at the doctrine so much as at the thought of their reception of it. In this respect the young Scotchman, embodying his country, was the most contradictory of men.
He was not very much more satisfactory in the other region, where the best of Anglicans occasionally wander, and where men who hold with the firmest conviction the doctrine of apostolic succession sometimes show a strange degree of uncertainly about things more important. Colin’s convictions were vague enough on a great many matters which were considered vital on the Holy Loch; and perhaps he was not a much more satisfactory bearer in his parish church at home than he was in Oxford when there was question of the descendants of the apostles. But amidst this sea of vague and undeveloped thought, which was not so much doubt as uncertainty, there stood up several rocks of absolute faith which were utterly impervious to assault. His mind was so far conformed to his age that he could hear even these ultimate and fundamental matters canvassed by the calm philosophers about him, without any undue theological heat or passion of defence; but it soon became evident that on these points the young Scotchman was immovable, a certainty which made him an interesting study to some of his companions and teachers. It would be foolish to say that his faith procured for him that awe and respect which the popular mind takes it for granted a company of sceptics must always feel for the one among them who retains his religious convictions. On the contrary, Colin’s world was amused by his belief. It was, itself to start with, a perfectly pious, well-conducted world, saying its prayers like everybody else, and containing nothing within its placid bosom which in the least resembled the free-thinkers ofancient days. The Church was not the least in the world in danger from that mild fraternity, to which every kind of faith was a thing to be talked about, to evolve lines of thought upon, and give rise to the most refined, and acute, and charming conversation. But, as for Colin, they regarded him with amused observation as a rare specimen of the semi-cultivated, semi-savage intelligence which is always so refreshing to a society which has refined itself to a point somewhat beyond nature. He was “a most interesting young man,” and they found in him “a beautiful enthusiasm,” an “engaging simplicity.” As for Colin, he was quite aware of the somewhat unfounded admiration with which he was regarded, and smiled in his turn at his observers with a truer consciousness of the humour of the position than they could possibly have who saw only half of it; but he kept his shrewd Scotch eyes open all the time, and half unconsciously made himself acquainted with a great many new developments of that humanity which was to be the material of all the labours of his life. He had it in his power to remark the exact and delicate points at which Anglicanism joined on to the newer fashion of intellectualism, and to note how a morsel of faith the less might be now and then conciliated and made up for by a morsel of observance the more. And, at the same time, he became aware of the convenient possibility of dividing a man, and making him into two or three different “beings,” as occasion required; so that the emotional being—having sundry natural weaknesses, such as old association and youthful habit, and a regard to the feelings of others, not to speak of the affectionate prejudices of a good Churchman—was quite free to do his daily service at chapel, and say his prayers, even at the very moment when the intellectual being was busy with the most delicate demonstration that prayer in a universe governed by absolute law was an evident absurdity and contradiction of all reason. Colin for his part looked on at this partition, and smiled in his turn. He was not shocked, as perhaps he ought to have been; but then, as has been said, he too was a man of his age, and found many things which were required by absolute orthodoxy unnecessaryimpedimenta, as Lauderdale had called them.