But, with all this, the young man had never been able to cut himself in half, and he could not learn to regard the process as one either advantageous or even honourable now.
Such, apart from the work which was necessary in obedience to his grand original impulse, were the studies he pursued in Oxford. At the same time he had another occupation in hand,strangely out of accord at once with those studies and with his own thoughts. This was the publication of poor Meredith’s book, the “Voice from the Grave,” at which he had laboured to the latest moment of his life. In it was represented another world, an altogether contradictory type of existence. Between Colin’s intellectual friends, to whom the “Hereafter” was a curious and interesting but altogether baffling subject of investigation, and the dying youth who had gone out of this world in a dauntless primitive confidence of finding himself at once in the shining streets and endless sunshine of the New Jerusalem, the difference was so great as to be past counting. As for the young editor, his view of life was as different from Meredith’s as it was from that of his present companions. The great light of heaven was to Colin, as to many others, as impenetrable as the profoundest darkness; he could neither see into it, nor permit himself to make guesses of what was going on beyond; and, consequently, he had little sympathy with the kind of piety which regards life as a preparation for death. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes he sighed over the proofs as he corrected them; sometimes, but for knowing as he did the utter truthfulness with which the dead writer had set forth his one-sided and narrow conception of the world, Colin would have been disposed to toss into the fire those strange warnings and exhortations. But when he thought of the young author, dead in his youth, and of all the doings and sayings of those months in which they lived together, and, more touching still, of those conversations that were held on the very brink of the grave, and at the gate of heaven, his heart smote him. And then his new friends broke in upon him, and discussed the book with opinions so various that Colin could but admire and wonder. One considered them a curious study of the internal consciousness, quite worthy the attention of a student of mental phenomena. Another was of opinion that such stuff was the kind of nutriment fit for the uneducated classes, who had strong religious prejudices, and no brains to speak of. When Colin found his own sentiments thrown back to him in this careless fashion, he began to see for the first time the conceit and self-importance of his judgment; and many discussions followed, as might be supposed.
“When religion becomes a matter of self-interest,” said one of the young men met in his rooms on one such occasion, “I don’t see any attraction in it. I don’t understand what you can see in this rubbish, Campbell. Inflated humbug and sordid calculations——”
“Hush!” said Colin, with a sparkle in his eyes, “the writer was of the kind of man that saints were once made of—and I believe in saints for my part.”
“Well, yes,” said his interlocutor; “I don’t mean to be vulgar: one can’t help to a certain extent believing in saints—though our wise fathers you know thought otherwise.” Perhaps the young speaker would not have thought it necessary to be civil to them, if it had not been that a former generation had made fun of the saints.
“And as for self-interest,” said Colin, “I don’t see how a man can have an altogether generous and patronizing love for God. A child’s love for his father is always interested in a kind of way. The love that has no self-regard in it, is pity or patronage rather than love.”
“Oh, love!” said Colin’s friend, who had not been altogether thinking of that; and then another speaker broke in.
“For my part, it is the emotional aspect of religion that chiefly interests me,” he said; “in a philosophical point of view, you know. But the only way you can influence the masses is by working on their feelings. It would be different, of course, with a set of fellows like you.”
“We are superior to that sort of thing,” said Colin. “Perhaps we have no feelings. When a man becomes a Don, I don’t see what use he has for such superfluities.”
“You are going to be a Don yourself, I suppose,” said some one. “You are sure of your Fellowship, of course.”
Upon which Colin smiled with the pleasant arrogance of his age. “Something better than that,” he said. “I am not the kind of stuff that Dons are made of. I am going home to Scotland to the Kirk.”
Though his friends were all aware of this magnanimous intention, they could not but open their eyes at every new repetition of it.
“If you have set your heart on being a parson,” one of his companions said, “go into the Church, at least. Hang it! Campbell, don’t go and bind yourself to a conventicle,” said his anxious acquaintance; “a man has always a chance of doing something in the Church.”
“That is precisely my idea,” said Colin, “though you fellows seem to think it the last possibility. And, besides, it is the only thing I can do. I can’t be a statesman, as you have the chance of being, and I have not an estate to manage. What else would you have me do?”
“My dear fellow,” said another of his friends, “you are as sure of your Fellowship as any man ever was. Go in for literature, and send your old Kirk to Jericho—a fellow like you has nothing to do in such a place. One knows the sort of thing precisely; any blockhead that can thump his pulpit, and drone out long prayers—”
“Many thanks for your advice,” said Colin; “but I prefer my own profession, literature is all very well when a man is born to it, but life is better than literature at its best; and my own trade should be good for something, if any profession ever was.”
“Well, now, taking it at the very best, how much do you think you are likely to have a-year?—a hundred and fifty perhaps? No, I don’t mean to say that’s final;—but, of course, a thoughtful fellow like you takes it into consideration,” said Colin’s adviser; “everything is badly paid now-a-days—but, at all events, there are chances. If a man is made of iron and brass, and has the resolution of an elephant, he may get to be something at the Bar, you know, and make a mint of money. And, even in the Church, to be sure, if he’s harmless and civil, something worth having may come in his way; but you are neither civil nor harmless, Campbell. And, by Jove! it’s not the Church you are thinking of, but the Kirk, which is totally different. I’ve been in Scotland,” continued the Mentor, with animation; “it’s not even one Kirk, which would be something. But there’s one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom, and I defy any man to tell which is which. Come, Campbell, don’t be a Quixote—give it up!”
“You might as well have told my namesake to give up the Queen’s service after he had lost a battle,” said Colin. “Though I don’t suppose Sir Colin ever did lose a battle, by the way. I tell you I am not the sort of stuff for a Don—the atmosphere is too much rarified up here—I can’t breathe in it. Men who come of my race must work or die.”
“I can’t say that I feel the force of the alternative,” said Colin’s friend. “A man must think; it is the first condition of existence; but as for the other two— What have you in common with the unreasoning multitude?” asked the young philosopher. There were plenty of voices to take the other side of the question, but Colin’s mind was not political to speak of, and he had no inclination to take the democratic side.
“A few things,” Colin said, with a smile, “that don’t exist among the Illuminati. For instance, ignorance and want and some other human attributes; and we can help each other ondown below, while you are thinking it all out above. The worst is that we will probably find time to live and die before you come to any conclusion. Let us talk it over ten years hence,” said this young prince of the future, with royal confidence. And this was how a great many such conversations came to an end.
Ten years was like to be an eventful period to the young men who were standing on the verge of life; but they all made very light of it, as was natural. As for Colin, he did not attempt to make out to himself any clear plan of what he attempted to do and to be in ten years. Certainly, he calculated upon having by that time reached the highest culmination of which life was capable. He meant to be a prince in his own country without, at the same time, following anything for his own glory or advantage; for in reality, the highest projects that could move the spirit of a man were in Colin’s mind. He had no thought of becoming a popular preacher, or the oracle of a coterie. What he truly intended indeed was not quite known to himself, in the vague but magnificent stirrings of his ambition. He meant to take possession of some certain corner of his native country, and make of it an ideal Scotland, manful in works and steadfast in belief; and he meant from that corner to influence and move all the land in some mystical method known only to the imagination. Such are the splendid colours in which fancy, when sufficiently lively, can dress up even such a sober reality as the life of a Scotch minister. While he planned this he seemed to himself so entirely a man of experience, ready to smile at the notions of undisciplined youth, that he succeeded in altogether checking and deceiving his own inevitable good sense—that watchful monitor which warns even an imaginative mind of its extravagance. This was the great dream which, interrupted now and then by lighter fancies, had accompanied Colin more or less clearly through all his life. And now the hour of trial was about to come, and the young man’s ambition was ready to accomplish itself as best it might.
Itis unnecessary to say that Colin won the prize on which he had set his heart. The record is extant in the University, to save his historian trouble; and, to be sure, nobody can be supposed to be ignorant on so important a point—at least nobody who isanybody and has a character to support. He took a double first-class—as he had set his heart on doing—and thereby obtained, as some great man once said in a speech, an equal standing to that of a duke in English society. It is to be feared that Colin did not experience the full benefits of his elevation; for, to be sure, such a dukedom is of a temporary character, and was scarcely likely to survive beyond his year. But the prize when it was won, and all the long details of the process of winning it, were not without their effect upon him. Colin, being still young and inexperienced, had, indeed, the idea that the possessor of such a distinction needed but to signify his august will, and straightway every possible avenue of advancement would open before him. But for that idea, the pride of carrying home his honours, and laying them at the feet of his native church and country, would have been much lessened; and, to tell the truth, when the moment of triumph came, Colin yielded a little to the intoxication, and lent his thoughts, in spite of himself, to those charmed voices of ambition which, in every allegory that ever was invented, exercise their siren influence on the young man at the beginning of his career. He waited to be wooed at that eventful moment. He had a vague idea at the bottom of his heart that the State and the Church, and the Bar and the Press, would all come forward open-armed to tempt the hero of the year; and he had nobly determined to turn a deaf ear to all their temptations, and cling to his natural vocation, the profession to which he had been destined from his cradle with a constancy to which the world could not fail to do honour. Colin accordingly took possession of his honours with a little expectation, and waited for the siren-voices. When they did not come, the young man was a little astonished, a little mortified and cast down for the moment. But after that, happily, the absurdity of the position struck him. He burst into sudden laughter in his rooms, where he sat in all the new gloss of his fame and dignity, with much congratulations from his friends, but no particular excitement on the part of the world. Great Britain, as it appeared, for the moment, was not so urgently in want of a new Secretary of State as to contest the matter with the anonymous Scotch parish which had a claim upon the young man as its minister; and neither theTimesnor theQuarterly Reviewput forth any pretensions to him. And University life, to which he might have had a successfulentrée, did not exercise any charm upon Colin. A tutorship, though with unlimited prospect of pupils, or even a final hope of reaching the august elevation of Master,was not the vocation on which he had set his heart. The consequence was, as we have said, that the new Fellow of Balliol remained expectant for some time, then began to feel mortified and disappointed, and finally arose, with a storm of half-indignant laughter, to find that, after all, his position was not vitally changed by his success.
This was a strange, and perhaps in some respects a painful, discovery for a young man to make. He had distinguished himself among his fellows as much as a young soldier who had made himself the hero of a campaign would have distinguished himself among his; but this fact had very little effect upon his entry into the world. If he had been the Duke’s son, his first-class glories would have been a graceful addition to the natural honours of his name, and perhaps might have turned towards him with favour the eyes of some of those great persons who hold the keys of office in their hands. But Colin was only the farmer of Ramore’s son, and his prize did him no more good than any other useless laurel—except indeed that it might have helped him to advancement in the way of pupils, had that been Colin’srôle. But, considering how honourable a task it is to rear the new generation, it is astonishing how little enthusiasm generally exists among young men for that fine and worthy office. Colin had not the least desire to devote himself henceforward to the production of other first-class men—though, doubtless, that would have been a very laudable object of ambition; and, notwithstanding his known devotion to the “Kirk,” as his Oxford friends liked to call it, the young man was, no doubt, a little disappointed to find himself entirely at liberty to pursue his vocation. To be sure, Colin’s “set” still remonstrated against his self-immolation, and assured him that with his advantages fabulous things might be done. But the young Scotsman was too clear-sighted not to see that a great many of his congratulating friends had a very faint idea what to do with themselves, though some of them were but a step or two beneath him in honours. And, in the meantime, Colin felt quite conscious that the world gave no sign of wanting him, nor even availed itself of the commonest opportunities of seeking his invaluable services. A man who takes such a discovery in good part, and can turn back without bitterness upon his original intentions, is generally a man good for something; and this is precisely what, with much less flourish of trumpets than at the beginning, Colin found it necessary to do.
But he was not sorry to pay a visit to Wodensbourne, wherehe was invited after his victory, and to take a little time to think it all over. Wodensbourne had always been a kind of half-way house. It stood between him and his youthful life, with its limited external circumstances and unlimited expectations—and that otherreallife—the life of the man, wonderfully enlarged in outward detail, and miraculously shrunk and confined in expectation—which, by the force of contrast, young as he was, seemed to make two men of Colin. It was there first that he had learned to distinguish between the brilliant peasant firmament of Ramore, full of indistinct mists of glory, underneath which everything was possible—an atmosphere in which poor men rose to the steps of the throne, and princesses married pages, and the world was still young and fresh and primitive; and that more real sky in which the planets shone fixed and unapproachable, and where everything was bound by bonds of law and order, forbidding miracle. The more Colin had advanced, the more had he found advancement impossible according to the ideas entertained of it in his original sphere; and it was at Wodensbourne that he had first made this grand discovery. It was there he had learned the impossibility of the fundamental romance which at the bottom of their hearts most people like to believe in;—of that love which can leap over half a world to unite two people and to make them happy ever after, in spite not only of differences of fortune but of the far larger and greater differences by which society is regulated. Colin was on perfectly pleasant terms with Miss Matty by this time, and did not hide from himself how much he owed to her,—though perhaps she, who owed to him a momentary perception of the possibility which she had proved to his heart and understanding to be impossible, would have been but little grateful had she been made aware of the nature of his indebtedness. But now, having made still another discovery in his life, the young man was pleased to come to Wodensbourne to think over it, and make out what it meant. And the Franklands were, as always, very kind to Colin. Miss Matty, who had had a great many nibbles in the interval, was at length on the eve of being married. And Harry, who had nothing particular to do, and who found Wodensbourne stupid now that he was not to marry his cousin, was abroad, nobody seemed exactly to know where; and various things, not altogether joyful, had happened in the family, since the far-distant age when Colin was the tutor, and had been willing for Miss Matty’s sake to resign everything, if it should even be his life.
“It will be a very nice marriage,” said Lady Frankland. “I will not conceal from you, Mr. Campbell, that Matty has been very thoughtless, and given us a great deal of anxiety. It is always so much more difficult, you know, when you have the charge of a girl who is not your own child. One can say anything to one’s own child; but your niece, you know—and, indeed, not even your own, but your husband’s niece——”
“But I am sure Miss Frankland is as much attached to you,” said Colin, who did not like to hear Matty blamed, “as if——”
“Oh yes,” said Lady Frankland; “but still it is different. You must not think I am the least vexed about Harry. I never thought her the proper person for Harry. He has so much feeling, though strangers do not see it; and if he had been disappointed in his wife after they were married, fancy what my feelings would have been, Mr. Campbell. I was always sure they never would have got on together; and you know, when that is the case, it is so much better to break off at once.”
“What is that you are saying about breaking off at once?” said Miss Matty, who came into the room at that moment. “It must be Mr. Campbell who is consulting you, aunt. I thought he would have askedmyadvice in such a case. I do believe my lady has forgotten that there ever was a time when she was not married and settled, and that is why she gives you such cruel advice. Mr. Campbell, I am much the best counsellor, and I beg of you, don’t break it off at once!” said Miss Matty, looking up in his face with eyes that were half mocking and half pathetic. She knew very well it was herself whom my lady had been talking of—which made her the more disposed to send back the arrow upon Colin. But Matty, after all, was a good deal disconcerted—more disconcerted than he was, when she saw the sudden flush that came to Colin’s face. Naturally, no woman likes to make the discovery that a man who has once been her worshipper has learned to transfer his affections to somebody else. When she saw that this chance shaft had touched him, she herself was conscious of a sudden flush—a flush which had nothing whatever to do with love, but proceeded from the indescribable momentary vexation and irritation with which she regarded Colin’s desertion. That he was her adorer no longer was a fact which she had consented to; but Miss Matty experienced a natural movement of indignation when she perceived that he had elevated some one else to the vacant place. “Oh, if you look like that, I shall think it quite unnecessary to advise,” she said, with a little spitefulness, lowering her voice.
“What do I look like?” said Colin with a smile; for Lady Frankland had withdrawn to the other end of the room, and the young man was perfectly disposed to enter upon one of the half-mocking, half-tender conversations which had given such a charm to his life of old.
“What do you look like?” said Miss Matty. “Well, I think you look a great deal more like other people than you used to do; and I hate men who look like everybody else. One can generally tell a woman by her dress,” said the young lady pensively; “but most men that one meets in society want to have little labels with their names on them. I never can tell any difference between one and another for my part.”
“Then perhaps it would clear the haze a little if I were to name myself,” said Colin. “I am Colin Campbell of Ramore, at your ladyship’s service—once tutor to the learned and witty Charley, that hope of the house of Wodensbourne—and once also your ladyship’s humble boatman and attendant on the Holy Loch.”
“Fellow of Balliol, double-first—Coming man, and reformer of Scotland,” said Miss Matty with a laugh. “Yes, I recognise you; but I am not my ladyship just yet. I am only Matty Frankland for the moment, Sir Thomas’s niece, who has given my lady a great deal of trouble. Oh, yes; I know what she was saying to you. Girls who live in other people’s houses know by instinct what is being said about them. Oh, to be sure, it is quite true; they have been very, very kind to me; but, don’t you know, it is dreadful always to feel that people are kind. Ah! how sweet it used to be on the Holy Loch. But you have forgotten one of your qualifications, Mr. Campbell; you used to be a poet as well as tutor. I think, so far as I was concerned, it was the former capacity which you exercised with most applause. I have a drawer in my desk full of certain effusions; but, I suppose, now you are a Fellow of Balliol you are too dignified for that.”
“I don’t see any reason why I should be,” said Colin; “I was a great deal more dignified, for that matter, when I was eighteen, and a student at Glasgow College, and had very much more lofty expectations than now.”
“Oh, you always were devoted to the Kirk,” said Miss Matty; “which was a thing I never could understand—and now less than ever, when everybody knows that a man who has taken such honours as you have, has everything open to him.”
“Yes,” said Colin; “but then what everybody knows is a little vague. I should like to hear of any one thing that really is open to me except taking pupils. Of course,” said the young man, with dignity, “my mind is made up long ago, and my profession fixed; but for the good of other people in my position—and for my own good as well,” Colin added with a laugh—“for you know it is pleasant to feel one’s-self a martyr, rejecting every sort of advantage for duty’s sake.”
“Oh, but of course it is quite true,” said Matty; “youaregiving up everything—of course it is true. You know you might go into Parliament, or you might go into the Church, or you might—I wish you would speak to my uncle about it; I suppose he knows. For my part, I think you should go into Parliament; I should read all your speeches faithfully, and always be on your side.”
“That is a great inducement,” said Colin. “With that certainty one could face a great many obstacles. But, on the other hand, when I have settled down somewhere in my own parish, you can come and hear me preach.”
“That will not be half so interesting,” said Miss Matty, making a littlemoueof disdain; “but, now, tell me,” she continued, sinking her voice to its most confidential tone, “what it was that made you look so?—you know we areveryold friends,” said Miss Matty, with the least little tender touch or pathos; “we have done such quantities of things together—rowed on the Holy Loch, and walked in the woods, and discussed Tennyson, and amused Sir Thomas—yououghtto tell me your secrets; you don’t know what a goodconfidanteI should be; and if I know the lady—— But, at all events, you must tell me what made you look so?” she said, with her sweetest tone of inquisitive sympathy, the siren of Colin’s youth.
“Perhaps—when you have explained to me what it means to lookso,” said Colin; “after being buried for three years one forgets that little language. And then I am disposed to deny ever having lookedso,” he went on, laughing; but, notwithstanding his laugh, Colin was much more annoyed than became his reasonable years and new dignities to feel once more that absurd crimson rising to his hair. The more he laughed the higher rose that guilty and conscious colour; and, as for Miss Matty, she pointed her little pink finger at him with an air of triumph.
“There!” she said, “and you dare to pretend that you never lookedso! I shall be quite vexed if you don’t tell me. If itwas not something very serious,” said Miss Matty, “you would not change likethat.”
“Here is Sir Thomas; he will never accuse me of lookingso, or changing likethat—and it is a guest’s first duty to make himself agreeable to his host, is it not?” said Colin, who was rather glad of Sir Thomas’s arrival. As for Matty, she was conscious that Lady Frankland had given her what she would have called “a look” before leaving the room, and that her uncle regarded her with a little anxiety as he approached. Decidedly, though she liked talking to Colin, it was necessary to be less confidential. “I won’t sayau revoir,” she said, shrugging her pretty shoulders; “you know what you said about that once upon a time, when you were a poet.” And then Matty felt a little sorry for herself as she went away. “They might know, if they had any sense, that it does not matter in the least what I say tohim,” the young lady said to herself; but then she was only suffering the natural penalty of a long course of conquest, and several good matches sacrificed, and matters were serious this time, and not to be trifled with. Miss Matty accordingly gave up her researches into Colin’s secret; but not the less regarded with a certain degree of lively despite, the revelation out of the clouds of that unknown woman at thought of which Colin blushed. “I daresay it is somebody quite stupid, who does not understand him a bit,” she said to herself, taking a little comfort from the thought—for Matty Frankland was not a model woman, desiring only the hero’s happiness; and a man who is sufficiently insensible to console himself under such circumstances with another attachment, deserves to have his inconstancy punished, as everybody will allow.
To tell the truth, Colin, though guiltless of any breach of allegiance towards Matty, was punished sufficiently for his second attempt at love. He had heard nothing of Alice all these three years, but, notwithstanding, had never ceased to feel upon his neck that invisible bridle which restrained him against his will. Perhaps, if the woman of his imagination had ever fairly revealed herself, the sight would have given him courage to break for ever such a visionary bond, and to take possession of his natural liberty; but she contented herself with waving to him those airy salutations out of the clouds, and with now and then throwing a glance at him out of the eyes of some passer-by, who either disappeared at once from his sight, or turned out upon examination to be utterly unlike that not impossible She;and Colin had two sentinels to keep watch upon his honour in the forms of his mother and Lauderdale, both of whom believed in Love, and did not know what inconstancy meant. He said to himself often enough that the struggle in his heart was not inconstancy; but then he was not a man who could admit to them, or even to himself, that the bond between him and Alice was a great and tender pity, and not love. She had been on the eve of becoming his wife—she might be his wife still for anything he knew to the contrary—and Colin, who in this respect was spotless as any Bayard, would not, even to his dearest friends, humiliate by such a confession the woman whose love he had once sought.
And now the time had almost come when he could in reality “settle in life.” His Scotch parish came nearer and nearer, in the natural course of affairs, without any dazzling obstacles and temptations between it and himself, as he had once hoped; and Alice was of age by this time; and honour seemed to demand that, now when his proposal really meant something, he should offer to her the possibility of confirming her early choice. But somehow Colin was not at all anxious to take this step; he hung back, and nursed the liberty which still remained to him, and longed, in spite of himself, towards the visionary creature of his dreams, who was not Alice. Accordingly, he had two rather troublesome matters to think over at Wodensbourne, and occupied a position which was made all the more vexatious because it was at the same time amusing and absurd. His mind had been made up from the beginning as to his future life, as he truly said; but then he had quite intended it to be a sacrifice which he made out of his supreme love for his Church and his country. He meant to have fought his way back to the venerable mother through every sort of brilliant temptation; and to carry his honours to her with a disinterested love which he should prove by leaving behind him still higher honours and ambitions; whereas, in reality, the world was permitting him to return very quietly to his native country as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The disappointment was perhaps harsher in its way than if Colin had meant to avail himself of those splendid imaginary chances; and it did not make it any the less hard to bear that he himself saw the humour of the situation, and could not but laugh grimly at himself.
Perhaps Colin will suffer in the opinion of the readers of this history when we add that, notwithstanding the perplexing and critical character of the conjuncture, and notwithstandingthe other complication in his history in regard to Alice, he employed his leisure at Wodensbourne, after the interview we have recorded, in writing[3]verses for Miss Matty. It was true she had challenged him to some such task, but still it was undoubtedly a weakness on the part of a man with so much to think of. Truth, however, compels his historian to confess to this frivolity. As he strayed about the flat country, and through the park, the leisure in which he had intended to think over his position only betrayed him into this preposterous idleness; for, to be sure, life generally arranges itself in its own way without much help from thinking—but one cannot succeed in writing a farewell to a first love, for which one retains a certainkindness, without a due attention to one’s rhymes: and this was the sole result, as far as anybody was aware, of Colin’s brief but pleasant holiday at Wodensbourne.
Itis so difficult a matter to tell the story of a man’s life without wearying the audience, that we will make a leap over all the circumstances of Colin’s probation in Scotland, though they were sufficiently amusing. For, naturally, the presbytery of Glen-Diarmid—in which district the Holy Loch, Colin’s native parish, is situated—were a little at a loss what to make of a Fellow of Balliol when he offered himself for licence. To be sure, they made a long pause over the fact of his Fellowship, which implied that he was a member of the Church of England; but the presbytery permitted Colin to be heard in defence, and he had friends among them, and had sufficient skill with his weapons to perplex and defeat any rising antagonist. Besides, it was not in the nature of a country presbytery in this tolerant age to be otherwise than a little proud of the academical honours which the young neophyte bore. “If we accept any lout who comes up for licence, and refuse a lad of his attainments, what do you suppose the world will think of us?” said one of the more enlightened members of the clerical court, forgetting, as was natural, that the world concerned itself very little with the doings of the presbytery of Glen-Diarmid. “It’s safe to leave all that to the objectors when he comes to be placed,” said another of Colin’s judges, more wary than his brother; “if he’s not sound, you may trust it to them to find that out,”—and the young man was accordingly endued with the preliminary privileges of preacher, and licensed to exercise his gift. Colin had made friends all along the road of his life, as some men are happy enough to do, and had many who would have been pleased to do him a service, and one, as it happened, who at this juncture could; and so it befell, that, a very short time after, the second and more serious trial to which the prudent presbyter had referred, came into the life of the young preacher. He was presented, as people say in Scotland, to the parish of Afton, in the county, or, as the natives prefer to call it, the kingdom of Fife. It was a good living enough, making up,when the harvest was of average productiveness, and wheat steady, rather more than three hundred pounds a year—and more than that when the harvest was bad, and the price of com high; and there was an excellent manse, not much inferior to an English parsonage, and a compact little comfortable glebe, of which a minister of agricultural tastes might make something if he chose; and, above all, there were “heritors” of good conditions, and a university town, of small dimensions, but wealthy in point of society, within reach—all of which points seemed to Colin’s English friends a fabulous combination of advantages to be found in a Scotch parish.
Colin, however, did not fully describe the horrible gulf which lay between him and his benefice to anybody out of Scotland; for he was not the man to betray the imperfections of his beloved country, even while he suffered from them. His historian, however, does not require to exercise so much delicacy; and, as Colin’s case was exactly the same as that of any other young clergyman in the Church of Scotland, there is no betrayal of confidence involved. Between him and that haven there was a channel to cross before which the boldest might have quailed. The parish of Alton was a large parish, and there were seven hundred and fifty people in it who had a right to “object” to Colin. They had a right to object, if they liked, to his looks, or his manners, or his doctrines, or the colour of his hair; they had a right to investigate all his life, and make a complaint at “the bar of the presbytery”—which meant, at the same time, in all the local newspapers, eager for any kind of gossip—that he had once been guilty of bird’s-nesting, or had heard the midnight chimes at some unguarded moment of his youth. When Colin entered the pulpit for the first time in the parish to which he was presented, he made his appearance there not to instruct the congregation, but to be inspected, watched, judged, and finally objected to—and all the process was vigorously enforced in his case. For, to be sure, there were several things to be remarked in this young man—or, as the people of Afton expressed it, “this new laud”—which were out of the way, and unlike other people. He was a lad that had not found Scotch education good enough for him, but had gone to England for at least part of his training. To be sure, he had partly made up for this by taking the highest honours possible, and coming out of the contest in a manner creditable to Scotland—which was a point in his favour. And then his prayers (which was odd, as Colin was decidedly aliturgist) were wanting in those stock expressions which, more pertinacious than any liturgy, haunt the public prayers of the ordinary ministers of the Church of Scotland; and his sermons were short and innocent of divisions, and of a tenor totally unlike what the respectable parishioners had been used to hear. Some of the shrewder elders were of opinion that this or that expression “might mean onything”—a conclusion in which there was a certain truth; for Colin, as we have said, was not perfectly clear on all points as to what he believed. If he was not altogether heterodox on the subject of eternal punishment, for example, he was, to say the least, extremely vague; and, indeed, he deserted doctrinal ground altogether as often as he could, and took refuge in life and its necessities in a way which, doubtless, had its effect on the uninstructed multitude, but was felt to be meagre and unsatisfactory by the theologians of the parish. Two or three public meetings were held on the subject before it was time to lodge the final objections against the “presentee;” and Colin himself, who was living at St. Rule’s, within a few miles of the theatre of war, naturally found those meetings, and the speeches thereat, which appeared in theFife Argus, much less amusing than an impartial spectator might have done.
And then the same enlightened journal contained all sorts of letters on the subject—letters in which “An Onlooker” asked whether the Rev. Mr. Campbell, who was presentee to the parish of Afton, was the same Mr. Campbell who had passed a spring at Rome three or four years before, and had been noted for his leaning to the Papacy and its superstitious observances; while, on the other hand, “A Fife Elder” implored the parishioners to take notice that the man whom an Erastian patron—not himself a member of the Church, and perhaps unaware how dearly the spiritual privileges purchased by the blood of their martyred forefathers are regarded by Scotsmen—thus endeavoured to force upon them, was notoriously a disciple of Heward, and belonged to the most insidious school of modern infidelity. It was the main body of the opposing army which made such attacks; but there was no lack of skirmishers, who treated the subject in a lighter manner, and addressed the obliging editor in a familiar and playful fashion:—“Sir,—Having nothing better to do last Sunday morning, I strayed into the parish church of Afton, with the intention of worshipping with the congregation; but you may judge of my surprise when I observed ascending the pulpit-stairs a young gentlemanpresenting all the appearance of a London swell or a cavalry officer, with a beard upon which it was evident he had spent more time than on his sermon”—wrote a witty correspondent; while another indignant Scot demanded solemnly, “Is it to be tolerated that our very pulpits should be invaded by the scum of the English Universities, inexperienced lads that make a hash of the Prayer-book, and preach sermons that may do very well on the other side of the Tweed, but won’t go down here?”
Such were the pleasant effusions with which Colin’s friend at St. Rule’s amused his guest at breakfast. They were very amusing to a spectator safely established in the Elysian fields of a Scotch professorship, and beyond the reach of objections; but they were not amusing, to speak of, to Colin; and the effect they produced upon the household at Ramore may be faintly imagined by the general public, as it will be vividly realized by such Scotch families as have sons in the Church. The Mistress had said to herself, with a certain placid thankfulness, “It’s little they can have to say about my Colin, that has been aye the best and the kindest.” But when she saw how much could be made of nothing, the indignation of Colin’s mother did not prevent her from being wounded to the heart. “I will never mair believe either in justice or charity,” she said, with a thrill of wrath in her voice which had never before been heard at Ramore; “him that was aye so true and faithful—him that has aye served his Master first, and made no account of this world!” And, indeed, though his mother’s estimation of him might be a little too favourable, it is certain that few men more entirely devoted to their work than Colin had ever taken upon them the cure of souls. That, however, was a matter beyond the ken of the congregation and parish of Afton. There were seven hundred and fifty communicants, and they had been well trained in doctrine under their late minister, and had a high character for intelligence; and, when an opportunity thus happily arrived for distinguishing themselves, it was not in human nature to neglect it. Had not West Port worried to the point of extinction three unhappy men whom the Crown itself had successively elevated to the unenviable distinction of presentee? The Afton case now occupied the newspapers as the West Port case had once occupied them. It combined all the attractions of a theological controversy and a personal investigation; and, indeed, there could have been few better points of view for observing the humours of Scotch character and the peculiarities of rural Scotch society of the humbler levels; only that, as wehave before said, the process was not so amusing as it might have been to Colin and his friends.
“Me ken, Mr. Heward?” said the leading weaver of Afton; “no, I ken nothing about him. I’m no prepared to say what he believes. For that matter (but this was drawn out by cross-examination), I’m no just prepared to say at a moment’s notice what I believe myself. I believe in the Confession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism. No, I cannot just say that I’ve ever read the Confession of Faith—but eh, man, you ken little about parish schools if you think I dinna ken the Catechism. Can I say ‘What is Effectual Calling?’ I would like to know what right you have to ask me. I’ll say it at a proper time, to them that have a title to ask. I’m here to put in my objections against the presentee. I’m no here to say my questions. If I was, may be I would ken them better than you.”
“Very well; but I want to understand what you know about Mr. Heward,” said the counsel for the defence.
“I’ve said already I ken naething about Mr. Heward. Lord bless me! it’s no a man, it’s a principle we’re thinking of. No, I deny that; it’s no an oath. ‘Lord bless me!’ is a prayer, if you will be at the bottom o’t. We’ve a’ muckle need to say that. I say the presentee is of the Heward school of infidelity; that’s the objection I’m here to support.”
“But, my friend,” said a member of the presbytery, “it is necessary that you should be more precise. It is necessary to say, you know, that Mr. Heward rejects revelation; that he——”
“Moderator, I call my reverend brother to order,” said another minister; “the witness is here to give evidence about Mr. Campbell. No doubt he is prepared to show us how the presentee has proved himself to belong to the Heward school.”
“Oh ay,” said the witness; “there’s plenty evidence of that. I took notes mysel’ of a’ the sermons. Here’s one of them. It’s maybe a wee in my ain words, but there’s nae change in the sense,—‘My freends, it’s aye best to look after your ain business: it’s awfu’ easy to condemn others. We’re all the children of the Heavenly Father. I have seen devotion among a wheen poor uninstructed Papists that would put the best of you to shame’—No, that’s no what I was looking for; that’s the latitudinarian bit.”
“I think it has been said, among other things,” said another member of the presbytery, “that Mr. Campbell had a leaning towards papal error; it appears to me that the witness’s note is almost a proof of that.”
“Moderator,” said Colin’s counsel, “I beg to call your attention to the fact that we are not discussing the presentee’s leaning towards papal error, but his adherence to the Heward school of infidelity, whatever that may be. If the witness will inform us, or if any of the members of the court will inform us, what Mr. Heward believes, we will then be able to make some reply to this part of the case.”
“I dinna ken naething about Mr. Heward,” said the cautious witness. “I’m no prepared to enter into ony personal question. It’s no the man but the principle that we’re heeding, the rest of the objectors and me.”
“The witness is perfectly right,” said a conscientious presbyter; “if we were tempted to enter into personal questions there would be no end to the process. My friend, the thing for you to do in this delicate matter is to lead proof. No doubt the presentee has made some statement which has led you to identify him with Mr. Heward. He has expressed some doubts, for example, about the origin of Christianity or the truth of revelation—”
“Order, order,” cried the enlightened member; “I protest against such leading questions. Indeed, it appears to me, Moderator, that it is impossible to proceed with this part of the case unless it has been made clearly apparent to the court what Mr. Heward believes.”
Upon which there naturally ensued a lively discussion in the presbytery, in which the witness was with difficulty prevented from joining. The subject was without doubt sufficiently unfathomable to keep half-a-dozen presbyteries occupied; but there were at that period in the kingdom of Fife, men of sufficient temerity to pronounce authoritatively even upon a matter so mysterious and indefinite. The court, however, adjourned that day without coming to any decision; and even the Edinburgh papers published a report of the Afton case, which involved so many important interests; although so far as concerned the great Heward heresy, the objections could not be held to be proved.
Colin was saved on the other counts of his indictment also, as it happened, but more by accident than by any effect which he produced on his reluctant parishioners. By dint of repeated examinations on the model of that which we have quoted above, the presbytery came to the decision that the presentee’s leaning to papal error was, like his adherence to the Heward school of theology, not proven; and they even—for presbyteries alsomarch to a certain extent with the age—declined to consider the milder accusation brought against him, of favouring the errors of a less fatal heretic. By this time, it is true, Colin was on the point of abandoning for ever the Church to which at a distance he had been willing to give up all his ambitions, and the Mistress was wound up to such a pitch of indignant excitement as to threaten a serious illness, and Lauderdale had publicly demonstrated his wrath by attending “the English chapel,” as he said, “two Sundays running.” As for Colin, in the quiet of St. Rule’s, feeling like a culprit on his trial, and relishing not at all the notion of being taken to pieces by the papers, even though they were merely papers of Fife, he had begun to regard with some relief the idea of going back to Balliol and reposing on his Fellowship, and even taking pupils, if nothing better came in his way. If he could have gone into Parliament, as Matty Frankland suggested, the indignant young man would have seized violently on that means of exposing to the House and the world the miseries of a Scotch presentee and the horrors of Lord Aberdeen’s Act. But, fortunately, he had no means of getting into Parliament, and a certain sense at the bottom of his heart, that this priesthood which had to be entered by a channel so painful and humiliating was in reality his true vocation, retained him as by a silken thread. If he had been less convinced on this point, no doubt he would have abandoned the mortifying struggle, and the parish of Afton, having whetted its appetite upon him, would have gone freshly to work upon another unhappy young preacher, and crunched his bones with equal satisfaction; and, what is still more important to us, this history would have broken off abruptly short of its fit and necessary period. None of those misfortunes happened, because Colin had at heart a determination to make himself heard, and enter upon his natural vocation, and because, in the second place, he was independent, and did not at the present moment concern himself in the smallest degree about the stipend of the parish, whether corn was at five pounds the chaldron or five shillings. To be sure, it is contrary to the ordinary habit of biography to represent a young clergyman as entering a parish against the will or with the dislike of the inhabitants; as a general rule it is at worst, an interested curiosity, if not a lively enthusiasm, which the young parish priests of literature find in their village churches; but then it is not England or Arcadia of which we are writing, nor of an ideal curate or spotless primitive vicar, but only of Colin Campbell and the parish of Afton, in thekingdom of Fife, in the country of Scotland, under the beneficent operation of Lord Aberdeen’s Act.
However, at last the undignified combat terminated. After the objections were all disposed of, the seven hundred and fifty communicants received their minister, it is to be hoped, with the respect due to a victor. Perhaps it was a touch of disdain on Colin’s part—proving how faulty the young man remained, notwithstanding, as the Mistress said, “all he had come through”—that prompted him to ascend the pulpit, after the struggle was over, with his scarlet hood glaring on his black gown to the consternation of his parishioners. It cannot be denied that this little movement of despite was an action somewhat unworthy of Colin at such a moment and in such a place; but then he was young, and it is difficult for a young man to do under all circumstances exactly what he ought. When he had got there and opened his mouth, Colin forgot all about his scarlet hood—he forgot they had all objected to him and put him in the papers. He saw only before him a certain corner of the world in which he had to perform the highest office that is confided to man. He preached without thinking he was preaching, forgetting all about doctrines, and only remembering the wonderful bewildering life in which every soul before him had its share, the human mysteries and agonies, the heaven, so vague and distant, the need so urgent and so near. In sight of these, which had nothing to do with Lord Aberdeen’s Act, Colin forgot that he had been put innocently on his trial, and taken to pieces; and, what was still more strange, when two or three harmless weeks had passed, the seven hundred and fifty communicants had clean forgotten it too.
But, after all, there are few trials to which a man of lofty intentions and an elevated ideal can be exposed, more severe than the entirely unexpected one which comes upon him when he has had his way, and finds himself for the first time in the much desired position in which he can carry out all the plans of his youth. Perhaps few people arrive so completely at this point as to acknowledge it distinctly to themselves; for, to be sure, human projects and devices have a knack of expandingand undergoing a gradual change from moment to moment. Something of the kind, however, must accompany, for example, every happy marriage; though perhaps it is the woman more than the man who comes under its influence. The beautiful new world of love and goodness into which the happy bride supposes herself to be entering comes to bear after a while so extraordinary a resemblance to the ordinary mediocre world which she has quitted that the young woman stands aghast and bewildered. The happiness which has come has made a more subtle happiness, that ideal perfection of being to which she has been more or less looking forward all her life. Colin, when he had gone through all his trials, and had fairly reached the point at which the heroic and magnificent existence which he meant to live should commence, found himself very much in the same position. The young man was still in the fantastic age. To preach his sermons every Sunday, and do his necessary duty, and take advantage of the good society at St. Rule’s, did not seem a life sufficient for the new minister. What he had thought of was something impossible, a work for his country, an elevation of the national firmament, an influence which should mellow the rude goodness of Scotland, and link her again to all the solemn past, to all the good and gracious present, to all the tender lights and dawns of hope.
Colin had derived from all the religious influences with which he had been brought in contact a character which was perhaps only possible to a young Scotchman and Presbyterian, strongly anchored to his hereditary creed, and yet feeling all its practical deficiencies. He was High Church, though he smiled at Apostolic succession; he was Catholic, though the most gorgeous High Mass that ever was celebrated would have moved him no more than one of Verdi’s operas. When other enlightened British spectators regarded with lofty superiority the poor Papist people coming and going into all the tawdry little churches, and singing unintelligible Latin, horribly out of tune, Colin for his part looked at them with a sigh for his own country, which had ceased to recognise any good in such devotion. And all through his education, from the moment when he smiled at the prayer-book under the curate’s arm at Wodensbourne, and wondered what a Scotch peasant would think of it, to the time when he studied in the same light the prelections of the University preacher in St. Mary’s, Colin’s thought had been, “Would I were in the field!” It appeared to him that if he were but there, in all his profusion of strength and youth, he could breathea new breath into the country he loved. What he meant to do was to untie the horrible bands of logic and knit fair links of devotion around that corner of the universe which it has always seemed possible to Scotsmen to make into a Utopia; to persuade his nation to join hands again with Christendom, to take back again the festivals and memories of Christianity, to rejoice in Christmas and sing lauds at Easter, and say common prayers with a universal voice. These were to be the outward signs; but the fact was that it was a religious revolution in Scotland at which Colin aimed. He meant to dethrone the pragmatic and arrogant preacher, whose reign has lasted so long. He meant to introduce a more humble self-estimate, and a more gracious temper into the world he swayed in imagination. From this dream Colin woke up, after the rude experience of the objectors, to find himself at the head of his seven hundred and fifty communicants, with authority to say anything he liked to them (always limited by the knowledge that they might at any time “libel” him before the presbytery, and that the presbytery might at any time prosecute, judge, and condemn him), and to a certain extent spiritual ruler of the parish, with a right to do anything he liked in it, always subject to the approval of the Kirk-Session, which could contravent him in many ingenious ways. The young man was at last in the position to which he had looked forward for years—at last his career was begun, and the course of his ambition lay clear before him. Nothing now remained but to realize all these magnificent projects, and carry out his dreams.
But the fact is that Colin, instead of plunging into his great work, stood on the threshold struck dumb and bewildered, much as a bride might do on the threshold of the new home which she had looked forward to as something superior to Paradise. The position of his dreams was obtained, but these dreams had never till now seemed actually hopeless and preposterous. When he took his place up aloft in his high pulpit, from which he regarded his people much as a man at a first-floor window might regard the passers-by below, and watched the ruddy countrymen pouring in with their hats on their heads and a noise like thunder, the first terrible blow was struck at his palace of fancy. They were altogether different from the gaping rustics at Wodensbourne, to whom that good little curate preached harmless sermons out of his low desk, about the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, and the admirable arrangements of the Church. Colin upstairs at his first-floor window was in no harmless position.He was put up there for a certain business, which the audience down below understood as well as he did. As for prayers and psalm-singing, they were necessary preliminaries to be got over as quickly as possible. The congregation listened and made internal criticisms as the young minister said his prayers. “He’s awfu’ limited in his confessions,” one of the elders whispered to another. “I canna think he’s fathomed the nature o’ sin, for my part;” and Colin was conscious by something in the atmosphere, by a certain hum and stir, that, though his people were a little grateful to find his first attempt at devotion shorter than usual, a second call upon them was regarded with a certain displeased surprise; for, to be sure, the late minister of Afton had been of the old school. And then, this inevitable preface having been disposed of, the congregation settled down quietly to the business of the day. Colin was young, and had kept his youthful awe of the great mysteries of faith, though he was a minister. It struck him with a sort of panic, when he looked down upon all those attentive faces, and recalled to himself the idea that he was expected to teach them, to throw new light upon all manner of doctrines, and open up the Bible, and add additional surety to the assurance already possessed by the audience that it was a very well-instructed congregation and knew all about the system of Christian theology. It gleamed upon Colin in that terrible moment that, instead of being a predestined reformer, he was a very poor pretender indeed, and totally inadequate to the duties of the post which he had taken upon him thus rashly; for, indeed, he was not by any means so clear as most of his hearers were about the system of theology. This sudden sense of incapacity, which came upon him at the very moment when he ought to have been strongest, was a terrible waking up for Colin. He preached his sermon—but with pale lips and a heart out of which all the courage seemed to have died for the moment; and betook himself to his manse afterwards to think it all over, with a horrible sense that, after all, he was a sham and impostor, and utterly unworthy of exercising influence upon any reasonable creature. For, to be sure, though a lofty ideal is the best thing in the world, according to its elevation is the pain and misery of the fall.
The consequence was that Colin stopped short in a kind of fright after he had made this first discovery, and that, after all his great projects, nothing in the world was heard all that winter of the young reformer. To return to our metaphor, he was silent as a young wife sometimes finds herself among the relics of herabsurd youthful fancies, contemplating the ruin ruefully, and not yet fully awakened to the real possibilities of the position. During this little interval he came gradually down out of his too lofty ideas to consider the actual circumstances. When Lauderdale came to see him, which he did on the occasion of the national new-year holiday, Colin took his friend to see his church with a certain comic despair. “I have a finer chancel than that at Wodensbourne, which was the curate’s object in life,” said Colin; “but, if I make any fuss about it, I should be set down as an idiot; and, if any man has an imagination sufficiently lively to conceive of my ploughmen entering my church as our poor friends went into the Pantheon——”
“Dinna be unreasonable,” said Lauderdale. “You were aye awfu’ fantastic in your notions; what should the honest men ken about a chancel? I wouldna say that I’m just clear on the subject mysel’. As for the Pantheon, that was aye an awfu’ delusion on your part. Our cathedral at Glasgow is an awfu’ deal mair Christian-like than the Pantheon, as far as I can judge; but I wouldna say that it’s an idea that ever enters my head to go there for my ain hand to say my prayers; and, as for a country kirk with naked pews and cauld stone——”
“Look at it,” said Colin with an air of disgust which was comprehensible enough in a Fellow of Balliol. The church of Afton was worth looking at. It illustrated with the most wonderful, almost comic, exactness, two distinct historic periods. At one end of it was a wonderful Norman chancel, gloomy but magnificent, with its heavy and solemn arches almost as perfect as when they were completed. This chancel had been united to a church of later date (long since demolished) by a lighter and loftier pointed arch, which, however, under Colin’s incumbency, was filled up with a partition of wood, in which there was a little door giving admission to the church proper, the native and modern expression of ecclesiastical necessities in Scotland. This edifice was like nothing so much as a square box, encircled by a level row of windows high up in the wall, so many on each side; and there it was that Colin’s lofty pulpit, up two pairs of stairs, rigidly and nakedly surveyed the rigorous lines of naked pews which traversed the unlovely area. Colin regarded this scene of his labours with a disgust so melancholy, yet so comical, that his companion, though not much given to mirth, gave forth a laugh which rang into the amazed and sombre echoes. “Yes, it is easy enough to laugh,” said Colin, who was not without a sense of the comic side of his position; “but if it was your own church——”
“Whisht, callant,” said Lauderdale, whose amusement was momentary; “if I had ever come to onything in this world, and had a kirk, I wouldna have been so fanciful. It’s well for you to get your lesson written out so plain. There’s nae place to speak of here for the prayers and the thanksgivings. I’m no saying but what they are the best, but that’s no our manner of regarding things in Scotland. Even the man that has maist set his heart on a revolution must aye begin with things as they are. This is no a place open at a’ times to every man that has a word to say to God in quietness, like yon Catholic chapels. It’s a place for preaching; and you maun preach.”
“Preach!” said Colin; “what am I to preach? What I have learned here and there, in Dickopftenburg for example, or in the Divinity Hall? and much the better they would be for all that. Besides, I don’t believe in preaching, Lauderdale. Preaching never did me the least service. As for that beastly pulpit perched up there, all wood and noise as it is——” but here Colin paused, overcome by the weight of his discontent, and the giddiness natural to his terrible fall.
“Well,” said Lauderdale, after a pause, “I’m no saying but what there’s some justice in what you say; but I would like to hear, with your ideas, what you’re meaning to do.”
To which Colin answered with a groan. “Preach,” he said gloomily; “there is nothing else I can do: preach them to death, I suppose: preach about everything in heaven and earth; it is all a priest is good for here.”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale; “and then the worst o’t is that you’re no a priest, but only a minister. I wouldna say, however, but what you might pluck up a heart and go into the singing business, and maybe have a process in the presbytery about an organ; that’s the form that reformation takes in our kirk, especially with young ministers that have travelled and cultivated their minds, like you. But, Colin,” said the philosopher, “you’ve been in more places than the Divinity Hall. There was once a time when you were awfu’ near dying, if a man daur say the truth now it’s past; and there was once a bit little cham’er out yonder, between heaven and earth——”
Out yonder—Lauderdale gave a little jerk with his hand, as he stood at the open door, across the grey, level country which lay between the parish church of Afton and the sea; and the words and the gesture conveyed Colin suddenly to the lighted window that shone feebly over the Campagna, and to the talk within over Meredith’s deathbed. The recollection brought awonderful change over his thoughts. He took his friend’s arm in silence, when he had locked the door. “I wonder what he is doing,” said Colin. “I wonder whether the reality has fallen short of the expectation there. If there should be no golden gates or shining streets as yet, but only another kind of life with other hopes and trials! If one could but know!”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, in the tone that Colin knew so well; and then there was a long pause. “I’m no saying but what it’s natural,” he went on afterwards with some vagueness. “It’s aye awfu’ hard upon a man to get his ain way; but once in a while there’s one arises that can take the good out of even that. You’ll no make Scotland of your way of thinking, Colin; but you’ll make it worth her while to have brought ye forth for a’ that. As for Arthur, poor callant, I wouldna say but his ideal may have changed a wee on the road there. I’m awfu’ indifferent to the shining streets for my part; but I’m no indifferent to them that bide yonder in the silence. There was one now that wasna in your case,” continued Lauderdale; “hewas aye pleased to teach in season and out of season. For the sake of the like of him, I’m whiles moved to hope that a’s no so awfu’ perfect in the other world as we think. I canna see ony ground for it in the Bible. Naething ever comes to an end in this world, callant;—and that was just what I was meaning to ask in respect to other things.”
“I don’t know what you mean by other things,” said Colin; “that is, if you mean Miss Meredith, Lauderdale, I have heard nothing of her for years. That must be concluded to have come to an end if anything ever did. It is not for me to subject myself to rejection any more.”
Upon which Lauderdale breathed out a long breath which sounded like a sigh, and was visible as well as audible in the frosty air. “It’s aye weel to have your lesson written so plain,” he said after a minute, with that want of apparent sequence which was sometimes amusing and sometimes irritating to Colin; “it’s nae disgrace to a man to do his work under strange conditions. When a lad like you has no place to work in but a pulpit, it’s clear to me that God intends him to preach whether he likes it or no.”
And this was all the comfort Colin received, in the midst of his disenchantment and discouragement, from his dearest friend.
But before the winter was over, life had naturally asserted its rights in the mind of the young minister. He had begun to stretch out his hands for his tools almost without knowing it,and to find that after all, a man in a pulpit, although he has two flights of stairs to ascend to it, has a certain power in his hand. Colin found eventually, that he had after all a great deal to say, and that even in one hour in a week it was possible to convey sundry new ideas into the rude, but not stupid, minds of his parishioners. A great many of them had that impracticable and hopeless amount of intelligence natural to a well brought-up Scotch peasant, with opinions upon theological matters and a lofty estimate of his own powers; but withal there were many minds open and thoughtful as silence, and the fields, and much observation of the operations of nature could make them. True, there were all the disadvantages to be encountered in Afton which usually exist in Scotch parishes of the present generation. There was a Free church at the other end of the parish very well filled, and served by a minister who was much more clear in a doctrinal point of view than Colin; and the heritors, for the most part—that is to say, the land-owners of the parish—though they were pleased to ask a Fellow of Balliol to dinner, and to show him a great deal of attention, yet drove placidly past his church every Sunday to the English chapel in St. Rule’s; which is unhappily the general fortune of the National Church in Scotland. It was on this divided world that Colin looked from his high pulpit, where, at least for his hour, he had the privilege of saying what he pleased without any contradiction; and it is not to be denied that after a while the kingdom of Fife grew conscious to its other extremity that in the eastern corner a man had arrived who had undoubtedly something to say. As his popularity began to rise, Colin’s ambitions crept back to his heart one by one. He preached the strangest sort of baffling, unorthodox sermons, in which, however, when an adverse critic took notes, there was found to be nothing upon which in these days he could be brought to the bar of the presbytery. Thirty years ago, indeed, matters were otherwise regulated; but even presbyteries have this advantage over popes, that they do take a step forward occasionally to keep in time with their age.
This would be the proper point at which to leave Colin, if there did not exist certain natural, human prejudices on the subject which require a distinct conclusion of one kind or another. Until a man is dead, it is impossible to say what he has done, or to make any real estimate of his work; and Colin, so far from being dead, is only as yet at the commencement of his career, having taken the first steps with some success andéclat, and having recovered the greater part of his enthusiasm. There was,indeed, a time when his friends expected nothing else for him than that early and lovely ending which makes a biography perfect. There is only one other ending in life, which is equally satisfactory, and, at least on the face of it, more cheerful than dying; and that, we need not say, is marriage. Accordingly, as it is impossible to pursue his course to the one end, all that we can do is to turn to the other, which, though the hero himself was not aware of it, was at that moment shadowing slowly out of the morning clouds.
It is accordingly with a feeling of relief that we turn from the little ecclesiastical world of Scotland, where we dare not put ourselves in too rigorous contact with reality, or reveal indiscreetly, without regard to the sanctity of individual confidence, what Colin is doing, to the common open air and daylight, in which he set out, all innocent and unfearing, on a summer morning, accompanied as of old by Lauderdale, upon a holiday journey. He had not the remotest idea, any more than the readers of his history have at this moment, what was to happen to him before he came back again. He set out with all his revolutionary ideas in his mind, without pausing to think that circumstances might occur which would soften down all insurrectionary impulses on his part, and present him to the alarmed Church, not under the aspect of an irresistible agitator and reformer, but in the subdued character of a man who has given hostages to society. Colin had no thought of this downfall in his imagination when he set out. He had even amused himself with the idea of a new series of “Tracts for the Times,” which might peradventure work as much commotion in the Church of Scotland as the former series had done in the Anglican communion. He went off in full force and energy with the draft of the first of these revolutionary documents in the writing-case in which he had once copied out his verses for Alice Meredith. Poor Alice Meredith! The bridle which Colin had once felt on his neck had worn by this time to such an impalpable thread that he was no longer aware of its existence; and even the woman in the clouds had passed out of his recollection for the moment, so much was he absorbed with the great work he had embarked on. Thus he set out on a pedestrian excursion, meaning to go to the English lakes, and it is hard to say where besides, in his month’s holiday; and nothing in the air or in the skies gave any notice to Colin of the great event that was to befall him before he could return.