Itwas, as we have said, a lovely summer morning when Colin set out on his excursion, after the fatigues of the winter and spring. His first stage was naturally Ramore, where he arrived the same evening, having picked up Lauderdale at Glasgow on his way. A more beautiful evening had never shone over the Holy Loch; and, as the two friends approached Ramore, all the western sky was flaming behind the dark hills, which stood up in austere shadow, shutting out from the loch and its immediate banks the later glories of the sunset. To leave the eastern shore, where the light still lingered, and steal up under the shadow into the soft beginning of the twilight, with Ramore, that “shines where it stands,” looking out hospitably from the brae, was like leaving the world of noise and commotion for the primitive life, with its silence and its thoughts; and so, indeed, Colin felt it, though his world was but another country parish, primitive enough in its ways. But then it must not be forgotten that there is a difference between the kingdom of Fife, where wheat grows golden on the broad fields, and where the herrings come up to the shore to be salted and packed in barrels, and the sweet Loch half hidden among the hills, where the cornfields are scant and few, and where grouse and heather divide the country with the beasts and the pastures, and where, in short, Gaelic was spoken within the memory of man. Perhaps there was something of the vanity of youth in that look of observation and half amused, half curious criticism which the young man cast upon the peaceful manse, where it did not seem as if anything could ever happen, and where the minister, who had red hair, had painfully begun his career when Colin himself was a boy. The manse of Afton was not nearly so lovely, but—it was different; though perhaps he could not have told how. And the same thought was in his mind as he went on past all the tranquil houses. How did they manage to keep existing, those people for whom life was over, who had ceased to look beyond the day, or to anticipate either good or evil? To be sure all this was very unreasonable; for Colin was aware that things did happen now and then on the Holy Loch. Somebody died occasionally, when it was impossible to help it, and by turns somebody was born, and there even occurred, at rare intervals a marriage, with its suggestion of life beginning; butthese domestic incidents were not what he was thinking of. Life seemed to be in its quiet evening over all that twilight coast; and then it was the morning with Colin, and it did not seem possible for him to exist without the hopes, and motives, and excitements which made ceaseless movement and commotion in his soul. He was so full of what had to be done, even of what he himself had to do, that the silence seemed to recede before him, and to rustle and murmur round him as he carried into it his conscious and restless life.
Colin had even such a wealth of existence to dispose of that it kept flowing on in two or three distinct channels, a thing which amused him when he thought of it. For underneath all this sense of contrast, and Lauderdale’s talk, and his own watch for the Ramore boat, No. 1 of the “Tracts for the Times” was at the same time shaping itself in Colin’s brain; and there are moments when a man can stand apart from himself, and note what is going on in his own mind. He was greeting the old friends who recognised him in the steamboat, and looking out for home, and planning his tract, and making that contrast between the evening and the morning all at the same moment. And at the same time he had taken off the front of his mental habitation, and was looking at all those different processes going on in its different compartments with a curious sense of amusement. Such were the occupations of his mind as he went up to the Loch, to that spot where the Ramore boat lay waiting on the rippled surface. It was a different homecoming from any that he had ever made before. Formerly his prospects were vague, and it never was quite certain what he might make of himself. Now he had fulfilled all the ambitions of his family, as far as his position went. There was nothing more to hope for or to desire in that particular; and, naturally, Colin felt that his influence with his father and brothers at least would be enhanced by the realization of those hopes, which, up to this time, had always been mingled with a little uncertainty. He forgot all about that, it is true, when he grasped the hands of Archie and of the farmer, and dashed up the brae to where the Mistress stood wistful at the door; but, notwithstanding, there was a difference, and it was one which was sufficiently apparent to all. As for his mother, she smoothed down the sleeve of his black coat with her kind hand, and examined with a tender smile the cut of the waistcoat which Colin had brought from Oxford—though, to tell the truth, he had still a stolen inclination for “mufti,” and wore his uniform only when a solemn occasion occurred like thisand on grand parade; but, for all her joy and satisfaction at sight of him, the Mistress still looked a little shattered and broken, and had never forgotten—though Colin had forgotten it long ago—the “objections” of the parish of Afton, and all that her son had had “to come through,” as she said, “before he was placed.”
“I’m awfu’ shaken in my mind about a’ that,” said the Mistress; “there’s the Free Kirk folk—though I’m no for making an example of them—fighting among themselves about their new minister, like thae puir senseless creatures in America. Thamas, at the Millhead, is for the ae candidate, and his brother Dugald for the tither; and they’re like to tear each other’s een out when they meet. That’s ill enough, but Afton’s waur. I’m no for setting up priests, nor making them a sacerdotal caste as some folk say; but will you tell me,” said Mrs. Campbell, indignantly, “that a wheen ignorant weavers and canailye like that can judge my Colin? ay, or even if it was thae Fife farmers driving in their gigs. I would like to ken what he studied for and took a’ thae honours, and gave baith time and siller, if he wasna to ken better than the like of them? I’m no pretending to meddle with politics that are out of my way—but I canna shut my een,” the Mistress said, emphatically. “The awfu’ thing is that we’ve nae respect to speak of for onything but ourselves; we’re so awfu’ fond of our ain bit poor opinions, and the little we ken. If there was ony change in our parish—and the minister’s far from weel, by a’ I can hear—and that man round the point at the English chapel wasna such an awfu’ haveril—I would be tempted to flee away out of their fechts and their objections, and get a quiet Sabbath day there.”
“I’m no for buying peace so dear, for my part,” said Lauderdale; “they’re terrible haverils, most of the English ministers in our pairts, as the Mistress says. We’re a’ in a kind of dissenting way now-a-days, the mair’s the pity. Whisht a moment, callant, and let a man speak.—I’m no saying onything against dissent; it’s a wee hard in its ways, and it has an awfu’ opinion of itsel’, and there’s nae beauty in it; but, when your mind’s made up to have popular rights and your ain way in everything, I canna see onything else for it, for my part.”
“Weel, we’ll a’ see,” said big Colin, who in his heart could not defend an order of ecclesiastical economy which permitted his son to be assaulted by the parish of Afton, or any otherparish, “if it’s the will of God. We’re none of us so awfu’ auld; but the world’s aye near its ending to a woman that sees her son slighted; there’s nae penitence can make up for that—no that he’s suffered much that I can see,” the farmer said with a laugh. “There’s enough of the Kirk for one night.”
“Eh, Colin, dinna be so worldly,” said his wife; “I think whiles it would be an awfu’ blessing if the world was to end as you say; and a thing be cleared up, and them joined again that had been parted, and the bonnie earth safe through the fire—if it’s to be by fire,” she added with a questioning glance towards her son; “I canna think but it’s ower good to be true. When I mind upon a’ we’ve to go through in this life, and a’ that is so hard to mend;—eh, if He would but take it in His ain hand!” said the Mistress with tears in her eyes. No one was so hard-hearted as to preach to her at that moment, or to enlarge upon the fact that everything was in His hand, as indeed she knew as well as her companions; but it happens sometimes that the prayers and the wishes which are out of reason, are those that come warmest, and touch deepest, to the heart.
But, meanwhile, awaiting the end of the world, Colin, when he was settled for the night in his old room, with its shelving roof, took out and elaborated hisTract for the Times. It was discontent as great as that of his mother’s which breathed out of it; but then hers was the discontent of a life which had nothing to do or to look for, and which had found out by experience how little progress can be made in a lifetime, and how difficult it is to change evil into good. Colin’s discontent, on the contrary, was that exhilarating sentiment which stimulates youth, and opens an endless field of combat and conquest. At his end of the road it looked only natural that the obstacles should move of themselves out of the way, and that what was just and best should have the inevitable victory. When he had done, he thought with a tenderness which brought tears to his eyes, yet at the same moment a smile to his lips, of the woman’s impatience that would hasten the wheels of fate, and call upon God to take matters, as she said, in His own hand. That did not, as yet, seem a step necessary to Colin. He thought there was still time to work by the natural means, and that things were not arrived as such a pass that it was needful to appeal to miracle. It could only be when human means had failed that such a resource could be necessary; and the humanmeans had certainly not failed entirely so long as he stood there in the bloom of his young strength, with his weapons in his hand.
He preached in his native church on the following Sunday, as was to be expected; and from up the Loch and down the Loch all the world came to hear young Colin of Ramore. And big Colin the farmer sat glorious at the end of his pew, and in the pride of his heart listened, and noted, and made inexorable criticisms, and commented on his son’s novel ideas with a severe irony which it was difficult to understand in its true sense. The Duke himself came to hear Colin’s sermon, which was a wonderful honour to the young man, and all the parish criticised him with a zest which it was exhilarating to hear. “I mind when he couldna say his Questions,” said Evan of Barnton; “I wouldna like to come under ony engagement that he kens them noo. He was aye a callant awfu’ fond of his ain opinion, and for my part I’m no for Presbyteries passing ower objections so easy. Either he’s of Heward’s school or he’s no; but I never saw that there was ony right decision come to. There were some awfu’ suspicious expressions under his second head—if you could ca’ yon a head,” said the spiritual ruler, with natural contempt; for indeed Colin’s divisions were not what they ought to have been, and he was perfectly open to criticism so far as that was concerned.
“A lot of that was out of Dennistoun,” said another thoughtful spectator. “I’m aye doubtful of thae misty phrases. If it wasna for hurting a’ their feelings, I would be awfu’ tempted to say a word. He’s no’ that auld, and he might mend.”
“He’ll never mend,” said Evan. “I’m no’ one that ever approved of the upbringing of thae laddies. They have ower much opinion of themselves. There’s Archie, that thinks he kens the price of cattle better than a man of twice his age. She’s an awfu’ fanciful woman, that mother of theirs—and then they’ve a’ been a wee spoiled with that business about the English callant; but I’ll no say but what he has abilities,” the critic added, with a national sense of clanship. The parish might not approve of the upbringing of the young Campbells, nor of their opinions, but still it had a national share in any reputation that the family or any of its members might attain.
Colin continued his course on the Monday with his friend. He had stayed but a few days at home, but it was enough, andall the party were sensible of the fact. Henceforward that home, precious as it was, could not count for much in his life. It was a hard thing to think of, but it was a necessity of nature. Archie and the younger sons greeted with enthusiasm the elder brother, who shared with them his better fortunes and higher place; but, when the greeting was given on both sides, there did not remain very much to say; for, to be sure, seen by Colin’s side, the young Campbells,—stillgauche, and shamefaced, and with the pride of a Scotch peasant in arms, looked inferior to what they really were, and felt so—and the mother felt it for them, though Colin was her own immediate heir and the pride of her heart. She bade him farewell with suppressed tears, and a sense of loss which was not to be suppressed. “He has his ain hame, and his ain place, and little need of us now, the Lord be praised,” the Mistress said to herself as she watched him going down to the boat; “I think I would be real content if he had but a good wife.” But still it was with a sigh that she went in again and closed the door upon the departing boat that carried her son back to the world.
Asfor Colin and his friend, they went upon their way steadily, with that rare sympathy in difference which is the closest bond of friendship. Lauderdale by this time had lost almost all the lingerings of youth which had hung long about him, perhaps by right of his union with the fresh and exuberant youth of his brother-in-arms. His gaunt person was gaunter than ever, though, by an impulse of the tenderest pride—not for himself but for his companion—his dress fitted him better, and was more carefully put on than it had even been during all his life; but his long hair, once so black and wild, was now grey, and hung in thin locks, and his beard, that relic of Italy, which Lauderdale preserved religiously, and had ceased to be ashamed of, was grey also, and added to the somewhat solemn aspect of his long thoughtful face. He was still an inch or two taller than Colin, whose great waves of brown hair, tossed up like clouds upon his forehead, and shining brown eyes, which even now had not quite lost the soft shade of surprise and admirationwhich had given them such a charm in their earlier years, contrasted strangely with the worn looks of his friend. They were not like father and son; for Lauderdale preserved in his appearance an indefinable air of solitude and of a life apart, which made it impossible to think of him in any such relationship; but perhaps their union was more close and real than even that tie could have made it, since the unwedded childless man was at once young and old, and had kept in his heart a virgin freshness more visionary, and perhaps even more spotless, than that of Colin’s untarnished youth; for, to be sure, the young man not only was conscious of that visionary woman in the clouds, but had already solaced himself with more than one love, and still meant to marry a wife like other men, though that was not at present the foremost idea in his mind; whereas, whatever love Lauderdale might have had in that past from which he never drew the veil, it had never been replaced by another, nor involved any earthly hope.
As they crossed the borders, and found themselves among the Cumberland hills, Lauderdale began to make gradual advances to a subject which had been for a long time left in silence between them. Perhaps it required that refinement of ear natural to a born citizen of Glasgow to recognise that it was “English” which was being spoken round them as they advanced—but the philosopher supposed himself to have made that discovery. He recurred to it with a certain pathetic meaning as they went upon their way. They had set out on foot from Carlisle, each with his knapsack, to make their leisurely way to the Lakes; and, when they stopped to refresh themselves at the humble roadside inn which was their first resting-place, the plaintive cadence of his friend’s voice struck Colin with a certain amusement. “They’re a’ English here,” Lauderdale said, with a tone of sad recollection, as a man might have said in Norway or Russia, hearing for the first time the foreign tongue, and bethinking himself of all the dreary seas and long tracts of country that lay between him and home. It might have been pathetic under such circumstances, though the chances are that even then Colin, graceless and fearless, would have laughed; but at present, when the absence was only half a day’s march, and the difference of tongue, as we have said, only to be distinguished by an ear fine and native, the sigh was too absurd to be passed over lightly. “I never knew you have themal du paysbefore,” Colin said with a burst of laughter:—and the patriot himself did not refuse to smile.
“Speak English,” he said, with a quaint self-contradiction; “though I should say speak Scotch if I was consistent;—you needna make your jokes at me. Oh ay, it’s awfu’ easy laughing. It’s nothatI’m thinking of; there’s nothing out of the way in the association of ideas this time, though they play bonnie pranks whiles. I’m thinking of the first time I was in England, and how awfu’ queer it sounded to hear the bits of callants on the road, and the poor bodies at the cottage doors.”
“The first time you were in England—that was when you came to nurse me,” said Colin; “I should have died that time but for my mother and you.”
“I’m not saying that,” said Lauderdale; “you’re one of the kind that’s awfu’ hard to kill—but it’s no that I’m thinking of. There are other things that come to my mind with the sound of the English tongue. Hold your peace, callant, and listen; is there nothing comes back to your ain mind when you hear the like ofthat?”
“I hear a woman talking very broad Cumberland,” said Colin, who notwithstanding began to feel an uncomfortable heat mounting upwards in his face; “you may call it English, if you have a mind. There is some imperceptible difference between that and the Dumfriesshire, I suppose; but I should not like to have to discriminate where the difference lies.”
As for Lauderdale, he sighed; but without intending it, as it appeared, for he made a great effort to cover his sigh with a yawn, for which latter indulgence he had evidently no occasion; and then he tried a faint little unnecessary laugh. “I’m an awfu’ man for associations,” he said; “I’m no to be held to account for the things that come into my head. You may say it’s Cumberland, and I’m no disputing; but for a’ that there’s something in the sound of the voice——”
“Look here,” said Colin impatiently; “listen to my tract. I want you to give me your opinion now it is finished; turn this way, with your face to the hills, and never mind the voice.”
“Oh, ay,” said Lauderdale, with another sigh; “there’s nae voice like his ain voice to this callant’s ear; it’s an awfu’ thing to be an author, and above a’ a reformer; for you may be sure it’s for the sake of the cause, and no because he’s written a’ that himsel’. Let’s hear this grand tract of yours; no that I’ve any particular faith, in that way of working,” he added impartially. It was not encouraging perhaps to the young author; but Colin was sufficiently used by this time to his friend’s predilections, and for his own part was very well pleased to escape from memoriesmore perplexing and difficult to manage. It was with this intention that he had taken out No. I. of theTracts for the Times. If any of the writers of the original series of these renowned compositions could but have looked over the shoulder of the young Scotch minister, and beheld the different fashion of thoughts, the curious fundamental difference which lay underneath, and yet the apparent similarity of intention on the face of it! Rome and the Pope were about as far off as Mecca and the prophet from Colin’s ideas. He was not in the least urgent for any infallible standard, nor at all concerned to trace a direct line of descent for himself or his Church; and yet withal his notions were as high and absolute and arbitrary on some points as if he had been a member of the most potent of hierarchies. It would, however, be doing Colin injustice to reproduce here this revolutionary document: to tell the truth, circumstances occurred very soon after to retard the continuation of the series, and, so far as his historian is aware, the publication of this preliminary[4]address was only partial. For, to be sure, the young man had still abundance of time before him, and the first and most important thing, as Lauderdale suggested, was the preparation of an audience—an object which was on the whole better carried out by partial and private circulation than by coming prematurely before the public, and giving the adversary occasion to blaspheme, and perhaps frightening the Kirk herself out of her wits.
Having said so much, we may return to the more private and individual aspect of affairs. The two friends were seated, while all this was going on, out of doors, on a stone bench by the grey wall of the cottage inn, in which they had just refreshed themselves with a nondescript meal. The Cumberland hills—at that moment bleaching under the sunshine, showing all their scars and stains in the fulness of the light—stretched far away into the distance, hiding religiously in their depths the sacred woods and waters that were the end of the pilgrimage on which the two friends were bound. Lauderdale sat at leisure and listened, shading the sunshine from his face, and watching the shadows play on the woods and hills; and the same force of imagination which persuaded the unaccustomed traveller that he could detect a difference of tone in the rude talk he heard in the distance, and that that which was only the dialect of Cumberland wasEnglish,persuaded him also that the sunshine in which he was sitting was warmer than the sunshine at home, and that he was really, as he himself would have described it, “going south.” He was vaguely following out these ideas, notwithstanding that he also listened to Colin, and gave him the fullest attention. Lauderdale had not travelled much in his life, nor enjoyed many holidays; and, consequently, the very sense of leisure and novelty recalled to him the one great recreation of his life—the spring he had spent in Italy, with all its vicissitudes, prefaced by the mournful days at Wodensbourne. All this came before Lauderdale’s mind more strongly a great deal than it did before that of Colin, because it was to the elder man the one sole and clearly marked escape out of the monotony of a long life—a thing that had occurred but once, and never could occur again. How the Cumberland hills, and the peasant voices in their rude dialect, and the rough stone bench outside the door of a grey lime-stone cottage, could recall to Lauderdale the olive slopes of Frascati, the tall houses shut up and guarded against the sunshine, and the far-off solemn waste of the Campagna, would have been something unintelligible to Colin. But in the meantime these recollections were coming to a climax in his companion’s mind. He gave a great start in the midst of Colin’s most eloquent paragraph, and jumped to his feet, crying, “Do you hear that?” with a thrill of excitement utterly inexplicable to the astonished young man: and then Lauderdale grew suddenly ashamed of himself, and took his seat again, abashed, and felt that it was needful to explain.
“Do I hear what?” said Colin; and, as this interruption occurred just at the moment when he supposed he had roused his hearer to a certain pitch of excitement and anxiety, by his account of the religious deficiencies of Scotland, which he was on the point of relieving by an able exposition of the possibilities of reform, it may be forgiven to him if he spoke with a little asperity. Such a disappointment is a trying experience to the best of men. “What is it, for Heaven’s sake?” said the young man, forgetting he was a minister; and, to tell the truth, Lauderdale was so much ashamed of himself that he felt almost unable to explain.
“She’s singing something, that’s a’,” said the confused philosopher. “I’m an awfu’ haveril, Colin. There’s some things I canna get out of my head. Never you mind; a’ that’s admirable,” said the culprit, with a certain deprecatory eagerness. “I’m awfu’ anxious to see how you get us out of the scrape. Go on.”
Colin was angry, but he was human, and he could not but laugh at the discomfiture and conciliatory devices of his disarmed critic. “I am not going to throw away my pearls,” he said; “since your mind is in such a deplorable state you shall hear no more to-day. Oh, no. I understand the extent of your anxiety. And so here’s Lauderdale going the way of all flesh. Who isshe? and what is she singing? The best policy is to make a clean breast of it,” said the young man, laughing; “and then, perhaps I may look over the insult you have been guilty of to myself.”
But Lauderdale was in no mood for laughing. “It would be the best plan to go on,” he said; “for I’ve been giving my best attention; and maybe if I was to speak out what was in my heart—”
“Speak it out,” said Colin. He was a little affronted, but he kept his composure. As he folded up his papers and put them away in his pocket-book, he too heard the song which Lauderdale had been listening to. It was only a countrywoman singing as she went about her work, and there was no marked resemblance in the voice to anything he had heard before. Yet he knew what was coming when he put up his papers in his pocket-book, and it occurred to him that perhaps it would be well to have the explanation over and be done with it, for he knew how persistent his companion was.
“It’s no that there’s much to say,” said Lauderdale, changing his tone; “a man like me, that’s little used to change, get’s awfu’ like a fool in his associations. There’s naething that ony reasonable creature could see in thae hills, and a’ the sheep on them, that should bringthatto my mind; and, as you say, callant, it’s Cumberland they’re a’ speaking, and no English. It’s just a kind of folly that men are subject to that live their lane. I canna but go a’ through again, from the beginning to—— Well, I suppose,” said Lauderdale with a sigh, “what you and me would call the end.”
“What any man in his senses would call the end,” said Colin, beginning to cut his pencil with some ferocity, which was the only occupation that presented itself to him for the moment; “I don’t suppose there can be any question as to what you mean. Was it to be expected that I should court rejection over again for the mere pleasure of being rejected?—as you know I have been, both by letter and in person; and then, as if even that was not enough, accused of fortune-hunting; when Heaven knows——” Here Colin stopped short, and cut his pencil so violently that he cut his finger, an act which convicted himof using unnecessary force, and of which accordingly he was ashamed.
“It is nothatI was thinking of,” said Lauderdale, “I was minding of the time when we a’ met first, and the bit soft English voice—it’s no that I’m fond of the English, or their ways,” continued the philosopher. “We’re maybe no so well in our ain country, and maybe we’re better; I’ll no say. It’s a question awfu’ hard to settle. But, if ever we a’ foregather again, I cannot think there will be that difference. It wasna to say musical that I ken of, but it was aye soft and pleasant—maybe ower soft, Colin, for the like of you—and with a bit yielding tone in it, as if the heart would break sooner than make a stand for its own way. I mind it real weel,” said Lauderdale, with a sigh. “As for the father, no doubt there was little to be said in his favour. But, after a’, it wasna him that you had any intention to marry. And yon Sabbath-day after he was gone, poor man!—when you and me didna ken what to do with ourselves till the soft thing came out of her painted cha’amer, and took the guiding of us into her hands. It’sthatI was thinking of,” said Lauderdale, fixing his eyes on a far-off point upon the hills, and ending his musings with a sigh.
Colin sighed, too, for sympathy—he could not help it. The scene came before him as his friend spoke. He thought he could see Alice, in her pallor and exhaustion, worn to a shadow, in her black dress, coming into the bare Italian room in the glorious summer day, which all the precautions possible could not shut out from the house of mourning—with her prayer-book in her hand; and then he remembered how she had chidden him for reading another lesson than that appointed for the day. It was in the height of his own revolutionary impulses that this thought struck him; and he smiled to himself in the midst of his sigh, with a tender thought for Alice, and a passing wonder for himself, what change might have been wrought upon him if that dutiful little soul had actually become the companion of his life. Colin was not the kind of man who can propose to himself to form his wife’s mind, and rule her thoughts, and influence her without being sensible of her influence in return. That was not the order of domestic affairs in Ramore; and naturally he judged the life that might have been, and even yet might be, by that standard. The Mistress’s son did not understand having a nullity, or a shadow of himself, for a wife; and insensibly he made his way back from theattendrissementinto which Lauderdale’s musings had led him, into half-amused speculation as to theeffect Alice and her influence might have had upon him by this time. “Ifthathad happened,” he said with a smile, bursting out, as was usual to him when Lauderdale was his companion, at that particular point of his thoughts which required expression, without troubling himself to explain how he came there—“ifthathad happened,” said Colin, with the conscious smile of old, “I wonder what sort of fellow I should have been by this time? I doubt if I should have had any idea of disturbing the constituted order of affairs. Things are always for the best, you perceive, as everybody says. A man who has any revolutionary work to do must be free and alone. But don’t let us talk any more of this—I don’t like turning back upon the road. But for that feeling I should have settled the business before now about poor Arthur’s ‘Voice from the Grave.’”
“I was aye against that title,” said Lauderdale, “if he would have paid any attention; but you’re a’ the same, you young callants; it’s nae more a voice from the grave than mine is. It’s a voice from an awfu’ real life, that had nae intention to lose a minute that was permitted. It would be awfu’ agreeable to ken if he was permitted to have any pleasure in his book; but then, so far as I can judge, he maun ken an awfu’ deal better by this time—and maybe up there they’re no heeding about a third edition. It’s hard to say; he was so terrible like himself up to the last moment; I canna imagine, in my own mind, that he’s no like himself still. There should be a heap of siller,” said Lauderdale, “by this time; and sooner or later you’ll have to open communication, and let them ken.”
“Yes,” said Colin, with a momentary look of sullenness and repugnance; and then he added, in a lighter tone, “heaps of money never came out of a religious publisher’s hands. A third edition does not mean the same thing with them as with other people. Of course, it must be set right some time or other. We had better set off, I can tell you, and not talk idle talk like this, if we mean to get to our journey’s end to-night.”
“Oh, ay,” said Lauderdale, “you’re aye in a hurry, you young callants. Is it the father that makes you so unwilling for any correspondence?—but it’s awfu’ easy to settle a thing like that.”
“I think you want to try how far my patience can go,” said Colin, who had grown crimson up to the hair. “Do you think a man has no feeling, Lauderdale? Do you think it is possible to be treated as I have been, and yet go back again with humility, hat in hand? I don’t feel myself capable of that.”
“If you’re asking me my opinion,” said Lauderdale, calmly, “I’ve nae objection to tell you what I think. You’re no vindictive, and you’ve nae pride to speak of—I’m meaning pride ofthatkind. It’s no in you to bear a grudge at onybody, beyond, maybe, the hour or the day. So I’m no heeding much about that question, for my part. If you had an awfu’ regard for the man, he might affront you; but no being indifferent. I’m telling you just my opinion, with my partial knowledge of the premises; and forher, I cannot but say what is in my ain mind. I’ve a kind of longing to see her again; we used to be awfu’ good friends, her and me. I had you to take care of, callant, and she hadhim; and whiles she had a moment of envy, and grudged terrible in her heart to see the air and the sun, that are for baith the good and the evil, so hard upon him, and so sweet to you. There was little in her mind to hide, and her and me were good friends. I’ll never forget our counts and our reckonings. It’s awfu’ hard for the like o’ me to divine wherefore it is that a’ that has come to an end, and her and you dropped out of one another’s life.”
“Lauderdale,” said Colin, with a little choking in his voice, “I will tell you what I never told you before——” and then the young man stopped short, as if he had received a blow. What was it that came over him like an imperious sudden prohibition, stopping the words upon his lips the first time he had ever dreamt of uttering them to mortal ear? He had a feeling somehow as if one of those flying shadows that kept coming and going over the mountains had taken visible shape and stepped before him, and put a cold hand on his lips. He was about to have confessed that his love had been no more than tender compassion and kindness; he was about to have said what Lauderdale perhaps might have guessed before, what Colin had kept secret and hidden in his breast—that Alice never was nor could be the ideal woman of his thoughts, the true love who waited for him somewhere in the future. But perhaps, after all, it was no shadow nor unseen influence, but only the young man’s magnanimous heart that spared that humiliation to the name of Alice—solely to her name; for, now that all was over between them, it was only that abstract representation of her that was concerned.
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, after a moment, “you were going to tell me——” and then he rose as Colin had done, and threw his knapsack on his shoulder, and prepared to resume his march.
“We shall have an hour’s walking in the dark, if we don’t make all the better progress,” said Colin; “which is uncomfortable when one does not know the way. And now to return to No I.” he said with a laugh, as they went on along the dusty road. There was not another word said between them of the confession thus abruptly stopped. Perhaps Lauderdale in his heart had a perception of what it meant; but, however that might be, both fell at once with eagerness, as if they had never digressed for a moment, upon the first number of Colin’sTracts for the Times.
Thisconversation, however, as was natural, had a certain effect upon both the friends. It threw Colin, who, to be sure, was chiefly concerned, into a world of confused imaginations, which influenced even his dreams, and through his dreams reacted upon himself. When he was alone at night, instead of going to sleep at once, as would have been natural after his day’s journey, he kept falling into absurd little dozes, and waking up suddenly with the idea that Alice was standing by him, that she was calling him, that it was the marriage-day, and that somebody had found him out, and was about to tell his bride that he did not love her; and at last, when he went to sleep in good earnest, the fantasticmélangeof recollection and imagination carried him back to Frascati, where he found Arthur and Alice, as of old, in the greatsalone, with its frescoed walls, and talked to them as in former days. He thought Meredith told him of an important journey upon which he was setting out, and made arrangements in the meantime for his sister with an anxiety which the real Arthur had never dreamt of exhibiting. “She will be safe with you at present,” the visionary Arthur seemed to say, “and by-and-by you can send her to me——” And when Colin woke it was hard for him to convince himself at first that he had not been in actual communication with his friend. He accounted for it, of course, as it is very easy to account for dreams, and made up his mind how it came about, and yet left behind in some crevice of his heart a dumb certainty which hid itself out of sight that it might not be argued with, that after all Arthur and he in the dark had passed by each other, and exchanged a word or thought in passing. Colin took care not to betray evento himself the existence of this conviction; but deep down in the silence it influenced him unawares.
As for Lauderdale, his thoughts, as might have been expected, had taken another direction. Perhaps he was past the age of dreaming. Colin’s revelation which he did not make had possibly told his friend more than if it had been said out in words; and the two began their second day’s journey with but little talk, and that of a vague and general kind. They had not gone far upon the white and dusty road when Lauderdale drew aside a little, and stepped across the boundary of furze and wild thorn and bramble bushes which separated it from the hillside.
“No, I’m no tired at this hour of the morning,” he said, “but I’ve an awfu’ objection to dust, and the road is as powdery as a mill. My intention is to take a seat on this brae and let that carriage pass.”
“Wait a little, then; it comes on very slowly; there must be some invalid in it, for the horses look good enough,” said Colin; and he turned his back to the approaching carriage, about which he was altogether indifferent, and faced round to the green slope, covered with trees and brushwood, upon which Lauderdale meant to rest. They were separated a little when the carriage came up, and neither of them paid much attention to it. Lauderdale was already half way up the slope, and Colin was standing by the side of the road, looking after him. Then all at once there was a sudden cry, and the horses made a dash forward, and rolled the equipage along at such a pace that its occupants were quite out of Colin’s sight when he turned round. This he did with a start so violent that the stones under his feet seemed suddenly to get in his way and trip him up: and Lauderdale for his part came down from the brae with a long leap and strange exclamation. “What was that?” they said to each other, in the same breath, and paused for a moment, and looked into each other’s faces, and listened. The carriage went on faster, raising a cloud of dust, and nothing was to be heard except the sound of the horses’ hoofs and the wheels. It was Colin who was the first to break the silence. He detached himself from among the stones and bushes, where he had got entangled in that moment of agitation, and sprang back again to the high road which lay before him, veiled in a cloud of dust. “It is simply absurd,” said Colin. “Lauderdale, I cannot imagine what you mean; you are enough to drive a man mad. Some one gives a chance outcry inpassing, and you make up your mind that it is—— Good heavens! I never knew such folly!” cried the young man. He took off his hat without knowing it, and thrust his hair up over his forehead, and made an effort to take courage and regain his composure as he took breath. But it was very clear that Lauderdale had nothing to do with Colin’s excitement. He had himself heard the cry, and felt in his heart that it was no imagination. As he stood there in his pretended indignation the impulse of flight came upon him, mingled with a terror, which he could not explain nor comprehend. There was not a man in existence before whom he would have flown; but that little cry of recognition took away all his courage. He did not feel in himself the strength to go forward, to venture upon a possible meeting. The blood which had rushed to his face for the first moment seemed to go back upon his heart and stifle it. He had made a step or two forward without thinking; but then he stopped himself, and wavered, and looked upon the road which lay quite tranquil behind him in the shadow of the hills. It seemed to him for the moment as if his only safety was in flight.
As for Lauderdale, it took him all the time which Colin had occupied in these thoughts to get down from his elevation and return to his friend’s side. He for his part was animated and eager. “This is nohercountry,” said Lauderdale; “she’s a traveller, as we are. The carriage will stop at our next stage, but there’s no time to be lost;” and as he said these words he resumed his march with that long steady step which got over so much ground without remarking the hesitation of Colin, or what he had said. The young man himself felt that saving impulse fail him after the first minute. Afterwards, all the secondary motives came into his mind, and urged him to go on. Had he allowed that he was afraid to meet or to renew his relationships with Alice Meredith, supposing that by any extraordinary chance this should be she, it would be to betray the secret which he had guarded so long, and to betray himself; and he knew no reason that he could give for such a cowardly retreat. He could not say, “If I see her again, and find that she has been thinking of me, I shall be compelled to carry out my original mistake, and give up my brighter hopes,”—for no one knew that he had made any mistake, or that she was not to his eyes the type of all that was dearest in woman. “The chances are that it is all a piece of folly—a deception of the senses,” he said to himself instead—“something like what people have when they think they see ghosts. We have talked of her, and I have dreamed of her, and now, to be sore, necessity requires that I should hear her. It should have been seeing, to make all perfect;” and, after that little piece of self-contempt, he went on again with Lauderdale without making any objection. The dust which had been raised by the carriage came towards them like a moving pillar; but the carriage itself went rapidly on and turned the corner and went out of sight. And then Colin did his best to comfort and strengthen himself by other means.
“Don’t put yourself out of breath,” he said to Lauderdale; “the whole thing is quite explainable. That absurd imagination of yours yesterday has got into both our heads. I don’t mind saying I dreamt of it all last night. Anything so wild was never put into a novel. It’s an optical illusion, or, rather I should say, it’s an ocular illusion. Things don’t happen in real life in this kind of promiscuous way. Don’t walk so quick and put yourself out of breath.”
“Did you no hear?” said Lauderdale. “If you hadna heard I could understand. As for me, I canna say but what I saw as well. I’m no minding at this moment about my breath.”
“What did you see?” cried Colin, with a sudden thrill at his heart.
“I’ll no say it washer,” said Lauderdale; “no but what I am as sure as I am of life that she was there. I saw something white laid back in the carriage, somebody that was ill; it might be her or it might be another. I’ve an awfu’ strong conviction that it was her. It’s been borne in on my mind that she was ill and wearying. We mightna kenher, but she kent you and me.”
“What you say makes it more and more unlikely,” said Colin. “I confess that I was a little excited myself by those dreams and stuff; but nothing could be more improbable than that she should recognise you and me. Bah! it is absurd to be talking ofherin this ridiculous way, as if we had the slightest reason to suppose it was she. Any little movement might make a sick lady cry out; and, as for recognising a voice!—All this makes me feel like a fool,” said Colin. “I am more disposed to go back than to go on. I wish you would dismiss this nonsense from your thoughts.”
“If I was to do that same, do you think you could join me?” said Lauderdale. “There’s voices I would ken after thirty years instead of after three; and I’m no likely to forget the bit English tone of it. I’m a wee slow about some things, and I’ll no pretend to fathom your meaning; but, whether it’s daftlike or no, this I’m sure of, that if you make up to that carriage that’s away out of our sight at this moment, you’ll find Alice Meredith there.”
“I don’t believe anything of the kind. Your imagination has deceived you,” said Colin, and they went on for a long time in silence; but at the bottom of his heart Colin felt that his own imagination had not deceived him. The only thing that had deceived him was that foolish feeling of liberty, that sense that he had escaped fate, and that the rash engagements of his youth were to have no consequences, into which he had deluded himself for some time past. Even while he professed his utter disbelief in this encounter, he was asking himself how in his changed circumstances he should bear the old bridle, the rein upon his own proud neck? If it had been a curb upon his freedom, even at the moment when he had formed it—if it had become a painful bondage afterwards while still the impression of Alice’s gentle tenderness had not quite worn off his mind—what would it be now when he had emancipated himself from those soft prejudices of recollection, and when he had acknowledged so fully to himself that his heart never had been really touched? He marched on by Lauderdale’s side, and paid no attention to what his friend said to him; and nothing could be more difficult to describe than the state of Colin’s mind during this walk. Perhaps the only right thing, the only sensible thing he could have done in the circumstances, would have been to turn back and decline altogether this reawakening of the past. But then at six-and-twenty the mind is still so adverse to turning back, and has so much confidence in its own power of surmounting difficulty, and in its good star, and in the favour and assistance of all powers and influences in heaven and earth; and his pride was up in arms against such a mode of extricating himself from the apparent difficulty, and all the delicacy of his nature revolted from the idea of thus throwing the wrong and humiliation upon the woman, upon Alice, a creature who had loved him and trusted him, and whom he had never owned he did not love.
Underneath all these complications there was, to be sure, a faint, sustaining hope that an encounter of this kind was incredible—that it might turn out not to be Alice at all, and that all these fears and embarrassments might come to nothing. With all this in his mind he marched on, feeling the sweet air and fresh winds and sunshine to be all so many spectators accompanying him perhaps to the turning-point of his life,where, for all he knew, things might go against him, and his wings be clipped, and his future limited for ever and ever. Perhaps some of Colin’s friends may think that he exhibited great weakness of mind on this occasion—and, indeed, it is certain that there are many people who believe, with great reason, that it is next thing to a sin to put honour in the place of love, or to give to constancy the rights of passion. But then, whatever a man’s principles may be, it is his character in most cases that carries the day. Every man must act according to his own nature, as says the Arabian sage. Sir Bayard, even, thinking it all over, might not approve of himself, and might see a great deal of folly in what he was doing; but, as for a man’s opinion of himself, that counts for very little; and he could only go on and follow out his career in his own way.
Lauderdale, on his side, had less comprehension of his friend at this point of his character than at any other. He had discouraged, as far as he was able, the earlier steps of the engagement between Colin and Alice; but when things “had gone so far” the philosopher understood no compromise. He hastened on through the dust, for his part, with a tender anxiety in his heart, concerned for the girl who had approached him more nearly than any woman had done since the days of his youth; who had been to him that mingled type of sister, daughter, dependent, and ruler, which a very young, very innocent, woman sometimes is to a man too old to fall in love with her, or even to think of such a weakness. Such love as had been possible to Lauderdale had been given early in his life—given once and done with; and Colin had filled up all the place in his heart which might have been left vacant as a prey to vagrant affections. At present, he was occupied with the thought that Alice was ill, and that the little cry she had uttered had a tone of appeal in it, and was in reality a cry for help to those who had succoured her in her loneliness, and been more to her for one little period of her life than father or family. And Colin’s friend and guardian pursued his way with great strides, going to the rescue of the tender little suffering creature, the mournful, yet dutiful little woman, who had borne her grief so courageously at Frascati, where they two were all the protectors, all the comforters she had. Thus the friends went on with their different sentiments, saying little to each other, and not a word upon this particular subject. They had meant to pause at a village which was on their way to Windermere to rest during the heat of the day and refreshthemselves; and it was here, according to all likelihood, that the carriage which had passed with the invalid would also stop, to repose the sick lady if she was a stranger—to await the approach of the two pedestrians if it was Alice, and if she was free to take such a step. Lauderdale had no doubt either of the one or the other of these facts; and, to tell the truth, Colin, regarding the matter under an altogether different aspect, had little doubt on his part that the crisis of his fate had arrived.
Nevertheless, when he saw the first straggling houses of the hamlet—rude little Westmoreland houses, grey and simple, with a moorland air, and no great proprietor near at hand to trim them into model cottages—— It is so hard to believe what goes against one’s wishes. After all, perhaps, the end would be a laugh, an exclamation of surprise, a blessed sense of relief; and no dreadful apparition of old ties and old vows to bind the freedman over again in cold blood and without any illusion. Such feverish hopes came into Colin’s mind against his will, as they drew nearer. The road was as dusty as ever, but he did not see the broad mark of the carriage wheels; and with a great throb of relief found when they came in sight of the little inn that there was no carriage, nothing but a farmer’s gig before the door. He began to breathe again, throwing off his burden. “It might be one of my farmers for anything one could tell to the contrary,” said Colin, with a short laugh, and a sense of relief past describing. “You see now what fools we were to suppose——”
At that moment, however, he stopped short in the midst of his sentence. A man was coming to meet them, who might have been, for anything, as Colin said, that one could say to the contrary, the farmer to whom the gig belonged. He was at present but a black figure against the sunshine, with his face shaded by his hat; but notwithstanding Colin stopped short when he came in sight of him, and his heart stopped beating,—or at least he thought so. He had seen this man once in his life before,—but once, and no more. But there are some circumstances which sharpen and intensify the senses. Colin recognised him the moment his eyes rested on him. He stopped short, because what he was saying was proved to be folly, and worse than folly. It was a denial of the certainty which had suddenly appeared before his eyes. He stopped without explaining why he stopped, and made a step onwards in a confused and bewildered way. Henceforward Lauderdale had nothing to dowith it. It was Colin himself as the principal and contracting party who was concerned.
And the stranger, for his part, who had also seen the young man but once in his life, recognised Colin. It had only been for a moment, and it was nearly four years ago, but still Mr. Meredith knew, when he saw him, the young man whom he had bidden to begone for a fortune-hunter; who had closed his son’s eyes, and laid Arthur in his grave; and given to Alice in her desolation the tenderest guardianship. He did not know Lauderdale, who had his share in all but the last act of that sad little domestic drama; but he recognised Colin by intuition. He came forward to him with the courtesy of a man whom necessity compels to change all his tactics. “Mr. Campbell, I think?” he said. “I feel that I cannot be mistaken. Alice was sure she saw you on the road. I came back after I had taken her home, to try whether I could meet you. Will you do me the favour to introduce me to your friend. I believe I am almost as much indebted to him as to you.”
“There’s no debt on one side or the other,” said Lauderdale, interposing, for Colin found it difficult to speak. “Tell us how she is, which is far more important. We heard her give a cry, and since then we’ve been hurrying on to see.”
“She is not strong,” said Mr. Meredith. “I hope you will consent to gratify Alice by going back with me. My house is close by here, and I came on purpose. Mr. Campbell, you may think you have a just grievance against me. I hope you will overlook it at present, and hear my explanation afterwards. We can never be sufficiently grateful for all you have done for my son, both before his death and after. It was a terrible dispensation of Providence; but I cannot be thankful enough that my poor boy lived to produce a work which has been of value to so many; and but for you it never could have been successfully published. My dear sir, I hope you will not suffer any personal feeling to me—— I beg you to believe that what I said was said in ignorance—I mean, I trust that you will not refuse to gratify Alice. She is almost all I have left,” Mr. Meredith said, with a faltering voice. “I have had great losses in my family. She has not been so much interested about anything for a long time. You will come with me, will you not, for Arthur’s and for my daughter’s sake?”
If any man could have said No to that appeal, Colin was not the man. He made little answer except a bow, and Mr. Meredith turned with them, and they all got into the country vehicle atthe door of the little inn, and drove off in silence to the house where Alice was awaiting them. Colin had scarcely a word to say as he drove along by her father’s side. The gaiety, and freedom, and happy thoughts with which he had set out on his journey seemed to detach themselves from his mind, and abandon him one by one. His fate had encountered him where he had least expectation of meeting it. And yet at the same time a compunction awoke in his heart to think that it was in this way, like a captive brought back to her presence, that the man whom Alice loved was going to her. He could have felt aggrieved and angry for her sake, if the claim of his own reluctance and dread had not been nearer, and gained upon the more generous feeling. And yet withal he had a longing to see her, a kind of inclination to carry her off from this man, who had but a secondary claim upon her, and heal and cherish the wounded dove. Such was the singular medley of emotion, with which Colin was led back out of the free ways of his own choosing into the beaten path of life.
“Holmbyis not my house,” said Mr. Meredith as they drove up the avenue; “I took it to please Alice. She has a fancy for the north now, as she used to have for the south.” As he said this he gave a wistful side-glance at Colin, who had scarcely spoken during all the drive; and even to this speech the young man made little response. The house was a pale grey house, of rough limestone, like the humbler houses, surrounded by woods, and bearing anything but a cheerful aspect. The avenue was long and straight, and the cold commonplace outline of this secluded dwelling-place filled up the vista between the two dark lines of trees, growing gradually more distinct as they approached. Everything had a certain visionary aspect to Colin at the moment, and the look of the house irritated him, as if it had been a type of the commonplace existence which he was henceforward to lead. He could not keep the cloud that was on his mind from appearing also on his countenance, though, at the same time, he could not help observing that Mr. Meredith looked at him often with a regard that was almost pathetic.To be sure, there was nothing very elevated in the aspect of this man, whose history was not one which Colin liked to think of; but still it was evident that his heart was trembling for his child, and that he was conveying to her the lover whom he had once rejected and insulted, as he might have carried a costly medicine, hard to procure and of doubtful efficacy, but still the only thing that there was any hope in. Colin recognised this wistful look by the freemasonry of a mind equally excited, though in a different way; and, as for Lauderdale, he looked on at both with a painful doubt and uncertainty which had never before entered into his thoughts. For all this time he had been trying to think it was Alice’s father, or even Alice herself, who was to blame; and now only he began to see clearly the reluctance of his friend to its fullest extent—his reluctance and, at the same time, that almost fantastic honour and delicacy which kept the young man from avowing even to his closest companion the real state of his feelings. So that now, at the first moment for years in which the fulfilment of Colin’s engagement began to appear possible, Lauderdale, who had preached to him of constancy, who had longed after Alice, who had taken every opportunity of directing to her the truant thoughts of his friend, for the first time faltered. He began to see the other side of the question just at the time when it would have been agreeable to ignore it. He saw not only that Colin’s happiness was at stake, but that it would be better for Alice even to break her heart if that was inevitable, than to be married, not for love, but for honour; and unhappily he recognised this just at the moment when Sir Bayard, Sir Quixote, whatever absurd title you may please to give him—the Mistress’s son, who was incapable of leaving a woman in the lurch, or casting upon her the shame of rejection—was going on to meet his fate.
From this it will be seen that it was a very subdued and silent party which was at this moment driving along the long avenue under the trees, and making Alice’s heart beat, indoors on her sofa, with every turn of those wheels on the gravel. “Is papa alone?” she asked of her little sister, who was at the window; and her heart was jumping up into her throat when she uttered that simple question, as if it would take away her breath. When she received for answer a lengthened and interrupted description of the two gentlemen who accompanied Mr. Meredith, Alice put her head back on her pillows and closed her eyes in the sudden faintness of her great joy. Forshe in her simplicity had no doubt about Colin. If he had not loved her he would not have turned back; he would never have come to her. It was the tender guardian of her loneliness, the betrothed in whom she had reposed the entire faith of her nature, whom her father was bringing back to her; and, so far as Alice was concerned, the four intervening years might have had no existence. She had seen nobody and done nothing during that dreary interval. Ill-health, and seclusion, and mourning had made it appear to her that her life had temporarily stopped at the time when Mr. Meredith carried her off from Frascati. And now, with Colin, life and strength and individuality were coming back. This was how the matter appeared on her side of affairs, and it seemed to Alice the natural solution of the difficulty; for, after all, but for her father’s cruel persistence against her, which Providence by many blows had broken and made to yield, she would have been Colin’s wife for all those years. And now, the one obstacle being removed, it seemed only natural to her straightforward and simple intelligence that the long-deferred conclusion should arrive at last.
Both she and the little sister at the window were in mourning. Mrs. Meredith was dead—the stepmother, who had been Alice’s greatest enemy; and, of all the children who had once made their father indifferent to his elder son and daughter, the only one left was the little girl, who was giving her sister an elaborate description of the gentlemen who were with papa. This was why Mr. Meredith had yielded. Alice judged, according to her simple reckonings, with a little awe of the terrible means employed, that it was Providence who had thus over-turned her father’s resolution, and made him yielding and tender. It did not occur to her to ask whether for her happiness it was just or reasonable that so many should suffer; she only accepted it as providential, just as Colin four years before had persuaded himself that all the circumstances which had thrown them together were providential. And now the climax, which the poor girl permitted herself to think God had been bringing about by all the family convulsions of these four years, came close, and the heart of Alice grew faint with thankfulness and joy. When she heard them coming upstairs she sat upright, recovering with her old force of self-restraint her composure and calmness. Mr. Meredith came in with a little bustle to spare his daughter the agitation of the meeting. “You were quite right, Alice, my love,” he said, bringing them hurriedly up to her. “Here is Mr. Campbell and your friend, Mr. Lauderdale.They recognised you at the same minute as you recognised them; and, if I had not been so foolish as to tell John to drive on, we might have picked them up and saved them their walk. I thought she was ill,” the anxious father continued, turning his back upon Alice and occupying himself with Lauderdale. “She had a fainting fit yesterday, and I was frightened it was coming on again, or I should have stopped and picked you up. We are a little dark here with all these trees. I would have them cut down if Holmby were mine; but at this window, if you are fond of scenery, I can show you a beautiful view.”
And it was thus that the two, who parted at Frascati as lovers within a few weeks of their marriage, met in the shaded drawing-room at Holmby. The most exciting events of Colin’s life were framed within the interval; but nothing had happened individually to Alice. He seemed to find her exactly where he had left her, though with the sense of having himself travelled to an unutterable distance in the meantime. She did not say much in the tumult and confusion of her joy; she only held out her hand to him, and lifted her soft eyes to his face with a look of supreme content and satisfaction, whim had the strangest effect upon Colin. He felt his doom fixed for ever and ever as he looked into the gentle blue eyes which conveyed to him all that was in Alice’s heart. And she had not the slightest suspicion of the heaviness that was in his as he drew a chair near her sofa. “At last!” she said softly, under her breath. The little sister stood by, looking on with round eyes opened to their widest; but, as for Alice, she had no consciousness of any presence but one. And Colin sat down by her without any answer, in his heart not knowing what to say. Her black dress, her languid air, the paleness one moment, and the flush of delicate colour the next, all moved him strangely. Even had he not been Bayard he could not have done anything to wound the fair, feeble creature who looked at him with her heart in her eyes. And naturally the consequence was, that Colin answered in a way far more decisive than any words—by clasping the soft clinging hand, and bending down to kiss it as in the old Italian days. Alice had never had any doubt of her betrothed, but at that moment she felt herself receiving the pledge of a new and more certain troth—and in the revulsion from despondency and weakness her mouth was opened for the first time in her life—opened with a fulness, the thought of which would have covered poor Alice with misery and confusion if she could but have known what was passing in her companion’s heart.
“I had grown so tired of waiting,” she said, scarcely aware of what she said, “I was wearying, wearying, as Mr. Lauderdale used to say; and to think you should be passing so near, and perhaps might have passed altogether, and never have known I was here; Oh, Colin, it was Providence!” said Alice, with the tears in her eyes.
And poor Colin, who did not know what to say, whose heart was bursting with the profound pity and instinctive tenderness of old, and with that sense that all his own imaginations were ended for ever, and his future decided for him without any action of his own—Colin could find no answer to make. He bent down again on the pale, soft hand which he held in his own, and kissed it once more with that tender affection which was everything in the world but love. “Yes,” he said, but it was more to himself than to her, “I think it was Providence.” Alice had not an ear that could hear the despair that was in the words—for indeed it was a despair so mingled with softer emotions, with sympathy and anxiety, and a kind of fondness that nobody could have found it out who did not know Colin to the bottom of his heart. This was how the meeting was accomplished after all those years; for by this time Lauderdale had looked at the view without seeing it, and was returning to see how his friend had gone through the encounter, and to claim Alice’s recognition for himself. The two spectators who approached from the window, where they had been pretending to look at the view, were, to tell the truth, as much agitated as the young people themselves. Perhaps even, on the whole, a stranger, not knowing anything about the matter, would have concluded that it was Lauderdale and Mr. Meredith who were moved the most; for perhaps there is nothing which can happen to one’s self which moves one so profoundly as to watch a crisis of fate passing over another human creature whom one loves, yet whom one cannot die for or suffer for, and whose burden has to be borne, not by us, but by himself. Alice’s father, for his part, looked upon this meeting somehow as his child’s last chance for life—or rather, it would be better to say, as his own last chance to save her life and preserve her to himself; and Lauderdale saw Colin’s happiness, which was almost of more importance than his life, hanging upon the doubtful expression in the sick girl’s eyes. When the two turned back, it was impossible to mistake the sweet joy and serenity of Alice’s looks. Excitement was unnatural to her in all circumstances. She had been agitated profoundly for a moment; but now all that wasover, and the content of old had returned to her face. The same look that Lauderdale remembered at Frascati—the look which always greeted Colin’s arrival—not any tumult of delight, but a supreme satisfaction and completeness, as if there remained nothing more in the world to be looked for or desired! She half rose up to meet her old friend as he came back to her, himself greatly moved, and not venturing to look at Colin—and held out both her hands to him. “Oh Mr. Lauderdale, I have not told you how glad I am, nor how I have beenwearying”—said Alice. She repeated that word—a word she had once laughed at—as if with a soft appeal to his recollection. She had said it so often to herself in those long years—half because it was Scotch, and pleased her yearning fancy; and half because there was a lingering depth of expression in it, like her long watch and vigil. And then she smiled in his face, and then cried a little. For, notwithstanding her tranquillity, all this had tried her weakness, and proved a little more than she could bear.
“You must not agitate yourself, Alice,” said Mr. Meredith, taking, as most men do, the result of her past agitation for the thing itself. “She is still a little weakly, but I hope now we shall soon see her strong again.” This he said again with a covert glance at Colin, who was still sitting close to the sofa with his face shaded by his hand. Notwithstanding that shade the young man knew by instinct the look that was being directed upon him, and turned to meet it; and on his face there were greater marks of agitation than on that of Alice, which had been relieved by her tears. He was pale, and to Lauderdale’s anxious eyes seemed to have fallen back from his vigour of manhood for the moment into that unassured youth which he had left behind him for years. And then the voice of Mr. Meredith had an effect upon Colin’s mind altogether different from that produced by the soft familiar tones of Alice. When the father spoke, Colin’s heart shut fast its doors, and rose up against the impending fate.
“If Miss Meredith was ill,” he said, with a little bitterness, taking at least advantage of the rights thus pressed back upon him to repulse this man, whom he could not help disliking in his heart, “I am surprised that you did not let me know.”
This speech was so unexpected and sudden, and there was in it such an amount of suppressed exasperation, that Lauderdale made a step forward without knowing it, and Alice put out her hand vaguely to arrest the vehemence of her betrothed. As forMr. Meredith, he was as much relieved by the assumption of right in Colin’s words, as he was disturbed by his unfriendly tone.
“My dear sir,” said the father, “I hope you will let bygones be bygones. I have learned many severe lessons, and Providence has dealt with me in a way to make me see my errors; but I can safely say that, since I understood the true state of the case, I have always reproached myself for not having shown the gratitude I felt to you.”
Colin, for his part, did not make any answer. His temper was disturbed by the struggle he had been going through. He could not cry and get over it, like Alice; being a man it was only in this way that he could give a little vent to his feelings. And then he could relieve himself by putting out some of his pain upon Mr. Meredith, without injury to her who had thus thrown herself undoubtingly upon his love, as she supposed. Perhaps Bayard himself, under the same circumstances, would have done as much.
“I may say, my gratitude to both,” said Mr. Meredith, whose anxiety that he might not lose this chance for Alice was so great that it made him almost servile, and who could not help recollecting at that inopportune moment the letter he had written to Lauderdale; “I know that Mr. Lauderdale also was very kind to my poor boy. I hope you will both excuse the error of the moment,” he said, faltering a little. It was hard to own himself altogether in the wrong, and yet in his anxiety he would have done even that for Alice’s sake.
“Speak no more of it,” said Lauderdale. “Our friend Arthur spoke of his father with his last breath, and we’re no like to forget any of his words. It’s an awfu’ consolation to my mind to seeheragain, and to feel that we’re a’ friends. As for Colin, he’s a wee out of himself, as is natural. I would have been real vexed,” said the philosopher, with the smile that was half tears, and that Alice remembered so well—“being sure of Arthur for a fast friend whenever we may meet again—to have lost all sight and knowledge of you.”
He looked at Alice, but it was to Arthur’s father that he held out his hand; and, as for Colin, it was impossible for him not to follow the example, though he did it with a certain reluctance which did not escape any of the spectators. And then they all made believe to be composed, and at their ease, and began to talk, forming a little circle round Alice’s sofa, outside of which the little sister, with her eyes open to the widest extent, still stood,drinking in everything, and wondering much what it could mean.
“And, now that we have you,” said Mr. Meredith, “we cannot let you go again. You can go to Windermere, and any other place worth seeing, from Holmby. You must tell me where to send for your things, and we will try to make you comfortable here.”
“We have no things but those we carry with us,” said Colin. “We are pedestrians, and not fit for ladies’ society. I am afraid we must go upon our dusty way—and return again,” he added with an involuntary glance at Alice. It was because he thought he was failing of his duty that he said these last words; but they were unnecessary so far as Alice was concerned, who had no suspicion, and, most likely, if she had known his secret, would not have understood it. It never could have entered her head as a possible idea that he would thus have come to her again and accepted his old position had he not loved her; and in her truthfulness she had the superiority over Colin—notwithstanding, perhaps, that his motives were of a higher order, and his mode of thinking more exalted than anything that could ever have come into her honest and simple mind.