Fromthat day life flew upon celestial wings for Charley Frankland’s tutor. It was not that love-making proved possible, or that existence at Wodensbourne became at all what it had been at Ardmartin. The difference was in the atmosphere, which was now bright with all kinds of gladsome chances, and pervaded by anticipations—a charm which, at Colin’s age, was more thanreality. He never knew what moment of delight might come to him any day—what words might be said, or smiles shed upon him. Such an enchantment could not, indeed, have lasted very long; but, in the meantime, it was infinitely sweet, and made his life like a romance to the young man. There was nobody at Wodensbourne to occupy Miss Matty, or withdraw her attention from her young worshipper; and Colin, with his poetic temperament, and his youthful genius, and all the simplicities and inexperience which rendered him so different from the other clever young men who had been seen or heard of in that region, was very delightful company, even when he was not engaged in any acts of worship. Lady Frankland herself acknowledged that Mr. Campbell was a great acquisition. “He is not the least like other people,” said the lady of the house; “but you must take care not to let him fall in love with you, Matty;” and both the ladies laughed softly as they sat over their cup of tea. As for Matty, when she went to dress for dinner, after that admonition, she put on tartan ribbons over her white dress, partly, to be sure, because they were the fashion; but chiefly to please Colin, who knew rather less about tartan than she did, and had not the remotest idea that the many-coloured sash had any reference to himself.
“I love Scotland,” the little witch said to him, when he came into the drawing-room, to which he was now admitted during Sir Thomas’s nap—and, to tell the truth, Lady Frankland herself had just closed her eyes in a gentle doze, in her easy chair—“but, though you are a Scotchman, you don’t take the least notice of my ribbons; I am very fond of Scotland,” said Matty;—“and the Scotch,” the wicked little girl added, with a glance at him, which made Colin’s heart leap in his deluded breast.
“Then I am very glad to be Scotch,” said the youth, and stooped down over the end of the sash till Matty thought he meant to kiss it, which was a more decided act of homage than it would be expedient, under the circumstances, to permit.
“Don’t talk like everybody else,” said Miss Matty; “that does not make any difference—you were always glad to be Scotch. I know you all think you are so much better and cleverer than we are in England. But, tell me, do you still mean to be a Scotch minister? I wish you would not,” said Matty, with a little pout. And then Colin laughed—half with pleasure at what he thought her interest in him, and half with a quaint recollection which belonged only to himself.
“I don’t think I could preach about the twentieth Sundayafter Trinity,” he said with a smile; which, however, was a speech Miss Matty did not understand.
“People here don’t preach as you do in Scotland,” said the English girl, with a little offence. “You are always preaching, and that is what makes it so dull. But what is the good of being a minister? There are plenty of dull people to be ministers; you who are so clever—”
“Am I clever?” said Colin. “I am Charley’s tutor—it does not require a great deal of genius—” but while he spoke, his eyes—which Matty did not comprehend, which always went leagues further than she could follow—kindled up a little. He looked a long way beyond her, and no doubt he saw something; but it piqued her not to be able to follow him, and find out what he meant.
“If you had done what I wished, and gone to Oxford, Campbell,” said Sir Thomas, whose repose had been interrupted earlier than usual; “I can’t say much about what I could have done myself, for I have heaps of boys of my own to provide for; but, if you’re bent on going into the Church, something would certainly have turned up for you. I don’t say there’s much of a career in the Church for an ambitious young fellow, but still, if you do work well and have a few friends—. As for your Scotch Church, I don’t know very much about it,” said the baronet, candidly. “I never knew any one who did. What a bore it used to be a dozen years ago, when there was all that row; and now, I suppose, you’re all at sixes and sevens, ain’t you?” asked the ingenuous legislator. “I suppose whisky and controversy go together somehow.” Sir Thomas got himself packed into the corner of a sofa very comfortably, as he spoke, and took no notice of the lightning in Colin’s eyes.
“Oh, uncle! don’t,” said Miss Matty; “don’t you know that the Presbyterians are all going to give up and join the Church? and it’s all to be the same both in England and Scotland? You need not laugh. I assure you I know quite well what I am saying,” said the little beauty, with a look of dignity. “I have seen it in the papers; such funny papers!—with little paragraphs about accidents, and about people getting silver snuff-boxes!—but all the same, they say what I tell you. There’s to be no Presbyterians and no precentors, and none of their wicked ways, coming into church with their hats on, and staring all round instead of saying their prayers; and all the ministers are to be made into clergymen—priests and deacons, you know; and they are going to have bishops and proper service like otherpeople. Mr. Campbell,” said Matty, looking up at him with a little emphasis, to mark that, for once, she was calling him formally by his name—“knows it is quite true.”
“Humph,” said Sir Thomas, “I know better; I know how Campbell, there, looked the other day when he came out of church. I know the Scotch and their ways of thinking. Go and make the tea, and don’t talk of what you don’t understand. But, as for you, Campbell, if you have a mind for the University and to go in for the Church—”
But this was more than Colin, being twenty, and a Scotchman, could bear.
“Iamgoing in for the Church,” said the lad, doing all he could to keep down the excitement at which Sir Thomas would have laughed, “but it did not in the least touch my heart the other day to know that it was the twentieth Sunday after Trinity. Devotion is a great matter,” said the young Scotchman, “I grant you have the advantage over us there; but it would not do in Scotland to preach about the Church’s goodness, and what she had appointed for such or such a day. We preach very stupid sermons, I dare say; but at least we mean to teach somebody something—what God looks for at their hands, or what they may look for at His. It is more an occupation for a man,” cried the young revolutionary, “than reading the sublimest of prayers. I am going in for the Church—but it is the Church of Scotland,” said Colin. He drew himself up with a grand youthful dignity, which was much lost on Sir Thomas, who, for his part, looked at his new tutor with eyes of sober wonderment, and did not understand what this emotion meant.
“There is no occasion for excitement,” said the baronet; “nobody now-a-days meddles with a man’s convictions; indeed, Harry would say, it’s a great thing to have any convictions. That is how the young men talk now-a-days,” said Sir Thomas; and he moved off the sofa again, and yawned, though not uncivilly. As for Miss Matty, she came stealing up when she had made the tea, with her cup in her hand.
“So you do mean to be a minister?” she said, in a half whisper, with a deprecating look. Lady Frankland had roused up, like her husband, and the two were talking, and did not take any notice of Matty’s proceedings with the harmless tutor. The young lady was quite free to play with her mouse a little, and entered upon the amusement with zest, as was natural. “You mean to shut yourself up in a square house, with five windows in front, like the poor gentleman who has such red hair; andnever see anybody but the old women in the parish, and have your life made miserable every Sunday bythatprecentor—”
“I hope I have a soul above precentors,” said Colin, with a little laugh, which was unsteady still, however, with excitement; “and one might mend all that,” he added a minute after, looking at her with a kind of wistful inquiry which he could not have put into words. What was it he meant to ask with his anxious eye? But he did not himself know.
“Oh yes,” said Matty, “I know what you could do: you could get a little organ and marry somebody who would play it, and teach the people better; I know exactly what you could do,” said the young lady with a piquant little touch of spite, and a look that startled Colin; and then she paused, and hung her head for a moment and blushed, or looked as if she blushed. “But you would not?” said Matty, softly, with a sidelong glance at her victim. “Don’t marry anybody; no one is of any use after that. I don’t approve of marrying, for my part, especially for a priest. Priests should always be detached, you know, from the world.”
“Why?” said Colin. He was quite content to go on talking on such a subject for any length of time. “As for marrying, it is only your rich squires and great people who can marry when they please; we who have to make our own way in the world—” said the young man, with a touch of grandeur, but was stopped by Miss Matty’s sudden laughter.
“Oh, how simple you are! As if rich squires and great people, as you say, could marry when they pleased—as if any man could marry when he pleased!” cried Miss Matty, scornfully. “After all, we do count for something, we poor women; now and then, we can put even an eldest son out in his calculations. It is great fun too,” said the young lady, and she laughed, and so did Colin, who could not help wondering what special case she might have in her eye, and listened with all the eagerness of a lover. “There is poor Harry—” said Miss Matty under her breath, and stopped short and laughed to herself and sipped her tea, while Colin lent an anxious ear. But nothing further followed that soft laughter. Colin sat on thorns, gazing at her with a world of questions in his face, but the siren looked at him no more. Poor Harry! Harry’s natural rival was sensible of a thrill of jealous curiosity mingled with anxiety. What had she done to Harry, this witch who had beguiled Colin?—or was it not she who had done anything to him, but some other as pretty and as mischievous? Colin had no clue tothe puzzle, but it gave him a newaccèsof half-conscious enmity to the heir of Wodensbourne.
After that talk there elapsed a few days during which Colin saw but little of Matty, who had visits to pay, and some solemn dinner-parties to attend in Lady Frankland’s train. He had to spend the evenings by himself on these occasions after dining with Charley, who was not a very agreeable companion; and, when this invalid went to his room, as he did early, the young tutor found himself desolate enough in the great house, where no human bond existed between him and the little community within its walls. He was not in a state of mind to take kindly to abstract study at that moment of his existence, for Colin had passed out of the unconscious stage in which he had been at Ardmartin. There, however much he might have wished to be out of temptation, he could not help himself, which was a wonderful consolation; but now he had come wilfully and knowingly into danger, and had become aware of it; and far more distinctly than ever before had become aware of the difference between himself and the object of his thoughts. Though he found it very possible at times to comfort himself with the thought that this was an ordinary interruption of a Scotch student’s work, and noways represented the Armida’s garden in which the knight lost both his vocation and his life, there were other moments and moods which were less easily manageable; and, on the whole, he wanted the stimulus of perpetual excitement to keep him from feeling the false position he was in, and the inexpediency of continuing it. Though this feeling haunted him all day, at night, in the drawing-room—which was brightened and made sweet by the fair English matron who was kind to Colin, and the fairer maiden who was the centre of all his thoughts—it vanished like an evil spirit, and left him with a sense that nowhere in the world could he have been so well; but, when the stimulus was withdrawn, the youth was left in a very woeful plight, conscious, to the bottom of his heart, that he ought to be elsewhere, and here was consuming his strength and life. He went out in the darkness of the December nights through the gloomy silent park into the little village with its feeble lights, where everybody and everything was unknown to him; and all the time his demon sat on his shoulder and asked what he did there. One evening while he strayed through the broken, irregular village-street, to all appearance looking at the dim cottage-windows and listening to the rude songs from the little ale-house, the curate encountered the tutor. Most probably the young priest, who was not remarkable for wisdom, imagined the Scotch lad to be in some danger; for he laid a kindly hand upon his arm and turned him away from the vociferous little tavern, which was a vexation to the curate’s soul. “I should like you to go up to the Parsonage with me, if you will only wait till I have seen this sick woman,” he said; and Colin went in very willingly within the cottage porch to wait for his acquaintance, who had his prayer-book under his arm. The young Scotchman looked on with wondering eyes while the village priest knelt down by his parishioner’s bedside and opened his book. Naturally there was a comparison always going on in Colin’s mind. He was like a passive experimentalist, seeing all kinds of trials made before his eyes, and watching the result. “I wonder if they all think it is a spell,” said Colin to himself; but he was rebuked and was silent when he heard the responses which the cottage folk made on their knees. When the curate had read his prayer he got up and said good-night, and went back to Colin; and this visitation of the sick was a very strange experience to the young Scotch observer, who stood revolving everything, with an eye to Scotland, at the cottage-door.
“You don’t make use of our Common Prayer in Scotland?” said the curate; “pardon me for referring to it. One cannot help being sorry for people who shut themselves out from such an inestimable advantage. How did it come about?”
“I don’t know,” said Colin. “I suppose because Laud was a fool, and King Charles a ——”
“Hush, for goodness sake,” said the curate, with a shiver. “What do you mean? such language is painful to listen to. The saints and martyrs should be spoken of in a different tone. You think that was the reason? Oh, no; it was your horrible Calvinism, and John Knox, and the mad influences of that unfortunate Reformation which has done us all so much harm; though I suppose you think differently in Scotland,” he said with a little sigh, steering his young companion, of whose morality he felt uncertain, past the alehouse door.
“Did you never hear of John Knox’s liturgy?” said the indignant Colin; “the saddest, passionate service! You always had time to say your prayers in England, but we had to snatch them as we could. And your prayers would not do for us now,” said the Scotch experimentalist; “I wish they could; but it would be impossible. A Scotch peasant would have thoughtthatan incantation you were reading. When you go to see asick man, shouldn’t you like to say, God save him, God forgive him, straight out of your heart without a book?” said the eager lad; at which question the curate looked up with wonder in the young man’s face.
“I hope I do say it out of my heart,” said the English priest, and stopped short, with a gravity that had a great effect upon Colin;—“but in words more sound than any words of mine,” the curate added a moment after, which dispersed the reverential impression from the Scotch mind of the eager boy.
“I can’t see that,” said Colin, quickly, “in the church for common prayer, yes; at a bedside in a cottage, no. At least, I mean that’s how we feel in Scotland—though I suppose you don’t care much for our opinion,” he added with some heat, thinking he saw a smile on his companion’s face.
“Oh, yes, certainly; I have always understood that there is a great deal of intelligence in Scotland,” said the curate, courteous as to a South-Sea Islander. “But people who have never known this inestimable advantage—I believe preaching is considered the great thing in the North?” he said with a little curiosity. “I wish society were a little more impressed by it among ourselves; but mereinformationeven about spiritual matters is of so much less importance! though that, I daresay, is another point on which we don’t agree?” the curate continued, pleasantly. He was just opening the gate into his own garden, which was invisible in the darkness, but which enclosed and surrounded a homely house with some lights in the windows, which, it was a little comfort to Colin to perceive, was not much handsomer nor more imposing in appearance than the familiar manse on the borders of the Holy Loch.
“It depends on what you call spiritual matters,” said the polemical youth. “I don’t think a man can possibly get too much information about his relations with God, if only anybody could tell him anything; but certainly about ecclesiastical arrangements and the Christian year,” said the irreverent young Scotchman, “a little might suffice;” and Colin spoke with the slightest inflection of contempt, always thinking of the twentieth Sunday after Trinity, and scorning what he did not understand, as was natural to his years.
“Ah, you don’t know what you are saying,” said the devout curate. “After you have spent a Christian Year, you will see what comfort and beauty there is in it. You say, ‘if anybody could tell him anything.’ I hope you have not got into a sceptical way of thinking. I should like very much to have along talk with you,” said the village priest, who was very good and very much in earnest, though the earnestness was after a pattern different from anything known to Colin; and, before the youth perceived what was going to happen, he found himself in the curate’s study, placed on a kind of moral platform, as the emblem of Doubt and that pious unbelief which is the favourite of modern theology. Now, to tell the truth, Colin, though it may lower him in the opinion of many readers of his history, was not by nature given to doubting. He had, to be sure, followed the fashion of the time enough to be aware of a wonderful amount of unsettled questions, and questions which it did not appear possible ever to settle. But somehow these elements of scepticism did not give him much trouble. His heart was full of natural piety, and his instincts all fresh and strong as a child’s. He could not help believing, any more than he could help breathing, his nature being such; and he was half-amused and half-irritated by the position in which he found himself, notwithstanding the curate’s respect for the ideal sceptic, whom he had thus pounced upon. The commonplace character of Colin’s mind was such, that he was very glad when his new friend relaxed into gossip, and asked him who was expected at the Hall for Christmas; to which the tutor answered by such names as he had heard in the ladies’ talk, and remembered with friendliness or with jealousy, according to the feeling with which Miss Matty pronounced them—which was Colin’s only guide amid this crowd of the unknown.
“I wonder if it is to be a match,” said the curate, who, recovering from his dread concerning the possible habits of his Scotch guest, had taken heart to share his scholarly potations of beer with his new friend. “It was said Lady Frankland did not like it, but I never believed that. After all, it was such a natural arrangement. I wonder if it is to be a match?”
“Is what to be a match?” said Colin, who all at once felt his heart stand still and grow cold, though he sat by the cheerful fire which threw its light even into the dark garden outside. “I have heard nothing about any match,” he added, with a little effort. It dawned upon him instantly what it must be, and his impulse was to rush out of the house or do something rash and sudden that would prevent him from hearing it said in words.
“Between Henry Frankland and his cousin,” said the calm curate; “they looked as if they were perfectly devoted to each other at one time. That has died off, for she is rather a flirt, I fear; but all the people hereabouts had made up their mindson the subject. It would be a very suitable match on the whole. But why do you get up? you are not going away?”
“Yes; I have something to do when I go home,” said Colin, “something to prepare,” which he said out of habit, thinking of his old work, at home, without remembering what he was saying or whether it meant anything. The curate put down the poker which he had lifted to poke the fire, and looked at Colin with a touch of envy.
“Ah! something literary, I suppose?” said the young priest, and went with his new friend to the door thinking how lucky he was, at his age, to have a literary connexion; a thought very natural to a young priest in a country curacy with a very small endowment. The curate wrote verses, as Colin himself did, though on very different subjects, and took some of them out of his desk and looked at them, after he had shut the door, with affectionate eyes, and a half intention of asking the tutor what was the best way to get admission to the magazines; and on the whole he was pleased with what he had seen of the young Scotchman, though he was so ignorant of church matters; an opinion which Colin perfectly reciprocated, with a more distinct sentiment of compassion for the English curate, who knew about as much of Scotland as if it had lain in the South Seas.
Meanwhile Colin walked home to Wodensbourne with fire and passion in his heart. “It would be a very suitable match on the whole,” he kept saying to himself, and then tried to take a little comfort from Matty’s sweet laughter over “Poor Harry!” Poor Harry was rich and fortunate, and independent, and Colin was only the tutor; were these two to meet this Christmas time and contend over again on this new ground? He went along past the black trees as if he were walking for a wager; but, quick as he walked, a dog-cart dashed past him with lighted lamps gleaming up the avenue. When he reached the Hall-door, one of the servants was disappearing up stairs with a portmanteau, and a heap of coats and wrappers lay in the Hall.
“Mr. Harry just come, sir—a week sooner than was expected,” said the butler, who was an old servant and shared in the joys of the family. Colin went to his room without a word, and shut himself up there with feelings which he could not have explained to any one. He had not seen Harry Frankland since they were both boys; but he had never got over the youthful sense of rivalry and opposition which had sent him skimming over the waters of the Holy Loch to save the boy who was his born rival and antagonist. Was this the day of their encounter and conflict which had come at last?
Harry Frankland’sreturn made a great difference to the tutor, between whom and the heir of the house there existed that vague sense of jealousy and rivalship which was embittered on the part of young Frankland by a certain consciousness of obligation. He was a good-natured fellow enough, and above the meanness of treating unkindly anybody who was in a dependent position; but the circumstances were awkward, and he did not know how to comport himself towards the stranger. “The fellow looks like a gentleman,” he said privately in confidence to his mother; “if I had never seen him before we might have got on, you know; but it’s a horrible nuisance to feel that you’re obliged to a fellow in that kind of position—neither your equal, you know, nor your inferior, nor—. What on earth induced the governor to have him here? If it hadn’t been for these cheap Scotch universities and stuff, he’d have been a ploughman that one could have given ten pounds to and been done with him. It’s a confounded nuisance having him here.”
“Hush, Harry,” said Lady Frankland. “He is very nice and very gentlemanly, I think. He used to be very amusing before you came home. Papa, you know, is not entertaining after dinner; and really Mr. Campbell was quite an acquisition, especially to Matty, who can’t live without a slave,” said the lady of the house, with an indulgent, matronly smile.
“Oh, confound it, why did the governor have him here?” cried the discontented heir. “As for Matty, it appears to me she had better begin to think of doing without slaves,” he said moodily, with a cloud on his face; a speech which made his mother look up with a quick movement of anxiety, though she still smiled.
“I can’t make out either you or Matty,” said Lady Frankland. “I wish you would be either off or on. With such an appearance of indifference as you show to each other—”
“Oh, indifference, by Jove!” said Harry, breaking in upon his mother’s words; and the young man gave a short whistle, and, jumping up abruptly, went off without waiting for any more. Lady Frankland was not in the habit of disturbing herself about things in general. She looked after her son with a serious look, which, however, lasted but a moment. Then she returned immediately to her placidity and her needlework. “I daresay it will comeall right,” she said to herself, with serene philosophy, which perhaps accounted for the absence of wrinkles in her comely, middle-aged countenance. Harry, on the contrary, went off in anything but a serene state of mind. It was a foggy day, and the clouds lay very low and heavy over the fen-country, where there was nothing to relieve the dulness of nature. And it was afternoon—the very time of the day when all hopes and attempts at clearing up are over—and dinner was still too far off to throw its genial glow upon the dusky house. There had been nothing going on for a day or two at Wodensbourne. Harry was before his time, and the expected guests had not yet arrived, and the weather was as troublesome and hindersome of every kind of recreation as weather could possibly be. Young Frankland went out in a little fit of impatience, and was met at the hall-door by a mouthful of dense white steaming air, through which even the jovial trees of holly, all glowing with Christmas berries, loomed like two prickly ghosts. He uttered an exclamation of disgust as he stood on the broad stone steps, not quite sure what to do with himself—whether to face the chill misery of the air outside, or to hunt up Matty and Charley, and betake himself to the billiard-room within. But then the tutor—confound the fellow! Just at that moment Harry Frankland heard a laugh, a provoking little peal of silver bells. He had an odd sort of affection—half love, half dislike—for his cousin. But of all Matty’s charms, there was none which so tantalized and bewitched him as this laugh, which was generally acknowledged to be charming. “Much there is to laugh about, by Jove!” he muttered to himself, with an angry flush; but he grew grimly furious when he heard her voice.
“You won’t give in,” said Matty; “the Scotch never will, I know; you are all so dreadfully argumentative and quarrelsome. But you are beaten, though you won’t acknowledge it; you know you are. I like talking to you,” continued the little witch, dropping her voice a little, “because—hush! I thought I heard some one calling me from the house.”
“Because why?” said Colin. They were a good way off, behind one of those great holly trees; but young Frankland, with his quickened ears, discerned in an instant the softness, the tender admiration, the music of the tutor’s voice. “By Jove!” said the heir to himself; and then he shouted out, “Matty, look here! come here!” in tones as different from those of Colin as discord is from harmony. It did not occur to him that Miss Matty’s ear, being perfectly cool and unexcited,was quite able to discriminate between the two voices which thus claimed her regard.
“What do you want?” said Matty. “Don’t stand there in the fog like a ghost; if you have anything to say, come here. I am taking my constitutional; one’s first duty is the care of one’s health,” said the wicked little creature, with her ring of laughter; and she turned back again under his very eyes along the terrace without looking at him again. As for Harry Frankland, the words which escaped from his excited lips were not adapted for publication. If he had been a little less angry he would have joined them, and so made an end of the tutor; but, being furious, and not understanding anything about it, he burst for a moment into profane language, and then went off to the stables, where all the people had a bad time of it until the dressing-bell rang.
“What a savage he is,” said Matty, confidentially. “That is the bore of cousins; they can’t bear to see one happy, and yet they won’t take the trouble of making themselves agreeable. How nice it used to be down at Kilchurnthatsummer—you remember? And what quantities of poetry you used to write. I suppose Wodensbourne is not favourable to poetry? You have never shown me anything since you came here.”
“Poetry is only for one’s youth,” said Colin; “that is, if you dignify my verses with the name—for one’s extreme youth, when one believes in everything that is impossible; and for Kilchurn, and the Lady’s Glen, and the Holy Loch,” said the youth, after a pause, with a fervour which disconcerted Matty. “Thatsummer was not summer, but a bit of paradise—and life is real at Wodensbourne.”
“I wish you would not speak in riddles,” said Miss Matty, who was in the humour to have a little more of this inferred worship. “I should have thought life was a great deal more real at Ramore than here. Here we have luxuries and things—and—and—and books and—.” She meant to have implied that the homely life was hard, and to have delicately intimated to Colin the advantage of living under the roof of Sir Thomas Frankland; but, catching his eye at the outset of her sentence, Matty had suddenly perceived her mistake, and broke down in a way most unusual to her. As she floundered, the young man looked at her with a full unhesitating gaze, and an incomprehensible smile.
“Pardon me,” he said—he had scarcely ever attempted before to take the superiority out of her hands, little trifler and finelady as she was—he had been quite content to lay himself down in the dust and suffer her to march over him in airy triumph. But, while she was only a little tricksy coquette, taking from his imagination all her higher charms, Colin was a true man, a man full of young genius, and faculties a world beyond anything known to Matty; and, when he was roused for the moment, it was so easy for him to confound her paltry pretensions. “Pardon me,” he said, with the smile which piqued her, which she did not understand; “I think you mistake. At Ramore I was a poor farmer’s son, but we had other things to think of than the difference between wealth and poverty. At Ramore we think nothing impossible; but here—” said Colin, looking round him with a mixture of contempt and admiration, which Matty could not comprehend. “That, you perceive, was the age of poetry, the age of romance, the golden age,” said the young man, with a smile. “The true knight required nothing but his sword, and was more than a match for all kinds of ugly kings and wicked enchanters; but Wodensbourne is prose, hard prose—fine English if you like, and much to be applauded for its style,” the tutor ran on, delivering himself up to his fancy. “Not Miltonian, to be sure; more like Macaulay—fine vigorous English, not destitute of appropriate ornament; but still prose, plain prose, Miss Frankland—only prose!”
“It appears to me that you are cross, Mr. Campbell,” said Matty, with a little spite; for her young vassal showed signs of enfranchisement when he called her by her name. “You like your rainy loch better than anything else in the world; and you are sorry,” said the siren, dropping her voice, “you are even so unkind as to be sorry that you have come here?”
“Sometimes, yes,” said Colin, suddenly clouding over. “It is true.”
“Always,” said Matty; “though you cannot deny that we freed you from the delightful duty of listening to Sir Thomas after dinner,” she went on, with a laugh. “Dear old uncle, why does he snore? So you are really sorry you came? I do so wish you would tell me why. Wodensbourne, at least, is better than Ardmartin,” said Miss Matty, with a look of pique. She was rather relieved and yet horribly disappointed at the thought that Colin might perhaps be coming to his senses, in so far as she herself was concerned. It would save her a good deal of embarrassment, it was true, but she was intent upon preventing it all the same.
“I will tell you why I am sorry, if you will tell me why Iought to be glad,” said Colin, who was wise enough, for once, to see that he had the best of the argument.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Matty; “if you don’t see yourself—if you don’t care about the advantages—if you don’t mind living in the same—I mean, if you don’t see the good—”
“I don’t see any good,” said Colin, with suppressed passion, “except one which, if I stated it plainly, you would not permit me to name. I see no advantages that I can venture to put in words. On the other hand, Wodensbourne has taught me a great deal. This fine perspicuous English prose points an argument a great deal better than all the Highland rhymings in existence,” said the young man, bitterly; “I’ll give you a professional example, as I’m a tutor. At the Holy Loch we conjugate all our verbs affirmatively, interrogatively. Charley and I are getting them up in the negative form here, and it’s hard work,” said Charley’s tutor. He broke off with a laugh which sounded strange and harsh, an unusual effect, to his companion’s ear.
“Affirmatively? Interrogatively?” said Miss Matty, with a pretty puzzled look; “I hate long words. How do you suppose I can know what you mean? It is such a long time since I learnt my verbs—and then one always hated them so. Look here, what a lovely holly-leaf!Il m’aime, il ne m’aime pas?” said Miss Matty, pricking her fingers on the verdant spikes and casting a glance at Colin. When their eyes met they both laughed, and blushed a little in their several ways—that is to say, Miss Matty’s sweet complexion grew a little, a very little, brighter for one moment, or Colin at least thought it did; whereas the blood flushed all over his face, and went dancing back like so many streams of new life and joy to exhilarate his foolish youthful heart.
“By the bye, I wonder if that foolish Harry came from my aunt; perhaps she wants me,” said Miss Matty, who had gone as far as she meant to go. “Besides, the fog gets heavier; though, to be sure, I have seen it twenty times worse at Kilchurn. Perhaps it is the fog and the rain that makes it poetical there? I prefer reality, if that means a little sunshine, or even the fire in my lady’s dressing-room,” she cried, with a shiver. “Go indoors and write me some pretty verses: it is the only thing you can do after being such a savage.Au revoir—there are no half-partings in English; and it’s so ridiculous to say good-bye for an hour or two,” said Miss Matty. She made him a little mock curtsey as she went away, to which, out ofthe fulness of her grace, the little witch added a smile and a pretty wave of her hand as she disappeared round the corner of the great holly, which were meant to leave Colin in a state of ecstasy. He stayed on the foggy terrace a long time after she had left him, but the young man’s thoughts were not ecstatic. So long as she was present, so long as the strongest spell of natural magic occupied his eyes in watching and his ears in listening to her, he was still carried along and kept up by the witchery of young love. But in the intervals when her presence was withdrawn, matters grew to be rather serious with Colin. He was not like a love-sick girl, able to exist upon these occasional sweetnesses; he was a man, and required something more to satisfy his mind than the tantalizing enchantments and disappointments of this intercourse, which was fascinating enough in its way, but had no substance or reality in it. He had spoken truly—it had been entire romance, sweet as a morning dream at the Holy Loch. There the two young creatures, wandering by the glens and streams, were the ideal youth and maiden entering upon their natural inheritance of beauty and love and mutual admiration; and at homely Ramore, where the world to which Matty belonged was utterly unknown, it was not difficult either for Colin himself, or for those around him; to believe that—with his endowments, his talents, and genius—he could do anything, or win any woman. Wodensbourne was a most sobering, disenchanting reality after this wonderful delusion. The Franklands were all so kind to the young tutor, and their sense of obligation towards him made his position so much better than any other tutor’s of his pretensions could have been, that the lesson came with all the more overwhelming force upon his awakening faculties. The morning and its dreams were gliding away—or, at least, Colin thought so; and this clear daylight, which began to come in, dissipating all the magical effects of sunshine and mist and dew, had to be faced as he best could. He was not a young prince, independent of ordinary requirements; he was truly a poor man’s son, and possessed by an ideal of life and labour such as has inspired many a young Scotchman. He wanted not only to get on in the world, to acquire an income and marry Matty, but also to be good for something in his generation. If the course of true love had been quite smooth with him, if Matty had been his natural mate, Colin could not have contented himself with that personal felicity. He was doubtful of all his surroundings, like most young men of his period—doubtful what to do and how to do it—more than doubtful of all the local ways and fashions of the profession to which he had been trained. But underneath this uncertainty lay something of which Colin had no doubt. He had not been brought into the world without an object; he did not mean to leave it without leaving some mark that he had been here. To get through life easily and secure as much pleasure as possible by the way was not the theory of existence known at Ramore.Thereit was understood to be a man’s, a son’s duty to better his position, to make his way upwards in the world; and this philosophy of life had been enlarged and elevated in the poetic soul of Colin’s mother. He had something to do in his own country, in his own generation. This was the master-idea of the young man’s mind.
But how it was to be reconciled with this aimless, dependent life in the rich English household—with this rivalry, which could never come to anything, with Sir Thomas Frankland’s heir—with this vain love, which, it began to be apparent to Colin, must, like the rivalry, end in nothing—it was hard to see. He remained on the terrace for about an hour, walking up and down in the fog. All that he could see before him were some indistinct outlines of trees, looking black through the steaming white air, and, behind, the great ghost of the house, with its long front and wings receding into the mist—the great, wealthy, stranger house, to which he and his life had so little relationship. Many were the thoughts in Colin’s mind during this hour; and they were far from satisfactory. Even the object of his love began to be clouded over with fogs, which looked very different, breathing over those low, rich, English levels, from the fairy mists of the Lady’s Glen. He began to perceive dimly that his devotion was a toy and plaything to this little woman of the world. He began to perceive what an amount of love would be necessary to make such a creature as Matty place herself consciously by the side of such a man as himself. Love!—and as yet all that he could say certainly of Matty was that she liked a little love-making, and had afforded him a great many facilities for that agreeable but unproductive occupation. Colin’s heart lost itself in an uncertainty darker than the fog. His own position galled him profoundly. He was Charley’s tutor. They were all very kind to him; but, supposing he were to ask the child of the house to descend from her eminence and be his wife—not even his wife, indeed, but his betrothed; to wait years and years for him until he should be able to claim her—what would everybody think of him? Colin’s heart beatagainst his breast in loud throbs of wounded love and pride. At Wodensbourne everything seemed impossible. He had not the heart to go away and end abruptly his first love and all his dreams; and how could he stay to consume his heart and his life? How go back to the old existence, which would now be so much harder? How begin anew and try another life apart from all his training and traditions, for the sake of that wildest of incredible hopes? Colin had lived for some time in this state of struggle and argument with himself, and it was only Matty’s presence which at times delivered him from it. Now, as before, he took refuge in the thought that he could not immediately free himself; that, having accepted his position as Charley’s tutor, he could not relinquish it immediately; that honour bound him to remain for the winter at least. When he had come, for the fiftieth time, to this conclusion, he went indoors, and upstairs to his room. It was a good way up, but yet it was more luxurious than anything in Ramore, and on the table there were some flowers which she had given him the night before. Poor Colin! after his serious reflections he owed himself a little holiday. It was an odd enough conclusion, certainly, to his thoughts, but he had an hour to himself and his writing-desk was open on the table, and involuntarily he bethought himself of Miss Matty’s parting words. The end of it was that he occupied his hour writing and re-writing and polishing into smooth couplets the pretty verses which that young lady had asked for. Colin’s verses were as follows; from which it will be seen that, though he had a great deal of poetical sentiment, he was right in refusing to consider himself a poet:—
“In English speech, my lady said,There are no sweet half-partings made—Words half regret, half joy, that tellWe meet again and all is well.Ah, not for sunny hours or daysIts grave ‘Farewell’ our England says;Nor for a moment’s absence, true,Utters its prayer, ‘God be with you.’Other the thoughts that Love may reach,In the grave tones of English speech;Deeper than Fancy’s passing breath,The blessing stands for life or death.If Heaven in wrath should rule it so,If earth were capable of woeSo bitter as that this might beThe last dear word ’twixt thee and me—Thus Love in English speech, aboveAll lighter thoughts, breathes: ‘Farewell, Love;For hours or ages if we part,God be with thee, where’er thou art.To no less hands than His aloneI trust thy soul out of mine own.’Thus speaks the love that, grave and strongCan master death, neglect, and wrong,Yet ne’er can learn, long as it lives,To limit the full soul it gives,Or cheat the parting of its painWith light words ’Till we meet again.’Ah, no, while on a moment’s breathLove holds the poise ’twixt life and death,He cannot leave who loves thee, sweet,With light postponement ’Till we meet;’But rather prays, ‘Whate’er may beMy life or death, God be withthee!Though one brief hour my course may tell,Ever and ever Farethouwell.’”
“In English speech, my lady said,There are no sweet half-partings made—Words half regret, half joy, that tellWe meet again and all is well.Ah, not for sunny hours or daysIts grave ‘Farewell’ our England says;Nor for a moment’s absence, true,Utters its prayer, ‘God be with you.’Other the thoughts that Love may reach,In the grave tones of English speech;Deeper than Fancy’s passing breath,The blessing stands for life or death.If Heaven in wrath should rule it so,If earth were capable of woeSo bitter as that this might beThe last dear word ’twixt thee and me—Thus Love in English speech, aboveAll lighter thoughts, breathes: ‘Farewell, Love;For hours or ages if we part,God be with thee, where’er thou art.To no less hands than His aloneI trust thy soul out of mine own.’Thus speaks the love that, grave and strongCan master death, neglect, and wrong,Yet ne’er can learn, long as it lives,To limit the full soul it gives,Or cheat the parting of its painWith light words ’Till we meet again.’Ah, no, while on a moment’s breathLove holds the poise ’twixt life and death,He cannot leave who loves thee, sweet,With light postponement ’Till we meet;’But rather prays, ‘Whate’er may beMy life or death, God be withthee!Though one brief hour my course may tell,Ever and ever Farethouwell.’”
“In English speech, my lady said,There are no sweet half-partings made—Words half regret, half joy, that tellWe meet again and all is well.Ah, not for sunny hours or daysIts grave ‘Farewell’ our England says;Nor for a moment’s absence, true,Utters its prayer, ‘God be with you.’Other the thoughts that Love may reach,In the grave tones of English speech;Deeper than Fancy’s passing breath,The blessing stands for life or death.If Heaven in wrath should rule it so,If earth were capable of woeSo bitter as that this might beThe last dear word ’twixt thee and me—Thus Love in English speech, aboveAll lighter thoughts, breathes: ‘Farewell, Love;For hours or ages if we part,God be with thee, where’er thou art.To no less hands than His aloneI trust thy soul out of mine own.’Thus speaks the love that, grave and strongCan master death, neglect, and wrong,Yet ne’er can learn, long as it lives,To limit the full soul it gives,Or cheat the parting of its painWith light words ’Till we meet again.’Ah, no, while on a moment’s breathLove holds the poise ’twixt life and death,He cannot leave who loves thee, sweet,With light postponement ’Till we meet;’But rather prays, ‘Whate’er may beMy life or death, God be withthee!Though one brief hour my course may tell,Ever and ever Farethouwell.’”
Probably the readers of this history will think that Colin deserved his fate.
He gave them to her in the evening, when he found her alone in the drawing-room—alone, at least, in so far that Lady Frankland was nodding over the newspaper, and taking no notice of Miss Matty’s proceedings. “Oh, thank you; how nice of you!” cried the young lady; but she crumpled the little billet in her hand, and put it, not into her bosom as young ladies do in novels, but into her pocket, glancing at the door as she did so. “I do believe you are right in saying that there is nothing but prose here,” said Matty. “I can’t read it just now. It would only make them laugh, you know;” and she went away forthwith to the other end of the room, and began to occupy herself in arranging some music. She was thus employed when Harry came in, looking black enough. Colin was left to himself all that evening. He had, moreover, the gratification of witnessing all the privileges once accorded to himself given to his rival. Even in matters less urgent than love, it is disenchanting to see the same attentions lavished on another of which one has imagined one’s self the only possessor. It was in vain that Colin attempted a grim smile to himself at this transference of Matty’s wiles and witcheries. The lively table-talk—more lively than it could be with him, for the two knew all each other’s friends and occupations; the little services about the tea-table which he himself had so often rendered to Matty, but which her cousin could render with a freedom impossible to Colin; the pleased, amused looks of the elders, who evidently imagined matters to be going on as they wished;—would have been enough of themselves to drive the unfortunate youth half wild as he sat in the background and witnessed it all. But, as Colin’s evil genius would have it, the curate was that evening dining at Wodensbourne. And, in pursuance of his benevolent intention of cultivating and influencing the young Scotchman, this excellent ecclesiastic devoted himself to Colin. He asked a great many questions about Scotland and the Sabbath question, and the immoral habits of the peasantry, to which the catechumen replied with varying temper, sometimes giving wild answers, quite wide of the mark, as he applied his jealous ear to hear rather the conversation going on at a little distance than the interrogatory addressed to himself. Most people have experienced something of the difficulty of keeping up an indifferent conversation while watching and straining to catch such scraps as may be audible of something more interesting going on close by; but the difficulty was aggravated in Colin’s case by the fact that his own private interlocutor was doing everything in his power to exasperate him in a well-meaning and friendly way, and that the words which fell on his ear close at hand were scarcely less irritating than the half-heard words, the but too distinctly seen combinations at the other end of the room, where Matty was making tea, with her cousin hanging over her chair. After he had borne it as long as he could, Colin turned to bay.
“Scotland is not in the South Seas,” said the young Scotchman; “a day’s journey any time will take you there. As for our Universities, they are not rich like yours, but they have been heard of from time to time,” said Colin, with indignation. His eyes had caught fire from long provocation, and they were fixed at this moment upon Matty, who was showing her cousin something which she half drew out of her pocket under cover of her handkerchief. Was it his foolish offering that the two were about to laugh over? In the bitterness of the moment, he could have taken the most summary vengeance on the irreproachable young clergyman. “We don’t tattoo ourselves now-a-days, and no Englishman has been eaten in my district within the memory of man,” said the young savage, who looked quite inclined to swallow somebody, though it was doubtful who was the immediate object of the passion which played in his brown eyes. Perhaps Colin had never been so much excited in his life.
“I beg your pardon,” said the wondering curate. “I tire you, I fear—” and he followed Colin’s eyes, after his first movement of offence was over, and perhaps comprehended the mystery,for the curate himself had been in his day the subject of experiments. “They seem to have come to a very good understanding, these two,” he said, with a gentle clerical leaning towards inevitable gossip. “I told you how it was likely to be. I wish you would come to the vicarage oftener,” continued the young priest. “If Frankland and you don’t get on—”
“Why should not we get on?” said Colin, who was half mad with excitement; he had just seen some paper, wonderfully like his own verses, handed from one to another of the pair who were so mutually engrossed—and, if he could have tossed the curate or anybody else who might happen to be at hand out of window, it would have been a relief to his feelings. “He and I are in very different circumstances,” said the young man, with his eyes aflame. “I am not aware that it is of the least importance to any one whether we get on or not. You forget that I am only the tutor.” It occurred to him, as he spoke, that he had said the same words to Matty at Ardmartin, and how they had laughed together over his position. It was not any laughing matter now; and to see the two heads bending over that bit of paper was more than he could bear.
“I wish you would come oftener to the parsonage,” said the benevolent curate. “I might be—we might be—of—of some use to each other. I am very much interested in your opinions. I wish I could bring you to see the beauty of all the Church’s arrangements and the happiness of those—”
Here Colin rose to his feet without being aware of it, and the curate stopped speaking. He was a man of placid temper himself, and the young stranger’s aspect alarmed him. Harry Frankland was coming forward with the bit of paper in his hand.
“Look here,” said Frankland, instinctively turning his back on the tutor, “here’s a little drawing my cousin has been making for some schools you want in the village. She says they must be looked after directly. It’s only a scratch, but I think it’s pretty—a woman is always shaky in her outlines, you know; but the idea ain’t bad, is it? She says I am to talk to you on the subject,” said the heir; and he spread out the sketch on the table and began to discuss it with the pleased curate. Harry was pleased too, in a modified way; he thought he was gratifying Matty, and he thought it was good of such a wayward little thing to think about the village children; and, finally, he thought if she had been indifferent to the young lord of the manor she would not have taken so much trouble—which wereall agreeable and consolatory imaginations. As for Colin, standing up by the table, his eyes suddenly glowed and melted into a mist of sweet compunctions; he stood quite still for a moment, and then he caught the smallest possible gesture, the movement of a finger, the scarce-perceptible lifting of an eyelash, which called him to her side. When he went up to Matty he found her reading very demurely, with her book held in both her hands, and his little poem placed above the printed page. “It is charming!” said the little witch; “I could not look at it till I had got rid of Harry. It is quite delightful, and it is the greatest shame in the world not to print it; but I can’t conceive how you can possibly remember the trumpery little things I say.” The conclusion was, that sweeter dreams than usual visited Colin’s sleep that night. Miss Matty had not yet done with her interesting victim.
Colinfound a letter on the breakfast-table next morning, which gave a new development to his mental struggle. It was from the Professor in Glasgow in whose class he had won his greatest laurels. He was not a correspondent nor even a friend of Colin’s, and the effect of his letter was increased accordingly. “One of our exhibitions to Balliol is to be competed for immediately after Christmas,” wrote the Professor. “I am very anxious that you should be a candidate. From all I have seen of you, I am inclined to augur a brilliant career for your talents if they are fully cultivated; and for the credit of our University, as well as for your own sake, I should be glad to see you the holder of this scholarship. Macdonald, your old rival, is a very satisfactory scholar, and has unbounded perseverance and steadiness—doggedness, I might almost say; but he is not the kind of man—I speak to you frankly—to do us any credit at Oxford, nor indeed to do himself any particular advantage. His is the commonly received type of Scotch intelligence—hard, keen, and unsympathetic—a form as little true to the character of the nation as conventional types usually are. I don’t want, to speak the truth, to send him to my old college as a specimen of what we can produce here. It would be much more satisfactory to myself to send you, and I think you could make better use of theopportunities thus opened to you. Lauderdale informs me that Sir Thomas Frankland is an old friend and one under obligations to you or your family: probably, in the circumstances, he would not object to release you from your engagement. The matter is so important, that I don’t think you should allow any false delicacy in respect to your present occupation to deter you from attending to your own interests. You are now just at the age to benefit in the highest degree by such an opportunity of prosecuting your studies.”
This was the letter which woke all the slumbering forces of Colin’s mind to renew the struggle against his heart and his fancy which he had already waged unsuccessfully. He was not of much use to Charley for that day at least; their conjugations, negative or affirmative, made but small progress, and the sharp-witted boy gave his tutor credit for being occupied with Matty, and scorned him accordingly—of which fact the young man was fortunately quite unaware. When it became possible for Colin to speak to Sir Thomas on the subject, he had again lost himself in a maze of conflicting inclinations. Should he leave this false position, and betake himself again, in improved and altered circumstances, to the business of his life? But Colin saw very clearly that to leave his present position was to leave Matty—to relinquish his first dream; to give up the illusion which, notwithstanding all its drawbacks, had made life lovely to him for the past year at least. Already he had so far recovered his senses as to feel that, if he left her now, he left her for ever, and that no new tie could be woven between his humble fortunes and those of the little siren of Wodensbourne. Knowing this, yet all the while subject to her witcheries—hearing the song that lured him on—how was he to take a strenuous resolution, and leap back into the disenchanted existence, full of duty but deprived of delights, which awaited him in his proper sphere? He had gone out to the terrace again in the afternoon to argue it out with himself, when he encountered Sir Thomas, who had a cold, and was taking his constitutional discreetly for his health’s sake, not without an eye to the garden in which Lady Frankland intended sundry alterations which were not quite satisfactory to her lord. “Of course I don’t mean to interfere with my lady’s fancies,” said the baronet, who was pleased to find some one to whom he could confide his griefs; “a flower-garden is a woman’s department, certainly, if anything is; but I won’t have this terrace disturbed. It used to be my mother’s favourite walk,” said Sir Thomas. The good man went on, a little moved by thisparticular recollection, meditating his grievance. Sir Thomas had got very nearly to the other end of that table-land of existence which lies between the ascent and the descent—that interval in which the suns burn hottest, the winds blow coldest, but upon which, when it is fair weather, the best part of life may be spent. By right of his extended prospect, he was naturally a little contemptuous of those griefs and struggles of youth which cloud over the ascending way. Had any one told him of the real conflict which was going on in Colin’s mind, the excellent middle-aged man would but have laughed at the boy’s folly—a laughter softened yet confirmed by the recollection of similar clouds in his own experience which had long dispersed into thin air. He was a little serious at the present moment, about my lady’s caprice, which aimed at altering the smooth stretch of lawn to which his eyes had been accustomed for years—and turned to listen to Colin, when the young man addressed him, with a slight air of impatience, not knowing anything of importance which the youth could have to say.
“I should be glad to know,” said Colin, with hesitation, “how long you think Charley will want my services. Lady Frankland was speaking the other day of the improvement in his health—”
“Yes,” said the baronet, brightening up a little, for his invalid boy was his favourite. “We are greatly obliged to you, Campbell. Charley has brightened and improved amazingly since you came here.”
This was an embarrassing way of receiving Colin’s attempt at disengaging himself from Charley. The youth hesitated and stammered, and could not well make up his mind what to say next. In his perplexity he took out the letter which had stimulated him to this attempt. Sir Thomas, who was still a little impatient, took it out of his hands and read it. The baronet whistled under his breath with puzzled astonishment as he read. “What does it mean?” said Sir Thomas. “You declined to go to Oxford under my auspices, and now here is something about a scholarship and a competition. You want to go to the University after all—but why then reject my proposal when I made it?” said Colin’s patron, who thought hisprotégéhad chosen a most unlucky moment for changing his mind.
“I beg your pardon,” said Colin, “but I could not accept your offer at any time. I could not accept such a favour from any man; and I know no claim I have upon you to warrant—”
“Oh, stuff!” said Sir Thomas; “I know very well what are the obligations I am under to you, Campbell. You saved myson Harry’s life—we are all very sensible of your claims. I should certainly have expected you to help Harry as far as was possible—for he is like myself—he is more in the way of cricket and boating, and a day with the hounds when he can get it, than Greek; but I should have felt real pleasure,” said the baronet blandly, “in helping so deserving a young man, and one to whom we all feel so much indebted—”
“Thank you,” said Colin, who at that moment would have felt real pleasure in punching the head, or maltreating the person of the heir of Wodensbourne—“I suppose we have all some pride in one way or another. I am obliged to you, Sir Thomas, but I could not accept such a favour from you; whereas, a prize won at my own university,” said the young man, with a little elevation, “is no discredit, but—
“Discredit!” said Sir Thomas; “you must have a very strange idea of me, Mr. Campbell, if you imagine it discreditable to accept a kindness at my hands.”
“I beg your pardon,” again said Colin, who was at his wit’s end; “I did not mean to say anything uncivil; but I am Scotch. I dislike receiving favours. I prefer—”
Sir Thomas rubbed his hands. The apology of nationality went a long way with him, and restored his temper. “Yes, yes; I understand,” he said, with good-humoured superiority: “you prefer conferring favours—you like to keep the upper hand. I know a great deal of you Scotchmen; I flatter myself I understand your national character. I should like to know now,” said the baronet, confidentially, “if you are set upon becoming a Scotch minister, as you once told me, what good it will do you going to Oxford? Supposing you were to distinguish yourself, which I think very possible; supposing you were to take a—a second-class, or even a first-class, for example, what would be the good? The reputation and the—theprestigeand that sort of thing would be altogether lost in Scotland. All the upper classes you know have gone from the old Kirk, and you would not please the peasants a bit better for that—indeed, the idea of an Oxford first-class man spending his life preaching to a set of peasants is absurd,” said Sir Thomas. “I know more about Scotland than most men: I paid a great deal of attention to that Kirk question. If you go to Oxford I shall expect you to change your mind about your profession. If you don’t take to something more ambitious, at least you’ll go in for the Church.”
“I have always intended so,” said Colin, with his grand air, ignoring the baronet’s meaning. “To preach, if it is only topeasants, is more worth a man’s while than leading prayers for ever, like your curate here. I am only Scotch; I know no better,” said Colin. “We want changes in Scotland, it is true; but it is as good to work for Scotland as for England—better for me—and I should not grudge my first-class to the service of my native Church,” said the youth, with a movement of his head which tossed his heavy brown locks from his concealed forehead. Sir Thomas looked at him with a blank amazement, not knowing in the least what he meant. He thought the young fellow had been piqued somehow, most probably by Matty, and was in a heroical mood, which mood Colin’s patron did not pretend to understand.
“Well, well,” he said, with some impatience, “I suppose you will take your own way; but I must say it would seem very odd to see an Oxford first-class man in a queer little kirk in the Highlands, preaching a sermon an hour long. Of course, if you like it, that’s another matter; and the Scotch certainly do seem to like preaching,” said Sir Thomas, with natural wonder; “but we flattered ourselves you were comfortable here. I am sorry you want to go away.”
This was taking Colin on his undefended side. The words brought colour to his cheeks and moisture to his eye. “Indeed, I don’t want to go away,” he said, and paused, and faltered, and grew still more deeply crimson. “I can never forget; I can never think otherwise than with—with gratitude of Wodensbourne.” He was going to have said tenderness, but stopped himself in time; and even Sir Thomas, though his eyes were noway anointed with any special chrism of insight, saw the emotion in his face.
“Then don’t go,” said the straightforward baronet; “why should you go if you don’t want to? We are all most anxious that you should stay. Indeed, it would upset my plans dreadfully if you were to leave Charley at present. He’s a wonderful fellow, is Charley. He has twice as much brains as the rest of my boys, sir; and you understand him, Campbell. He is happier, he is stronger, he is even a better fellow—poor lad, when he’s ill he can’t be blamed for a bit of temper—since you came. Indeed, now I think it over,” said Sir Thomas, “you will mortify and disappoint me very much if you go away. I quite considered you had accepted Charley’s tutorship for a year at least. My dear, here’s a pretty business,” he said, turning round at the sound of steps and voices, which Colin had already discerned from afar with a feeling that he was now finallyvanquished, and could yield with a good grace; “here’s Campbell threatening to go away.”
“To go away!” said Lady Frankland. “Dear me, he can’t mean it. Why, he only came the other day; and Charley, you know”—said the anxious mother; but she recollected Harry’s objection to the tutor, and did not make any very warm opposition. Colin, however, was totally unconscious of the lukewarmness of the lady of the house. The little scream of dismay with which Miss Matty received the intelligence might have deluded a wiser man than he.
“Going away! I call it downright treachery,” said Miss Matty. “I think it is using you very unkindly, uncle; when he knows you put such dependence on him about Charley; and whenweknow the house has been quite a different thing since Mr. Campbell came,” said the little witch, with a double meaning, of which Colin, poor boy, swallowed the sweeter sense, without a moment’s hesitation.Heknew it was not the improvement in Charley’s temper which had made the house different to Matty; but Lady Frankland, who was not a woman of imagination, took up seriously what seemed to be the obvious meaning of the words.
“It is quite true. I am sure we are much obliged to Mr. Campbell,” she said; “Charley is quite an altered boy; and I had hoped, you were liking Wodensbourne. If we could do anything to make it more agreeable to you,” said Lady Frankland, graciously, remembering how Charley’s “temper” was the horror of the house. “I am sure Sir Thomas would not grudge—”
“Pray do not say any more,” said Colin, confused and blushing; “no house could be more—no house could besoagreeable to me. You are all very kind. It was only my—my own—”
What he was going to say is beyond the reach of discovery. He was interrupted by a simultaneous utterance from all the three persons present, of which Colin heard only the soft tones of Matty. “He does not mean it,” she said; “he only means to alarm us. I shall not say good-bye, nor farewell either. You shall have no good wishes if youthinkof going away. False as a Campbell,” said the siren under her breath, with a look which overpowered Colin. He never was quite sure what words followed from the elder people; but even Lady Frankland became fervent when she recalled what Charley had been before the advent of the tutor. “What we should do with him now, if Mr. Campbell was to leave and the house full of people, I tremble to think,” said the alarmed mother. When Colin returned to the house it was with a slightly flattered sense ofhis own value and importance new to him—with a sense too that duty had fully acquitted and justified inclination, and that he could not at the present moment leave his post. This delicious unction he laid to his soul while it was still thrilling with the glance and with the words which Matty, in her alarm, had used to prevent her slave’s escape. Whatever happened, he could not, he would not, go; better to perish with such a hope, than to thrive without it; and, after all, there was no need for perishing, and next year Oxford might still be practicable. So Colin said to himself, as he made his simple toilette for the evening, with a face which was radiant with secret sunshine, “It was only my—my own—.” How had he intended to complete that sentence which the Franklands took out of his mouth? Was he going to say interest, advantage, peace? The unfinished words came to his mind involuntarily when he was alone. They kept flitting in and out, disturbing him with vague touches of uneasiness, asking to be completed. “My own—only my own,” Colin said to himself as he went downstairs. He was saying over the words softly as he came to a landing, upon which there was a great blank staircase-window reaching down to the floor, and darkly filled at this present moment with a grey waste of sky and tumbling clouds, with a wild wind visibly surging through the vacant atmosphere, and conveying almost to the eye in palpable vision the same demonstration of its presence as it did to the ear. “My own—only my own. I wonder what you mean; the words sound quite sentimental,” said Miss Matty, suddenly appearing at Colin’s side, with a light in her hand. The young man was moved strangely; he could not tell why. “I meant my own life, I believe,” he said with a sudden impulse, unawares; “only my own life,” and went down the next flight of stairs before the young lady, not knowing what he was about. When he came to himself, and stood back, blushing with hot shame, to let her pass, the words came back in a dreary whirl, as if the wind had taken them up and tossed them at him, but of that wild windowful of night. His life—only his life; was that what he had put in comparison with Charley’s temper and Matty’s vanity, and given up with enthusiasm? Something chill, like a sudden cold current through his veins, ran to Colin’s heart for a moment. Next minute he was in the room, where bright lights, and lively talk, and all the superficial cordiality of prosperity and good-humour filled the atmosphere round him. Whatever the stake had been, the cast was over and the decision made.