It was some time before Colin recovered his composure, or found it
possible to console himself for the failure of his hopes. He wrote a
great deal of poetry in the meantime--or rather of verses which looked
wonderfully like poetry, such as young men of genius are apt to produce
under such circumstances. The chances are, that if he had confided them
to any critic of a sympathetic mind, attempts would have been made to
persuade Colin that he was a poet. But luckily Lauderdale was not at
hand, and there was no one else to whom the shy young dreamer would have
disclosed himself. He sent some of his musings to the magazines, and so
added a little excitement and anxiety to his life. But nobody knew Colin
in that little world where, as in other worlds, most things go by
favour, and impartial appreciation is comparatively unknown. The editors
most probably would have treated their unknown correspondent in exactly
the same manner had he been a young Tennyson. As it was, Colin did not
quite know what to think about his repeated failures in this respect.
When he was despondent he became disgusted with his own productions, and
said to himself that of course such maudlin verse could be procured by
the bushel, and was not worthy of paper and print. But in other moods
the lad imagined he must have some enemy who prejudiced the editorial
world, and shut against him the gates of literary fame. In books all the
heroes, who could do nothing else, found so ready a subsistence by means
of magazines, that the poor boy was naturally puzzled to find that all
his efforts could not gain him a hearing. And it began to be rather
important to him to find something to do. During the previous summers
Colin had not disdained the farm and its labours, but had worked with
his father and brothers without any sense of incongruity. But now
matters were changed. Miss Matty, with her curls and her smiles, had
bewitched the boy out of his simple innocent life. It did not seem
natural that the hand which she consented to touch with her delicate
fingers should hold the plough or the reaping hook, or that her
companion in so many celestial rambles should plod through the furrows
at other times, or go into the rough drolleries of the harvest field.
Colin began to think that the life of a farmer’s son at Ramore was
inconsistent with his future hopes, and there was nothing else for it
but teaching, since so little was to be made of the magazines. When he
had come to himself and began to see the surrounding circumstances with
clearer eyes, Colin, who had no mind to be dependent, but meant to make
his own way as was natural to a Scotch lad of his class, bethought
himself of the most natural expedient. He had distinguished himself at
college, and it was not difficult to find the occupation he wanted.
Perhaps he was glad to escape from the primitive home, from the mother’s
penetrating looks, and all the homely ways of which the ambitious boy
began to be a little impatient. He had come to the age of discontent. He
had begun to look forward no longer to the vague splendours of boyish
imagination, but to elevation in the social scale, and what he heard
people call success in life. A year or two before it had not occurred to
Colin to consider the circumstances of his own lot;--his ambition
pointed only to ideal grandeur, unembarrassed by particulars--and it was
very possible for the boy to be happy, thinking of some incoherent
greatness to come, while engaged in the humblest work, and living in the
homeliest fashion. But the time had arrived when the pure ideal had to
take to itself some human garments, and when the farmer’s son became
aware that a scholar and a gentleman required a greater degree of
external refinement in his surroundings. His young heart was wounded by
this new sense, and his visionary pride offended by the thought that
these external matters could count for anything in the dignity of a man.
But Colin had to yield like every other. He loved his family no less,
but he was less at home among them. The inevitable disruption was
commencing, and already, with the quick insight of her susceptible
nature, the mistress of Ramore had discovered that the new current was
setting in, that the individual stream of Colin’s life was about to
disengage itself, and that her proud hopes for her boy were to be sealed
by his separation from her. The tender-hearted woman said nothing of it,
except by an occasional pathetic reflection upon things in general,
which went to Colin’s heart, and which he understood perfectly; but
perhaps, though no one would have confessed as much, it was a relief to
all when the scholar-son, of whom everybody at Ramore was so proud, went
off across the loch, rowed by two of his brothers, with his portmanteau
and the first evening coat he had ever possessed, to Ardmartin, the fine
house on the opposite bank, where he was to be tutor to Mr. Jordan’s
boys, and eat among strangers the bread of his own toil.
The mistress stood at the door shading her eyes with her hand, and
looking after the boat as it shot across the bright water. Never at its
height of beauty had the Holy Loch looked more fair. The sun was
expanding and exulting over all the hills, searching into every hollow,
throwing up unthought-of tints, heaps of moss, and masses of rock, that
no one knew of till that moment; and with the sunshine went flying
shadows that rose and fell like the lifting of an eyelid. The gleam of
the sun before she put up her hand to shade her face fell upon the tear
in the mistress’s eye, and hung a rainbow upon the long lash, which was
wet with that tender dew. She looked at her boys gliding over the loch
through this veil of fairy colours, all made out of a tear, and the
heart in her tender bosom beat with a corresponding conjunction of pain
and happiness. “He’ll never more come back to bide at home like his
father’s son,” she said to herself, softly, with a pang of natural
mortification; “but, eh, I’m a thankless woman to complain, and him so
weel and so good, and naething in fant but nature,” added the mother,
with all the compunction of true love; and so stood gazing till the boat
had gone out of hearing, and had begun to enter that sweet shadow of the
opposite bank, projected far into the loch, which plunged the whole
landscape into a dazzling uncertainty, and made it a doubtful matter
which was land and which was water. Colin himself, touched by the
loveliness of the scene, had paused just then to look down the shining
line to where this beatified paradise of water opened out into the
heaven of Clyde. And to his mother’s eyes gazing after him, the boat
seemed to hang suspended among the sweet spring foliage of the Lady’s
Glen, which lay reflected, every leaf and twig, in the sweeter loch.
When somebody called her indoors she went away with a sigh. Was it
earth, or a vision of Paradise, or “some unsubstantial fairy place?” The
sense of all this loveliness struck intense, with almost a feeling of
pain, upon the gentle woman’s poetic heart.
And it was in such a scene that Colin wrote the verses which borrowed
from the sun and the rain prismatic colours like those of his mother’s
tears, and were as near poetry as they could possibly be to miss that
glory. Luckily for him he had no favourite confidant at hand to persuade
him that he was a poet; so the verse-making did him nothing but good,
providing a safety-valve for that somewhat stormy period of his
existence.
Mr. Jordan was very rich and very liberal, and, indeed, lavish of the
money which had elevated him above all his early friends and
associations. He had travelled, he bought pictures, he prided himself
upon his library, and he was very good to his young tutor, who, he told
everybody, was “a lad of genius;” and though naturally, even with all
this, Colin’s existence was not one of unmingled bliss, the change was
good for him. As soon as he had left Ramore he began to look back to it
with longing, as was natural to his years. The sense that he had that
home behind him, with everybody ready to stand by him whatever trouble
he might fall into, and every heart open to hear and sympathize in all
the particulars of his life, restored the young man all at once to
content and satisfaction with the homely household that loved him. When
he was there life looked gray and sombre in all its sober-coloured
garments; but when he looked across the loch at the white house on the
hillside, that little habitation had regained its ideal character. He
had some things to endure, as was natural, that galled his high spirit,
but, on the whole, he was happier than if he had still been at Ramore.
And so the summer passed on. He had sent his answer to Sir Thomas
without any delay--an answer in which, on the whole, his father
concurred--written in a strain of lofty politeness which would not have
misbecome a young prince. “He was destined for the Church of Scotland,”
Colin wrote, “and such being the case, it was best that he should
content himself with the training of a Scotch university. Less perfect,
no doubt,” the boy had said, with a kind of haughty humility; “but,
perhaps, better adapted to the future occupations of a Scotch
clergyman.” And then he went on to offer thanks in a magnificent way,
calculated to overwhelm utterly the good-natured baronet, who had never
once imagined that the pride of the farmer’s son would be wounded by his
proposal. The answer had been sent, and no notice had been taken of it.
It was months since then, and not a word of Sir Thomas Frankland or his
family had been heard about the Holy Loch. They seemed to have
disappeared altogether back again into their native firmament, never
more to dazzle the eyes of beholders in the west country. It was hard
upon Colin thus to lose, at a stroke, not only the hope on which he had
built so securely, but at the same time a great part of the general
stimulation of his life. Not only the visionary budding love which had
filled him with so many sweet thoughts, but even the secret rivalry and
opposition which no one knew of, had given strength and animation to his
life--and now both seemed to have departed together. He mused over it
often with wonder, asking himself if Lauderdale was right; if it was
true that most things come to nothing; and whether meetings and
partings, which looked as if they must tell upon life for ever and ever,
were, after all, of not half so much account as the steady routine of
existence? The youth perplexed himself daily with such questions, and
wrote to Lauderdale many a long mysterious epistle which puzzled his
anxious friend, who could not make out what had set Colin’s brains
astray out of all the confident philosophies of his years. When the
young man, in his hours of leisure, climbed up the woody ravine close
by, to where the burn took long leaps over the rocks, flinging itself
down in diamonds and showers of spray into the heart of the deep summer
foliage in the Lady’s Glen, and from that height looked down upon the
castle on the other side, seated among its lawns and trees on the soft
promontory which narrowed the entrance of the loch, Colin could not but
feel the unexpected void which was suddenly made in his life. The
Frankland family had been prominent objects on his horizon for a number
of years. In disliking or liking, they had been always before him; and
even at his most belligerent period, there was something not
disagreeable to the lad’s fancy, at least, in this link of connexion
with a world so different from his own--a world in which, however
commonplace might be the majority of the actors, such great persons as
were to be had in the age might still be found. And now they had gone
altogether away out of Colin’s reach or ken; and he was left in his
natural position nowise affected by his connexion with them. It was a
strange feeling, and notwithstanding the scorn with which he rejected
the baronet’s kindness and declined his patronage, much disappointment
and mortification mingled with the sense of surprise in Colin’s mind.
“It is all as it ought to be,” he said to himself many times as he
pondered over it; but, perhaps, if it had been quite as he expected, he
would not have needed to impress that sentiment on his mind by so many
repetitions. These reflections still recurred to him all the summer
through whenever he had any time to himself. But Colin’s time was not
much at his own disposal. Nature had given to this country lad a
countenance which propitiated the world. Not that it was handsome in the
abstract, or could bear examination feature by feature; but there were
few people who could resist the mingled shyness and frankness of the
eyes with which Colin looked out upon the miraculous universe,
perceiving perpetual wonders. The surprise of existence was still in his
face, indignant though he would have been had anybody told him so; and
tired people of the world, who knew better than they practised, took
comfort in talking to the youth, who, whatever he might choose to say,
was still looking as might be seen, with fresh eyes at the dewy earth,
and saw everything through the atmosphere of the morning. This
unconscious charm of his told greatly upon women, and most of all upon
women who were older than himself. The young ladies were not so sure of
him, for his fancy was preoccupied; but he gained many friends among the
matrons whom he encountered, and generally was a popular individual. And
then hospitality reigns paramount on those sweet shores of the Holy
Loch. Mr. Jordan filled his handsome house with a continual succession
of guests from all quarters; and as neither the host nor hostess was in
the least degree amusing, Colin’s services were in constant requisition.
Sometimes the company was good, often indifferent; but, at all events,
it occupied the youth, and kept him from too much inquisition into the
early troubles of his own career.
His life went on in this fashion until September brought sportsmen in
flocks to the heathery braes of the loch. Colin, whose engagement was
but a temporary one, was beginning to look forward once again to his old
life in Glasgow--to the close little room in Donaldson’s Land, and the
long walks and longer talks with Lauderdale, which were almost his only
recreation. Perhaps the idea was not so agreeable to him as in former
years. Somehow, he was going back with a duller idea of existence, with
no radiance of variable light upon his horizon; and in the absence of
that fairy illumination the natural circumstances became more palpable,
and struck him with a sense of their poverty and meanness such as he had
never felt before. He had to gulp down a little disgust as he thought of
his attic, and even, in the involuntary fickleness of his youth, was not
quite so sure of enjoying Lauderdale’s philosophy as he had been for all
those bygone years.
He was in this state of mind when he heard of a new party of visitors
who were to arrive the day after at Ardmartin--a distinguished party of
visitors, fine people, whom Mr. Jordan had met somewhere in the world,
and who had deigned to forget his lack of rank, and even of interest, in
his wealth, and his grouse, and the convenient situation of his house;
for Colin’s employer was not moderately rich--a condition which does a
man no good in society--but had heaps upon heaps of money, or was
supposed to have it, which comes to about the same, and was respected
accordingly. Colin listened but languidly to the scraps of talk he heard
about these fine people. There was a dowager countess among them, whose
name abstracted the lady of the house from all other considerations. As
for Colin, he was still too young to care for dowagers; he heard without
hearing of all the preparations that were to be made, and the exertions
that were thought necessary in order to make Ardmartin agreeable to so
illustrious a party, and paid very little attention to anything that was
going on, hoping within himself to make his escape from the fuss of the
reception, and have a little time to himself. On the afternoon on which
they were expected he betook himself to the hills, as soon as his work
with his pupils was over. It had been raining as usual, and everything
shone and glistened in the sun, which blazed all over the braes with a
brightness that did not neutralize the chill of the season. The air was
so still that Colin heard the crack of the sportsmen’s guns from
different points around him, miles apart from each other, and could
even, on the height where he stood, make out the throb of the little
steamer which was progressing through the loch at his feet, reflected to
the minutest touch, from its pennon of white steam at the funnel to the
patches of colour among its passengers on the deck, in the clear water
over which it glided. The young man pursued his walk till the shadows
began to gather, and the big bell of Ardmartin pealed out its summons to
dress into all the echoes as he reached the gate. The house looked
crowded to the very door, where it had overflowed in a margin of
servants, some of whom were still unloading the last carriage as Colin
entered. He pursued his way to his own room languidly enough, for he was
tired, and he was not much interested in anything he personally was
likely to hear or see.
But as he went up the grand staircase, he passed a door which was ajar,
and from which came the sound of an animated conversation. Colin started
as if he had received a blow, as one of these voices fell on his ear. He
came to a dead pause in the gallery upon which this room opened, and
stood listening, unconscious of the surprised looks of somebody’s maid,
who passed him with her lady’s dress in her arms, and looked very
curiously at the tutor. Colin stopped short and listened, suddenly
roused up to a degree of interest which brought the colour to his cheek
and the light to his eye. He thought all the ladies of the party must be
there, so varied was the pleasant din and so many the voices; but he had
been standing breathless, in the most eager pose of listening, for
nearly half the time allowed for dressing, before he heard again the
voice which had arrested him. Then, when he began to imagine that it
must have been a dream, the sound struck his ear once more--a few brief
syllables, a sweet, sudden laugh, and again silence. Was it _her_ voice?
or was it only a trick of fancy? While he stood lingering, wondering,
straining his ear for a repetition of the sound, the door opened softly,
and various white figures in dressing-gowns flitted off upstairs and
downstairs, some of them uttering little exclamations of fright at sight
of the alarming apparition of a man. It was pretty to see them
dispersing, like so many white doves, from that momentary confabulation;
but _she_ was not among them. Colin went up to his room and dressed with
lightning speed, chafing within himself at the humble place which he was
expected to take at the table. When he went into the dining-room, as
usual, all the rest of the party were taking their places. The only
womankind distinctly within Colin’s sight was a lady of fifty, large
enough to make six Matildas. He could not see _her_ though he strained
his eyes up and down through the long alley of fruits and flowers.
Though he was not twenty, and had walked about ten miles that afternoon
over the wholesome heather, the poor young fellow could not eat any
dinner. He had been placed beside a heavy old man to amuse him, whom
his employer thought might be useful to the young student; but Colin had
not half a dozen words to spend upon any one. Was _she_ here? or was it
mere imagination which brought down to him now and then, through the
pauses of the conversation, a momentary tone that was like hers? When
the ladies left the room the young man rushed, though it was not his
office, to open the door for them. Another moment and Colin was in
paradise--the paradise of fools. How was it possible that he could have
been deceived? The little start with which she recognised him, the
movement of surprise which made her drop her handkerchief and brought
the colour to her cheek, rapt the lad into a feeling more exquisite than
any he had known all his life. She smiled; she gave him a rapid, sweet
look of recognition, which was made complete by that start of surprise.
She was here, under the same roof--she whom he had never hoped to see
again. Colin fell headlong into the unintended snare. He sat pondering
over her look and her startled gesture all the tedious time, while the
other men drank their wine, without being at all aware what divine
elixir was in _his_ cup. Her look of sweet wonder kept shining ever
brighter and brighter before his imagination. Was it wonder only, or
some dawning of another sentiment? If she had spoken, the spell might
have been less powerful. A crowd of fairy voices kept whispering all
manner of delicious follies in Colin’s ear, as he sat waiting for the
moment when he could follow her. Imagination did everything for him in
that moment of expectation and unlooked-for delight.