Mr. Jordan had invited a large party of people to meet the Dowager
Countess; but the greatness of the leading light, which was to
illustrate his house, had blinded him to the companion stars that were
to twinkle in her company. The principal people about had consented
graciously to be reviewed by her ladyship, who, once upon a time, had
been a very great lady and fashionable potentate. A very little fashion
counts for much on the shores of the Holy Loch, and the population was
moved accordingly. But the young ladies, who accompanied the dowager,
were less carefully provided for. When Miss Frankland, who was
unquestionably the beauty of the party, cast a glance of careless but
acute observation round her, after all the gentlemen had returned to the
drawing-room, she saw nobody whom she cared to distinguish by her
notice. Most of the men about had a flavour of commerciality in their
talk, or their manner, or their whiskers. Most of them were rich, some
of them were very well bred and well educated, though the saucy beauty
could not perceive it; but there was not an individual among them who
moved her curiosity or her interest, except one who stood rather in the
background, and whose eyes kept seeking her with wistful devotion.
Colin had improved during the last year. He was younger than Miss
Frankland, a fact of which she was aware, and he was at the age upon
which a year tells mightily. Looking at him in the background, through
clouds of complacent people who felt themselves Colin’s superiors, even
an indifferent spectator might have distinguished the tall youth, with
those heaps of brown hair overshadowing the forehead which might have
been apostrophized as “domed for thought” if anybody could have seen it;
and in his eyes that gleam of things miraculous, that unconscious
surprise and admiration which would have given a touch of poetry to the
most commonplace countenance. But Miss Matty was not an indifferent
spectator. She was fond of him in her way as women are fond of a man
whom they never mean to love--fond of him as one is fond of the victim
who consents to glorify one’s triumph. As she looked at him, and saw how
he had improved, and perceived the faithful allegiance with which he
watched every movement she made, the heart of the beauty was touched.
Worship is sweet, even when it is only a country boy who bestows it--and
perhaps this country boy might turn out a genius or a poet. Not that
Matilda cared much for genius or poetry, but she liked everything which
bestows distinction, and was aware that in the lack of other titles, a
little notability, even in society, might be obtained if one was wise,
and knew how to manage it, even by such means. And besides all this,
honestly and at the foundation, she was fond of Colin. When she had
surveyed all the company, and had made up her mind that there was nobody
there in the least degree interesting, she held up her fan with a pretty
gesture, calling him to her. The lad made his way through the assembly
at that call with a smile and glow of exultation which it is impossible
to describe. His face was lighted up with a kind of celestial
intoxication. “Who is that very handsome young man?” the Dowager
Countess was moved to remark as he passed within her ladyship’s range of
vision, which was limited, for Lady Hallamshire was, like most other
people, shortsighted. “Oh, he is not a handsome young man, he is only
the tutor,” said one of the ladies of the Holy Loch; but,
notwithstanding, she too looked after Colin, with aroused curiosity. “I
suppose Matty Frankland must have met him in society,” said the Dowager,
who was the most comfortable of _chaperones_, and went on with her talk,
turning her eyeglass towards her pretty charge. As for the young men,
they stared at Colin with mingled consternation and wrath. What was he?
a fellow who had not a penny, a mere Scotch student, to be distinguished
by the prettiest girl in the room? for the aspiring people about the
Holy Loch, as well as in the other parts of Scotland, had come to
entertain that contempt for the national universities and national
scholarship which is so curious a feature in the present transition
state of the country. If Colin had been an Oxford man the west-country
people would have thought it quite natural, but a Scotch student did not
impress them with any particular respect.
“I am so glad to meet you again!” said Matty, with the warmest
cordiality, “but so surprised to see you here. What are you doing here?
why have you come away from that delicious Ramore, where I am sure I
should live for ever and ever if it were mine? What have you been doing
with yourself all this time? Come and tell me all about it; and I do so
want to know how everything is looking at that dear castle and in our
favourite glen. Don’t you remember that darling glen behind the church,
where we used to gather basketfuls of primroses--and all the lovely
mosses? I am dying to hear about everything and everybody. Do come and
sit down here, and tell me all.”
“Where shall I begin?” said Colin, who, utterly forgetful of his
position, and all the humilities incumbent on him in such an exalted
company, had instantly taken possession of the seat she pointed out to
him, and had placed himself according to her orders directly between her
and the company, shutting her into a corner. Miss Matty could see very
well all that was going on in the drawing-room, but Colin had his back
to the company, and had forgotten everything in the world except her
face.
“Oh, with yourself, of course,” said Matty. “I want to know all about
it; and, first of all, what are you doing among these sort of people?”
the young lady continued, with a little nod of her head towards the
assembled multitude, some of whom were quite within hearing.
“These sort of people have very little to say to me,” said Colin, who
suddenly felt himself elevated over their heads; “I am only the tutor;”
and the two foolish young creatures looked at each other, and laughed,
as if Colin of Ramore had been a prince in disguise, and his tutorship
an excellent joke.
“Oh, you are only the tutor?” said Miss Matty--“that is charming. Then
one will be able to make all sorts of use of you. Everybody is allowed
to maltreat a tutor. You will have to row us on the loch, and walk with
us to the glen, and carry our cloaks, and generally conduct yourself as
becomes a slave and vassal. As for me, I shall order you about with the
greatest freedom, and expect perfect obedience,” said the beauty,
looking with her eyes full of laughter into Colin’s face.
“All that goes without saying,” said Colin, who did not like to commit
himself to the French. “I almost think I have already proved my perfect
allegiance.”
“Oh, you were only a boy last year,” said Miss Matty, with some
evanescent change of colour, which looked like a blush to Colin’s
delighted eyes. “Now you are a man and a tutor, and we shall behave to
you accordingly. How lovely that glen was last spring, to be sure,”
continued the girl, with a little quite unconscious natural feeling; “do
you remember the day when it rained, and we had to wait under the
beeches, and when you imagined all sorts of things in the pattering of
the shower? Do you ever write any poetry now? I want so much to see what
you have been doing--since--” said the siren, who, half-touched by
nature in her own person, was still perfectly conscious of her power.
“Since!” Colin repeated the word over to himself with a flush of
happiness which, perhaps, no real good in existence could have equalled.
Poor boy! if he could but have known what had happened “since” in Miss
Matty’s experience--but, fortunately, he had not the smallest idea what
was involved in the season which the young lady had lately terminated,
or in the brilliant winter campaign in the country, which had brought
adorers in plenty, but nothing worthy of the beauty’s acceptance, to
Miss Matty’s feet. Colin thought only of the beatific dreams, the
faithful follies which had occupied his own juvenile imagination
“since.” As for the heroine herself, she looked slightly confused to
hear him repeat the word. She had meant it to produce its effect, but
then she was thinking solely of a male creature of her own species, and
not of a primitive, innocent soul like that which looked at her in a
glow of young delight out of Colin’s eyes. She was used to be admired
and complimented, and humoured to the top of her bent, but she did not
understand being believed in, and the new sensation somewhat flattered
and embarrassed the young woman of the world. She watched his look, as
he replied to her, and thereby added doubly, though she did not mean it,
to the effect of what she had said.
“I never write poetry,” said Colin, “I wish I could--I know how I should
use the gift; but I have a few verses about somewhere, I suppose, like
everybody else. Last spring I was almost persuaded I could do something
better; but that feeling lasts only so long as one’s inspiration lasts,”
said the youth, looking down, in his turn, lest his meaning might be
discovered too quickly in his eye.
And then there ensued a pause--a pause which was more dangerous than the
talk, and which Miss Matty made haste to break.
“Do you know you are very much changed?” she said. “You never did any of
this society-talk last year. You have been making friends with some
ladies somewhere, and they have taught you conversation. But, as for me,
I am your early friend, and I preferred you when you did not talk like
other people,” said Miss Matty, with a slight pout. “Tell me who has
been forming your mind?”
Perhaps it was fortunate for Colin at this moment that Lady Hallamshire
had become much bored by the group which had gathered round her sofa.
The dowager was clever in her way, and had written a novel or two, and
was accustomed to be amused by the people who had the honour of talking
to her. Though she was no longer a leader of fashion, she kept up the
manners and customs of that remarkable species of the human race, and
when she was bored, permitted her sentiments to be plainly visible in
her expressive countenance. Though it was the member for the county who
was enlightening her at that moment in the statistics of the West
Highlands, and though she had been in a state of great anxiety five
minutes before about the emigration which was depopulating the moors,
her ladyship broke in quite abruptly in the midst of the poor-rates with
a totally irrelevant observation--
“It appears to me that Matty Frankland has got into another flirtation;
I must go and look after her,” said the Dowager; and she smiled
graciously upon the explanatory member, and left him talking, to the
utter consternation of their hostess. Lady Hallamshire thought it
probable that the young man was amusing as well as handsome, or Matty
Frankland, who was a girl of discretion, would not have received him
into such marked favour. “Though I daresay there is nobody here worth
her trouble,” her chaperone thought as she looked round the room; but
anyhow a change was desirable. “Matty, mignonne, I want to know what you
are talking about,” she said, suddenly coming to anchor opposite the two
young people; and a considerable fuss ensued to find her ladyship a
seat, during which time Colin had a hundred minds to run away. The
company took a new centre after this performance on the part of the
great lady, and poor Colin, all at once, began to feel that he was doing
exactly the reverse of what was expected of him. He got up with a
painful blush as he met Mr. Jordan’s astonished eye. The poor boy did
not know that he had been much more remarked before: “flirting openly
with that dreadful little coquette Miss Frankland, and turning his back
upon his superiors,” as some of the indignant bystanders said. Even
Colin’s matronly friends, who pitied him and formed his mind,
disapproved of his behaviour. “She only means to make a fool of you, and
you ought not to allow yourself to be taken in by it,” said one of these
patronesses in his ear, calling him aside. But Fate had determined
otherwise.
“Don’t go away,” said Lady Hallamshire. “I like Matty to introduce all
her friends to me; and you two look as if you had known each other a
long time,” said the dowager, graciously; for she was pleased, like most
women, by Colin’s looks. “One would know him again if one met him,” she
added, in an audible aside; “he doesn’t look exactly like everybody
else, as most young men do. Who is he, Matty?” And Miss Frankland’s
_chaperone_ turned the light of her countenance full upon Colin, quite
indifferent to the fact that he had heard one part of her speech quite
as well as the other. When a fine lady consents to enter the outer
world, it is to be expected that she should behave herself as civilized
people do among savages, and the English among the other nations of the
world.
“Oh, yes! we have known each other a long time,” said Matty, partly with
a generous, partly with a mischievous, instinct. “My uncle knows Mr.
Campbell’s father very well, and Harry and he and I made acquaintance
when we were children. I am sure you must have heard how nearly Harry
was drowned once when we were at Kilchurn Castle. It was Mr. Campbell
who saved his life.”
“Oh!” said Lady Hallamshire; “but I thought that was”--and then she
stopped short. Looking at Colin again, her ladyship’s experienced eye
perceived that he was not arrayed with that perfection of apparel to
which she was accustomed; but at the same moment her eye caught his
glowing face, half pleased, half haughty with that pride of lowliness
which is of all pride the most defiant. “I am very glad to make Mr.
Campbell’s acquaintance,”--she went on so graciously that everybody
forgot the pause. “Harry Frankland is a very dear young friend of mine,
and we are all very much indebted to his deliverer.”
It was just what a distinguished matron would have said in the
circumstances in one of Lady Hallamshire’s novels; but, instead of
remaining overcome with grateful confusion, as the hero ought to have
done, Colin made an immediate reply.
“I cannot take the credit people give me,” said the lad, with a little
heat. “He happened to get into my boat when he was nearly
exhausted--that is the whole business. There has been much more talk
about it than was necessary. I cannot pretend even to be a friend of Mr.
Frankland,” said Colin, with the unnecessary explanatoriness of youth,
“and I certainly did not save his life.”
With which speech the young man disappeared out of sight amid the
wondering assembly, which privately designated him a young puppy and a
young prig, and by various other epithets, according to the individual
mind of the speaker. As for Lady Hallamshire, she was considerably
disgusted. “Your friend is original, I dare say; but I am not sure that
he is quite civil,” she said to Matty, who did not quite know whether to
be vexed or pleased by Colin’s abrupt withdrawal. Perhaps on the whole
the young lady liked him better for having a mind of his own,
notwithstanding his devotion, and for preferring to bestow his worship
without the assistance of spectators. If he had been a man in the least
eligible as a lover, Miss Frankland might have been of a different
opinion; but, as that was totally out of possibility, Matty liked, on
the whole, that he should do what was ideally right, and keep up her
conception of him. She gave her head a pretty toss of semi-defiance, and
went across the room to Mrs. Jordan, to whom she was very amiable and
caressing all the rest of the evening. But she still continued to watch
with the corner of her eye the tall boyish figure which was now and then
to be discerned in the distance, with those masses of brown hair heaped
like clouds upon the forehead, which Colin’s height made visible over
the heads of many very superior people. She knew he was watching her
and noted every movement she made, and she felt a little proud of the
slave, who, though he was only the tutor and a poor farmer’s son, had
something in his eyes which nobody else within sight had any inkling of.
Matty was rather clever in her way, which was as much different from
Colin’s as light from darkness. No man of a mental calibre like hers
could have found him out; but she had a little insight, as a woman,
which enabled her to perceive the greater height when she came within
sight of it. And then poor Colin, all unconsciously, had given her such
an advantage over him. He had laid his boy’s heart at her feet, and,
half in love, half in imagination, had made her the goddess of his
youth. If she had thought it likely to do him any serious damage,
perhaps Matty, who was a good girl enough, and was of some use to the
rector and very popular among the poor in her own parish, might have
done her duty by Colin, and crushed this pleasant folly in the bud. But
then it did not occur to her that a “friendship” of which it was so very
evident nothing could ever come, could harm anybody. It did not occur to
her that an ambitious Scotch boy, who knew no more of the world than a
baby, and who had been fed upon all the tales of riches achieved and
glories won which are the common fare of many a homely household, might
possibly entertain a different opinion. So Matty asked all kinds of
questions about him of Mrs. Jordan, and gave him now and then a little
nod when she met his eye, and generally kept up a kind of special
intercourse far more flattering to the youth than ordinary conversation.
Poor Colin neither attempted nor wished to defend himself. He put his
head under the yoke, and hugged his chains. He collected his verses,
poor boy! when he went to his own room that night--verses which he knew
very well were true to her, but in which it would be rather difficult to
explain the fatal stroke--the grievous blow on which he had expatiated
so vaguely that it might be taken to mean the death of his lady rather
than the simple fact that she did not come to Kilchurn Castle when he
expected her. How to make her understand that this was the object of his
lamentations puzzled him a little; for Colin knew enough of romance to
be aware that the true lover does not venture to address the princess
until he has so far conquered fortune as to make his suit with honour to
her and fitness in the eyes of the world.
It was thus that the young tutor sat in his bare little room out of the
way, and, with eyes that glowed over his midnight candle, looked into
the future, and calculated visionary dates at which, if all went with
him as he hoped, he might lay his trophies at his lady’s feet. It is
true that Matty herself fully intended by that time to have daughters
ready to enter upon the round of conquest from which she should have
retired into matron dignity; but no such profanity ever occurred to
Colin. Thus the two thought of each other as they went to their
rest--the one with all the delusions of heroic youthful love, the other
with no delusions at all, but a half gratitude, half affection--a
woman’s compassionate fondness for the man who had touched her heart a
little by giving her his, but whom it was out of the question ever to
think of loving. And so the coils of Fate began to throw themselves
around the free-born feet of young Colin of Ramore.