The parting of the two who had been thrown so much together, who had
thought so much of each other, and who had, notwithstanding, so few
things in common, was as near an absolute parting as is practicable in
this world of constant commotion, where everybody meets everybody else
in the most unlikely regions. Colin dared not propose to write to her;
dared not, indeed--being withheld by the highest impulses of
honour--venture to say to her what was in his heart; and Miss Matty
herself was a little silent--perhaps a little moved--and could not utter
any commonplaces about meeting again, as she had intended to do. So they
said good-bye to each other in a kind of absolute way, as if it might be
for ever and ever. As for Matty, who was not in love, but whose heart
was touched, and who had a vague, instinctive sense that she might never
more meet anybody in her life like this country lad--perhaps she had
enough generosity left in her to feel that it would be best they should
not meet again. But Colin had no such thoughts. He felt in his heart
that one time--how or when he knew not--he should yet go to her feet and
offer what he had to offer: everything else in the world except that one
thing was doubtful to Colin, but concerning that he was confident, and
entertained no fear. And so they parted; she, perhaps, for half an hour
or so, the most deeply moved of the two. Miss Matty, however, was just
as captivating as usual in the next house they went to, where there were
one or two people worth looking at, and the company in general was more
interesting than at Ardmartin; but Colin, for his part, spent most of
the evening on the hillside, revolving in the silence a hundred
tumultuous thoughts. It was the end of September, and the nights were
cold on the Holy Loch. There was not even a moon to enliven the
landscape, and all that could be seen was the cold, blue glimmer of the
water, upon which Colin looked down with a kind of desolate sense of
elevation--elevation of the mind and of the heart, which made the grief
of parting look like a grand moral agent, quickening all his powers, and
concentrating his strength. Henceforward the strongest of personal
motives was to inspire him in all his conflicts. He was going into the
battle of life with his lady’s colours on his helmet, like a knight of
romance, and failure was not to be thought of as a possibility. As he
set his face to the wind, going back to Ardmartin, the pale sky
lightened over the other side of the loch, and underneath the breaking
clouds, which lay so black on the hills, Colin saw the distant glimmer
of a light, which looked like the light in the parlour window at Ramore.
Just then a sudden gust swept across the hill-side, throwing over him a
shower of falling leaves, and big rain-drops from the last shower. There
was not a soul on the road but Colin himself, nor anything to be seen
far or near, except the dark tree-tops in the Lady’s Glen, which were
sighing in the night wind, and the dark side of Ardmartin, where all the
shutters are closed, and one soft star hanging among the clouds just
over the spot where that little friendly light in the farmhouse of
Ramore held up its glimmer of human consolation in the darkness. It was
not Hero’s torch to light her love--was it, perhaps, a sober gleam of
truth and wisdom to call the young Leander back from those bitter waters
in which he could but perish? All kinds of fancies were in Colin’s mind
as he went back, facing the wind, to the dull, closed up house, from
which the enchantment had departed; but among them there occurred no
thought of discouragement from this pursuit upon which now his heart was
set. He would have drowned himself cauld he have imagined it possible
that he could cease to love--and so long as he loved how was it possible
to fail?
“And _must_ you be a Scotch minister?” When Colin went home a fortnight
later to make his preparations for returning to the University, he was
occupied, to the exclusion of almost all other questions, by revolving
this. It is true that at his age, and with his inexperience, it was
possible to imagine that even a Scotch minister, totally unfavoured by
fortune, might, by mere dint of genius, raise himself to heights of fame
sufficient to bring Sir Thomas Frankland’s niece within his reach--but
the thing was unlikely, even to the lively imagination of twenty. And it
was the fact that Colin had no special “vocation” towards the profession
for which he was being trained. He had been educated and destined for it
all his life, and his thoughts had a natural bias that way. But
otherwise there was no personal impulse in his mind towards what Mrs.
Jordan called “the work of the ministry.” Hitherto his personal impulses
had been neither for nor against. Luckily for Colin, and many of his
contemporaries, there were so many things to object to in the Church of
Scotland, so many defects of order and external matters which required
reformation, that they were less strongly tempted to become sceptical in
matters of faith than their fellows elsewhere. As for Colin himself, he
had fallen off no doubt from the certainty of his boyhood upon many
important matters; but the lad, though he was a Scotchman, was happily
illogical, and suffered very little by his doubts. Nothing could have
made him sceptical, in any real sense of the word, and accordingly there
was no repulsion in Colin’s mind against his future profession. But now!
He turned it over in his mind night and day in the interval between
Matty’s departure and his own return to Ramore. What if, instead of a
Scotch minister, incapable of promotion, and to whom ambition itself was
unlawful, he were to address himself to the Bar, where there were at
least chances and possibilities of fame? He was occupied with this
question, to the exclusion of every other, as he crossed the loch in the
little steamer, and landed on the pier near Ramore, where his young
brothers met him, eager to carry his travelling-bag, and convey him home
in triumph. Colin was aware that such a proposal on his part would
occasion grievous disappointment at home, and he did not know how to
introduce the subject, or disclose his wavering wishes. It was a
wonderful relief, as well as confusion to him, when he entered the
Ramore parlour, to find Lauderdale in possession of the second
arm-chair, opposite the mistress’s, which was sacred to visitors. He had
arrived only the evening before, having left Glasgow “for a holiday,
like everybody else, in the saut-water season; the first I ever mind of
having in my life,” he said, with a certain boyish satisfaction,
stretching out his long limbs by the parlour fire.
“It’s ower cauld to have much good of the water,” said the mistress;
“the boat’s no laid up yet, waiting for Colin, but the weather’s awfu’
winterly--no to say soft,” she added, with a little sigh, “for its aye
soft weather among the lochs, though we’ve had less rain than common
this year.”
And as the mistress spoke, the familiar, well-known rain came sweeping
down over the hills. It had the usual effect upon the mind of the
sensitive woman. “We maun take a’ the good we can of you, laddie,” she
said, laying her kind hand on her boy’s shoulder, “it’s only a sight we
get now in passing. He’s owre much thought of, and made of, to spend his
time at hame,” the mistress added, turning, with a half-reproachful
pride to Lauderdale; “I’ll be awfu’ sorry if the rain lasts, on your
account. But, for myself, I could put up with a little soft weather, to
see mair of Colin; no that I want him to stay at hame when he might be
enjoying himself,” she continued, with a compunction. Soft weather on
the Holy Loch signified rain and mist, and everything that was most
discouraging to Mrs. Campbell’s soul, but she was ready to undergo
anything the skies could inflict upon her, if fortified by the society
of her son.
It was the second night after his return before Colin could make up his
mind to introduce the subject of which his thoughts were full. Tea was
over by that time, and all the household assembled in the parlour. The
farmer himself had just laid down his newspaper, from which he had been
reading scraps of county gossip aloud, somewhat to the indignation of
the mistress, who, for her part, liked to hear what was going on in the
world, and took a great interest in Parliament and the foreign
intelligence. “I canna say that I’m heeding about the muckle apple
that’s been grown in Clydesdale, nor the new bailies in Greenock,” said
the farmer’s wife. “If you would read us something wise-like about thae
poor oppressed Italians, or what Louiss Napoleon is thinking about--I
canna excuse him for what they ca’ the _coo-detaw_,” said Mrs. Campbell;
“but for a’ that, I take a great interest in him;” and with this the
mistress took up her knitting with a pleasant anticipation of more
important news to come.
“There’s naething in the _Herald_ about Louiss Napoleon,” said the
farmer, “nor the Italians neither--no that I put much faith in thae
Italians; they’ll quarrel amang themselves when there’s naebody else to
quarrel wi’--though I’m no saying onything against Cavour and Garibaldi.
The paper’s filled full o’ something mair immediately interesting--at
least, it ought to have mair interest to you wi’ a son that’s to be a
minister. Here’s three columns mair about that Dreepdaily case. It may
be a grand thing for popular rights, but it’s an awfu’ ordeal for a man
to gang through,” said big Colin, looking ruefully at his son.
“I was looking at that,” said Lauderdale. “It’s his prayers the folk
seem to object to most--and no wonder. I’ve heard the man mysel’, and
his sermon was not bad reasoning, if anybody wanted reasoning; but it’s
a wonderful thing to me the way that new preachers take upon them to
explain matters to the Almighty,” said Colin’s friend reflectively. “So
far as I can see, we’ve little to ask in our worship; but we have an
awfu’ quantity of things to explain.”
“It is an ordeal I could never submit to,” said Colin, with perhaps a
little more heat than was necessary. “I’d rather starve than be set up
as a target for a parish. It is quite enough to make a cultivated clergy
impossible for Scotland. Who would submit to expose one’s life, all
one’s antecedents, all one’s qualities of mind and language to the
stupid criticism of a set of boors? It is a thing I never could submit
to,” said the lad, meaning to introduce his doubts upon the general
subject by this violent means.
“I dinna approve of such large talking,” said the farmer, laying down
his newspaper. “It’s a great protection to popular rights. I would
sooner run the risk of disgusting a fastidious lad now and then, than
put in a minister that gives nae satisfaction; and if you canna submit
to it, Colin, you’ll never get a kirk, which would be worse than
criticism,” said his father, looking full into his face. The look
brought a conscious colour to Colin’s cheeks.
“Well,” said the young man, feeling himself driven into a corner, and
taking what courage he could from the emergency, “one might choose
another profession;” and then there was a pause, and everybody in the
room looked with alarm and amazement on the bold speaker. “After all,
the Church is not the only thing in Scotland,” said Colin, feeling the
greatness of his temerity. “Nobody ventures to say it is in a
satisfactory state. How often do I hear you criticising the sermon and
finding fault with the prayers? and, as for Lauderdale, he finds fault
with everything. Then, look how much a man has to bear before he gets a
church as you say. As soon as he has his presentation the Presbytery
comes together and asks if there are any objections; and then the parish
sits upon the unhappy man; and, when everybody has had a turn at him,
and all his peculiarities and personal defects and family history have
been discussed before the Presbytery--and put in the newspapers, if they
happen to be amusing--then the poor wretch has to sign a confession
which nobody--”
“Stop you there, Colin, my man,” said the farmer, “that’s enough at one
time. I wouldna say that you were a’thegither wrong as touching the
sermon and the prayers. It’s awfu’ to go in from the like of this
hill-side and weary the very heart out of you in a close kirk, listening
to a man preaching that has nothing in this world to say. I am whiles
inclined to think--” said big Colin, thoughtfully--“laddies, you may as
well go to your beds. You’ll see Colin the morn, and ye canna understand
what we’re talking about. I am whiles disposed to think,” he continued
after a pause, during which the younger members of the family had left
the room, after a little gentle persuasion on the part of the mistress,
“when I go into the kirk on a bonnie day, such as we have by times on
the lock baith in summer and winter, that it’s an awfu’ waste of time.
You lose a’ the bonnie prospect, and you get naething but weariness for
your pains. I’ve aye been awfu’ against set prayers read out of a book;
but I canna but allow the English chapel has a kind of advantage in
that, for nae fool can spoil your devotion there, as I’ve heard it done
many and many’s the time. I ken our minister’s prayers very near as well
as if they were written down,” said the farmer of Ramore, “and the maist
part of them is great nonsense. Ony little scraps o’ real supplication
there may be in them, you could get through in five minutes; the rest is
a’ remarks, that I never can discriminate if they’re meant for me or for
the Almighty; but my next neibor would think me an awfu’ heathen if he
heard what I’m saying,” he continued, with a smile; “and I’m far from
sure that I would get a mair merciful judgment from the wife herself.”
The mistress had been very busy with her knitting while her husband was
speaking; but, notwithstanding her devotion to her work, she was uneasy
and could not help showing it. “If we had been our lane it would have
been naething,” she said to Colin, privately; “but afore yon man that’s
a stranger and doesna ken!” With which sentiment she sat listening, much
disturbed in her mind. “It’s no a thing to say before the bairns,” she
said, when she was thus appealed to, “nor before folk that dinna ken
you. A stranger might think you were a careless man to hear you speak,”
said Mrs. Campbell, turning to Lauderdale with bitter vexation, “for a’
that you havena missed the kirk half a dozen times a’ the years I have
kent you--and that’s a long time,” said the mother, lifting hers soft
eyes to her boy. When she looked at him she remembered that he too had
been rash in his talk. “You’re turning awfu’ like your father, Colin,”
said the mistress, “taking up the same thoughtless way of talking. But I
think different for a’ you say. Our ain kirk is aye our ain kirk to you
as well as to me, in spite o’ your speaking. I’m well accustomed to
their ways,” she said, with a smile, to Lauderdale, who, so far from
being the dangerous observer she thought him, had gone off at a tangent
into his own thoughts.
“The Confession of Faith is a real respectable historical document,”
said Lauderdale. “I might not like to commit myself to a’ it says, if
you were to ask me; but then I’m not the kind o’ man that has a heart to
commit myself to anything in the way of intellectual truth. I wouldna
bind myself to say that I would stand by any document a year after it
was put forth, far less a hundred years. There’s things in it naebody
believes--for example, about the earth being made in six days; but I
would not advise a man to quarrel with his kirk and his profession for
the like of that. I put no dependence on geology for my part, nor any of
the sciences. How can I tell but somebody might make a discovery the
morn that would upset all their fine stories? But, on the whole, I’ve
very little to say against the Confession. It’s far more guarded about
predestination and so forth than might have been expected. Every man of
common sense believes in predestination; though I would not be the man
to commit myself to any statement on the subject. The like of me is good
for little,” said Colin’s friend, stretching his long limbs towards the
fire, “but I’ve great ambition for that callant. He’s not a common
callant, though I’m speaking before his face,” said Lauderdale; “it
would be terrible mortifying to me to see him put himself in a corner
and refuse the yoke.”
“If I cannot bear the yoke conscientiously, I cannot bear it at all,”
said Colin, with a little heat. “If _you_ can’t put your name to what
you don’t believe, why should I?--and as for ambition,” said the lad,
“ambition! what does it mean?--a country church, and two or three
hundred ploughmen to criticise me, and the old wives to keep in good
humour, and the young ones to drink tea with--is that work for a man?”
cried the youth, whose mind was agitated, and who naturally had said a
good deal more than he intended to say. He looked round in a little
alarm after this rash utterance, not knowing whether he had been right
or wrong in such a disclosure of his sentiments. The father and mother
looked at each other, and then turned their eyes simultaneously upon
their son. Perhaps the mistress had a glimmering of the correct meaning
which Colin would not have betrayed wittingly had it cost him his life.
“Eh, Colin, sometime ye’ll think better,” she cried under her
breath--“after a’ our pride in you and our hopes!” The tears came into
her eyes as she looked at him. “It’s mair honour to serve God than to
get on in this world,” said the mistress. The disappointment went to her
heart, as Colin could see; she put her hands hastily to her eyes to
clear away the moisture which dimmed them. “It’s maybe naething but a
passing fancy--but it’s no what I expected to hear from any bairn of
mine,” she said with momentary bitterness. As for the farmer, he looked
on with a surprised and inquiring countenance.
“There has some change come over you, Colin--what has happened?” said
his father. “I’m no a man that despises money, nor thinks it a sin to
get on in the world, but it’s only fools that quarrel wi’ what’s within
their reach for envy of what they can never win to. If ye had displayed
a strong bent any other way I wouldna have minded,” said big Colin. “But
it’s the new-fangled dishes at Ardmartin that have spoiled the callant’s
digestion; he’ll come back to his natural inclination when he’s been at
home for a day or two,” the farmer added, laying his large hand on his
son’s shoulder with a pressure which meant more than his words; but the
youth was vexed, and impatient, and imagined himself laughed at, which
is the most dreadful of insults at Colin’s age, and in his
circumstances. He paid no attention to his father’s looks, but plunged
straightway into vehement declaration of his sentiments, to which the
elder people around him listened with many complications of feeling
unknown to Colin. The lad thought, as was natural at his years, that
nobody had ever felt before him the same bondage of circumstance and
perplexities of soul, and that it was a new revelation he was making to
his little audience. If he could have imagined that both the men were
looking at him with the half sympathy, half pity, half envy of their
maturer years, remembering as vividly as if it had occurred but
yesterday similar outbreaks of impatience and ambition and natural
resistance to all the obstacles of life, Colin would have felt deeply
humiliated in his youthful fervour; or, if he could but have penetrated
the film of softening dew in his mother’s eyes, and beheld there the
woman’s perennial spectatorship of that conflict which goes on for ever.
Instead of that, he thought he was making a new revelation to his
hearers; he thought he was cruel to them, tearing asunder their pleasant
mists of illusion, and disenchanting their eyes; he had not an idea that
they knew all about it better than he did, and were watching him as he
rushed along the familiar path which they all had trod in different
ways, and of which they knew the inevitable ending. Colin, in the heat
and impatience of his youth, took full advantage of his moment of
utterance. He poured forth in his turn that flood of immeasurable
discontent with all conditions and restrictions, which is the privilege
of his years. To be sure, the restrictions and conditions surrounding
himself were, so far as he knew, the sole objects of that indignation
and scorn and defiance which came to his lips by force of nature. As for
his mother, she listened, for her part, with that mortification which is
always the woman’s share. She understood him, sympathised with him, and
yet did not understand nor could tolerate his dissent from all that in
her better judgment she had decided upon on his behalf. She was far more
tender, but she was lest tolerant than the other spectators of Colin’s
outburst; and mingled with all her personal feeling was a sense of
wounded pride and mortification, that her boy had thus betrayed himself
“before a stranger.” “If we had been our lane, it would have been less
matter,” she said to herself, as she wiped the furtive tears hurriedly
from the corners of her eyes.
When Colin had come to an end there was a pause. The boy himself thought
it was a pause of horror and consternation, and perhaps was rather
pleased to produce an effect in some degree corresponding to his own
excitement. After that moment of silence, however, the farmer got up
from his chair. “It’s very near time we were a’ gaun to our beds,” said
big Colin. “I’ll take a look round to see that the beasts are
comfortable, and then we’ll have in the hot water. You and me can have a
talk the morn,” said the farmer to his son. This was all the reply which
the youth received from the parental authorities. When the master went
out to look after the beasts, Lauderdale followed to the door, where
Colin in another moment strayed after him, considerably mortified, to
tell the truth; for even his mother addressed herself to the question of
“hot water,” which implied various other accessories of the homely
supper-table; and the young man, in his excitement and elevation of
feeling, felt as if he had suddenly tumbled down out of the stormy but
lofty firmament, into which he was soaring--down, with a shock, into the
embraces of the homely tenacious earth. He went after his friend, and
stood by Lauderdale’s side, looking out into a darkness so profound that
it made his eyes ache and confused his very mind. The only gleam of
light visible in earth or heaven was big Colin’s lantern, which showed a
tiny gleam from the door of the byre where the farmer was standing. All
the lovely landscape round, the loch and the hills, the sky and the
clouds, lay unseen--hidden in the night. “Which is an awfu’ grand moral
lesson, if we had but sense to discern it,” said the voice of Lauderdale
ascending half-way up to the clouds; “for the loch hasna’ vanished, as
might be supposed, but only the light. As for you, callant, you ken
neither the light nor the darkness as yet, but are aye seeing miraculous
effects like yon man Turner’s pictures, Northern Streamers, or Aurora
Borealis, or whatever ye may call it. And it’s but just you should have
your day;” with which words Lauderdale heaved a great sigh, which moved
the clouds of hair upon Colin’s forehead, and even seemed to disturb,
for a moment, the profound gloom of the night.
“What do you mean by having my day?” said Colin, who was affronted by
the suggestion. “You know I have said nothing that is not true. Can I
help it if I see the difficulties of my own position more clearly than
you do, who are not in my circumstances?” cried the lad with a little
indignation. Lauderdale, who was watching the lantern gliding out and in
through the darkness, was some time before he made any reply.
“I’m no surprised at yon callant Leander, when one comes to think of
it,” he said in his reflective way; “it’s a fine symbol, that Hero in
her tower. May be she took the lamp from the domestic altar and left the
household god in darkness,” said the calm philosopher; “but that makes
no difference to the story. I wouldna’ say but I would swim the
Hellespont myself for such an inducement--or the Holy Loch--it’s little
matter which; but whiles she lets fall the torch before you get to the
end--”
“What do you mean? or what has Hero to do with me?” cried Colin, with a
secret flush of shame and rage, which the darkness concealed but which
he could scarcely restrain.
“I was not speaking of you--and after all, it’s but a fable,” said
Lauderdale; “most history is fable, you know; it’s no actual events,
(which I never believe in, for my part,) but the instincts o’ the human
mind that make history--and that’s how the Heros and Leanders are aye to
be accounted for. He was drowned in the end like most people,” said
Lauderdale, turning back to the parlour where the mistress was seated,
pondering with a troubled countenance upon this new aspect of her boy’s
life. Amid the darkness of the world outside this tender woman sat in
the sober radiance of her domestic hearth, surrounded and enshrined by
light; but she was not like Hero on the tower. Colin, too, came back,
following his friend with a flush of excitement upon his youthful
countenance. After all, the idea was not displeasing to the young man.
The Hellespont, or the Holy Loch, were nothing to the bitter waters
which he was prepared to breast by the light of the imaginary torch held
up in the hand of that imaginary woman who was beckoning Colin, as he
thought, into the unknown world. Life was beginning anew in his person,
and all the fables had to be enacted over again; and what did it matter
to the boy’s heroic fancy, if he too should go to swell the record of
the ancient martyrs, and be drowned, as Lauderdale said--like most
people--in the end?
There was no further conversation upon this important subject until next
morning, when the household of Ramore got up early, and sat down to
breakfast before it was perfect daylight; but Colin’s heart jumped to
his mouth, and a visible thrill went through the whole family, when the
farmer came in from his early inspection of all the byres and stables,
with another letter from Sir Thomas Frankland conspicuous in his hand.