Colin never ascertained what were the events immediately succeeding his
plunge into the canal; all he could recall dimly of that strange crisis
in his life was a sense of slow motion in which he himself was passive,
and of looking up at the stars in a dark-blue, frosty, winterly sky,
with a vague wonder in his mind how it was that he saw them so clearly,
and whether it was they or he that moved. Afterwards, when his mind
became clear, it grew apparent to him that he must have opened his eyes
for a moment while he was being carried home; but there intervened a
period during which he heard nothing distinctly, and in which the only
clear point to him was this gleam of starlight, and the accompanying
sense of motion, which perplexed his faculties in his weakness. While he
lay feverish and unconscious he kept repeating, to the amazement of the
bystanders, two stray lines which had no apparent connexion with any of
the circumstances surrounding him.
“Each with its little span of sky,
And little lot of stars,”
poor Colin said to himself over and over, without knowing it. It had
been only for a moment that he opened his eyes out of the torpor which
was all but death, but that moment was enough to colour all the
wanderings of his mind while still the weakness of the body dominated
and overpowered it. Like a picture or a dream, he kept in his
recollection the sharp frosty glimmer, the cold twinkling of those
passionless, distant lights, and with it a sense of rushing air and
universal chill, and a sound and consciousness of wending his way
between rustling hedges, though all the while he was immovable. That
feeling remained with him till he woke from a long sleep one afternoon
when the twilight was setting in, and found himself in a room which was
not his own room, lying in a great bed hung with crimson curtains, which
were made still more crimson by a ruddy glow of fire-light which flashed
reflections out of the great mirror opposite the end of the bed. Colin
lay a while in a pause of wonder and confusion when he woke. The
starlight went out of his eyes and the chill out of his frame, and a
certain sense of languid comfort came over him. When he said, “Where am
I?” faintly, in a voice which he could scarcely recognise for his own,
two women rose hastily and approached him. One of these was Lady
Frankland, the other a nurse. While the attendant hurried forward to see
if he wanted anything, Lady Frankland took his hand and pressed it
warmly in both hers.
“You shall hear all about it to-morrow,” she said, with the tears in her
eyes; “you will do well now, but you must not exert yourself to-night.
We have all been so anxious about you. Hush, hush! You must take this;
you must not ask any more questions to-night.”
What he had to take was some warm jelly, of which he swallowed a little,
with wonder and difficulty. He did not understand what had befallen him,
or how he had been reduced to this invalid condition. “Hush, hush! you
must not ask any questions to-night,” said Lady Frankland; and she went
to the door as if to leave the room, and then came back again and bent
over Colin and kissed his forehead, with her eyes shining through tears.
“God bless you and reward you!” she said, smiling and crying over him;
“you will do well now--you have a mother’s blessing and a mother’s
prayers,” and with these strange words she went away hastily, as if not
trusting herself to say more.
Colin lay back on his pillow with his mind full of wonder, and, catching
at the clue she had given him, made desperate feeble efforts to piece it
out, and get back again into his life. He found it so hard fighting
through that moment of starlight which still haunted him, that he had to
go to sleep upon it, but by-and-by woke up again when all was
silent--when the light was shaded, and the nurse reclining in an easy
chair, and everything betokened night--and lying awake for an hour or
two, at last began to gather himself up, and recollect what had
happened. He had almost leaped from his bed when he recalled the scene
by the canal--his conviction that Frankland had gone down, his own
desperate plunge. But Colin was past leaping from his bed, for that time
at least. He followed out this recollection, painfully trying to think
what had occurred. Was Harry Frankland alive or dead? Had he himself
paused too long on the brink, and was the heir of Wodensbourne gone, out
of all his privileges and superiorities? This was the interpretation
that appeared most likely to Colin. It seemed to him to explain Lady
Frankland’s tears and pathos of gratitude. The tutor had suffered in his
attempt to save the son, and the parents, moved by the tenderness of
grief, were thankful for his ineffectual efforts. As he lay awake in the
silence, it appeared to him that this was the explanation; and he too
thought with a certain pathos and compunction of Harry--his instinctive
rival, his natural opponent. Was it thus he had fallen, so near the
beginning of the way--snatched out of the life which had so many charms,
so many advantages for him? As Colin lay alone in the silence, his
thoughts went out to that unknown life into which he could not but
imagine the other young man, who was yesterday--was it yesterday?--as
strong and life-like as himself, had passed so suddenly. Life had never
seemed so fair, so bright, so hopeful to himself as while he thus
followed with wistful eyes the imaginary path of Harry into the unknown
awe and darkness. The thought touched him deeply, profoundly, with
wistful pity, with wonder and inquiry. Where was he now, this youth who
had so lately been by his side? Had he found out those problems that
trouble men for their life long? Had existence grown already clear and
intelligible to the eyes which in this world had cared but little to
investigate its mysteries?
While Colin’s mind was thus occupied, it occurred to him suddenly to
wonder why he himself was so ill and so feeble. He had no inclination to
get up from the bed on which he lay. Sometimes he coughed, and the cough
pained him; his very breathing was a fatigue to him now and then. As he
lay pondering this new thought, curious half-recollections, as of things
that had happened in a dream, came into Colin’s mind; visions of doctors
examining some one--he scarcely knew whether it was himself or
another--and of conversations that had been held over his bed. As he
struggled through these confusing mazes of recollection or imagination,
his head began to ache and his heart to beat; and finally his uneasy
movements woke the nurse, who was alarmed and would not listen to any of
the questions he addressed to her. “My lady told you as you’d hear
everything to-morrow,” said Colin’s attendant; “for goodness gracious
sake take your draught, do, and lie still; and don’t go a-moidering and
a-bothering, and take away a poor woman’s character, as was never known
to fall asleep before, nor wouldn’t but for thinking you was better and
didn’t want nothing.” It was strange to the vigorous young man, who had
never been in the hands of a nurse in his life, to feel himself
constrained to obey--to feel, indeed, that he had no power to resist,
but was reduced to utter humiliation and dependence, he could not tell
how. He fell asleep afterwards, and dreamed of Harry Frankland drowning,
and of himself going down, down through the muddy, black water--always
down, in giddy circles of descent, as if it were bottomless. When he
woke again it was morning, and his attendant was putting his room to
rights, and disposed to regard himself with more friendly eyes. “Don’t
you go disturbing of yourself,” said the nurse, “and persuading of the
doctor as you ain’t no better. You’re a deal better, if he did but know
it. What’s come to you? It’s all along of falling in the canal that
night along of Mr. Harry. If you takes care, and don’t get no more cold,
you’ll do well.”
“Along with Mr. Harry--poor Harry!--and he--?” said Colin. His own voice
sounded very strange to him, thin and far-off, like a shadow of its
former self. When he asked this question, the profoundest wistful pity
filled the young man’s heart. He was sorry to the depths of his soul for
the other life which had, he supposed, gone out in darkness. “Poor
Frankland!” he repeated to himself, with an action of mournful regret.
_He_ had been saved, and the other lost. So he thought, and the thought
went to his heart.
“Mr. Harry was saved, sir, when you was drownded,” said the nurse, who
was totally unconscious of Colin’s feelings; “he’s fine and hearty
again, is Mr. Harry. Bless you, a ducking ain’t nothing to him. As for
you,” continued the woman, going calmly about her occupations--“they say
it wasn’t the drowning, it was the striking against----”
“I understand,” said Colin. He stopped her further explanations with a
curious sharpness which he was not responsible for, and at which he
himself wondered. Was not he glad that Harry Frankland lived? But then,
to be sure, there came upon him the everlasting contrast--the good
fortune and unfailing luck of his rival, who was well and hearty, while
Colin, who would have been in no danger but for him, lay helpless in
bed! He began to chafe at himself, as he lay, angry and impotent,
submitting to the nurse’s attentions. What a poor weakling anybody must
think him, to fall ill of the ducking which had done no harm to Harry!
He felt ridiculous, contemptible, weak--which was the worst of
all--thinking with impatience of the thanks which presently Lady
Frankland would come to pay him, and the renewed obligations of which
the family would be conscious. If he only could get up, and get back to
his own room! But, when he made the attempt, Colin was glad enough to
fall back again upon his pillows, wondering and dismayed. Harry was
well, and had taken no harm; what could be the meaning of _his_ sudden
and unlooked-for weakness?
Lady Frankland came into the room, as he had foreseen, while it was
still little more than daylight of the winter morning. She had always
been kind to Colin--indifferently, amiably kind, for the most part, with
a goodness which bore no particular reference to him, but sprang from
her own disposition solely. This time there was a change. She sat down
by his side with nervous, wistful looks, with an anxious, almost
frightened expression. She asked him how he was with a kind of tremulous
tenderness, and questioned the nurse as to how he had slept. “I am so
glad to hear you have had a refreshing sleep,” she said, with an anxious
smile, and even laid her soft white hand upon Colin’s and caressed it as
his own mother might have done, whilst she questioned his face, his
aspect, his looks, with the speechless scrutiny of an anxious woman.
Somehow these looks, which were so solicitous and wistful, made Colin
more impatient than ever.
“I am at a loss to understand why I am lying here,” he said, with a
forced smile; “I used to think I could stand a ducking as well as most
people. It is humiliating to find myself laid up like a child by a touch
of cold water----”
“Oh, Mr. Campbell, pray don’t say so,” said Lady Frankland; “it was not
the cold water; you know you struck against---- Oh, how can we thank you
enough!--how can I ever express my gratitude!” said the poor lady,
grasping his hands in both hers, while her eye filled unawares with
tears.
“There is no need for gratitude,” said Colin, drawing away his hand with
an impatience which he could not have explained. “I am sorry to find
myself such a poor creature that I have to be nursed, and give you
trouble. Your son is all right, I hear.” This he said with an effort at
friendliness which cost him some trouble. He scorned to seem to envy the
young favourite of fortune, but it was annoying to feel that the
strength he was secretly proud of had given way at so slight a trial. He
turned his face a little more towards the wall, and away from Harry’s
mother, as he spoke.
“Oh, yes,” said Lady Frankland, “he is quite well, and he is very, very
grateful to you, dear Mr. Campbell. Believe me, we are all very
grateful. Harry is so shy; and he has never once had an opportunity to
pay you that--that attention which you deserve at his hands; and it
showed such noble and disinterested regard on your part----”
“Pray don’t say so,” said Colin, abruptly; “you make me uncomfortable;
there was no regard whatever in the case.”
“Ah, yes! you say so to lighten our sense of obligation,” said Lady
Frankland. “It is so good, so kind of you. And when I think what it has
made you suffer--but I am sure you will believe that there is nothing we
would not do to show our gratitude. If you were our own son neither Sir
Thomas nor I could be more anxious. We have sent for Sir Apsley Wendown,
and I hope he will arrive to-day; and we have sent for your dear Mother,
Mr. Campbell----”
“My mother?” said Colin. He was so much startled that he raised himself
up on his pillows without thinking, and as he did so was seized by a
horrible pain which took away his breath. “Sir Apsley Wendown and my
mother? What does it mean?” the young man said gasping, as he managed to
slide down again into his former recumbent position. “Am I ill? or does
all this commotion arise simply from an unlooked-for ducking and a knock
against the side of the canal.” He got this out with difficulty, though
he strove with all his might to conceal the trouble it gave him; then he
turned his eyes to Lady Frankland, who sat wringing her hands and full
of agitation by his bedside. The poor lady had altogether lost her
good-natured and amiable composure. Whatever she had to say to him,
whatever the character of the communication might be, it disturbed her
greatly. She wrung her hands, and gave him a painful hurried glance, and
then withdrew her eyes from his inquiring looks. All this time Colin lay
impatient, looking at her, wondering, with a sharp sensation of anger,
what she could have to say.
“Dear Mr. Campbell,” she said at length, “you are ill; you have been
wandering and insensible. Oh, it is hard to think you are suffering for
your goodness, suffering for us! We could not trust you to our doctor
here after we knew; we thought it best to have the best advice, and we
thought you would prefer to have your mother. I would have nursed you
myself and tended you night and day,” said Lady Frankland, with
enthusiasm; “I owe you that and a great deal more; you who have saved my
dear boy.”
“What is the matter with me?” said Colin. It appeared to him as if a
great cloud was rolling up over the sky, throwing upon him a strange and
ominous shadow. He scarcely heard what she said. He did not pay any
attention to her. What was Henry Frankland’s mother to him, or her
thanks, or the things she was willing to do to show her gratitude? He
wanted to know why he was lying there powerless, unable to move himself.
That was the first thing to be thought of. As for Lady Frankland, she
wrung her hands again, and hesitated more and more.
“I hope God will reward you,” said the agitated woman; “I would give
everything I have in the world to see you well and strong as you were
when you came here. Oh, Mr. Campbell, if you only could know the feeling
that is in all our hearts!” It was her kindness, her reluctance to give
him pain, her unfeigned distress, that made her prolong Colin’s
suspense, and drive him frantic with these exasperating professions of
regard, for which, true as they doubtless were, he did not care.
“I suppose I’ve broken some of my bones,” said Colin; “it would be real
kindness if you would tell me what is the matter. Will it take a long
time to mend me? I should be glad to know, at least, what it is.”
Impelled by his looks and his tone, Lady Frankland burst into her
statement at last. “You have broken some of your ribs,” she said, “but I
don’t think that is of so much importance; Sir Apsley, when he comes,
will tell us. He is coming to-day and you are looking so much better. It
was old Mr. Eyre who gave us such a fright yesterday. He said your lungs
had been injured somehow, and that you might never--that it might be a
long time--that it might keep you delicate; but even if that were the
case, with care and a warm climate--oh, Mr. Campbell! I think he is
mistaken; he is always such a croaker. I think--I hope--I am almost sure
Sir Apsley will set you all right.”
Again Colin had risen in his bed with a little start. This time he was
scarcely sensible of the pain which every motion caused him. He fancied
afterwards that for that moment his heart stood still in his bosom, and
the pulses in his veins stopped beating. The shock was so strange, so
sudden, so unlooked-for. He sat up--struggled up--upon his pillows, and
instinctively and unawares faced and confronted the new Thing which
approached him. In that moment of strange consciousness and revelation
he felt as if the intimation was true--as if his doom was sealed and his
days numbered. He did not look at the anxious woman who was wringing her
arms by his bedside, nor at any external object; but with an
irresistible impulse confronted dumbly the new world--the changed
existence. When he laid himself down again it seemed to Colin as if
years had passed over his head. He said some vague words of thanks,
without being very well aware what he was saying, to Lady Frankland, and
then lay silent, stunned and bewildered, like a man who had received a
blow. What she said to him afterwards, or how long she remained in the
room, he was scarcely aware of. Colin belonged to a race which had no
weak members; he had been used to nothing but strength and
health--wholesome rural life and vigour--all his days. He had even
learned, without knowing it, to take a certain pride in his own physical
gifts, and in those of his family, and to look with compassionate
contempt on people who were “delicate” and obliged to take care of
themselves. The idea that such a fate might by any possibility fall to
himself had never once occurred to him. It was an impossible contingency
at which, even a week ago, the strong young man, just entering upon the
full possession of his powers, would have laughed, as beyond the range
of imagination. He might die, no doubt, like any other man--might be
snatched out of the world by violent disease or sudden fever, as other
strong men had been; but to have his strength stolen from him while
still his life remained, had appeared a thing beyond the bounds of
possibility until now.
But as Colin lay helpless, stunned by this unlooked-for downfall, there
came before his eyes, as vividly as if he saw them in actual presence,
the sick people of his native district--the young men and the young
women who now and then paid, even on the sweet shores of the Holy Loch,
the terrible toll which consumption takes of all the nations of the
north. One of them, a young man about his own age, who like himself had
been in training for the Scotch Church, whom Colin had pitied with all
his kind heart--with the deepest half-remorseful sense of his own
superior happiness--came before him with intense distinctness as he lay
struck silent by the cold shadow of fate. He could almost have thought
that he saw the spectral attenuated form, with its hectic cheeks, its
thin, long, wasted hands, its preternatural length of limb, seated in
the old, high-backed easy-chair in the farmhouse parlour. All the
invalid’s life appeared to him in a sudden flash of recollection; the
kindly neighbours’ visits; the books and papers which were lent him; the
soup and jellies which the minister’s wife and the other ladies of the
parish, few in number as they were, kept him provided with. Colin could
even remember his own periodical visits; his efforts to think what would
interest the sick man; his pity, and wonder, and almost contempt, for
the patience which could endure, and even take a pleasure in, the poor
comforts of the fading life. God help him! was this what he himself was
coming to? was this all he had to anticipate? Colin’s heart gave a
strange leap in his breast at the thought. A sudden wild throb, a sense
of something intolerable, a cry against the fate which was too hard,
which could not be borne, rose within him, and produced a momentary
sickness which took the light out of his eyes, and made everything swim
round him in a kind of dizzy gloom. Had he been standing he would have
fallen down, and the bystanders would have said he had fainted. But he
had not fainted; he was bitterly, painfully conscious of everything. It
was only his heart that fluttered in his breast like a wounded bird; it
was only his mind that had been struck, and reeled. So much absorbed was
he that he did not hear the voice of the nurse, who brought him some
invalid nourishment, and who became frightened when she got no answer,
and shook him violently by the arm. “Lord bless us, he’s gone,”
exclaimed the woman; and she was but little reassured when her patient
turned upon her with dry lips and a glittering eye. “I am not gone yet,”
said Colin; “there is no such luck for me;” and then he began once more
to picture out to himself the sick man at the Holy Loch, with the little
tray on the table beside him, and his little basin of soup. God help
him! was this how he was to be for all the rest of his life?
This was how he sustained the first physical shock of the intimation
which poor Lady Frankland had made to him with so much distress and
compunction. It is hard enough at any time to receive a sentence of
death; yet Colin could have died bravely had that been all that was
required of him. It was the life in death thus suddenly presented before
his eyes that appalled his soul and made his heart sick. And after that,
Heaven knows, there were other considerations still more hard to
encounter. If we were to say that the young man thus stopped short in
the heyday of his life bethought himself immediately of what is called
preparation for dying, it would be false and foolish. Colin had a
desperate passage to make before he came to that. As these moments,
which were like hours, passed on, he came to consider the matter in its
larger aspects. But for Harry Frankland he would have been in no danger,
and now Harry Frankland was safe, strong, and in the full enjoyment of
his life, while Colin lay broken and helpless, shipwrecked at the
beginning of his career. Why was it? Had God ordained this horrible
injustice, this cruel fate? As Colin looked at it, out of the clouds
that were closing round him, that fair career which was never to be
accomplished stretched bright before him, as noble a future as ever was
contemplated by man. It had its drawbacks and disadvantages when he
looked at it a week before, and might, perhaps, have turned out a
common-place life enough had it come to its daily fulfilment; but now,
when it had suddenly become impossible, what a career it seemed! Not of
selfish profit, of money-making, or personal advantage--a life which was
to be for the use of his country, for the service of his Church, for the
furtherance of everything that was honest and lovely, and of good
report. He stood here, stayed upon the threshold of his life, and looked
at it with wonder and despair. This existence God had cut short and put
an end to. Why? That another man might live and enjoy his common-place
pleasures--might come into possession of all the comforts of the world,
might fill a high position without knowing, without caring for it; might
hunt, and shoot, and fall asleep after dinner as his father had done
before him. In the great darkness Colin’s heart cried out with a cry of
anguish and terrible surprise to the invisible, inexorable God, “Why?
Why?” Was one of His creatures less dear, less precious to Him than
another, that He should make this terrible difference? The pure life,
the high hopes, the human purpose and human happiness, were they as
nothing to the great Creator who had brought them into being and
suffered them to bud and blossom only that He might crush them with His
hands? Colin lay still in his bed, with his lips set close and his eyes
straining into that unfathomable darkness. The bitterness of death took
possession of his soul--a bitterness heavier, more terrible than that of
death. His trust, his faith, had given way. God sat veiled upon his
awful throne, concealed by a horrible cloud of disappointment and
incomprehension. Neither love nor justice, neither mercy nor equal
dealing, was in this strange, unintelligible contrast of one man’s loss
and another man’s gain. As the young man lay struggling in this hour of
darkness, the God of his youth disappeared from him, the Saviour of his
childhood withdrew, a sorrowful shadow, into the angry heavens. What was
left? Was it a capricious Deity, ruled by incomprehensible impulses of
favour and of scorn? Was it a blind and hideous Chance, indifferent
alike to happiness and misery? Was it some impious power, owning no
everlasting rule of right and wrong, of good and evil, who trampled at
its will upon the hearts and hopes of men? Colin was asking himself
these terrible questions when the curtain was softly drawn, and a face
looked down upon him, in which tenderness and grief and pity had come to
such a climax as no words could convey any impression of. It was his
mother who stood beside him, stretching out her arms like a pitying
angel, yearning over him with the anguish and the impatience of love.
Sometimes, surely, the Master gives us in the fellowship of His
sufferings a human pang beyond His own--the will to suffer in the stead
of those we love, without the power.