“They’re awfu’ grateful, Colin--I canna but say that for them,” said
Mrs. Campbell; “and as anxious as if you were their own son. I’ll no
undertake to say that I havena an unchristian feeling myself to Harry
Frankland; but, when you’re a’ weel and strong, Colin,”--
“And what if I am never well and strong?” said the young man. His
mother’s presence had subdued and silenced, at least, for a time, the
wild questions in his heart. She had taken them upon herself, though he
did not know it. So far human love can stretch its fellowship in the
sufferings of its Master,--not to the extent of substitution, of
salvation temporal or spiritual, but, at least, to a modified
deliverance. She had soothed her son and eased him of his burden, but in
so doing had taken it to herself. The eagle that had been gnawing his
heart had gone to fix its talons in hers; but she carried it like the
Spartan, under her mantle, and smiled while it rent her in twain.
“Whisht, whisht!” she said, in her martyrdom of composure and calm
looks, and took her boy’s hand and held it between hers--God only could
tell how fondly--with a firm, warm grasp that seemed to hold him fast to
life. “Colin, my man, it’s a’ in God’s hands,” said the Mistress of
Ramore; “whiles His ways are awfu’ mysterious. I’m no one that pretends
to read them, or see a’thing plain, like some folk; but I canna think He
ever makes a mistake or lets anything go by hazard. We’ll bide His time,
Colin; and who can tell what mercy and goodness he may have in His
hand?”
“Mercy and goodness, or, perhaps, the contrary,” said Colin. If he had
not been a little comforted and eased in his heart, he would not have
given utterance to words which he felt to be unchristian. But now, with
his longing to be soothed and to accept the softening influence which
surrounded him, came an impulse to speak,--to use words which were even
more strong than his feelings. As for his mother, she was too
thoughtful a woman, and had in her own heart too heavy a burden, to be
shocked by what he said.
“Maybe what appears to us the contrary,” she said, “though that maun be
but an appearance, like most things in this life. I’m no one to deny my
ain heart, or make a show as if I understood the ways of the Lord, or
could, aye, in my poor way, approve of them, if a mortal creature might
daur to say so, Colin. There’s things He does that appear a’ wrang to
me--I canna but say it. I’m no doubting His wisdom nor yet His love, but
there’s mony a thing He does that I canna follow, nor see onything in
but loss and misery. But oh, Colin, my bonnie man, that’s nae cause for
doubting Him! He maun have His ain reasons, and they maun be better
reasons than ours. If you’ll close your eyes, and try and get a sleep,
I’ll take a breath of air to myself before night sets in. I was aye an
awfu’ woman for the air; and eh, laddie! I think ye’ll be thankful to
get back to Ramore after this dreary country, where there’s neither hill
nor glen--though maybe it might be cauld for you in the spring, when
there’s so much soft weather,” said the tender woman, smoothing his
pillows, and bending over him with her anxious smile. “It minds me o’
the time when you were my baby, Colin, to get you into my hands again.
They say a woman’s aye a queen in a sick room,” said the Mistress. Her
smile was such that tears would have been less sad; and she was
impatient to be gone--to leave her son’s bedside--because she felt
herself at the furthest stretch of endurance, and knew that her strained
powers must soon give way. Perhaps Colin, too, understood what it was
that made his mother so anxious to leave him, for he turned his face to
the waning evening light, and closed his eyes, and after a while seemed
to sleep. When he had lain thus quietly for some time, the poor mother
stole downstairs and out into the wintry twilight. Her heart was
breaking in her tender bosom; her strength had been strained to the
utmost bounds of possibility; and nature demanded at least the relief of
tears.
Two days before the Mistress had been tranquil and content in her
peaceful life at home. When Sir Thomas Frankland’s telegram came late at
night, like a sudden thunderbolt into the quiet house, the Holy Loch was
asleep and at rest, cradled in sweet darkness, and watched by fitful
glances of that moon for which Colin and his friends had looked to guide
them on the night of the accident; and no means of communicating with
the world until the morning was possible to the inhabitants of Ramore.
The anxious mother, whose eyes had not been visited with sleep through
all the lingering winter night, set off by dawn to thread her weary
unaccustomed way through all the mazes of the railways which were to
convey her to Wodensbourne. She had neither servant nor friend to manage
for her; and no fine lady, accustomed to the most careful guardianship,
could be more unused to the responsibilities of travelling than Mrs.
Campbell. When she arrived, it was to find her boy, her firstborn,
stretched helpless upon his bed, to see the examination made by the
great doctor from London, to hear his guarded statements, his
feebly-expressed hopes, which conveyed only despair--and with that
sudden arrow quivering in her heart to undertake the duties of a
cheerful nurse--to keep smiling upon Colin, telling him the news of the
parish, and the events of the countryside, as if her coming here had
been a holiday. All this, put together--though so many women have borne
it, and though the Mistress of Ramore was able to bear it, and more, for
her boy’s sake--was a hard strain upon her. When she got downstairs into
the air, the first thing she did was to sit down on the steps of the
glass door which led into the terrace and cry bitterly and silently. She
was alone among strangers, with scarcely even a friendly feature of
familiar nature to give her a little confidence. The aspect of the great
house, stretching its long wings and solemn front into the twilight,
containing a whole community of people unknown to her, whose very voices
were strange and sounded like a foreign tongue, completed the forlorn
sense she had of absence from everything that could help or console; and
when, in the restlessness of her musing, she got up and began to walk
about upon that deserted terrace which Colin had paced so often, all
Colin’s questions, all his doubts, rushed with double force and feminine
passion into his mother’s mind.
As she pursued her uncertain way, her eye was attracted by the lights in
the windows. One of them was large and low, and so close upon the
terrace that she could not help seeing the interior, and what was
passing there. Harry Frankland was standing by the fire with his cousin.
The long billiard-table behind them, and the cue which Miss Matty still
held in her hand, did not enlighten Mrs. Campbell as to what they had
been doing. Matty had laid her disengaged hand on her cousin’s shoulder,
and was looking up, as if pleading for something, into his face; and the
fire-light which gleamed upon them both, gave colour and brightness to
the two young faces, which seemed to the sorrowful woman outside to be
glowing with health and love and happiness. When Mrs. Campbell looked
upon this scene her heart cried out in her breast. It was Colin’s
question that came to her lips as she hurried past in the cold and the
gathering darkness--“Why? Oh God! why?” Her son struck to the earth in
the bloom of his young life--rooted up like a young tree, or a silly
flower--and this youth, this other woman’s son, taking the happiness
which should have been for Colin. Why was it? The poor woman called in
her misery upon the heavens and the earth to answer her. One deprived of
all, another possessed of everything that soul of man could desire; one
heart smitten and rent asunder, and another filled to overflowing with
safety and happiness.
As she went on in her haste, without knowing where she went, another
window caught the Mistress’s eye. It was the nursery window where all
the little ones were holding high carnival. Little boys and little
girls, the younger branches of the large happy family, with again the
light gleaming rosy over their childish faces. One of them was having
her toilette made for presentation in the drawing-room, and at sight of
her another blow, keen and poignant, went to Mrs. Campbell’s heart. Just
such a child had been the little maiden, the little daughter who once
made sunshine in the homely house of Ramore. It came upon the poor
mother in the darkness to think what that child would have been to her
now had she lived--how her woman child would have suffered with her,
wept with her, helped to bear the burden of her woe. Her heart yearned
and longed in her new grief over the little one who had been gone so
many years. She turned away hastily from the bright window and the gay
group and sank down upon her knees on the ground with a sob that came
from her heart--“Why? oh why?” God had His reasons, but what were they?
The agony of loss, in which there seemed no possible gain; the
bitterness of suffering, without knowing any reason for it, overpowered
her. The contrast of her own trouble with the happiness, the full
possession, the universal prosperity and comfort which she saw, struck
her sharply with something which was not envy of her neighbour, but the
appeal of an amazed anguish to God. “The ways of the Lord are not
equal,” she was saying in her soul. Was it, as Nature suggested, with
natural groans, because He loved her less--or, as the minister said,
because He loved her more, that God sent upon her those pangs, and
demanded from her those sacrifices? Thus she cried out of the depths,
not knowing what she said. “If I had but had my Jeanie!” the poor woman
moaned to herself, with a vision of a consoling angel, a daughter,
another dearer, fairer self, who would have helped to bear all her
burdens. But God had not afforded her that comfort, the dearest
consolation to a woman. When she had wept out those few bitter tears,
that are all of which the heart is capable when it is no longer young,
she gathered herself up out of the darkness and prepared to go back
again to Colin’s bedside. Though she had received no answer to her
question--though neither God Himself nor His angels, nor any celestial
creature, had gleamed through the everlasting veil, and given her a
glimpse of that Divine meaning which it is so hard to read--there was a
certain relief in the question itself, and in the tears that had been
wrung out of her heart. And so it was that, when Matty Frankland came
lightly out of the billiard-room, on her way to dress for dinner, Mrs.
Campbell, whom she met coming in from the terrace, did not appear to her
to bear a different aspect from that which the Mistress of Ramore had
borne in other days.
Matty did not lose a minute in making her advances to Colin’s mother.
She was, indeed, extremely sorry, and had even been conscious of a
passing thought similar to that which had struggled passionately into
being, both in Colin’s mind and in his mother’s--a passing sense of
wonder why Harry, who was good for nothing in particular, should have
been saved, and Colin, who was what Miss Matty called “so very clever,”
should have been the sufferer. Such a doubt, had it gone deep
enough--had it become an outcry of the soul, as it was with the
others--would have made an infidel of that little woman of the world.
She ran to Mrs. Campbell, and took her hand, and led her into the
billiard-room, the door of which stood open. “Oh, dear Mrs. Campbell,
come and tell me about him,” she said; and, as it had been the
conjunction of a little real feeling with her habitual wiles that
brought Colin under her influence, the same thing moved his mother at
least to tolerate the inquiry. She drew away her hand with some
impatience from the little enchantress, but her tender heart smote her
when she saw an involuntary tear in Matty’s eye. Perhaps, after all, it
was less her fault than her misfortune; and the Mistress followed the
girl into the room with less dislike, and more toleration, than she
could have supposed possible. It might be, after all, the older
people--to whom worldliness came by nature, as she was disposed to
think--who were to blame.
“Oh, Mrs. Campbell, I am so sorry; I cannot tell you how sorry I am,”
cried Matty--- and she spoke only the truth, and had real tears in her
eyes--“to think that he should save my cousin again, and suffer so for
his goodness. Don’t be angry with us--though, indeed, I should not
wonder if you could not bear our very name--I am sure I could not, if I
were you.”
“Na, God forbid,” said the Mistress. She was but half-satisfied of the
reality of the young lady’s professions, and this suspicion, so unusual
to her, gave dignity to her speech. “It wasna you nor ony mortal person,
but his own heart that moved my Colin. You could do an awfu’ deal,” said
Colin’s mother, looking with a woman’s look of disapproving admiration
on Matty’s pretty face, “but you couldna move my son like his ain
generous will. He never was one to think of his ain--comfort--”
continued Mrs. Campbell with a little shudder, for something in her
throat prevented her from saying his life--“when a fellow creature was
in danger. It was his ain heart that was to blame--if anything was to
blame--and not you.”
And the homely woman’s eyes went beyond her questioner with that same
look which in Colin had so often baffled Miss Matty, showing that the
higher spirit had gone past the lesser into its own element, where only
its equals could follow. The girl was awed for the moment and humbled.
Not for her poor sake, not for Harry Frankland, who was of no great
account to anybody out of his immediate family--but because of his own
nature, which would not permit him to see another perish, had Colin
suffered. This thought, imperfectly as she understood it, stopped the
voluble sympathy, pity and distress on Matty’s lips. She no longer knew
what to say, and, after an awkward pause, could only stammer over her
old common-places. “Oh, dear Mrs. Campbell, I am so sorry; I would give
anything in the world to make him well again; and I only hope you won’t
be angry with us,” said Matty, with a suppressed sob, which was partly
fright and partly feeling. The Mistress came to herself at the sound of
the girl’s voice.
“I’m no angry,” she said--“God forbid; though I might have something to
say to _you_ if my heart could speak. The like of you whiles do mair
harm in this world, Miss Frankland, than greater sinners. I’m no saying
you kent what you were doing; but, if it had not been for you, my Colin
would never have come near this place. You beguiled my son with your
pleasant words and your bonnie face. He had nae mair need to come here
to be tutor to yon bit crooked callant,” said the Mistress, with
involuntary bitterness, “than Maister Frankland himself. But he thought
to be near you, that had beguiled him and made him give mair heed to
your fables than to anything that was true in life. I’m no blaming my
Colin,” said the Mistress, with an unconscious elevation of her head;
“he never had kent onything but truth a’ his days, and, if he wasna to
believe in a woman that smiled on him and enticed him to her, what was
he to believe in at his years? Nor I’m no to call angry at you,” said
Colin’s mother, looking from the elevation of age and nature upon Miss
Matty, who drooped instinctively, and became conscious what a trifling
little soul she was. “We a’ act according to our ain nature, and you
wasna capable of perceiving what harm you could do; but, if you should
ever encounter again one that was true himself and believed in you----”
Here Matty, who had never been destitute of feeling, and who, in her
heart, was fond of Colin in her way, and had a kind of understanding of
him, so far as she could go, fell into such an outburst of natural tears
as disarmed the Mistress, who faltered and stopped short, and had hard
ado to retain some appearance of severity in sight of this weeping, for
which she was not prepared. Colin’s mother understood truth, and in an
abhorring, indignant, resentful way, believed that there was falsehood
in the world. But how truth and falsehood were mingled--how the impulses
of nature might have a little room to work even under the fictions of
art or the falseness of society--was a knowledge unimagined by the
simple woman. She began to think she had done Matty injustice when she
saw her tears.
“Oh, Mrs. Campbell, I know how good he is! I--I never knew any one like
him. How could I help----? But, indeed--indeed, I never meant any harm!”
cried Matty, ingeniously taking advantage of the truth of her own
feelings, so far as they went, to disarm her unconscious and
singleminded judge. The Mistress looked at her with puzzled, but pitiful
eyes.
“It would be poor comfort to him to say you never meant it,” she said;
and in the pause that followed Matty had begun to recollect that it was
a long time since the dressing-bell rang, though she still had her face
hid on the table, and the tears were not dried from her cheeks. “And
things may turn out more merciful than they look like,” said the
Mistress, with a sigh and a wistful smile. Perhaps it occurred to her
that the gratitude of the Franklands might go so far as to bestow upon
Colin the woman he loved. “I’ll no keep you longer,” she continued,
laying her tender hand for a moment on Matty’s head. “God bless you for
every kind thought you ever had to my Colin. He’s weel worthy of them
all,” said the wistful mother.
Matty, who did not know what to say, and who, under this touch, felt her
own artifice, and was for a moment disgusted with herself, sprang up in
a little agony of shame and remorse, and kissed Mrs. Campbell as she
went away. And Colin’s mother went back to her son’s room to find him
asleep, and sat down by his side, to ponder in herself whether this and
that might not still be possible. Love and happiness were physicians in
whom the simple woman had a confidence unbounded. If they came smiling
hand in hand to Colin’s pillow, who could tell what miracle of gladness
might yet fall from the tender heavens?