But, though Mrs. Campbell’s heart relented towards Matty, and was filled
with vague hopes which centred in her, it was very hard to find out what
Colin’s thoughts were on the same subject. He scarcely spoke of the
Franklands at all, and never named or referred to the ladies of the
house. When his mother spoke, with natural female wiles to tempt him
into confidence, of special inquiries made for him, Colin took no notice
of the inference. She even went so far as to refer specially to Miss
Matty with no greater effect. “There’s one in the house as anxious as
me,” said the Mistress, with tender exaggeration, as she smoothed his
pillow and made her morning inquiries; but her son only smiled faintly,
and shook his head with an almost imperceptible movement of incredulity.
He asked no questions, showed no pleasure at the thought, but lay most
of the day in a silence which his mother could find no means of
breaking.
The first horror, the first resistance, had gone out of Colin’s mind;
but he lay asking himself inevitable questions, facing the great problem
for which he could find no solution, which no man has been able to
explain. Had the thoughts of his mind been put into words, the chances
are that to most people who have never themselves come to such a trial
Colin would have seemed a blasphemer or an infidel. But he was neither
the one nor the other, and was indeed incapable by nature either of
scepticism or of profanity. The youth had been born of a
sternly-believing race, which recognised in all God’s doings an eternal
right, beyond justice and beyond reason, a right to deal with them and
theirs as he might please; but Colin himself was of the present age, and
was fully possessed by all those cravings after understanding and
explanation which belong to the time. Without any doubt of God, he was
arrested by the wonderful mystery of Providence, and stood questioning,
in the face of the unanswering silence, “Why?” The good God, the God of
the Gospels, the Father of our Lord, was the Divine Ruler whom Colin
recognised in his heart; but the young man longed and struggled to find
reasonableness, coherence, any recognisable, comprehensible cause, for
the baffling arrangements and disarrangements, the mysterious
inequalities and injustices of life. He wanted to trace the thread of
reason which God kept in His own hand; he wanted to make out why the
Father who loved all should dispense so unequally, so differently, His
gifts to one and another. This awful question kept him silent for days
and nights; he could not make anything of it. Social inequalities, which
speculatists fret at, had not much disturbed Colin. It had not yet
occurred to him that wealth or poverty made much difference; but why the
life of one should be broken off incomplete and that of another go
on--why the purposes of one should end in nothing, why his hopes should
be crushed and his powers made useless, while another flourished and
prospered, confounded him, in the inexperience of his youth. And neither
heaven nor earth gave him any answer. The Bible itself seemed to append
moral causes, which were wanting in his case, to the perennial
inequalities of existence. It spoke of the wicked great in power,
nourishing like the green bay-tree, and of the righteous oppressed and
suffering for righteousness’ sake; which was, in its way, a
comprehensible statement of the matter. But the facts did not agree in
Colin’s case. Harry Frankland could not, by any exertion of dislike, be
made to represent the wicked, nor was Colin, in his own thinking, better
than his neighbour. They were two sons of one Father, to whom that
Father was behaving with the most woeful, the most extraordinary
partiality; and nothing in heaven or earth was of half so much
importance as to prove the proceedings of the Father of all to be
everlastingly just and of sublime reason. What did it mean? This was
what Colin was discussing with himself as he lay on his bed. It was not
wonderful that such thoughts should obliterate the image of Miss Matty.
When she came into his mind at all, he looked back upon her with a
pensive sweetness as on somebody he had known a lifetime before.
Sterner matters had now taken the place of the light love and hopes of
bountiful and lavish youth. The hopes had grown few, and the abundance
changed into poverty. If the author of the change had chosen to reveal
the cause for it, the young soul thus stopped short in his way could
have consented that all was well.
And then Lady Frankland came every day to pay him a visit of sympathy,
and to express her gratitude. “It is such a comfort to see him looking
so much better,” Lady Frankland said; “Harry would like so much to come
and sit with you, dear Mr. Campbell. He could read to you, you know,
when you feel tired; I am sure nothing he could do would be too much to
show his sense of your regard----”
At which words Colin raised himself up.
“I should be much better pleased,” said Colin, “if you would not impute
to me feelings which I don’t pretend to. It was no regard for Mr.
Frankland that induced me----”
“Oh, indeed! I know how good you are,” said Harry’s mother, pressing his
hand, “always so generous and disposed to make light of your own
kindness; but we all know very well, and Harry knows, that there is many
a brother who would not have done so much. I am sure I cannot express to
you a tenth part of what I feel. Harry’s life is so precious,” said my
Lady, with a natural human appreciation of her own concerns, and
unconscious, unintentional indifference to those of others. “The eldest
son; and Sir Thomas has quite commenced to rely upon him for many
things--and I am sure I don’t know what I should do without Harry to
refer to,” Lady Frankland continued, with a little smile of maternal
pride and triumph. When she came to this point, it chanced to her to
catch a side glimpse of Mrs. Campbell’s face. The Mistress sat by her
son’s bedside, pale, with her lips set close, and her eyes fixed upon
the hem of her apron, which she was folding and refolding in her hands.
She did not say anything, nor give utterance in any way to the dumb
remonstrance and reproach with which her heart was bursting; but there
was something in her face which imposed silence upon the triumphant,
prosperous woman beside her. Lady Frankland gave a little gasp of
mingled fright and compunction. She did not know what to say to express
her full sense of the service which Colin had done her; and there was
nothing strange in her instinctive feeling, that she, a woman used to be
petted and tended all her life, had a natural claim upon other people’s
services. She was very sorry, of course, about Mr. Campbell; if any
exertion of hers could have cured him, he would have been well in
half-an-hour. But, as it was, it appeared to her rather natural than
otherwise that the tutor should suffer and that her own son should be
saved.
“I felt always secure about Harry when you were with him,” she said,
with an involuntary artifice. “He was so fond of you, Mr. Campbell--and
I always felt that you knew how important his safety was, and how much
depended--”
“Pardon me,” said Colin; he was angry in his weakness at her
pertinacity. “I have no right to your gratitude. Your son and I have no
love for each other, Lady Frankland. I picked him out of the canal, not
because I thought of the importance of his life, but because I had seen
him go down, and should have felt myself a kind of murderer had I not
tried to save him. That is the whole. Why should I be supposed to have
any special regard for him? Perhaps,” said Colin, whose words came
slowly and whose voice was interrupted by his weakness--“I would have
given my life with more comfort for any other man.”
“Oh Mr. Campbell! don’t be so angry and bitter. After all, it was not
our fault,” said Lady Frankland, with a wondering offence and
disappointment--and then she hurriedly changed her tone, and began to
congratulate his mother on his improved looks. “I am so glad to see him
looking so much better. There were some people coming here,” said my
lady, faltering a little; “we would not have them come so long as he was
so ill. Neither Harry nor any of us could have suffered it. We had sent
to put them off; but, now that he is so much better--” said Lady
Frankland, with a voice which was half complaint and half appeal. She
thought it was rather ill-tempered of the mother and son to make so
little response. “When I almost asked their permission!” she said, with
a little indignation, when she had gone downstairs; “but they seem to
think they should be quite masters, and look as black as if we had done
them an injury. Send to everybody, and say it is to be on Wednesday,
Matty; for Henry’s interests must not be neglected.” _It_ was a ball,
for which Lady Frankland had sent out her invitations some time before
the accident; for Harry Frankland was to ask the suffrages of the
electors of Earie at the approaching election. “I don’t mean to be
ungrateful to Mr. Campbell,” said the Lady of Wodensbourne, smoothing
her ruffled plumes. “I am sure nobody can say I have not been grateful;
but, at the same time, I can’t be expected to sacrifice my own son.”
Such were the sentiments with which Lady Frankland came downstairs. As
for the other mother, it would be hard to describe what was in her mind.
In the bitterness of her heart she was angry with the God who had no
pity upon her. If Harry Frankland’s life was precious, what was Colin’s?
and the Mistress, in her anguish, made bitter comparisons, and cried out
wildly with a woman’s passion. Downstairs, in the fine rooms which her
simple imagination filled with splendour, they would dance and sing
unconcerned, though her boy’s existence hung trembling in the balance:
and was not Heaven itself indifferent, taking no notice? She was glad
that twilight was coming on to conceal her face, and that Colin, who lay
very silent, did not observe her. And so, while Lady Frankland, feeling
repulsed and injured, managed to escape partially from the burden of an
obligation which was too vast to be borne, and returned to the
consideration of her ball, the two strangers kept silence in the
twilight chamber, each dumbly contending with doubts that would not be
overcome, and questions which could not be answered. What did God mean
by permitting this wonderful, this incomprehensible difference between
the two? But the great Father remained silent and made no reply. The
days of revelation, of explanation were over. For one, joy and
prosperity; for another, darkness and the shadow of death--plain facts
not to be misconceived or contested--and in all the dumb heavens and
silent observant earth no wisdom nor knowledge which could tell the
reason why.