It was for about six weeks altogether that the Mistress of Ramore
remained Sir Thomas Frankland’s guest. For half of that time Lauderdale,
too, tall, and gaunt, and grim, strode daily over the threshold of
Wodensbourne. He never broke bread, as he himself expressed it, nor made
the slightest claim upon the hospitality of the stranger’s house. On the
contrary, he declined steadily every advance of friendship that was made
to him with a curious Scotch pride, extremely natural to him, but odd to
contemplate from the point of view at which the Franklands stood. They
asked him to dinner or to lunch as they would have asked any other
stranger who happened to come in their way; but Lauderdale was far too
self-conscious to accept such overtures. He had come uninvited, an
undesired, perhaps unwelcome, visitor; but not for the world would the
philosopher have taken advantage of his position, as Colin’s friend, to
procure himself even the comfort of a meal. Not if he had been starving
would he have shared Colin’s dinner or accepted the seat offered him at
the luxurious table below. “Na, na! I came without asking,” said
Lauderdale; “when they bid me to their feasts it’s no for your sake,
callant, or for my sake, but for their own sakes--for good breeding, and
good manners, and not to be uncivil. To force a man to give you your
dinner out of civility is every bit as shabby an action as to steal it.
I’m no the man to sorn on Sir Thomas for short time or long.” And, in
pursuance of this whimsical idea of independence, Lauderdale went back
every evening along the dark country lanes to the little room he had
rented in the village, and subdued his reluctant Scotch appetite to the
messes of bacon and beans he found there--which was as severe a test of
friendship as could have been imposed upon him. He was not accustomed to
fare very sumptuously at home; but the fare of an English cottager is,
if more costly, at least as distasteful to an untravelled Scotch
appetite as the native porridge and broth of a Scotch peasant could be
to his neighbour over the Tweed. The greasy meal filled Lauderdale with
disgust, but it did not change his resolution. He lived like a Spartan
on the bread which he could eat, and came back daily to his faithful
tendance of the young companion who now represented to him almost all
that he loved in the world. Colin grew better during these weeks. The
air of home which his mother brought with her, the familiar discussions
and philosophies with which Lauderdale filled the weary time, gave him a
connecting link once more with the old life. And the new life again rose
before Colin, fresh, and solemn, and glorious. Painfully and sharply he
had been delivered from his delusions--those innocent delusions which
were virtues. He began to see that, if indeed there ever was a woman in
the world for whom it was worth a man’s while to sacrifice his existence
and individuality, Miss Matty, of all women, was not she. And after this
divergence out of his true path, after this cloud that had come over
him, and which once looked as though it might swallow him up, it is not
to be described how beautiful his own young life looked to Colin, when
it seemed to himself that he was coming back to it, and was about to
enter once more upon his natural career.
“I wonder how Macdonald will get on at Baliol,” he said; “of course
he’ll get the scholarship. It’s no use regretting what cannot be helped;
but when a man takes the wrong turning once in his life, do you think he
can get into the right road again?” said Colin. He had scarcely spoken
the words when a smile gradually stealing over his face, faint and soft
like the rising of the moon, intimated to his companions that he had
already answered himself. Not only so, but that the elasticity of his
youth had delivered Colin from all heavier apprehensions. He was not
afraid of the wrong turning he had taken. He was but playing with the
question in a kind of tender wantonness. Neither his health nor his lost
opportunity gave him much trouble. The tide of life had risen in his
heart, and again everything seemed possible; and, such being the case,
he trifled pleasantly with the dead doubts which existed no longer.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,” Colin said to himself, smiling
over it; and the two people who were looking at him, whose hearts and
whose eyes were studying every change in his face, saw that a new era
had begun, and did not know whether to exchange looks of gratulation or
to betake themselves to the silence and darkness to shed tears of
despair over the false hope.
“When a callant goes a step astray, you mean,” said Lauderdale, with a
harshness in his voice which sounded contemptuous to Colin--“goes out of
his way a step to gather a flower or the like,--a man that takes a wrong
turn is altogether a false eemage. Everything in this world is awfu’
mysterious,” said the philosopher. “I’m no clear in my mind about that
wrong turning. According to some theories there’s no such thing in
existence. ‘All things work together for good.’ I would like to know
what was in Paul’s head when he wrote down that. No to enter into the
question of inspiration, the opinion of a man like him is aye worth
having; but it’s an awfu’ mysterious saying to me.”
“Eh, but it’s true,” said the Mistress; “you’re no to throw ony of your
doubts upon Providence. I’ll no say but what it’s a hard struggle
whiles; but, if God doesna ken best--if He’s not the wisest and the
kindest--I would rather, for my part, come to an end without ony more
ado about it. I’m no wanting to live, either in earth or heaven, if
there’s ony doubts about Him.”
“That’s aye the way with women,” said Lauderdale, reflectively. “They’ve
nae patience for a philosophical question. But the practical argument is
no doubt awfu’ powerful, and I can say nothing against it. I’m greatly
of the same way o’ thinking myself. Life’s no worth having on less
terms; but at the same time--”
“I was speaking only of the Baliol Scholarship,” said Colin, with a
momentary pettishness; “you are more abstruse than ever, Lauderdale. If
there should happen to be another vacancy next year, do you think I’ve
injured myself by neglecting this one? I never felt more disposed for
work,” said the young man, raising himself out of his chair. It said a
great deal for his returning strength that the two anxious spectators
allowed him to get up and walk to the window without offering any
assistance. The evening was just falling, and Colin looked out upon a
grey landscape of leafless trees and misty flats, over which the shadows
were gathering. He came back again with a little exclamation of
impatience. “I hate these dull levels,” said the restless invalid; “the
earth, and the skies are silent here, and have nothing to say. Mother,
why do we not go home?” He stood before her for a moment in the twilight
looking, in his diminished bulk and apparently increased height, like a
shadow of what he was. Then he threw himself back in his chair with an
impatience partly assumed to conceal the weakness of which he was
painfully sensible. “Let us go to-morrow,” said Colin, closing his eyes.
He was in the state of weakness which feels every contradiction an
injury, and already had been more ruffled in spirit than he cared to
acknowledge, by the diversion of the talk from his own individual
concerns to a general question so large and so serious. He lay back in
his chair, with his eyes closed, and those clouds of brown hair of which
his mother was so proud hanging heavily over the forehead which, when it
was visible, looked so pale and worn out of its glory of youth. The
colour of day had all gone out of the whispering, solemn twilight; and,
when the Mistress looked at the face before her, pale, with all its
outlines rigid in the grey light, and its eyes closed, it was not
wonderful that a shiver went through her heart.
“That was just what I had to speak about, Colin, my man,” said Mrs.
Campbell, nerving herself for the task before her. “I see no reason
myself against it, for I’ve aye had a great confidence in native air;
but your grand doctor that was brought down from London--”
“Do not say anything more. I shall not stay here, mother; it is
impossible. I am throwing away my life,” cried Colin, hastily, not
waiting to hear her out. “Anybody can teach that boy. As for the
Franklands, I have done enough for them. They have no right to detain
me. We will go to-morrow,” the young man repeated with the petulance of
his weakness; to which Mrs. Campbell did not know how to reply.
“But, Colin, my man,” said the Mistress, after a pause of perplexity,
“it’s no _that_ I’m meaning. Spring’s aye sweet, and its sweet aboon a’
in your ain place, when ye ken every corner to look for a primrose in. I
said that to the doctor, Colin, but he wasna of my opinion. A’ that was
in his mind was the east wind (no that there’s much o’ that in our
countryside, but thae English canna tell one airt from another) and the
soft weather; and I couldna say but what it was whiles damp,” said the
candid woman; “and the short and the long is, that he said you were to
gang south and no north. If it wasna for your health’s sake, which keeps
folk anxious, it would sound ower grand to be possible,” she continued,
with a wistful smile, “and awfu’ proud I would be to think of my laddie
in Italy--”
“In Italy!” said Colin, with a cry of excitement and surprise; and then
they both stopped short, and he looked in his mother’s eyes, which would
not meet his, and which he could see, hard as she struggled to keep them
unseen, were wet and shining with tears. “People are sent to Italy to
die,” said the young man. “I suppose that is what the doctor
thinks?--and that is your opinion, my poor mother?--and Lauderdale
thinks so too? Don’t say No, no; I can see it in your eyes.”
“Oh, Colin, dinna say that! dinna break my heart!” cried the Mistress.
“I’m telling you every word the doctor said. He said it would be better
for you in the future; better for your strength, and for getting free of
danger in the many hard winters--dour Scotch winters, frost, and snow,
and stormy weather, and you your duty to mind night and day--” She made
a little pause to get her breath, and smiled upon Colin, and went on
hastily, lest she should break down before all was said. “In the mony
hard winters that you have to look forward to--the lang life that’s to
come--”
“Lauderdale,” said Colin, out of the darkness, “do you hear her saying
what she thinks is deception and falsehood. My mother is obliged to tell
me the doctor’s lie; but it stumbles on her lips. That is not how she
would speak of herself. She would say--”
“Callant, hold your peace,” said Lauderdale. His voice was so harsh and
strange, that it jarred in the air, and he rose up with a sudden
movement, rising like a tower into the twilight, through which the
pleasant reflections from the fire sparkled and played as lightly as if
the talk had been all of pleasure. “Be silent, sir,” cried Colin’s
friend. “How dare you say to me that any word but truth can come out of
the Mistress’s lips? How dare ye--” But here Lauderdale himself came to
a sudden pause. He went to the window, as Colin had done, and then came
quickly back again. “Because we’re a wee concerned and anxious about
him, he thinks he may say what he likes,” said the philosopher, with a
strange, short laugh. “It’s the way with such callants. They’re kings,
and give the laws to us that ken better. You may say what you like,
Colin, but you must not name anything that’s no true with your mother’s
name.”
It is strange to feel that you are going to die. It is stranger still to
see your friends profoundly conscious of the awful news they have to
convey, painfully making light of it, and trying to look as if they
meant nothing. Colin perceived the signification of his mother’s
pathetic smiles, of his friend’s impatience, of the vigilant watch they
kept upon him. He saw that, if perhaps her love kept a desperate spark
of hope alight in the Mistress’s heart, it _was_ desperate, and she put
no confidence in it. All this he perceived, with the rapid and sudden
perception which comes at such a crisis. Perhaps for a moment the blood
went back upon his heart with a suffocating sense of danger, against
which he could make no stand, and of an inevitable approaching fate
which he could not avoid or flee from. The next minute he laughed aloud.
The sound of his laughter was strange and terrible to his companions.
The Mistress took her boy’s hand and caressed it, and spoke to him in
the soothing words of his childhood. “Colin, my man--Colin, my bonnie
man!” said the mother whose heart was breaking. She thought his laugh
sounded like defiance of God, defiance of the approaching doom; and such
a fear was worse even than the dread of losing him. She kept his
reluctant fingers in hers, holding him fast to the faith and resignation
of his home. As for Lauderdale, he went away out of sight, struggling
with a hard sob which all his strength could not restrain; and it was in
the silence of this moment that Colin’s laugh, more faintly, more
softly, with a playful sound that went to their hearts, echoed again
into the room.
“Don’t hold me, mother,” he said; “I could not run away from you if I
would. You think I don’t take my discovery as I ought to do? If it is
true,” said Colin, grasping his mother’s hand, “you will have time
enough to be miserable about me after; let us be happy as long as we
can. But I don’t think it is true. I have died and come alive again. I
am not going to die any more just now,” said Colin, with a smile which
was more than his mother could bear; and his eyes were so fixed upon
her, that her efforts to swallow the climbing sorrow in her throat were
such as consumed her strength. But even then it was of him and not
herself that she thought. “I wasna meaning--I wasna saying--” she tried
to articulate in her broken voice; and then at intervals, “A’ can be
borne--a’ can be borne--that doesna go against the will of God. Oh
Colin, my ain laddie! we maun a’ die; but we must not rebel against
Him,” cried the Mistress. A little more, and even she, though
long-enduring as love could make her, must have reached the limits of
her strength; but Colin, strangely enough, was no way disposed for
solemnity, nor for seriousness. He was at the height of the rebound,
and disposed to carry his nurses with him to that smiling mountain-top
from which death and sorrow had dispersed like so many mists and clouds.
“Come to the window, and look out,” said Colin; “take my arm, mother; it
feels natural to have you on my arm. Look here--there are neither hills
nor water, but there are always stars about. I don’t mean to be
discouraged,” said the young man. He had to lean against the window to
support himself; but, all the same, he supported her, keeping fast hold
of the hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to be discouraged,” said Colin,
“nor to let you be discouraged. I have been in the valley of the shadow
of death, but I have come out again. It does not matter to me what the
doctor says, or what Lauderdale says, or any other of my natural
enemies. You and I, mother, know better,” he said; “I am not going to
die.”
The two stood at the window, looking up to the faint stars, two faces
cast in the same mould--one distraught with a struggling of hope against
knowledge, against experience; the other radiant with a smile of youth.
“I am not quite able to walk over the Alps, at present,” said Colin,
leading the Mistress back to her chair; “but, for all that, let us go to
Italy since the doctor says so. And, Lauderdale, come out of the dark,
and light the candles, and don’t talk any more nonsense. We are going to
have a consultation about the ways and means. I don’t know how it is to
be done,” said Colin, gaily, “since we have not a penny, nor has anybody
belonging to us; but still, since you say so, mother, and the doctor,
and Lauderdale----”
The Mistress, all trembling and agitated, rose at this moment to help
Lauderdale, who had come forward without saying anything, to do the
patient’s bidding. “You’ll no be angry?” said Mrs. Campbell, under her
breath; “it’s a’ his spirits; he means nothing but love and kindness.”
Lauderdale met her eye with a countenance almost as much disturbed as
her own.
“Me angry?” said Colin’s friend; “he might have my head for a football,
if that would please him.” The words were said in an undertone which
sounded like a suppressed growl; and as such Colin took this little
clandestine exchange of confidence.
“Is he grumbling, mother?” said the object of their cares. “Never mind;
he likes to grumble. Now come to the fire, both of you, and talk. They
are oracles, these great doctors; they tell you what you are to do
without telling you how to do it. Must I go to Italy in a balloon?” said
Colin. “After all, if it were possible, it would be worth being ill
for,” said the young man, with a sudden illumination in his eyes. He
took the management of affairs into his own hands for the evening, and
pointed out to them where they were to sit with the despotism of an
invalid. “Now we look comfortable,” said Colin, “and are prepared to
listen to suggestions. Lauderdale, your mind is speculative; do you
begin.”
It was thus that Colin defeated the gathering dread and anguish which,
even in the face of his apparent recovery, closed more and more darkly
round him; and, as what he did and said did not arise from any set
purpose or conscious intention, but was a mere outburst of instinctive
feeling, it had a certain inevitable effect upon his auditors, who
brightened up, in spite of themselves and their convictions, under his
influence. When Colin laughed, instead of feeling inclined to sob or
groan over him, even Lauderdale, after a while, cleared up too into a
doubtful smile; and, as for the Mistress, her boy’s confidence came to
her like a special revelation. She saw it was not assumed, and her heart
rose. “When a young creature’s appointed to be taken, the Lord gives him
warning,” she said in secret; “but my Colin has nae message in himself,”
and her tender soul was cheered by the visionary consolation. It was
under the same exhilarating influence that Lauderdale spoke.
“I’ve given up my situation,” he said. “No but what it was a very
honourable situation, and no badly remunerated, but a man tires of
everything that’s aye the same day by day. I’ve been working hard a’ my
life; and it’s in the nature of man to be craving. I’m going to Eetaly
for my own hand,” said Lauderdale; “no on your account, callant. I’ve
had enough of the prose, and now’s the time for a bit poetry. No that I
undertake to write verses, like you. If he has not me to take care of
him, he’ll flee into print,” said the philosopher, reflectively. “It
would be a terrible shock to me to see our first prizeman, the most
distinguished student, as the Principal himself said, coming out in a
book with lines to Eetaly, and verses about vineyards and oranges. That
kind of thing is a’ very well for the callants at Oxford and Cambridge,
but there’s something more expected from one of _us_,” said Lauderdale.
“I’m going to Eetaly, as I tell you, callant, as long as there’s a
glimmer of something like youth left in me, to get a bit poetry into my
life. You and me will take our knapsacks on our backs and go off
together. I have a trifle in the bank; a hundred pounds--or maybe mair:
I couldn’t say as to a shilling or two. If I’m speculative, as you say,
I’m no without a turn for the practical,” he continued with some pride;
“and everything’s awfu’ cheap when you know how to manage. This curate
callant--he has not a great deal of sense, nor ony philosophical
judgment, that I can see; and, as for theology, he doesna understand
what it means; but he does not seem to me to be deficient in other
organs,” said the impartial observer, “such as the heart, for example;
and he’s been about the world, and understands about inns and things.
Every living creature has its use in this life. I wouldna say he was
good for very much in the way of direct teaching from the pulpit, but
he’s been awfu’ instructive to me.”
“And you mean me to save my life at your cost?” said Colin. “This is
what I have come to; at your cost or at my father’s, or by somebody’s
charity? No; I’ll go home and sit in an easy-chair, like poor Hugh
Carlyle; and, mother, you’ll take care----”
When the sick man’s fitful spirits thus yielded again his mother was
near to soothe him into steadier courage. Again she held his hands, and
said, “Colin, my man--Colin, my bonnie man!” with the voice of his
childhood. “You’ll come back hale and strong to pay a’body back the
trouble,” said the Mistress, while Lauderdale proceeded unmoved, without
seeming to hear what Colin said.
“They’re a mystery to me, thae English priests,” said the meditative
Scotchman. “They’re not to call ignorant, in the general sense, but
they’re awfu’ simple in their ways. To think of a man in possession of
his faculties reading a verse or maybe a chapter out of the Bible, which
is very near as mysterious as life itself to the like of me, and then
discoursing about the Church and the Lessons appointed for this day or
that. It’s a grand tether, that Prayer-Book, though. Yon kind of
callant, so long as he keeps by that, he’s safe in a kind of a way; but
he knows nothing about what’s doing outside his printed walls, and, when
he hears suddenly a’ the stir that’s in the world, he loses his head,
and invents a’ the old heresies over again. But he’s awful instructive,
as I was saying, in the article of inns and steamboats. Not to say that
he’s a grand Italian scholar, as far as I can understand, and reads
Dante in the original. It’s a wonderful thought to realize the like of
that innocent reading Dante. You and me, Colin,” said Lauderdale, with a
sudden glow in his eyes, “will take the poets by the hand for once in
our lives. What you were saying about cost was a wonderful sensible
saying for you. When the siller’s done we’ll work our way home; it’s a
pity you have no voice to speak of, and I canna play the--guitar is’t
they call it?” said the philosopher, with a quaint grimace. He was
contemptuous of the lighter arts, as was natural to his race and habits,
and once more Colin’s laugh sounded gaily through the room, which, for
many weeks, had known little laughter. They discussed the whole matter,
half playfully, half seriously, as they sat over the fire, growing eager
about it as they went on. Lauderdale’s hundred pounds “or maybe mair”
was the careful hoarding of years. He had saved it as poor Scotchmen are
reported to save, by minute economies, unsuspected by richer men. But he
was ready to spend his little fortune with the composure of a
millionaire. “And myself after it, if that would make it more
effectual,” he said to himself, as he went back in the darkness to his
little lodging in the village. Let it not be supposed, however, that any
idea of self-sacrifice was in the mind of Lauderdale. On the contrary,
he contemplated this one possible magnificence of his life with a glow
of secret satisfaction and delight. He was willing to expend it all upon
Colin, if not to save him, at least to please him. That was _his_
pleasure, the highest gratification of which he was capable in the
circumstances. He made his plans with the liberality of a prince,
without thinking twice about the matter--though it was all the wealth he
had in the world which he was about to lavish freely for Colin’s sake.
“I don’t mean to take Lauderdale’s money, but we’ll arrange it somehow,”
said Colin; “and then for the hard winters you speak of, mother, and the
labour night and day.” He sent her away with a smile; but, when he had
closed the door of his own apartment, which now at length he was well
enough to have to himself without the attendance of any nurse, the light
went out of the young man’s face. After his kind attendants were both
gone, he sat down and began to think; things did not look so serene, so
certain, so infallible when he was alone. He began to think, What if
after all the doctor might be right? What if it were death and not life
that was written against his name? The thought brought a little thrill
to Colin’s heart, and then he set himself to contemplate the
possibility. His faith was shadowy in details, like that of most people;
his ideas about heaven had shifted and grown confused from the first
vague vision of beatitude, the crowns, and palms, and celestial harps of
childhood. What was that other existence into which, in the fulness of
his youth, he might be transported ere he was aware? _There_ at least
must be the solution of all the difficulties that crazed the minds of
men; _there_ at least, nearer to God, there must be increase of faculty,
elevation of soul. Colin looked it in the face, and the Unknown did not
appal him; but through the silence he seemed already to hear the cry of
anguish which would go up from one homely house under the unanswering
skies. It had been his home all his life: what would it be to him in the
event of that change, which was death, but not destruction? Must he look
down from afar off, from some cold, cruel distance, upon the sorrow of
his friends, himself being happy beyond reach, bearing no share in the
burden? Or might he, according to a still more painful imagination, be
with them, beside them, but unable by word or look, by breath or touch,
to lift aside even for a moment the awful veil, transparent to him, but
to them heavy and dark as night, which drops between the living and the
dead? It was when his thoughts came to this point, that Colin withdrew,
faint and sick at heart, from the hopeless inquiry. He went to rest,
saying his prayers as he said them at his mother’s knee, for Jesus’
sake. Heaven and earth swam in confused visions round the brain which
was dizzy with the encounter of things too mysterious, too dark to be
fathomed. The only thing in Earth or Heaven of which there seemed to be
any certainty was the sole Existence which united both, in whose name
Colin said his prayers.