After this interview it was strange to meet again the little committee
upstairs, and resume the consideration of ways and means, which Sir
Thomas would have settled so summarily. Colin could not help thinking of
the difference with a little amusement. He was young enough to be able
to dismiss entirely the grave thoughts of the previous night, feeling in
his elastic, youthful mind, something of the fresh influence of the
morning, or at least--for Colin had found out that the wind was
easterly, a thing totally indifferent to him in old times--of the
sentiment of the morning, which, so long as heart and courage are
unbroken, renews the thoughts and hopes. Money was a necessary evil, to
Colin’s thinking. So long as there happened to be enough of it for
necessary purposes, he was capable of laughing at the contrast between
his own utter impecuniosity and the wealth which was only important for
sake of the things that could be done with it. Though he was Scotch, and
of a careful, money-making race, this was as yet the aspect which money
bore to the young man. He laughed as he leaned back in his easy chair.
“What Lauderdale makes up by working for years, and what we can’t make
up by any amount of working, Sir Thomas does with a scrape of his pen,”
said Colin. “Downstairs they need to take little thought about these
matters, and up here a great deal of thought serves very little purpose.
On the whole, it seems to me that it would be very good for our tempers
and for our minds in general if we all had plenty of money,” said the
young philosopher, still laughing. He was tolerably indifferent on the
subject, and able to take it easily. While he spoke, his eye lighted on
his mother’s face, who was not regarding the matter by any means so
lightly. Mrs. Campbell on the contrary was suffering under one of the
greatest minor trials of a woman. She thought her son’s life depended on
this going to Italy, and to procure the means for it there was nothing
on earth his mother would not have done. She would have undertaken
joyfully the rudest and hardest labour that ever was undertaken by man.
She would have put her hands, which indeed were not unaccustomed to
work, to any kind of toil; but with this eager, longing in her heart she
knew at the same time that it was quite impossible for her to do
anything by which she could earn those sacred and precious coins on
which her boy’s life depended. While Colin spoke, his mother was making
painful calculations what she could save and spare, at least, if she
could not earn. Colin stopped short when he looked at her; he could not
laugh any longer. What was to him a matter of amusing speculation was to
her life or death.
“There canna but be inequalities in this world,” said the Mistress, her
tender brows still puckered with their baffling calculations. “I’m no
envious of ony grandeur, nor of taking my ease, nor of the pleasures of
this life. We’re awfu’ happy at hame in our sma’ way when a’s weel with
the bairns; but it’s for their sakes, to get them a’ that’s good for
them! Money’s precious when it means health and life,” said Mrs.
Campbell, with a sigh; “and it’s awfu’ hard upon a woman when she can do
nothing for her ain, and them in need.”
“I’ve known it hard upon mony a man,” said Lauderdale; “there’s little
difference when it comes to that. But a hundred pounds,” he continued,
with a delightful consciousness of power and magnificence, “is not a bad
sum to begin upon; before that’s done, there will be time to think of
more. It’s none of your business, callant, that I can see. If you’ll no
come with me, you must even stay behind. I’ve set my heart on a holiday.
A man has little good of his existence when he does nothing but work and
eat, and eat and work again, as I’ve been doing. I would like to take
the play a while, and feel that I’m alive.”
When the Mistress saw how Lauderdale stretched his long limbs on his
chair, and how Colin’s face brightened with the look, half sympathetic,
half provocative, which usually marked the beginning of a long
discussion, she went to the other end of the room for her work. It was
Colin’s linen which his mother was putting in order, and she was rather
glad to withdraw to a distance, and retire within that refuge of
needlework, which is a kind of sanctuary for a woman, and in which she
could pursue undisturbed her own thoughts. After a while, though these
discussions were much in Mrs. Campbell’s way, and she was not
disinclined in general to take part in them, she lost the thread of the
conversation. The voices came to her in a kind of murmur, now and then
chiming in with a chance word or two in the current of her own
reflections. The atmosphere which surrounded the convalescent had never
felt so hopeful as to-day, and the heart of the mother swelled with a
sense of restoration, a trust in God’s mercy which recently had been
dull and faint within her. Restoration, recovery, deliverance--Nature
grows humble, tender, and sweet under these influences of heaven. The
Mistress’s heart melted within her, repenting of all the hard thoughts
she had been thinking, of all the complaints she had uttered. “It is
good for me that I was afflicted,” said the Psalmist; but it was not
until his affliction was past that he could say so. Anguish and loss
make no such confession. The heart, when it is breaking, has enough ado
to refrain from accusing God of its misery, and it is only the
inhumanity of human advisers that adjure it to make spiritual
merchandize out of the hopelessness of its pain.
Matters were going on thus in Colin’s chamber, where he and his friend
sat talking; and the mother at the other end of the room carefully
sewing on Colin’s buttons, began to descend out of her heaven of
thankfulness, and to be troubled with a pang of apprehension lest her
husband should not see things in the same light as she did, but might,
perhaps, demur to Colin’s journey as an unwarrantable expense. People at
Ramore did not seek such desperate remedies for failing health. Whenever
a cherished one was ill, they were content to get “the best doctors,”
and do everything for him that household care and pains could do; but,
failing that, the invalid succumbed into the easy chair, and, when
domestic cherishing would serve the purpose no longer, into a submissive
grave, without dreaming of those resources of the rich which might still
have prolonged the fading life. Colin of Ramore was a kind father, but
he was only a man, as the Mistress recollected, and apt to come to
different conclusions from an anxious and trembling mother. Possibly he
might think this great expense unnecessary, not to be thought of, an
injustice to his other children; and the thought disturbed her
reflections terribly, as she sat behind backs examining Colin’s
wardrobe. At all events, present duty prompted her to make everything
sound and comfortable, that he might be ready to encounter the journey
without any difficulty on that score; and, absorbed in these mingled
cares and labours, she was folding up carefully the garments she had
done with, and laying them before her in a snowy heap upon the table,
when the curate knocked softly at the door. It was rather an odd scene
for the young clergyman, who grew more and more puzzled by his Scotch
acquaintances the more he saw of them, not knowing how to account for
their quaint mixture of homeliness and intelligence, nor whether to
address them politely as equals, or familiarly as inferiors. Mrs.
Campbell came forward, when he opened the door, with her cordial smile
and looks as gracious as if she had been a duchess. “Come away, sir,”
said the farmer’s wife; “we are aye real glad to see you,” and then the
Mistress stopped short, for Henry Frankland was behind the curate, and
somehow the heir of Wodensbourne was not a favourite with Colin’s
mother. But her discontent lasted only a moment. “I canna bid ye
welcome, Mr. Frankland, to your own house,” said the diplomatical woman;
“but if it was mine I would say I was glad to see you.” This was how she
got over the difficulty. But she followed the two young men towards the
fire, where Colin had risen from his easy chair. She could but judge
according to her knowledge, like other people; and she was a little
afraid that the man who had taken his love from him, who had hazarded
his health and, probably, his life, would find little favour in Colin’s
eyes; and to be anything but courteous to a man who came to pay her a
visit, even had he been her greatest enemy, was repugnant to her
barbaric-princely Scotch ideas. She followed accordingly, to be at hand
and put things straight, if they went wrong.
“Frankland was too late to see you to-day when you were downstairs; so
he thought he would come up with me,” said the curate, giving this
graceful version of the fact that, dragged by himself and pursued by
Lady Frankland, Harry had most reluctantly ascended the stair. “I am
very glad indeed to hear that you were down to-day. You are
looking--ah--better already,” said the kind young man. As for Harry
Frankland, he came forward and offered his hand, putting down at the
same time on the table a pile of books with which he was loaded.
“My cousin told me you wanted to learn Italian,” said Harry; “so I
brought you the books. It’s a very easy language; though people talk
great nonsense about its being musical. It is not a bit sweeter than
English. If you only go to Nice, French will answer quite well.” He sat
down suddenly and uncomfortably as he delivered himself of this
utterance; and Colin, for his part, took up the grammar, and looked at
it as if he had no other interest under the sun.
“I don’t agree with Frankland there,” said the curate; “everything is
harmonious in Italy except the churches. I know you are a keen observer,
and I am sure you will be struck with the fine spirit of devotion in the
people; but the churches are the most impious edifices in existence,”
said the Anglican, with warmth--which was said, not because the curate
was thinking of ecclesiastical art at the moment, but by way of making
conversation, and conducting the interview between the saved man and his
deliverer comfortably to an end.
“I think you said you had never been in Scotland?” said Lauderdale. “For
my part I’m no heeding much about the churches; but I’m curious to see
the workings of an irrational system where it has no limit. It’s an
awfu’ interesting subject of inquiry; and there is little doubt in my
mind that a real popular system must aye be more or less irrational----”
“I beg your pardon,” said the curate. “Of course there are many errors
in the Church of Rome; but I don’t see that such a word as
irrational----”
“It’s a very good word,” said Lauderdale. “I’m no using it in a
contemptuous sense. Man’s an irrational being, take him at his best. I’m
not saying if it’s above reason or below reason, but out of reason;
which makes it none the worse to me. All religion’s out of reason for
that matter--which is a thing we never can be got to allow in Scotland.
You understand it better here,” said the philosopher; but the curate’s
attention was too much distracted to leave him any time for
self-defence.
During this pause, however, Colin and Harry were eyeing each other over
the Italian books. “You won’t find it at all difficult,” said young
Frankland; “if you had been staying longer we might have helped you. I
say--look here; I am much obliged to you,” Harry added suddenly: “a
fellow does not know what to say in such circumstances. I am horribly
vexed to think of your being ill. I’d be very glad to do as much for you
as you have done for me.”
“Which is simply nothing at all,” said Colin, hastily; and then he
became conscious of the effort the other had made. “Thank you for saying
so much. I wish you could, and then nobody would think any more about
it,” he said, laughing; and they regarded each other for another half
minute across the table while Lauderdale and the curate kept on talking
heresy. Then Colin suddenly held out his hand.
“It seems my fate to go away without a grudge against anybody,” said the
young man; “which is hard enough when one has a certain right to a
grievance. Good-bye. I daresay after this your path and mine will
scarcely cross again.”
“Good-bye,” said Harry Frankland, rising up--and he made a step or two
to the door, but came back again, swallowing a lump in his throat.
“Good-bye,” he repeated, holding out his hand another time. “I hope
you’ll soon get well! God bless you, old fellow! I never knew you till
now;” and so disappeared very suddenly, closing the door after him with
a little unconscious violence. Colin lay back in his chair with a smile
on his face. The two who were talking beside him had their ears intently
open to this bye-play, but they went on with their talk, and left the
principal actors in the little drama alone.
“I wonder if I am going to die?” said Colin, softly, to himself; and
then he caught the glance of terror, almost of anger, with which his
mother stopped short and looked at him, with her lips apart, as if her
breathing had stopped for the moment. “Mother, dear, I have no such
intention,” said the young man; “only that I am leaving Wodensbourne
with feelings so amicable and amiable to everybody, that it looks
alarming. Even Harry Frankland, you see--and this morning his
cousin----”
“What about his cousin, Colin?” said the Mistress, with bated breath.
Upon which Colin laughed--not harshly or in mockery--softly, with a
sound of tenderness, as if somewhere not far off there lay a certain
fountain of tears.
“She is very pretty, mother,” he said, “very sweet, and kind, and
charming. I daresay she will be a leader of fashion a few years hence,
when she is married; and I shall have great pleasure in paying my
respects to her when I go up from the Assembly in black silk stockings,
with a deputation, to present an address to the Queen.”
Mrs. Campbell never heard any more of what had been or had not been
between her son and the little siren whom she herself, in the bitterness
of her heart, had taken upon herself to reprove; and this was how Colin,
without, as he said, a grudge against anybody, concluded the episode of
Wodensbourne.
Some time, however, elapsed before it was possible for Colin and his
companion to leave England. Colin of Ramore was, as his wife had
imagined, slow to perceive the necessity for so expensive a proceeding.
The father’s alarm by this time had come to a conclusion. The favourable
bulletins which the Mistress had sent from time to time by way of
calming the anxiety of the family, had appeared to the farmer the
natural indications of a complete recovery; and so thought Archie, who
was his father’s chief adviser in the absence of the mistress of the
house.
“The wife’s gone crazy,” said big Colin. “She thinks this laddie of hers
should be humoured and made of as if he was Sir Thomas Frankland’s son.”
And the farmer treated with a little carelessness his wife’s assurances
that a warmer climate was necessary for Colin.
“Naebody would ever have thought of such a thing had he been at hame
when the accident happened,” said Archie; which was, indeed, very true:
and the father and son, who were the money-makers of the family, thought
the idea altogether fantastical. The matter came to be mentioned to the
minister, who was, like everybody else on the Holy Loch, interested
about Colin, and, as it happened, finally reached the ears of the same
Professor who had urged him to compete for the Baliol scholarship. Now,
it would be hard in this age of competitive examinations to say anything
in praise of a university prize awarded by favour--not to say that the
prizes in Scotch universities are so few as to make such patronage
specially invidious. Matters are differently managed now-a-days, and it
is to be hoped that pure merit always wins the tiny rewards which
Scotch learning has at its disposal; but in Colin’s day the interest of
a popular professor was worth something. The little conclave was again
gathered round the fire in Colin’s room at Wodensbourne, reading, with
mingled feelings, a letter from Ramore, when another communication from
Glasgow was put into Colin’s hand. The farmer’s letter had been a little
impatient, and showed a household disarranged and out of temper. One of
the cows was ill, and the maid-servant of the period had not proved
herself equal to the emergency. “I don’t want to hurry you, or to make
Colin move before he is able,” wrote the head of the house; “but it
appears to me that he would be far more likely to recover his health and
strength at home.” The Mistress had turned aside, apparently to look out
at the window, from which was visible a white blast of rain sweeping
over the dreary plain which surrounded Wodensbourne, though in reality
it was to hide the gush of tears that had come to her eyes. Big Colin
and his wife were what people call “a very united couple,” and had kept
the love of their youth wonderfully fresh in their hearts; but still
there were times when the man was impatient and dull of understanding,
and could not comprehend the woman, just as, perhaps, though Mrs.
Campbell was not so clearly aware of that side of the question, there
might be times when, on her side, the woman was equally a hindrance to
the man. She looked out upon the sweeping rain, and thought of the “soft
weather” on the Holy Loch, which had so depressing an effect upon
herself, notwithstanding her sound health and many duties, and of the
winds of March which were approaching, and of Colin’s life,--the most
precious thing on earth, because the most in peril. What was she to do,
a poor woman who had nothing, who could earn nothing, who had only
useless yearnings and cares of love to give her son?
While Mrs. Campbell was thus contemplating her impotence, and wringing
her hands in secret over the adverse decision from home, Lauderdale was
walking about the room in a state of high good-humour and content,
radiant with the consciousness of that hundred pounds, “or maybe mair,”
with which it was to be his unshared, exclusive privilege to succour
Colin. “I see no reason why we should wait longer. The Mistress is
wanted at home, and the east winds are coming on; and, when our siller
is spent we’ll make more,” said the exultant philosopher. And it was at
this moment of all others that the professor’s letter was put into the
invalid’s hands. He read it in silence, while the Mistress remained at
the window, concocting in her mind another appeal to her husband, and
wondering in her tender heart how it was that men were so dull of
comprehension and so hard to manage. “If Colin should turn ill
again”--for she dared not even think the word she meant--“his father
would never forgive himsel’,” said the Mistress to herself; and, as for
Lauderdale, he had returned to the contemplation of a Continental
Bradshaw, which was all the literature of which at this crisis Colin’s
friend was capable. They were both surprised when Colin rose up, flushed
and excited, with this letter which nobody had attached any importance
to in his hands. “They have given me one of the new scholarships,” said
Colin without any preface, “to travel and complete my studies. It is a
hundred pounds a year; and I think, as Lauderdale says, we can start
to-morrow,” said the young man, who in his weakness and excitement was
moved almost to tears.
“Eh, Colin, the Lord bless them!” said the Mistress, sitting down
suddenly in the nearest chair. She did not know who it was upon whom she
was bestowing that benediction, which came from the depths of her heart;
but she had to sit still after she had uttered it, blinded by two great
tears that made even her son’s face invisible, and with a trembling in
her frame, which rendered her incapable of any movement. She was
inconsistent, like other human creatures. When she had attained to this
sudden deliverance, and had thanked God for it, it instantly darted
through her mind that her boy was going to leave her on a solemn and
doubtful journey, now to be delayed no longer; and it was some time
before she was able to get up and arrange for the last time the
carefully-mended linen, which was all ready for him now. She packed it,
shedding a few tears over it, and saying prayers in her tender heart for
her firstborn; and God only knows the difficulty with which she
preserved her smile and cheerful looks, and the sinking of her heart
when all her arrangements were completed. Would he ever come back again
to make her glad? “You’ll take awfu’ care of my laddie?” she said to
Lauderdale, who, for his part, was not delighted with the scholarship;
and that misanthrope answered, “Ay, I’ll take care of him.” This was all
that passed between the two guardians, who knew, in their inmost hearts,
that the object of their care might never come back again. All the
household of Wodensbourne turned out to wish Colin a good journey next
morning when he went away; and the Mistress put down her old-fashioned
veil when the express was gone which carried him to London, and went
home again humbly by the night-train. Fortunately there was in the same
carriage with her a harassed young mother with little children, whose
necessities speedily demanded the lifting up of Mrs. Campbell’s veil.
And the day was clear on the Holy Loch, and all her native hills held
out their arms to her, when the good woman reached her home. She was
able to see the sick cows that afternoon, and her experience suggested a
means of relieving the speechless creatures which filled the house with
admiration. “She may be a foolish woman about her bairns,” said big
Colin, who was half pleased and half angry to hear her story; “but it’s
a different-looking house when the wife comes hame.” And thus the
natural sunshine came back again to the Mistress’s eyes.