In the meantime at least a fortnight must pass before they could expect
an answer to Lauderdale’s letter. During that time they returned to all
their old habits, with the strange and melancholy difference, that
Arthur, once the centre of all, was no longer there. Every day of this
time increased the development of Colin’s new thoughts, until the
unknown father of Alice had grown, in his eyes, into a cruel and
profligate tyrant, ready to drag his daughter home and plunge her into
depraved society without any regard for either her happiness or her
honour. Colin had, indeed, in his own mind, in strictest privacy and
seclusion of thought, indited an imaginary letter, eloquent with
youthful indignation, to inform this unworthy parent that his deserted
daughter had found a better protector; but he was very silent about
these cogitations of his, and did not share them even with Lauderdale.
And there were moments when Colin felt the seriousness of the position,
and thought it very hard that such a necessity should meet him in the
face at the beginning of his career. Sometimes in the sudden darkening,
out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the
impossible woman, the ideal creature--she who could have divined the
thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came
into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then
disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange
blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. That
ineffable mate and companion was never to be his, the young man thought.
True, he had never met her, nor come upon any trace of her footsteps,
for Matty Frankland at her best never could have been she. But yet, as
long as he was unbound by other tie or affection, this vision was the
“not impossible She” to Colin as to all men; and this he had to give
up--for Alice, dutiful and sweet Alice, forsaken by all friends and yet
so steadfast in her gentle self-possession, whom it was not in the heart
of man to be otherwise than tender of; she who had need of him, and whom
his very nature bound him to protect and cherish--was not that woman. At
other moments he thought of his own life, for which still so much
training was necessary, and which he should have entered in the full
freedom of his youth; and was profoundly aware of the incumbered and
helpless trim in which he must go into the battle, obliged to take
thought not of his work only, and the best means of doing it, but of
those cares of living which lie so lightly on a young man alone.
There may be some of Colin’s friends who will think the less of him for
this struggle in his mind; and there may be many who will think with
justice that, unless he could have offered love to Alice, he had no
right to offer her himself and his life--an opinion in which his
historian fully agrees. But then this gift though less than the best,
was a long way superior to anything else which, at the present moment,
was likely to be offered to the friendless girl. If he could have laid
at her feet the full heart, which is the only true offering under such
circumstances, the chances are that Alice, in her simplicity and
gentleness, would have been sadly puzzled what to do with that
passionate and ungovernable thing. What he really could offer
her--affection, tenderness, protection--was clearly comprehensible to
her. She had no other idea of love than was included in those attributes
and phases of it. These considerations justified Colin in the step which
he contemplated--or rather in the step which he did not contemplate, but
felt to be necessary and incumbent upon him. It sometimes occurred to
him how--if he had been prudent and taken Lauderdale’s advice, and
eschewed at the beginning that close connexion with Meredith and his
sister, which he had entered into with his eyes open, and with a
consciousness even that it might affect his life--this embarrassing
situation might never have come into being; and then he smiled to
himself, with youthful superiority, contemplating what seemed so plainly
the meaning of Providence, and asking himself how he, by a momentary
exercise of his own will, could have overthrown that distinct celestial
intention? On the whole, it was comforting to think that everything had
been arranged beforehand by agencies so very clear and traceable; and
with this conclusion of the argument he left off, as near contented as
possible, and not indisposed to enjoy the advantages which were palpably
before him; for, though they were not the eyes he had dreamed of, there
was a sweetness very well worthy of close study in Alice Meredith’s
eyes.
The days passed very quietly in this time of suspense. The society of
the two strangers, who were more to her in her sorrow than all her
kindred, supported the lonely girl more than she was aware of--more than
any one could have believed. They were absent during the greater part of
the day, and left her unmolested to the tears that would come,
notwithstanding all her patience; and they returned to her in the
evening with attention and cares to which she had never been accustomed,
devoting two original and powerful minds, of an order at once higher and
more homely than any which she had ever encountered, to her amusement
and consolation. Alice had never known before what it was to have
ordinary life and daily occurrences brightened by the thick-coming
fancies, the tender play of word and thought, which now surrounded her.
She had heard clever talk afar off, “in society,” and been awe-stricken
by the sound of it; and she had heard Arthur and his friends uttering
much fine-sounding language upon subjects not generally in her way; but
she was utterly unused to that action of uncommon minds upon common
things which gives so much charm to the ordinary intercourse of life.
All they could think of to lighten the atmosphere of the house in which
she sat in her deep mourning, absorbed for hours together in those
thoughts of the dead to which her needlework afforded little relief,
they did with devotion, suspending their own talk and occupations to
occupy themselves with her. Colin read _In Memoriam_ to her till her
heart melted and relieved itself in sweet abundant tears; and Lauderdale
talked and told her many a homely history of that common course of
humanity, full of sorrows sorer than her own, which fills young minds
with awe. Between them they roused Alice to a higher platform, a
different atmosphere, than she had known before; and she raised herself
up after them with a half-bewildered sense of elevation, not
understanding how it was; and so the long days which were so hard, and
which nothing in the world could save from being hard, brightened
towards the end, not certainly into anything that could be called
pleasure, but into a sad expansion and elevation of heart, in which
faintly appeared those beginnings of profound and deep happiness which
are not incompatible with grief, and yet are stronger and more inspiring
than joy.
While this was going on, unconsciously to any one concerned, Sora
Antonia, in her white kerchief and apron, sometimes knitting, sometimes
with her distaff like a buxom Fate, sat and twisted her thread and
turned her spindle a little behind yet not out of reach, keeping a wary
eye upon her charge. She too interposed, sometimes with her own comments
upon life and things in general, and took part in the conversation; and,
whether it was that Sora Antonia’s mind was really of a superior order,
or that the stately Roman speech threw a refining colour upon her
narratives, it is certain that the interpellations of the Italian
peasant fell without any sensible derogation into the strain of lofty
yet familiar talk which was meant to wean Alice from her special grief.
Sora Antonia told them of the other Forestieri who had lived like
themselves in the Savelli palace; who had come for health and yet had
died, leaving the saddest mourners--helpless widows and little children,
heart-broken fathers and mothers, perhaps the least consolable of all.
Life was such, she said solemnly, bowing her stately head. She herself,
of a hardy race, and strong, as the Signori saw, had not she buried her
children, for whom she would have gladly died? But the good God had not
permitted her to die. Alice cried silently as she heard all this; she
kissed Sora Antonia, who, for her part, had outlived her tears, and with
a natural impulse turned to Colin, who was young, and in whose heart, as
in her own, there must live a natural protest against this awful
necessity of separation and misery; and thus it came to be Colin’s turn
to interpose, and he came on the field once more with _In memoriam_, and
with other poems which were sweet to hear, and soothed her even when she
only partially entered into their meaning. A woman has an advantage
under such circumstances. By means of her sympathy and gratitude, and
the still deeper feeling which grew unconsciously in her heart towards
him who read, she came to believe that she too understood and
appreciated what was to him so clear and so touching. A kind of
spiritual magnetism worked upon Alice, and, to all visible appearance,
expanded and enlarged her mind. It was not that her intellect itself
grew, or that she understood all the beautiful imaginations, all the
tender philosophies thus unfolded to her; but she was united in a
singular union of affectionate companionship with those who did
understand, and even to herself she appeared able to see, if not with
her own eyes, at least with theirs, the new beauties and solemnities of
which she had not dreamt before.
This strange process went on day by day without any one being aware of
it; and even Lauderdale had almost forgotten that their guardianship of
Alice was only for the moment, and that the state of affairs altogether
was provisionary and could not possibly continue, when an answer reached
him to his letter. He was alone when he received it, and all that
evening said nothing on the subject until Alice had retired with her
watchful attendant; then, without a word of comment, he put it into
Colin’s hand. It was written in a stilted hand, like that of one
unaccustomed to writing, and was not quite irreproachable even in its
spelling. This was what Lauderdale’s correspondent said:--
“SIR,--Your letter has had such a bad effect upon the health of my
dear husband, that I beg you won’t trouble him with any more such
communications. If it’s meant to get money, that’s vain--for
neither him nor me knows anything about the friends Arthur may have
picked up. If he had stayed at home he would have received every
attention. As for his ungrateful sister, I won’t have anything to
say to her. Mr. Meredith is very ill, and, for anything I know, may
never rise from a bed of sickness, where he has been thrown by
hearing this news so sudden; but I take upon me to let her know as
he will have nothing to say to one that could behave so badly as
she has done. I am always for making friends, but she knows she
cannot expect much kindness from me after all that has happened.
She has money enough to live on, and she can do as she pleases.
Considering what her ingratitude has brought her dear father to,
and that I may be left alone to manage everything before many days
are past, you will please to consider that here is an end of it,
and not write any more begging letters to me.
“JULIA MEREDITH.”
This communication Colin read with a beating heart. It was so different
from what he expected, and left him so free to carry out the dawning
resolution which he had imagined himself executing in the face of
tyrannical resistance, that he felt at first like a man who has been
straining hard at a rope and is suddenly thrown down by the
instantaneous stoppage of the pressure on the other side. When he had
picked himself up, the facts of the case rushed on him distinct and
unmistakeable. The time had now come when the lost and friendless maiden
stood in the path of the true knight. Was he to leave her there to fight
her way in the hard world by herself, without defence or protection,
because, sweet and fair and pure as she was, she was not the lady of his
dreams? He made up his mind at once with a thrill of generous warmth;
but at the same time felt himself saying for ever and ever farewell to
that ideal lady who henceforward, in earth or heaven, could never be
his. All this passed through his mind while he was looking at the letter
which already his rapid eye had read and his mind comprehended. “So
there is an end of your hopes,” said Colin. “Now we are the only friends
she has in the world--as I have always thought.”
“Softly,” said Lauderdale. “Callants like you aye run away with the half
of an idea. This is an ignorant woman’s letter, that is glad to get rid
of her. The father will mend, and then he’ll take her out of our hands.”
“He shall do nothing of the kind,” said Colin, hotly. “You speak as if
she was a piece of furniture; I look upon her as a sacred charge. We are
responsible to Meredith for his sister’s comfort and--happiness,” said
the young man, who during this conversation preferred not to meet his
companion’s eye.
“Ay!” said Lauderdale drily, “that’s an awfu’ charge for the like of you
and me. It’s more that I ever calculated on, Colin. To see her safe
home, and in the hands of her friends----”
“Lauderdale, do not be so heartless; cannot you see that she has no
friends?” cried Colin; “not a protector in the world except----”
“Callant, dinna deceive yourself,” said Lauderdale; “it’s no a matter
for hasty judgment; we have nae right to pass sentence on a man’s
character. He’s her father, and it’s her duty to obey him. I’m no
heeding about that silly woman’s letter. Mr. Meredith will mend. I’m
here to take care of you,” said Colin’s guardian. “Colin, hold your
peace. You’re no to do for a moment’s excitement, for pity and ruth and
your own tender heart, what you may regret all your life. Sit down and
keep still. You are only a callant, too young to take burdens on
yourself; there is but one way that the like of you can protect the like
of her--and that is no to be thought of, as you consented with your own
mouth.”
“I am aware of that,” said Colin, who had risen up in his excitement.
“There is but one way. Matters have changed since we spoke of it first.”
“I would like to know how far they have changed,” said Lauderdale.
“Colin, take heed to what I say; if it’s love I’ll no speak a word; I
may disapprove a’ the circumstances, and find fault with every step ye
take; but if it’s love----”
“Hush!” said Colin, standing upright, and meeting his friend’s eye; “if
it should happen to be my future wife we are speaking of, my feelings
towards her are not to be discussed with any man in the world.”
They looked at each other thus for a moment, the one anxious and
scrutinizing, the other facing him with blank brightness, and a smile
which afforded no information. Perhaps Lauderdale understood all that
was implied in that blank; at all events, his own delicate sense of
honour could not refuse to admit Colin’s plea. He turned away, shaking
his head, and groaning privately under his breath; while Colin, struck
with compunction, having shut himself up for an instant, unfolded again,
that crisis being over, with all the happy grace of apology natural to
his disposition. “You are not ‘any man in the world,’” he said with a
short laugh, which implied emotion. “Forgive me, Lauderdale; and now you
know very well what I am going to do.”
“Oh ay, I ken what you are going to do; I kent three months ago, for
that matter,” said the philosopher. “A man acts no from circumstances,
as is generally supposed, but from his ain nature.” When he had given
forth this oracular utterance, Lauderdale went straight off to his room
without exchanging another word with Colin. He was satisfied to a
certain extent with such a mate for his friend, and belonged to too
lowly a level of society to give profound importance to the inexpediency
of early marriages--and he was fond of Alice, and admired her sweet
looks and sweet ways, and respected her self-command and patience;
nevertheless, he too sighed, and recognised the departure of the ideal
woman, who to him as little as to Colin resembled Alice;--and thus it
was understood between them how it was to be.
All this, it may be imagined, was little compatible with that
reverential regard for womankind in general which both the friends
entertained, and evidenced a security in respect to Alice’s inclinations
which was not altogether complimentary to her. And yet it was highly
complimentary in a sense; for their security arose from their
appreciation of the spotless unawakened heart with which they had to do.
If Colin entertained little doubt of being accepted when he made his
proposal, it was not because he had an overweening idea of himself, or
imagined Alice “in love” with him according to the vulgar expression. A
certain chivalrous, primitive sense of righteous and natural necessity
was in his confidence. The forlorn maiden, knowing the knight to be
honest and true, would accept his protection loyally and simply, without
bewildering herself with dreams of choice where no choice was; and
having accepted would love and cleave as was her nature. To be sure
there were types of woman less acquiescent; and we have already said
that Alice did not bear the features of that ideal of which Colin had
dreamed; but such was the explanation of his confidence. Alice showed
little distress when she saw her stepmother’s letter except on account
of her father’s illness; though even that seemed rather consolatory to
her than otherwise, as a proof of his love for Arthur. As for Mrs.
Meredith’s refusal to interfere on her behalf, she was clearly relieved
by the intimation; and things went on as before for another week or two,
until Sora Antonia, who had now other tenants arriving and many
occupations in hand, began to murmur a little over the watch which she
would not relinquish. “Is it thus young ladies are left in England?” she
asked, with a little indignation, “without any one to take care of them
except the Signori, who, though amiable and excellent, are only men? or
when may the lady be expected from England who is to take charge of the
Signorina?” It was after this question, had been put to him with some
force one evening, that Colin proposed to Alice, who was beginning to
lift her head again like a flower after a storm, and to show symptoms of
awaking from the first heaviness of grief, to go out with him and visit
those ilex avenues, which had now so many associations for the
strangers. She went with a faint sense of pleasure in her heart through
the slanting sunshine, looking wistfully through her black veil at the
many cheerful groups on the way, and clinging to Colin’s arm when a kind
neighbour spoke to her in pity and condolence. She put up her veil when
they came to the favourite avenue, where Lauderdale and Colin walked so
often. Nothing could be more silent, more cool and secluded than this
verdant cloister, where, with the sunshine still blazing everywhere
around, the shade and quiet were profound and unbroken. They walked once
or twice up and down, remarking now and then upon the curious network of
branches, which, out of reach of the sun, were all bare and stripped of
their foliage--and upon the blue blaze of daylight at either opening,
where the low arch of dark verdure framed in a span of brilliant Italian
sky. Then they both became silent, and grew conscious of it; and it was
at that moment, just as Alice for the first time began to remember the
privileges and penalties of her womanhood, that Colin spoke,--
“I brought you here to speak to you,” he said. “I have a great deal to
say. That letter that Lauderdale showed you did not grieve you, did it?
You must tell me frankly. Arthur made me one of your guardians, and,
whatever you may decide upon, that is a sacred bond.”
“Yes, oh yes,” said Alice, with tears, “I know how kind you both are.
No, it did not grieve me, except about papa. I was rather glad, if I may
say so, that she did not send for me home. It is not--a--home--like what
it used to be,” said Alice; and then, perhaps because something in
Colin’s looks had advertised her of what was coming; perhaps because of
the awakening sense of her position sprang up in a moment, after long
torpor--a sudden change came upon her face. “I have given you a great
deal of trouble,” she said; “I am like somebody who has had a terrible
fall--as soon as I come to myself I will go away. It is very wrong of me
to detain you here.”
“You are not detaining us,” said Colin, who, notwithstanding, was a
little startled and alarmed; “and you must not talk of going away.
Where would you go? Are not we your friends--the friends you know best
in Italy? You must not _think_ of going away.”
But even these very words thus repeated acted like an awakening spell
upon Alice. “I cannot tell what I have been thinking of,” she said. “I
suppose it is staying indoors and forgetting everything. I do not seem
to know even how long it is. Oh yes, you are my kindest friends. Nobody
ever was so good to me; but, then, you are only--gentlemen!” said Alice,
suddenly withdrawing her hand from Colin’s arm, and blushing over all
her pallid face. “Ah! I see now how stupid I have been to put off so
long. And I am sure I must have detained you here.”
“No,” said Colin, “do not say so; but I have something more to say to
you. You are too young and too delicate to face the world alone, and
your people at home are not going to claim you. I am a poor man now, and
I never can be rich, but I would protect you and support you if you
would have me. Will you trust me to take care of you, Alice, not for
this moment, but always? I think it would be the best thing for us
both.”
“Mr. Campbell, I don’t understand you,” said Alice, trembling and
casting a glance up at him of wistful surprise and uncertainty. There
was an eager, timid inquiry in her eyes beside the bewilderment. She
seemed to say, “What is it you mean? Is _that_ what you mean?” and Colin
answered by taking her hand again and drawing it through his arm.
“Whether you will have me or not,” he said, “there is always the bond
between us which Arthur has made sacred, and you must lean on me all the
same. I think you will see what I mean if you consider it. There is only
one way that I can be your true protector and guardian, and that is if
you will consent to marry me, Alice. Will you? You know I have nothing
to offer you; but I can work for you, and take care of you, and with me
you would not be alone.”
It was a strange way of putting it, certainly--very different from what
Colin had intended to say, strangely different from the love-tale that
had glided through his imagination by times since he became a man; but
he was very earnest and sincere in what he said, and the innocent girl
beside him was no critic in such matters. She trembled more and more,
but she leaned upon him and heard him out with anxious attention. When
he had ended, there was a pause, during which Colin, who had not
hitherto been doubtful, began himself to feel anxious; and then Alice
once more gave a wistful, inquiring look at his face.
“Don’t be angry with me,” she said; “it is so hard to know what to
answer. If you would tell me one thing quite truly and frankly--Would it
not do you a great deal of harm if this was to happen as you say?----”
“No,” said Colin. When he said the word he could not help remembering,
in spite of himself, the change it would make in his young prospects,
but the result was only that he repeated his negative with more warmth.
“It can do me only good,” said Colin, yielding to the natural
temptations of the moment, “and I think I might do something for your
happiness too. It is for you to decide--do not decide against me,
Alice,” said the young man; “I cannot part with you now.”
“Ah!--” said Alice with a long breath. “If it only would not do you any
harm,” she added a moment after, once more with that inquiring look. The
inquiry was one which could be answered but in one way, and Colin was
not a man to remain unmoved by the wistful, sweet eyes thus raised to
him, and by the tender dependence of the clinging arm. He set her doubts
at rest almost as eloquently, and quite as warmly, as if she had indeed
been that woman who had disappeared among the clouds for ever; and led
her home to Sora Antonia with a fond care, which was very sweet to the
forlorn little maiden, and not irksome by any means to the magnanimous
knight. Thus the decisive step was taken in obedience to the necessities
of the position, and the arrangements (as Colin had decided upon them)
of Providence. When he met Lauderdale and informed him of the new event,
the young man looked flushed and happy, as was natural in the
circumstances, and disposed of all the objections of prudence with great
facility and satisfaction to himself. It was a moonlight night, and
Colin and his friend went out to the _loggia_ on the roof of the house,
and plunged into a sea of discussion, through which the young lover
steered triumphantly the frailest bark of argument that ever held water.
But, when the talk was over, and Colin, before he followed Lauderdale
downstairs, turned round to take a parting look at the Campagna, which
lay under them like a great map in the moonlight, the old apparition
looked out once more from the clouds, pale and distant, and again seemed
to wave to him a shadowy farewell. “Farewell! farewell! not in heaven
nor in earth shall you ever find me,” sighed the woman of Colin’s
imagination, dispersing into thin white mists and specks of clouds; and
the young man went to rest with a vague sense of loss in his heart. The
sleep of Alice was sweeter than that of Colin on this first night of
their betrothal; but at that one period of existence, it often happens
that the woman, for once in her life, has the advantage. And thus it was
that the event, foreseen by Lauderdale on board the steamer at the
beginning of their acquaintance, actually came to pass.