“Now we have found them let me face them by myself,” said Colin, to whom
the interval of silence and consideration had been of use. They were
both waiting in the hall of one of the hotels facing towards the Piazza
del Popolo, to which they had at last tracked Mr. Meredith, and
Lauderdale acquiesced silently in Colin’s decision. The young man had
already sent up his card, with a request that he might see not Alice but
her father. After a considerable time, the servant who had taken it
returned with an abrupt message that Mr. Meredith was engaged. When he
had sent up a second time, explaining that his business was urgent, but
with the same effect, Colin accompanied his third message with a note,
and went with his messenger to the door of the room in which his
adversary was. There could be no doubt of the commotion produced within
by this third application. Colin could hear some one pacing about the
room with disturbed steps, and the sound of a controversy going on,
which, though he was too far off to hear anything that was said, still
reached him vaguely in sound at least. When he had waited for about five
minutes, the clergyman, whom he had not in the least thought of or
expected to see, made his appearance cautiously at the door. He did not
attempt to admit the young man, but came up to him on tiptoe, and took
him persuasively, almost caressingly, by the arm. “My good friend, my
excellent young friend,” said the puzzled priest, with a mixture of
compunction and expostulation which in other circumstances would have
amused Colin, “let us have a little conversation. I am sure you are much
too generous and considerate to add to the distress of--of----” But here
the good man recollected just in time that he had pledged himself not to
speak of Alice, and made a sudden pause. “There in that room,” he went
on, changing his tone, and assuming a little solemnity, “is a sorrowful
father, mourning for his only son, and driven almost out of his senses
by illness and weakness, and a sense of the shameful way in which his
daughter has been neglected--not his fault, my dear Mr Campbell. You
cannot have the heart to increase his sufferings by claims, however well
founded, which have been formed at a time----”
“Stop,” said Colin, “it is not my fault if he has not done his duty to
his children; I have no right to bear the penalty. He has cast the
vilest imputations upon me--”
“Hush, hush, I beg of you,” said the clergyman, “my excellent young
friend--”
Colin laughed in spite of himself. “If I am your excellent friend,” he
said, “why do you not procure me admission to tell my own story? Why
should the sight of me distress your sorrowing father? I am not an ogre,
nor an enemy, but his son’s friend; and up to this day, I need not
remind you,” said the young man with a rising colour, “the only
protector, along with my friend Lauderdale, whom his daughter has had. I
do not say that he may not have natural objections to give her to a poor
man,” said Colin, with natural pride; “but, at all events, he has no
reason to hurry her away by stealth, as if I had not a right to be told
why our engagement is interrupted so summarily. I will do nothing to
distress Alice,” the young man went on, involuntarily lingering by the
door, which was not entirely closed; “but I protest against being
treated like a villain or an adventurer--”
“Hush, hush, hush,” cried the unlucky peacemaker, putting out his hand
to close the unfastened door; and before he could do so, Mr. Meredith
appeared on the threshold, flushed and furious. “What are you else, sir,
I should like to know,” cried the angry British father, “to drag an
unprotected girl into such an entanglement without even a pretence of
consulting her friends; to take advantage of a deathbed for your
detestable fortune-hunting schemes? Don’t answer me, sir! Have you a
penny of your own? have you anything to live on? That’s the question. If
it was not for other considerations, I’d indict you. I’d charge you with
conspiracy; and even now, if you come here to disturb my poor girl----.
But I promise you, you shall see her no more,” the angry man continued.
“Go, sir, and let me hear no more of you. She has a protector now.”
Colin stood a moment without speaking after Mr. Meredith has
disappeared, closing the door violently after him.
“I have not come to distress Alice,” said the young man. He had to
repeat it to himself to keep down the hot blood that was burning in his
veins; and as for the unfortunate clergyman, who was the immediate cause
of all this, he kept his position by the door in a state of mind far
from enviable, sorry for the young man, and ashamed of the old one, and
making inarticulate efforts to speak and mediate between them. But the
conference did not last very long outside the closed door. Though it did
not fortunately occur to Colin that it was the interference of his
present companion which had originated this scene, the young man did not
feel the insult the less from the deprecatory half-sympathy offered to
him. “It is a mistake--it is a mistake,” said the clergyman, “Mr.
Meredith will discover his error. I said I thought you were imprudent,
and indeed wrong; but I have never suspected you of interested
motives--never since my first interview with the young lady;--but think
of her sufferings, my dear young friend; think of her,” said the
mediator, who was driven to his wits’ end. As for Colin, he calmed
himself down a little by means of pacing about the corridor--the common
resource of men in trouble.
“Poor Alice,” he said, “if I did not think of her, do you think I should
have stood quietly to be insulted? But look here--the abuse of such a
man can do no harm to me, but he may kill her. If I could see her it
might do some good.--Impossible? Do you suppose I mean to see her
clandestinely, or to run away with her, perhaps? I mean,” said Colin,
with youthful sternness, “that if I were permitted to see her I might be
able to reconcile her a little to what is inevitable. Of course he is
her father. I wish her father were a chimney-sweep instead;--but it is
she I have to think of. Will you try to get me permission to see
her?--only for ten minutes, if you like--in your presence, if that is
necessary; but I must say one word to her before she is carried away.”
“Yes, yes, it is very natural--very natural,” said the peace-maker; “I
will do all I can for you. Be here at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning;
the poor dear young lady must have rest after her agitation. Don’t be
afraid; I am not a man to deceive you; they do not leave till the
afternoon for Civita Vecchia. You shall see her; I think I can promise
that. I will take the responsibility on myself.”
Thus ended Colin’s attempt to bring back the Signorina, as he said. In
the morning he had reached the hotel long before the hour mentioned, in
case of an earlier departure; but everything was quiet there, and the
young man hovered about, looking up at the windows, and wondering which
might be the one which inclosed his little love, with sentiments more
entirely lover-like than he had ever experienced before. But, when the
hour of his appointment came, and he hurried into the hotel, he was met
by the indignant clergyman, who felt his own honour compromised, and was
wroth beyond measure. Mr. Meredith had left Rome at dawn of day,
certainly not for Civita Vecchia, leaving no message for any one. He had
pretended, after hot resistance, to yield to the kind-hearted priest’s
petition, that the lovers might say farewell to each other, and this was
the way he had taken of balking them. It was now the author of the
original mischief who felt himself insulted and scorned, and his
resentment and indignation were louder than Colin’s, whose mind at first
lost itself in schemes of following, and vain attempts to ascertain the
route the party had taken. Lauderdale, coming anxious but steady to the
scene of action half an hour afterwards, found his friend absorbed in
this inquiry, and balancing all the chances between the road by Perugia
and the road by Orvieto, with the full intention of going off in
pursuit.
It was then his careful guardian’s turn to interfere. He led the youth
away, and pointed out to him the utter vanity of such an undertaking.
Not distance or uncertainty of road, but her father’s will, which was
likely to be made all the more rigorous by pursuit, parted Alice from
her young protector and bridegroom; and if he followed her to the end of
the world, this obstacle would still remain as unremoveable as ever.
Though he was hot-headed and young, and moved by excitement, and
indignation, and pity, to a height of passion which his love for Alice
by itself would never have produced, Colin still could not help being
reasonable, and he saw the truth of what was said to him. At the same
time, it was not natural that the shock which was so great and sudden
should be got over in a moment. He felt himself insulted and outraged,
in the first place; and the other side of the question was almost
equally mortifying; for he knew the relief that would be felt by all his
friends when the sudden end of his unwelcome project was made known to
them. The Ramore household had given a kind of passive acquiescence in
what seemed inevitable--but Colin was aware they would all be very glad
at home when the failure was known--and it was a failure, howsoever the
tale might be told. Thus the original disappointment was aggravated by
stings of apprehended ridicule and jocular sympathy, for to no living
soul, not even to his mother, would Colin have confessed how great a
share in his original decision Alice’s helpless and friendless position
had, nor the sense of loss and bondage with which he had often in his
secret heart regarded the premature and imprudent marriage which he had
lived to hear stigmatised as the scheme of a fortune-hunter. It was thus
that the very generosity of his intentions gave an additional sting at
once to the insult and the sympathy. After a day or two, his thoughts of
Alice as the first person to be considered, and the deep sense of the
terrible calamity it was to her, yielded a little to those thoughts of
himself and all the humiliating accompaniments of a change so unlooked
for. During this period his temper became, even by Lauderdale,
unbearable; and he threw aside everything he was doing, and took to
silence and solitary rambles, in utter disgust with the shortsightedness
and injustice of the world.
But after that unhappy interval it has to be confessed that the skies
suddenly cleared for Colin. The first symptom of revival that happened
to him came to pass on a starry, lovely May night, when he had plunged
into the darkness of the lonely quarter about the Colosseum alone, and
in a state of mind to which an encounter with the robbers supposed to
haunt these silent places would have been highly beneficial. But it
chanced that Colin raised his moody eyes to the sky, suddenly and
without any premeditation, and saw the moon struggling up through a maze
of soft white clouds, parting them with her hands as they threw
themselves into baffling airy masses always in her way; and suddenly,
without a moment of preface, a face--the face--the image of the veiled
woman, who was not Alice, and to whom he had bidden farewell, gleamed
out once more through the clouds, and looked Colin in the eyes,
thrilling him through and through with a guilty astonishment. The moment
after was the hardest of all Colin’s struggle; and he rushed home after
it tingling all over with self-contempt and burning indignation, and
plunged into a torrent of talk when he found his friend, by way of
forgetting himself, which struck Lauderdale with the utmost surprise.
But next day Colin felt himself somehow comforted without knowing how;
and then he took to thinking of his life, and work which now, even for
the sake of Alice, if nothing else, he must pursue with determined
energy; and then it seemed to him as if every moment was lost that kept
him away from home. Was it for Alice? Was it that he might offer her
again the perfected mind and settled existence to which his labours were
to lead him? He said so to himself as he made his plans; but yet
unawares a vision of deeper eyes came gleaming upon him out of the
clouds. And it was with the half-conscious thrill of another existence,
a feeling as of new and sweeter air in the sails, and a widening ocean
under the keel, that Colin rose up after all those varying changes of
sentiment were over, and set his face to the north once more.
“It’s awfu’ strange to think it’s the last time,” said Lauderdale, as
they stood together on the Pincian Hill, and watched the glowing colours
of the Roman sunset. “It’s little likely that you and me will ever see
St. Peter yonder start up black into the sun like that, another time in
our lives. It’s grander than a’ their illuminations, though it’s more
like another kind of spirit than an angel. And this is Rome! I dinna
seem ever to have realized the thought before. It’s awfu’ living and
life-like, callant, but it’s the graves we’ll mind it by. I’m no meaning
kings and Cæsars. I’m meaning them that come and never return.
Testaccio’s hidden out of sight, and the cypress trees,” said the
philosopher; “but there’s mony an eye that will never lose sight of them
even at the other end of the world. I might have been going my ways with
an awfu’ different heart, if it hadna been for the mercy of God.”
“Then you thought I should die?” said Colin, to whom, in the stir of his
young life, and the words were solemn and strange to say; “and God _is_
merciful--yet Meredith is lying yonder, though not me.”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, and then there was a long pause. “I’m no offering
ony explanation,” said the philosopher. “It’s a question between a man
and his Maker--spirit to spirit. It’s an awfu’ mystery to us, but it
maun be made clear and satisfying to them that go away. For me, I’ll
praise God,” he said abruptly, with a harsh ring in his voice; and Colin
for the first time knew assuredly that his faithful guardian had thought
nothing better than to bring him here to die. They went into the church
on the hill, where the nuns were singing their sweet vespers, as they
descended for the last time through the dusky avenues, listening as they
went to the bells ringing the Ave Maria over all the crowded town; and
there came upon Colin and his friend in different degrees that
compunction of happiness which is the soul of thanksgiving. Others,--how
many!--have stood speechless in dumb submission on that same spot and
found no thanks to say; and it was thus that Colin, after all the events
that made these four months so important in his life, entered upon a new
period of his history, and took his farewell of Rome.