Walkinshaw passed a night of ‘restless ecstasy’. Sometimes he reflected
on the proposition with all the coolness that the Laird himself
could have desired; but still and anon the centripetal movement of
the thoughts and feelings which generated this prudence was suddenly
arrested before they had gravitated into anything like resolution, and
then he was thrown as wild and as wide from the object of his uncle’s
solicitude as ever.
In the calmer, perhaps it may therefore be said, in the wiser course
of his reflections, Robina appeared to him a shrewd and sensible girl,
with a competent share of personal beauty, and many other excellent
household qualities, to make her a commendable wife. With her he would
at once enter on the enjoyment of opulence, and with it independence;
and, moreover, and above all, have it in his power to restore his
mother and sister to that state in society, to which, by birth and
original expectations, they considered themselves as having some
claim. This was a pleasing and a proud thought; and not to indulge it
at the expense of a little sacrifice of personal feeling, seemed to him
selfish and unmanly. But then he would remember with what high-toned
bravery of determination he had boasted to his uncle of his pure and
unalterable affections; how contemptuously he had spoken of pecuniary
inducements, and in what terms, too, he had told Robina herself, that
she had nothing to hope from him. It was, therefore, impossible that he
could present himself to either with any expression of regret for what
had passed, without appearing, in the eyes of both, as equally weak
and unworthy. But the very thought of finding that he could think of
entertaining the proposition at all, was more acute and mortifying than
even this; and he despised himself when he considered how Ellen Frazer
would look upon him, if she knew he had been so base as, for a moment,
to calculate the sordid advantages of preferring his cousin.
But what was to be done? To return to the counting-house, after his
resolute declaration; to embark again in that indoor and tame drudgery
which he ever hated, and which was rendered as vile as slavery, by the
disclosures which had taken place, could not be. He would be baser than
were he to sell himself to his uncle’s purposes, could he yield to such
a suggestion.
To leave Glasgow was his only alternative; but how? and where to
go? and where to obtain the means? were stinging questions that he
could not answer; and then what was he to gain? To marry Robina was
to sacrifice Ellen Frazer; to quit the country entailed the same
consequence. Besides all that, in so doing he would add to the sorrows
and the disappointments of his gentle-hearted and affectionate mother,
who had built renewed hopes on his success under the auspices of his
uncle, and who looked eagerly forward to the time when he should be
so established in business as to bring his sister before the world in
circumstances befitting his father’s child; for the hereditary pride
of family was mingled with his sensibility; and even the beautiful
and sprightly Ellen Frazer herself, perhaps, owed something of her
superiority over Robina to the Highland pedigrees and heroic traditions
which Mrs. Eadie delighted to relate of her ancestors.
While tossing on these troubled and conflicting tides of the mind, he
happened to recollect, that a merchant, a schoolfellow of his father,
and who, when he occasionally met him, always inquired, with more than
common interest, for his mother and sister, had at that time a vessel
bound for New York, where he intended to establish a store, and was in
want of a clerk; and it occurred to him, that, perhaps, through that
means, he might accomplish his wishes. This notion was as oil to his
agitation, and hope restored soon brought sleep and soothing dreams
to his pillow; but his slumbers were not of long duration, for before
sunrise he awoke; and, in order to avoid the garrulous remonstrances
of the Leddy, he rose and went to Camrachle for the purpose, as he
persuaded himself, to consult his mother; but, for all that we have
been able to understand, it was in reality only to communicate his
determination. But these sort of self-delusions are very common to
youths under age.
The morning air, as he issued from Glasgow, was cold and raw. Heavy
blobs of water, the uncongenial distillations of the midnight fogs,
hung so dully on the hoary hedges, that even Poesy would be guilty
of downright extravagance, were she, on any occasion, to call such
gross uncrystalline knobs of physic glass by any epithet implying
dew. The road was not miry, but gluey, and reluctant, and wearisome
to the tread. The smoke from the farm-houses rolled listlessly down
the thatch, and lazily spread itself into a dingy azure haze, that
lingered and lowered among the stacks of the farm-yards. The cows,
instead of proceeding, with their ordinary sedate common sense, to the
pastures, stood on the loans, looking east and west, and lowing to
one another--no doubt concerning the state of the weather. The birds
chirped peevishly, as they hopped from bough to bough. The ducks
walked in silence to their accustomed pools. The hens, creatures at
all times of a sober temperament, condoled in actual sadness together
under sheds and bushes; and chanticleer himself wore a paler crest than
usual, and was so low in spirits, that he only once had heart enough
to wind his bugle-horn. Nature was sullen--and the herd-boy drew his
blanket-mantle closer round him, and snarlingly struck the calf as he
grudgingly drove the herd afield. On the ground, at the door of the
toll-bar house, lay a gill-stoup on its side, and near it, on a plate,
an empty glass and a bit of bread, which showed that some earlier
traveller had, in despite of the statute, but in consideration of the
damp and unwholesome morning, obtained a dram from the gudewife’s ain
bottle.
In consequence of these sympathetic circumstances, before Walkinshaw
reached Camrachle, his heart was almost as heavy as his limbs were
tired. His mother, when she saw him pass the parlour window, as he
approached the door, was surprised at his appearance, and suffered
something like a shock of fear when she perceived the dulness of his
eye and the dejection of his features.
‘What has brought you here?’ was her first exclamation; ‘and what has
happened?’
But, instead of replying, he walked in, and seated himself at the
fireside, complaining of his cold and uncomfortable walk, and the
heaviness of the road. His sister was preparing breakfast, and
happening not to be in the room, his mother repeated her anxious
inquiries with an accent of more earnest solicitude.
‘I fear,’ said Walkinshaw, ‘that I am only come to distress you;’ and
he then briefly recapitulated what had passed between himself and his
uncle respecting Robina. But a sentiment of tenderness for his mother’s
anxieties, blended with a wish to save her from the disagreeable
sensation with which he knew his determination to quit Glasgow would
affect her, made him suppress the communication that he had come
expressly to make.
Mrs. Walkinshaw had been too long accustomed to the occasional
anticipations in which her brother-in-law had indulged on the subject,
to be surprised at what had taken place on his part; and both from her
own observations, and from the repugnance her son expressed, she had
no doubt that his attachment to Ellen Frazer was the chief obstacle
to the marriage. The considerations and reflections to which this
conclusion naturally gave rise, held her for some time silent. The
moment, however, that Walkinshaw, encouraged by the seeming slightness
of her regret at his declamations against the match, proceeded to a
fuller disclosure of his sentiments, and to intimate his resolution
to go abroad, her maternal fears were startled, and she was plunged
into the profoundest sorrow. But still during breakfast she said
nothing--misfortune and disappointment had indeed so long subdued
her gentle spirit into the most patient resignation, that, while her
soul quivered in all its tenderest feelings, she seldom even sighed,
but, with a pale cheek and a meek supplication, expressed only by a
heavenward look of her mild and melancholy eyes, she seemed to say,
‘Alas! am I still doomed to suffer?’ That look was ever irresistible
with her children: in their very childhood it brought them, with
all their artless and innocent caresses, to her bosom; and, on this
occasion, it so penetrated the very core of Walkinshaw’s heart, that he
took her by the hand and burst into tears.