And as he falteringly uttered these words, his eyes confirmed them with nature's purest token of severed friendship.
“Your worthiness,” at length replied Colin, “makes me, sir, lost what to say. Had you treated me harshly I could have replied; but as it is, I feel still the more bound by the very efforts made to shake me off. If you will have it so, sir, I know not how to oppose: though certainly it is impossible for me ever to comply. Not by that, that I mean to say the wishes of so worthy a man shall not be carried out as far as Heaven will give me power to do it: but though I go away never to return more, believe me, sir, my heart will be left with those I leave,—I shall do my best to forget where I am,—to inhabit this place still in imagination, and live out my life at least with the memory of her whom I am forbidden to know in any other manner.”
“Endeavour to be reconciled,” observed Mr. Calvert; “and remember that even the most favoured cannot say that this world was made for happiness.”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Colin bitterly,—“it is not indeed.”
“I am afraid,” rejoined his worthy friend, “that on neither side shall we ever cease to feel pain on this subject; but it will be our duty to bow with humility before those decrees which we cannot escape, and to endeavour to persuade ourselves that everything may possibly be after all for the best.”
“It cannot, sir,” replied Colin in the agony of his spirit; “it can never be for the best that we should be separated for ever! It is impossible. For however well it may be for others, to us it can be nothing but inevitable misery.”
“Do not speak thus, my young friend,” answered Mr. Calvert; “I am myself an old man, and have many times found in the course of a long and not uneventful life, that out of those circumstances which at the time of their occurrence promised nothing but unhappiness, the unseen agency of Providence not unfrequently deduced consequences the most important to our future welfare. Just as, on the contrary, we often find that the fairest promise of happiness ends in the least practical result; and at the bottom of the sweetest cup we find the bitterest dregs.”
Colin was about to reply, but Mr. Calvert waved his hand as significant that he would add a few more words.
“Who knows,” he asked, “but that under this, to you, most dire of disappointments may lie hidden the cause of all your future happiness? Unseen, it doubtless is to you now, and difficult perhaps of being even imagined. But inasmuch as no man can foresee what is in store for him, nor predicate from things present of things to come, it is at once the wisest way and the most in accordance with our faith and dependence upon Providence, to make ourselves willing to accept as the best possible good, with reference to our future welfare, those fatalities of life which no endeavours of ours can possibly avert. Be comforted; and strive both to forget the past and to believe the present and the future more rife with satisfaction than, under the influence of your existing excitement of feeling, they else might appear.
“And now, having, as I hope, settled this matter in the best manner it will allow of, let me add one more observation, and I have done. Under every possible view of the case, and considering that no conceivable good could come of a formal parting, I must beg of you to regard your interview, this morning, with Jane as the last. It is better that you do not see each other again.”