A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

“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.

CHAPTER XLI.

“It’s hard to ken what to say,” said the Mistress, going to the window for the hundredth time, and looking out wistfully upon the sky which shone dazzling over the Holy Loch with the excessive pathetic brightness of exceptional sunshine. “I canna make out for my part if he’s broken-hearted or no, and a word wrong just at a moment like this would be hard on the callant. It’s a wonderful mercy it’s such a bonnie day. That’s aye a blessing both to the body and the mind.”