A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Did you no hear?” said Lauderdale. “If you hadna heard I could understand. As for me, I canna say but what I saw as well. I’m no minding at this moment about my breath.”

“What did you see?” cried Colin, with a sudden thrill at his heart.

“I’ll no say it was her,” said Lauderdale; “no but what I am as sure as I am of life that she was there. I saw something white laid back in the carriage, somebody that was ill; it might be her or it might be another. I’ve an awfu’ strong conviction that it was her. It’s been borne in on my mind that she was ill and wearying. We mightna ken her, but she kent you and me.”

“What you say makes it more and more unlikely,” said Colin. “I confess that I was a little excited myself by those dreams and stuff; but nothing could be more improbable than that she should recognise you and me. Bah! it is absurd to be talking of her in this ridiculous way, as if we had the slightest reason to suppose it was she. Any little movement might make a sick lady cry out; and, as for recognising a voice!—All this makes me feel like a fool,” said Colin. “I am more disposed to go back than to go on. I wish you would dismiss this nonsense from your thoughts.”

“If I was to do that same, do you think you could join me?” said Lauderdale. “There’s voices I would ken after thirty years instead of after three; and I’m no likely to forget the bit English tone of it. I’m a wee slow about some things, and I’ll no pretend to fathom your meaning; but, whether it’s daftlike or no, this I’m sure of, that if you make up to that carriage that’s away out of our sight at this moment, you’ll find Alice Meredith there.”

“I don’t believe anything of the kind. Your imagination has deceived you,” said Colin, and they went on for a long time in silence; but at the bottom of his heart Colin felt that his own imagination had not deceived him. The only thing that had deceived him was that foolish feeling of liberty, that sense that he had escaped fate, and that the rash engagements of his youth were to have no consequences, into which he had deluded himself for some time past. Even while he professed his utter disbelief in this encounter, he was asking himself how in his changed circumstances he should bear the old bridle, the rein upon his own proud neck? If it had been a curb upon his freedom, even at the moment when he had formed it—if it had become a painful bondage afterwards while still the impression of Alice’s gentle tenderness had not quite worn off his mind—what would it be now when he had emancipated himself from those soft prejudices of recollection, and when he had acknowledged so fully to himself that his heart never had been really touched? He marched on by Lauderdale’s side, and paid no attention to what his friend said to him; and nothing could be more difficult to describe than the state of Colin’s mind during this walk. Perhaps the only right thing, the only sensible thing he could have done in the circumstances, would have been to turn back and decline altogether this reawakening of the past. But then at six-and-twenty the mind is still so adverse to turning back, and has so much confidence in its own power of surmounting difficulty, and in its good star, and in the favour and assistance of all powers and influences in heaven and earth; and his pride was up in arms against such a mode of extricating himself from the apparent difficulty, and all the delicacy of his nature revolted from the idea of thus throwing the wrong and humiliation upon the woman, upon Alice, a creature who had loved him and trusted him, and whom he had never owned he did not love.

Underneath all these complications there was, to be sure, a faint, sustaining hope that an encounter of this kind was incredible—that it might turn out not to be Alice at all, and that all these fears and embarrassments might come to nothing. With all this in his mind he marched on, feeling the sweet air and fresh winds and sunshine to be all so many spectators accompanying him perhaps to the turning-point of his life, where, for all he knew, things might go against him, and his wings be clipped, and his future limited for ever and ever. Perhaps some of Colin’s friends may think that he exhibited great weakness of mind on this occasion—and, indeed, it is certain that there are many people who believe, with great reason, that it is next thing to a sin to put honour in the place of love, or to give to constancy the rights of passion. But then, whatever a man’s principles may be, it is his character in most cases that carries the day. Every man must act according to his own nature, as says the Arabian sage. Sir Bayard, even, thinking it all over, might not approve of himself, and might see a great deal of folly in what he was doing; but, as for a man’s opinion of himself, that counts for very little; and he could only go on and follow out his career in his own way.

Lauderdale, on his side, had less comprehension of his friend at this point of his character than at any other. He had discouraged, as far as he was able, the earlier steps of the engagement between Colin and Alice; but when things “had gone so far” the philosopher understood no compromise. He hastened on through the dust, for his part, with a tender anxiety in his heart, concerned for the girl who had approached him more nearly than any woman had done since the days of his youth; who had been to him that mingled type of sister, daughter, dependent, and ruler, which a very young, very innocent, woman sometimes is to a man too old to fall in love with her, or even to think of such a weakness. Such love as had been possible to Lauderdale had been given early in his life—given once and done with; and Colin had filled up all the place in his heart which might have been left vacant as a prey to vagrant affections. At present, he was occupied with the thought that Alice was ill, and that the little cry she had uttered had a tone of appeal in it, and was in reality a cry for help to those who had succoured her in her loneliness, and been more to her for one little period of her life than father or family. And Colin’s friend and guardian pursued his way with great strides, going to the rescue of the tender little suffering creature, the mournful, yet dutiful little woman, who had borne her grief so courageously at Frascati, where they two were all the protectors, all the comforters she had. Thus the friends went on with their different sentiments, saying little to each other, and not a word upon this particular subject. They had meant to pause at a village which was on their way to Windermere to rest during the heat of the day and refresh themselves; and it was here, according to all likelihood, that the carriage which had passed with the invalid would also stop, to repose the sick lady if she was a stranger—to await the approach of the two pedestrians if it was Alice, and if she was free to take such a step. Lauderdale had no doubt either of the one or the other of these facts; and, to tell the truth, Colin, regarding the matter under an altogether different aspect, had little doubt on his part that the crisis of his fate had arrived.

Nevertheless, when he saw the first straggling houses of the hamlet—rude little Westmoreland houses, grey and simple, with a moorland air, and no great proprietor near at hand to trim them into model cottages—— It is so hard to believe what goes against one’s wishes. After all, perhaps, the end would be a laugh, an exclamation of surprise, a blessed sense of relief; and no dreadful apparition of old ties and old vows to bind the freedman over again in cold blood and without any illusion. Such feverish hopes came into Colin’s mind against his will, as they drew nearer. The road was as dusty as ever, but he did not see the broad mark of the carriage wheels; and with a great throb of relief found when they came in sight of the little inn that there was no carriage, nothing but a farmer’s gig before the door. He began to breathe again, throwing off his burden. “It might be one of my farmers for anything one could tell to the contrary,” said Colin, with a short laugh, and a sense of relief past describing. “You see now what fools we were to suppose——”

At that moment, however, he stopped short in the midst of his sentence. A man was coming to meet them, who might have been, for anything, as Colin said, that one could say to the contrary, the farmer to whom the gig belonged. He was at present but a black figure against the sunshine, with his face shaded by his hat; but notwithstanding Colin stopped short when he came in sight of him, and his heart stopped beating,—or at least he thought so. He had seen this man once in his life before,—but once, and no more. But there are some circumstances which sharpen and intensify the senses. Colin recognised him the moment his eyes rested on him. He stopped short, because what he was saying was proved to be folly, and worse than folly. It was a denial of the certainty which had suddenly appeared before his eyes. He stopped without explaining why he stopped, and made a step onwards in a confused and bewildered way. Henceforward Lauderdale had nothing to do with it. It was Colin himself as the principal and contracting party who was concerned.