And the stranger, for his part, who had also seen the young man but once in his life, recognised Colin. It had only been for a moment, and it was nearly four years ago, but still Mr. Meredith knew, when he saw him, the young man whom he had bidden to begone for a fortune-hunter; who had closed his son’s eyes, and laid Arthur in his grave; and given to Alice in her desolation the tenderest guardianship. He did not know Lauderdale, who had his share in all but the last act of that sad little domestic drama; but he recognised Colin by intuition. He came forward to him with the courtesy of a man whom necessity compels to change all his tactics. “Mr. Campbell, I think?” he said. “I feel that I cannot be mistaken. Alice was sure she saw you on the road. I came back after I had taken her home, to try whether I could meet you. Will you do me the favour to introduce me to your friend. I believe I am almost as much indebted to him as to you.”
“There’s no debt on one side or the other,” said Lauderdale, interposing, for Colin found it difficult to speak. “Tell us how she is, which is far more important. We heard her give a cry, and since then we’ve been hurrying on to see.”
“She is not strong,” said Mr. Meredith. “I hope you will consent to gratify Alice by going back with me. My house is close by here, and I came on purpose. Mr. Campbell, you may think you have a just grievance against me. I hope you will overlook it at present, and hear my explanation afterwards. We can never be sufficiently grateful for all you have done for my son, both before his death and after. It was a terrible dispensation of Providence; but I cannot be thankful enough that my poor boy lived to produce a work which has been of value to so many; and but for you it never could have been successfully published. My dear sir, I hope you will not suffer any personal feeling to me—— I beg you to believe that what I said was said in ignorance—I mean, I trust that you will not refuse to gratify Alice. She is almost all I have left,” Mr. Meredith said, with a faltering voice. “I have had great losses in my family. She has not been so much interested about anything for a long time. You will come with me, will you not, for Arthur’s and for my daughter’s sake?”
If any man could have said No to that appeal, Colin was not the man. He made little answer except a bow, and Mr. Meredith turned with them, and they all got into the country vehicle at the door of the little inn, and drove off in silence to the house where Alice was awaiting them. Colin had scarcely a word to say as he drove along by her father’s side. The gaiety, and freedom, and happy thoughts with which he had set out on his journey seemed to detach themselves from his mind, and abandon him one by one. His fate had encountered him where he had least expectation of meeting it. And yet at the same time a compunction awoke in his heart to think that it was in this way, like a captive brought back to her presence, that the man whom Alice loved was going to her. He could have felt aggrieved and angry for her sake, if the claim of his own reluctance and dread had not been nearer, and gained upon the more generous feeling. And yet withal he had a longing to see her, a kind of inclination to carry her off from this man, who had but a secondary claim upon her, and heal and cherish the wounded dove. Such was the singular medley of emotion, with which Colin was led back out of the free ways of his own choosing into the beaten path of life.
CHAPTER L.
“Holmby is not my house,” said Mr. Meredith as they drove up the avenue; “I took it to please Alice. She has a fancy for the north now, as she used to have for the south.” As he said this he gave a wistful side-glance at Colin, who had scarcely spoken during all the drive; and even to this speech the young man made little response. The house was a pale grey house, of rough limestone, like the humbler houses, surrounded by woods, and bearing anything but a cheerful aspect. The avenue was long and straight, and the cold commonplace outline of this secluded dwelling-place filled up the vista between the two dark lines of trees, growing gradually more distinct as they approached. Everything had a certain visionary aspect to Colin at the moment, and the look of the house irritated him, as if it had been a type of the commonplace existence which he was henceforward to lead. He could not keep the cloud that was on his mind from appearing also on his countenance, though, at the same time, he could not help observing that Mr. Meredith looked at him often with a regard that was almost pathetic. To be sure, there was nothing very elevated in the aspect of this man, whose history was not one which Colin liked to think of; but still it was evident that his heart was trembling for his child, and that he was conveying to her the lover whom he had once rejected and insulted, as he might have carried a costly medicine, hard to procure and of doubtful efficacy, but still the only thing that there was any hope in. Colin recognised this wistful look by the freemasonry of a mind equally excited, though in a different way; and, as for Lauderdale, he looked on at both with a painful doubt and uncertainty which had never before entered into his thoughts. For all this time he had been trying to think it was Alice’s father, or even Alice herself, who was to blame; and now only he began to see clearly the reluctance of his friend to its fullest extent—his reluctance and, at the same time, that almost fantastic honour and delicacy which kept the young man from avowing even to his closest companion the real state of his feelings. So that now, at the first moment for years in which the fulfilment of Colin’s engagement began to appear possible, Lauderdale, who had preached to him of constancy, who had longed after Alice, who had taken every opportunity of directing to her the truant thoughts of his friend, for the first time faltered. He began to see the other side of the question just at the time when it would have been agreeable to ignore it. He saw not only that Colin’s happiness was at stake, but that it would be better for Alice even to break her heart if that was inevitable, than to be married, not for love, but for honour; and unhappily he recognised this just at the moment when Sir Bayard, Sir Quixote, whatever absurd title you may please to give him—the Mistress’s son, who was incapable of leaving a woman in the lurch, or casting upon her the shame of rejection—was going on to meet his fate.
From this it will be seen that it was a very subdued and silent party which was at this moment driving along the long avenue under the trees, and making Alice’s heart beat, indoors on her sofa, with every turn of those wheels on the gravel. “Is papa alone?” she asked of her little sister, who was at the window; and her heart was jumping up into her throat when she uttered that simple question, as if it would take away her breath. When she received for answer a lengthened and interrupted description of the two gentlemen who accompanied Mr. Meredith, Alice put her head back on her pillows and closed her eyes in the sudden faintness of her great joy. For she in her simplicity had no doubt about Colin. If he had not loved her he would not have turned back; he would never have come to her. It was the tender guardian of her loneliness, the betrothed in whom she had reposed the entire faith of her nature, whom her father was bringing back to her; and, so far as Alice was concerned, the four intervening years might have had no existence. She had seen nobody and done nothing during that dreary interval. Ill-health, and seclusion, and mourning had made it appear to her that her life had temporarily stopped at the time when Mr. Meredith carried her off from Frascati. And now, with Colin, life and strength and individuality were coming back. This was how the matter appeared on her side of affairs, and it seemed to Alice the natural solution of the difficulty; for, after all, but for her father’s cruel persistence against her, which Providence by many blows had broken and made to yield, she would have been Colin’s wife for all those years. And now, the one obstacle being removed, it seemed only natural to her straightforward and simple intelligence that the long-deferred conclusion should arrive at last.
Both she and the little sister at the window were in mourning. Mrs. Meredith was dead—the stepmother, who had been Alice’s greatest enemy; and, of all the children who had once made their father indifferent to his elder son and daughter, the only one left was the little girl, who was giving her sister an elaborate description of the gentlemen who were with papa. This was why Mr. Meredith had yielded. Alice judged, according to her simple reckonings, with a little awe of the terrible means employed, that it was Providence who had thus over-turned her father’s resolution, and made him yielding and tender. It did not occur to her to ask whether for her happiness it was just or reasonable that so many should suffer; she only accepted it as providential, just as Colin four years before had persuaded himself that all the circumstances which had thrown them together were providential. And now the climax, which the poor girl permitted herself to think God had been bringing about by all the family convulsions of these four years, came close, and the heart of Alice grew faint with thankfulness and joy. When she heard them coming upstairs she sat upright, recovering with her old force of self-restraint her composure and calmness. Mr. Meredith came in with a little bustle to spare his daughter the agitation of the meeting. “You were quite right, Alice, my love,” he said, bringing them hurriedly up to her. “Here is Mr. Campbell and your friend, Mr. Lauderdale. They recognised you at the same minute as you recognised them; and, if I had not been so foolish as to tell John to drive on, we might have picked them up and saved them their walk. I thought she was ill,” the anxious father continued, turning his back upon Alice and occupying himself with Lauderdale. “She had a fainting fit yesterday, and I was frightened it was coming on again, or I should have stopped and picked you up. We are a little dark here with all these trees. I would have them cut down if Holmby were mine; but at this window, if you are fond of scenery, I can show you a beautiful view.”
And it was thus that the two, who parted at Frascati as lovers within a few weeks of their marriage, met in the shaded drawing-room at Holmby. The most exciting events of Colin’s life were framed within the interval; but nothing had happened individually to Alice. He seemed to find her exactly where he had left her, though with the sense of having himself travelled to an unutterable distance in the meantime. She did not say much in the tumult and confusion of her joy; she only held out her hand to him, and lifted her soft eyes to his face with a look of supreme content and satisfaction, whim had the strangest effect upon Colin. He felt his doom fixed for ever and ever as he looked into the gentle blue eyes which conveyed to him all that was in Alice’s heart. And she had not the slightest suspicion of the heaviness that was in his as he drew a chair near her sofa. “At last!” she said softly, under her breath. The little sister stood by, looking on with round eyes opened to their widest; but, as for Alice, she had no consciousness of any presence but one. And Colin sat down by her without any answer, in his heart not knowing what to say. Her black dress, her languid air, the paleness one moment, and the flush of delicate colour the next, all moved him strangely. Even had he not been Bayard he could not have done anything to wound the fair, feeble creature who looked at him with her heart in her eyes. And naturally the consequence was, that Colin answered in a way far more decisive than any words—by clasping the soft clinging hand, and bending down to kiss it as in the old Italian days. Alice had never had any doubt of her betrothed, but at that moment she felt herself receiving the pledge of a new and more certain troth—and in the revulsion from despondency and weakness her mouth was opened for the first time in her life—opened with a fulness, the thought of which would have covered poor Alice with misery and confusion if she could but have known what was passing in her companion’s heart.
“I had grown so tired of waiting,” she said, scarcely aware of what she said, “I was wearying, wearying, as Mr. Lauderdale used to say; and to think you should be passing so near, and perhaps might have passed altogether, and never have known I was here; Oh, Colin, it was Providence!” said Alice, with the tears in her eyes.