“No as if I was a better woman than my mother, or worthy o’ a better fate,” said the thoughtful mistress of Ramore; “for she was ane o’ the excellent of the earth, as a’body kens; and if ever a woman won to her rest through great tribulations, she was ane; and, if the Lord sent the cross, He would send the strength to bear it. But oh! Colin, my man, it would be kind to drown your mother in the loch, or fell her on the hill, sooner than bring upon her such great anguish and trouble as I have told you of this night.”
“Now, wife,” said the farmer, interfering, “you’ve said your part. Nae such thought is in Colin’s head. Gang you and look after his kist, and see that a’ thing’s right; and him and me will have our crack the time you’re away. Your mother’s an innocent woman,” said big Colin, after a pause, when she had gone away; “she kens nae mair of the world than the bairn on her knee. When you’re a man you’ll ken the benefit of taking your first notions from a woman like that. No an imagination in her mind but what’s good and true. It’s hard work fechting through this world without marks o’ the battle,” said big Colin with a little pathos; “but a man wi’ the like o’ her by his side maun be ill indeed if he gangs very far wrang. It mightna’ be a’ to the purpose,” continued the farmer, with a little of his half-conscious common-sense superiority, “as appeals to the feelings seldom are; but, Colin, if you take my advice, you’ll mind every word of what your mother says.”
Colin said not a syllable in reply. He had got rid of the tears safely, which was a great deal gained: they must have fallen had the mistress remained two seconds longer looking at him with her soft beaming eyes; but he had not quite gulped down yet that climbing sorrow which had him by the throat. Anyhow, even if his voice had been at his own command, he was very unlikely to have made any reply.
“Ye’ll find a’ strange when ye gang to Glasgow,” continued the farmer. “I’m no feared for any great temptation, except idleness, besetting a callant like you; but a man that has his ain bread and his ain way to make in the world, has nae time for idleness. You’ve guid abilities, Colin, and if they dinna come to something you’ll have but yoursel’ to blame: and I wouldna’ put the reproach on my Maker of having brought a useless soul into the world, if I were you,” said big Colin. “There’s never ony failures that I can see among the lower creation, without some guid reason; but it’s the privilege o’ men to fail without ony cause o’ failure except want o’ will to do weel. When ye see the like of George, for instance, ye ask what the Lord took the trouble to make such a ne’er-do-weel for?” said the homely philosopher; “I never could help thinking, for my part, that it was labour lost—though nae doubt Providence kent better; but I wouldna’ be like that if I could help it. There’s no a silly sheep on the hill, nor horse in the stable, that isna’ a credit to Him that made it. I would take good heed no to put mysel’ beneath the brute beasts, if I were you.”
“I’m no meaning,” cried Colin, with ungrammatical abruptness and a little offence; for he was pricked in his pride by this address, which was not, according to his father’s ideas, any “appeal to his feelings,” but a calm and common-sense way of putting an argument before the boy.
“I never said you were,” said the farmer. “It’ll cost us hard work to keep ye at your studies, and I put it to your honour no to waste your time; and you’ll write regular, and mind what kind o’ thoughts your mother’s thinking at home in Ramore; and I may tell you, Colin, I put confidence in you,” said the father, laying his big hand with a heavy momentary pressure upon the lad’s shoulder. “Now, good night, and go to your bed, and prepare for the morn.”
Such were the parting advices with which the boy was sent out into the world. His mother was in his room, kneeling before his chest, adding the last particulars to its store, when Colin entered the homely little chamber—but what they said to each other before they parted was for nobody’s ear; and the morning was blazing with a wintry brightness, and all the hills standing white against the sky, and the heart of the mistress hopeful as the day, when she wiped off her tears with her apron, and waved her farewell to her boy, as he went off in the little steamer which twice a day thrilled the loch with communications from the world. “He’ll come back in the spring,” she said to herself, as she went about her homely work, and ordered her household. And so young Colin went forth, all dauntless and courageous, into the great battlefield, to encounter whatsoever conflicts might come to him, and to conquer the big world and all that was therein, in the victorious dreams of his youth.
CHAPTER V.
The first disappointment encountered by the young hero was the wonderful shock of finding out that it was not an abstract world he had to encounter and fight with, but that life was an affair of days and hours exactly as at Ramore, which was about his first real mental experience and discovery. It was a strange mortification to Colin, who was, like his mother, a poet in his soul, to find out that there was nothing abstract in his new existence, but that a perpetually recurring round of lessons to learn, and classes to attend, and meals to eat, made up the days, which were noways changed in their character from those days which he had already known for all the fifteen years of his life. After the first shock, however, he went on with undiminished courage—for at fifteen it is so easy to think that those great hours are waiting for us somewhere in the undisclosed orb of existence. Certainly a time would come when every day, of itself a radiant whole and complete unity, would roll forth majestic like the earth in the mystic atmosphere. He had missed it this time, but after a while it must come; for the future, like the past, works wonders upon the aspect of time; and still it is true of the commonest hours that they—
——“win
A glory from their being far,
And orb into the perfect star
We saw not when we walked therein.”