“That’s a thing to be discussed hereafter,” said the farmer of Ramore. “I didna mean to say onything about it till I saw what your inclinations were, but women-folk are aye hasty Sir Thomas has made me a proposition, Colin. He would like to send you to Oxford with his own son if you and me were to consent. We’re to gie him an answer when we’ve made up our minds. Nae doubt he has heard that you were like enough to be a creditable protejee,” said Big Colin, with natural complacency. “A lad of genius gies distinction to his patron—if ye can put up with a patron, Colin.”
“Can you?” cried his son. The lad was greatly agitated by the question. Ambitious Scotch youths of Colin’s type, in the state of discontent which was common to the race, had come to look upon the English universities as the goal of all possible hopes. Not that Colin would have confessed as much had his fate depended on it—but such was the fact notwithstanding. Oxford, to his mind, meant any or every possibility under heaven, without any limit to the splendour of the hopes involved. A different kind of flush, the glow of eagerness and ambition, suddenly covered his face. But joined with this came a tumult of vague but burning offence and contradiction. While he recognised the glorious chance thus opened to him, pride started up to bolt and bar those gates of hope. He turned upon his father with something like anger in his voice, with a tantalizing sense of all the advantages thus flourished wantonly, as he thought, before his eyes. “Could you put up with a patron?” he repeated, looking almost fiercely in the farmer’s face; “and if not, why do you ask me such a question?” When he came to think of it, Colin felt injured by the suggestion. To be offered the thing of all others he most desired in the world, by means which made it impossible to accept the offer would have been galling enough under any circumstances; but just now, at this crisis of his youthful ambition and excitement, such a tantalizing glimpse of the possible and the impossible was beyond bearing. “Are we his dependents that he makes such an offer to me?” said the exasperated youth; and Big Colin himself looked on with a little surprise at his son’s excitement, comprehending only partially what it meant.
“I’ll no say I’m fond of patronage,” said the farmer, slowly; “neither in the kirk nor out of the kirk. It’s my opinion a man does aye best that fights his own way; but there’s aye exceptions, Colin. I wouldna have you make up your mind in any arbitrary way. As for Sir Thomas, he has aye been real civil and friendly—no one of your condescending fine gentlemen—and the son—”
“What right have I to any favour from Sir Thomas?” cried Colin. “He is nothing to me. I did no more for young Frankland than I would have done for any dog on the hillside,” he continued, with a contemptuous tone; and then his conscience reproved him. “I don’t mean to say anything against him. He behaved like a man, and saved himself,” said Colin, with haughty candour. “As for all this pretence of rewarding me, it feels like an insult. I want nothing at their hands.”
“There’s no occasion to be violent,” said the farmer. “I dinna expect that he’ll use force to make you accept his offer, which is weel meant and kind, whatever else it may be. I canna say I understand a’ this fury on your part; and there’s no good that I can see in deciding this very moment and no other. I would like you to sleep upon it and turn it over in your mind. Such an offer doesna come every day to the Holy Loch. I’m no the man to seek help,” said Big Colin, “but there’s times when it’s more generous to receive than to give.”
The mistress had followed her son wistfully with her eyes through all his changes of countenance and gesture. She was not simply surprised like her husband, but looked at him with unconscious insight, discovering by intuition what was in his heart—something, at least, of what was in his heart—for the anxious mother too was mistaken, and rushed at conclusions which Colin himself was far from having reached.
“There’s plenty of time to decide,” said the farmer’s wife; “and I’ve that confidence in my laddie that I ken he’ll do nothing from a poor motive, nor out of a jealous heart. There never were ony sulky ways, that ever I saw, in ony bairn of mine,” said Mrs. Campbell; “and if there was one in the world that was mair fortunate than me, I wouldna show a poor spirit towards him, because he had won. Whiles it’s mair generous to receive than to give, as the maister says; and whiles it’s mair noble to lose than to win,” said the mistress, with a momentary faltering of emotion in her voice. She thought the bitterness of hopeless love was in her boy’s heart, and that he was tempted to turn fiercely from the friendship of his successful rival. And she lifted her soft eyes, which were beaming with all the magnanimous impulses of nature, to Colin’s face, who did not comprehend the tenderness of pity with which his mother regarded him. But, at least, he perceived that something much higher and profounder than anything he was thinking of was in the mistress’s thoughts; and he turned away somewhat abashed from her anxious look.
“I am not jealous that I am aware of,” said Colin; “but I have never done anything to deserve this, and I should prefer not to accept any favours from—any man,” he concluded abruptly. That was how they left the discussion for that time at least. When the farmer went out to look after his necessary business, his wife remained with Colin, looking at him often, as she glanced up from her knitting, with eyes of wistful wonder. Had she been right in her guess, or was it merely a vague sentiment of repulsion which kept him apart from young Frankland? But all the mother’s anxiety could not break through the veil which separates one mysterious individuality from another. She read his looks with eager attention, half right and half wrong, as people make out an unfamiliar language. He had drifted off somehow from the plain vernacular of his boyish thoughts, and she had not the key to the new complications. So it was with a mixed and doubtful joy that the mistress of Ramore, on the first night of his return, regarded her son.
“And I suppose,” said Colin, with a smile dancing about his lips, “that I am to answer this proposal when they come to the castle? And they are coming soon as they expected last year? or, perhaps, they are there now?” he said, getting up from his chair again and walking away towards the door that his mother might not see the gleam of expectation in his face.
“But, Colin, my man,” said the mistress, who did not perceive the blow she was about to administer, “they’re no coming to the castle this year. The young lady that was delicate has got well, and they’re a’ in London and in an awfu’ whirl o’ gaiety like the rest of their kind; and Lady Mary, the earl’s sister, is to have the castle with her bairns; and that’s the way Sir Thomas wants our answer in a letter, for there’s none of the family to be here this year.”