A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

“It is very odd,” said Matty again. “I wonder if you are fated to be rivals, and come in each other’s way. If I knew any girl that Harry was in love with, I should not like to introduce you to her,” said Miss Matty, and she stopped and laughed a little, evidently at something in her own mind. “How odd it would be if you were to be rivals through life,” she continued; “I am sure I can’t tell which I should most wish to win—my cousin, who is a very good boy in his way, or you, who puzzle me so often,” said the little witch, looking suddenly up into Colin’s eyes.

“How is it possible I can puzzle you?” he said; but the innocent youth was flattered by the sense of superiority involved. “There can be very little rivalry between an English baronet and a Scotch minister,” continued Colin. “We shall never come in each other’s way.”

“And must you be a Scotch minister?” said Miss Matty, softly. There was a regretful tone in her voice, and she gave an appealing glance at him, as if she were remonstrating against that necessity. Perhaps it was well for Colin that they were so near the shore, and that he had to give all his attention to the boat, to secure the best landing for those delicate little feet. As he leaped ashore himself, ankle-deep into the bright but cold water, Colin could not but remember his boyish scorn of Henry Frankland, and that dislike of wet feet which was so amusing and wonderful to the country boy. Matters were wonderfully changed now-a-days for Colin; but still he plunged into the water with a certain relish, and pulled the boat ashore with a sense of his strength and delight in it which at such a moment it was sweet to experience. As for Miss Matty, she found the hill very steep, and accepted the assistance of Colin’s arm to get over the sharp pebbles of the beach. “One ought to wear strong boots,” she said, holding out the prettiest little foot, which indeed had been perfectly revealed before by the festooned dress, which Miss Matty found so convenient on the hills. When Colin’s mother saw from her window this pair approaching alone (for the Jordan boys were ever so far behind, still coquetting with their toy yacht), it was not wonderful if her heart beat more quickly than usual. She jumped, with her womanish imagination, at all kinds of incredible results, and saw her Colin happy and great, by some wonderful conjunction of his own genius and the favour of others, which it would have been hopeless to attempt any comprehension of. The mistress altogether puzzled and overwhelmed Miss Matty by the greeting she gave her. The little woman of the world looked in utter amazement at the poor farmer’s wife, whom she meant to be very kind and amiable to, but who to her consternation, took the superior part by right of nature; for Mrs. Campbell, being possessed by her own idea, was altogether obtuse to her visitor’s condescensions. The parlour at Ramore looked dingy certainly after the drawing-rooms of Ardmartin, and all the business of the farm was manifestly going on as usual; but even Colin, sensitive as he had become to all the differences of circumstances, was puzzled, like Matty, and felt his mother to have suddenly developed into a kind of primitive princess. Perhaps the poor boy guessed why, and felt that his love was elevating not only himself but everybody who belonged to him; but Miss Matty, who did not understand how profound emotion could affect anybody’s manners, nor how her young admirer’s mother could be influenced by his sentiments, was entirely in the dark, and could not help being immensely impressed by the bearing and demeanour of the mistress of Ramore.

“I’m glad it’s such a bonny day,” said Colin’s mother; “it looks natural and seemly to see you here on a day like this. As for Colin, he aye brings the light with him, but no often such sunshine as you. I canna lay any great feast before you,” said the farmer’s wife with a smile, “but young things like you are aye near enough heaven to be pleased with the common mercies. After a’, if I was a queen I couldna offer you anything better than the white bread and the fresh milk,” said the mistress; and she set down on the table, with her own tender hands, the scones for which Ramore was famous, and the abundant over-running jug of milk, which was not to be surpassed anywhere, as she said. Matty sat down with an odd involuntary conviction that Mr. Jordan’s magnificent table on the other side of the loch offered but a poor hospitality in comparison. Though she laughed at herself an hour after, it was quite impossible at that moment to feel otherwise than respectful. “I never saw anybody with such beautiful manners,” she said to Colin as they went back to the boat. She did not take his arm this time, but walked very demurely after him down the narrow path, feeling upon her the eyes of the mistress, who was standing at her door as usual to see her son go away. Matty could not help a little natural awe of the woman whose soft eyes were watching her. She could manage her aunt perfectly, and did not care in the least for Lady Hallamshire, who was the most accommodating of chaperones, but Mrs. Campbell’s sweet looks, and generous reception of her son’s enslaver somehow overwhelmed Matty. The mistress looked at the girl as if she considered her capable of all the grand and simple emotions which were in her own heart, and Matty was half-ashamed and half-frightened, and did not feel able at the moment to pursue her usual amusement. The row back, to which Colin had been looking with a thrill of expectation, was silent and grave, in comparison with all their former expeditions, notwithstanding that this was the last time they were likely to see each other alone. Poor Colin thought of Lauderdale and his philosophy, for the first time for many days, when he had to stop behind to place the boat in safety on the beach, while Matty, who generally waited for him, skipped up the avenue as fast as she could go, with the little Jordans beside her. Never yet was reality which came truly up to the expectation. Here was an end of his fool’s paradise; he vexed himself by going over and over all that had passed, wondering if anything had offended her; and then thought of Ramore with a pang at his heart—a pang of something nobler than the mere bitterness of contrast, which sometimes makes a poor man ashamed of his home. But all this time the true reason for her new-born reserve—which Miss Matty kept up victoriously until about the close of the evening, when, being utterly bored, she forgot her good resolution and called him to her side again—was quite unsuspected by Colin. He could not divine how susceptible to the opinion of women was the heart of a woman, even when it retained but little of its first freshness. Matty was not startled by Colin’s love, but she was by his mother’s belief in it and herself; it stopped her short in her careless career, and suggested endings that were not pleasant to think of. If she had been kept in amusement for a day or two after, it might have been well for Colin—but being bored she returned to her natural sport, and this interruption did him no good in the end.

CHAPTER XII.

The parting of the two who had been thrown so much together, who had thought so much of each other, and who had, notwithstanding, so few things in common, was as near an absolute parting as is practicable in this world of constant commotion, where everybody meets everybody else in the most unlikely regions. Colin dared not propose to write to her; dared not, indeed—being withheld by the highest impulses of honour—venture to say to her what was in his heart; and Miss Matty herself was a little silent—perhaps a little moved—and could not utter any commonplaces about meeting again, as she had intended to do. So they said good-bye to each other in a kind of absolute way, as if it might be for ever and ever. As for Matty, who was not in love, but whose heart was touched, and who had a vague, instinctive sense that she might never more meet anybody in her life like this country lad—perhaps she had enough generosity left in her to feel that it would be best they should not meet again. But Colin had no such thoughts. He felt in his heart that one time—how or when he knew not—he should yet go to her feet and offer what he had to offer: everything else in the world except that one thing was doubtful to Colin, but concerning that he was confident, and entertained no fear. And so they parted; she, perhaps, for half an hour or so, the most deeply moved of the two. Miss Matty, however, was just as captivating as usual in the next house they went to, where there were one or two people worth looking at, and the company in general was more interesting than at Ardmartin; but Colin, for his part, spent most of the evening on the hillside, revolving in the silence a hundred tumultuous thoughts. It was the end of September, and the nights were cold on the Holy Loch. There was not even a moon to enliven the landscape, and all that could be seen was the cold, blue glimmer of the water, upon which Colin looked down with a kind of desolate sense of elevation—elevation of the mind and of the heart, which made the grief of parting look like a grand moral agent, quickening all his powers, and concentrating his strength. Henceforward the strongest of personal motives was to inspire him in all his conflicts. He was going into the battle of life with his lady’s colours on his helmet, like a knight of romance, and failure was not to be thought of as a possibility. As he set his face to the wind, going back to Ardmartin, the pale sky lightened over the other side of the loch, and underneath the breaking clouds, which lay so black on the hills, Colin saw the distant glimmer of a light, which looked like the light in the parlour window at Ramore. Just then a sudden gust swept across the hill-side, throwing over him a shower of falling leaves, and big rain-drops from the last shower. There was not a soul on the road but Colin himself, nor anything to be seen far or near, except the dark tree-tops in the Lady’s Glen, which were sighing in the night wind, and the dark side of Ardmartin, where all the shutters are closed, and one soft star hanging among the clouds just over the spot where that little friendly light in the farmhouse of Ramore held up its glimmer of human consolation in the darkness. It was not Hero’s torch to light her love—was it, perhaps, a sober gleam of truth and wisdom to call the young Leander back from those bitter waters in which he could but perish? All kinds of fancies were in Colin’s mind as he went back, facing the wind, to the dull, closed up house, from which the enchantment had departed; but among them there occurred no thought of discouragement from this pursuit upon which now his heart was set. He would have drowned himself cauld he have imagined it possible that he could cease to love—and so long as he loved how was it possible to fail?

“And must you be a Scotch minister?” When Colin went home a fortnight later to make his preparations for returning to the University, he was occupied, to the exclusion of almost all other questions, by revolving this. It is true that at his age, and with his inexperience, it was possible to imagine that even a Scotch minister, totally unfavoured by fortune, might, by mere dint of genius, raise himself to heights of fame sufficient to bring Sir Thomas Frankland’s niece within his reach—but the thing was unlikely, even to the lively imagination of twenty. And it was the fact that Colin had no special “vocation” towards the profession for which he was being trained. He had been educated and destined for it all his life, and his thoughts had a natural bias that way. But otherwise there was no personal impulse in his mind towards what Mrs. Jordan called “the work of the ministry.” Hitherto his personal impulses had been neither for nor against. Luckily for Colin, and many of his contemporaries, there were so many things to object to in the Church of Scotland, so many defects of order and external matters which required reformation, that they were less strongly tempted to become sceptical in matters of faith than their fellows elsewhere. As for Colin himself, he had fallen off no doubt from the certainty of his boyhood upon many important matters; but the lad, though he was a Scotchman, was happily illogical, and suffered very little by his doubts. Nothing could have made him sceptical, in any real sense of the word, and accordingly there was no repulsion in Colin’s mind against his future profession. But now! He turned it over in his mind night and day in the interval between Matty’s departure and his own return to Ramore. What if, instead of a Scotch minister, incapable of promotion, and to whom ambition itself was unlawful, he were to address himself to the Bar, where there were at least chances and possibilities of fame? He was occupied with this question, to the exclusion of every other, as he crossed the loch in the little steamer, and landed on the pier near Ramore, where his young brothers met him, eager to carry his travelling-bag, and convey him home in triumph. Colin was aware that such a proposal on his part would occasion grievous disappointment at home, and he did not know how to introduce the subject, or disclose his wavering wishes. It was a wonderful relief, as well as confusion to him, when he entered the Ramore parlour, to find Lauderdale in possession of the second arm-chair, opposite the mistress’s, which was sacred to visitors. He had arrived only the evening before, having left Glasgow “for a holiday, like everybody else, in the saut-water season; the first I ever mind of having in my life,” he said, with a certain boyish satisfaction, stretching out his long limbs by the parlour fire.

“It’s ower cauld to have much good of the water,” said the mistress; “the boat’s no laid up yet, waiting for Colin, but the weather’s awfu’ winterly—no to say soft,” she added, with a little sigh, “for its aye soft weather among the lochs, though we’ve had less rain than common this year.”

And as the mistress spoke, the familiar, well-known rain came sweeping down over the hills. It had the usual effect upon the mind of the sensitive woman. “We maun take a’ the good we can of you, laddie,” she said, laying her kind hand on her boy’s shoulder, “it’s only a sight we get now in passing. He’s owre much thought of, and made of, to spend his time at hame,” the mistress added, turning, with a half-reproachful pride to Lauderdale; “I’ll be awfu’ sorry if the rain lasts, on your account. But, for myself, I could put up with a little soft weather, to see mair of Colin; no that I want him to stay at hame when he might be enjoying himself,” she continued, with a compunction. Soft weather on the Holy Loch signified rain and mist, and everything that was most discouraging to Mrs. Campbell’s soul, but she was ready to undergo anything the skies could inflict upon her, if fortified by the society of her son.

It was the second night after his return before Colin could make up his mind to introduce the subject of which his thoughts were full. Tea was over by that time, and all the household assembled in the parlour. The farmer himself had just laid down his newspaper, from which he had been reading scraps of county gossip aloud, somewhat to the indignation of the mistress, who, for her part, liked to hear what was going on in the world, and took a great interest in Parliament and the foreign intelligence. “I canna say that I’m heeding about the muckle apple that’s been grown in Clydesdale, nor the new bailies in Greenock,” said the farmer’s wife. “If you would read us something wise-like about thae poor oppressed Italians, or what Louiss Napoleon is thinking about—I canna excuse him for what they ca’ the coo-detaw,” said Mrs. Campbell; “but for a’ that, I take a great interest in him;” and with this the mistress took up her knitting with a pleasant anticipation of more important news to come.