And here the youth paused with a natural smile lurking at the corners of his lips—a smile of youthful confidence and self-gratulation. Not for a kingdom would the young hero have boasted of any look or word she had ever bestowed upon him; but he could not deny himself the delicious consciousness that she must have had something to do with this proposal—that it must have been her suggestion, or at least supported, seconded by her. Only through her could her uncle have known that he was tutor at Ardmartin; and the thought that it was she herself who was taking what maidenly means she could for their speedy reunion was too sweet to Colin’s heart to be breathed in words, even if he could have done it without a betrayal of his hopes.
“Ay, Colin, the lady—” said his mother; “you say no more in words, but your eye smiles, and your mouth, and I see the flush on your cheek. She’s bonnie and sweet and fair-spoken, and I canna think she means ony harm; but, oh, Colin, my man, mind what a difference in this world! You’ve nothing to offer her like what she’s been used to,” said the innocent woman, “and if I was to see my son come back breaking his heart for ane that was above his reach, and maybe no worthy!—” She could not say any more, partly because she had exhausted herself, partly because Colin rose from the table with a flush of excitement, which made his mother tremble.
“Worthy of me!” said the young man, with a kind of groan, “worthy of me! Mother, I don’t think you know what you are saying. I am going to Wodensbourne whatever happens. It may be for good or for evil; I can’t tell; but I am going, and you must ask me no further questions—not on this point. I am to be tutor to Sir Thomas Frankland’s boy,” said Colin, sitting down, with the smile again in his eyes. “Nothing more—and what could happen better to a poor Scotch student? He might have had a Cambridge man, and he chooses me. Let me finish my letter, mother dear.”
“He wouldna get many Cambridge men, or ony other men, like my boy,” said the mother half reassured; and she rearranged with her hands, that trembled a little, the writing-desk, which Colin’s hasty movements had thrust out of the way.
“Ah, mother, but a Scotch University does not count for the same as an English one,” said Colin, with a smile and a sigh; “it is not for my gifts Sir Thomas has chosen me,” he added, somewhat impatiently, taking up his pen again. What was it for? That old obligation of Harry Frankland’s life saved, which Colin had always treated as a fiction? or the sweet influence of some one who knew that Colin loved her? Which was it? If the youth determined it should be the last, could anybody wonder? He bent his head again over his paper, and wrote, with his heart beating high, that acceptance which was to restore him to her society. As for the Mistress, she left her son, and went about her homely business, wiping some tears from her eyes. “I kenna what woman could close her heart,” she said to herself, with a little sob, in her ignorance and innocence. “Oh, if she’s only worthy!” but, for all that, the mother’s heart was heavy within her, though she could not have told why.
The letter was finished and sealed up before Colin joined his friend on the hillside, where Lauderdale was straying about with his hands in his pockets, breathing long sighs into the fresh air, and unable to restrain, or account for, his own restlessness and uneasiness. One of those great dramas of sunshine and shadow, which are familiar to the Holy Loch, was going on just then among the hills, and the philosopher had made various attempts to interest himself in those wonderful alternations of gloom and light, but without avail. Nature, which is so full of interest when the heart is unoccupied, dwindles and grows pale in presence of the poorest human creature who throws a shadow into her sunshine. Not all those wonderful gleams of light—not all those clouds, driven wildly like so many gigantic phantoms into the solemn hollows, could touch the heart of the man who was trembling for his friend. Lauderdale roused himself up when Colin came to him, and met him cheerfully. “So you’ve written your letter?” he said, “and accepted the offer? I thought as much, by your eye.”
“You did not need to consult my eye,” said Colin, gaily. “I said as much. But I must walk down the loch a mile or two to meet the postman. Will you come? Let us take the good of the hills,” said the youth, with his heart running over. “Who can tell when we may be here again together? I like this autumn weather, with its stormy colours; and I suppose now my fortune, as you call it, will lead me to a flat country—that is, for a year or two at least.”
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, with a kind of groan; “that is how the world appears at your years. Who can tell when we may be here again together? Who can tell, laddie, what thoughts may be in our hearts when we are here again? I never have any security myself, when I leave a place, that I’ll ever dare to come back,” said the meditative man. “The innocent fields might have a cruel aspect, as if God had cursed them, and, for anything I know, I might hate the flowers that could bloom, and the sun that could shine, and had no heart for my trouble. No that you understand what I’m meaning; but that’s the way it affects a man like me.”
“What are you thinking of?” cried Colin, with a little dismay; “one would fancy you saw some terrible evil approaching. Of course the future is uncertain, but I am not particularly alarmed by anything that appears to me. What are you thinking of, Lauderdale? Your own career?”
“Oh, ay, just my ain career,” said Lauderdale, with a smile; “such a career to make a work about! though I am just as content as most men. I mind when my ain spirit was whiles uplifted as yours is, laddie; it’s that that makes a man think. It comes natural to the time of life, like the bright eye and the bloom on the cheek; and there’s no sentence of death in it either, if you come to that,” he went on to himself after a pause. “Life holds on—it aye holds on; a hope mair or less makes little count. And without the struggle, never man that was worth calling man came to his full stature.” All this Lauderdale kept saying to himself as he descended the hillside, leaping here and there over a half-concealed streamlet, and making his way through the withered ferns and the long tangled streamers of the bramble, which caught at him as he passed. He was not so skilful in overcoming these obstacles as Colin, who was to the manner born; and he got a little out of breath as he followed the lad, who, catching his monologue by intervals in the descent, looked at the melancholy philosopher with his young eyes, which laughed, and did not understand.