A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

After that talk there elapsed a few days during which Colin saw but little of Matty, who had visits to pay, and some solemn dinner-parties to attend in Lady Frankland’s train. He had to spend the evenings by himself on these occasions after dining with Charley, who was not a very agreeable companion; and, when this invalid went to his room, as he did early, the young tutor found himself desolate enough in the great house, where no human bond existed between him and the little community within its walls. He was not in a state of mind to take kindly to abstract study at that moment of his existence, for Colin had passed out of the unconscious stage in which he had been at Ardmartin. There, however much he might have wished to be out of temptation, he could not help himself, which was a wonderful consolation; but now he had come wilfully and knowingly into danger, and had become aware of it; and far more distinctly than ever before had become aware of the difference between himself and the object of his thoughts. Though he found it very possible at times to comfort himself with the thought that this was an ordinary interruption of a Scotch student’s work, and noways represented the Armida’s garden in which the knight lost both his vocation and his life, there were other moments and moods which were less easily manageable; and, on the whole, he wanted the stimulus of perpetual excitement to keep him from feeling the false position he was in, and the inexpediency of continuing it. Though this feeling haunted him all day, at night, in the drawing-room—which was brightened and made sweet by the fair English matron who was kind to Colin, and the fairer maiden who was the centre of all his thoughts—it vanished like an evil spirit, and left him with a sense that nowhere in the world could he have been so well; but, when the stimulus was withdrawn, the youth was left in a very woeful plight, conscious, to the bottom of his heart, that he ought to be elsewhere, and here was consuming his strength and life. He went out in the darkness of the December nights through the gloomy silent park into the little village with its feeble lights, where everybody and everything was unknown to him; and all the time his demon sat on his shoulder and asked what he did there. One evening while he strayed through the broken, irregular village-street, to all appearance looking at the dim cottage-windows and listening to the rude songs from the little ale-house, the curate encountered the tutor. Most probably the young priest, who was not remarkable for wisdom, imagined the Scotch lad to be in some danger; for he laid a kindly hand upon his arm and turned him away from the vociferous little tavern, which was a vexation to the curate’s soul. “I should like you to go up to the Parsonage with me, if you will only wait till I have seen this sick woman,” he said; and Colin went in very willingly within the cottage porch to wait for his acquaintance, who had his prayer-book under his arm. The young Scotchman looked on with wondering eyes while the village priest knelt down by his parishioner’s bedside and opened his book. Naturally there was a comparison always going on in Colin’s mind. He was like a passive experimentalist, seeing all kinds of trials made before his eyes, and watching the result. “I wonder if they all think it is a spell,” said Colin to himself; but he was rebuked and was silent when he heard the responses which the cottage folk made on their knees. When the curate had read his prayer he got up and said good-night, and went back to Colin; and this visitation of the sick was a very strange experience to the young Scotch observer, who stood revolving everything, with an eye to Scotland, at the cottage-door.

“You don’t make use of our Common Prayer in Scotland?” said the curate; “pardon me for referring to it. One cannot help being sorry for people who shut themselves out from such an inestimable advantage. How did it come about?”

“I don’t know,” said Colin. “I suppose because Laud was a fool, and King Charles a ——”

“Hush, for goodness sake,” said the curate, with a shiver. “What do you mean? such language is painful to listen to. The saints and martyrs should be spoken of in a different tone. You think that was the reason? Oh, no; it was your horrible Calvinism, and John Knox, and the mad influences of that unfortunate Reformation which has done us all so much harm; though I suppose you think differently in Scotland,” he said with a little sigh, steering his young companion, of whose morality he felt uncertain, past the alehouse door.

“Did you never hear of John Knox’s liturgy?” said the indignant Colin; “the saddest, passionate service! You always had time to say your prayers in England, but we had to snatch them as we could. And your prayers would not do for us now,” said the Scotch experimentalist; “I wish they could; but it would be impossible. A Scotch peasant would have thought that an incantation you were reading. When you go to see a sick man, shouldn’t you like to say, God save him, God forgive him, straight out of your heart without a book?” said the eager lad; at which question the curate looked up with wonder in the young man’s face.

“I hope I do say it out of my heart,” said the English priest, and stopped short, with a gravity that had a great effect upon Colin;—“but in words more sound than any words of mine,” the curate added a moment after, which dispersed the reverential impression from the Scotch mind of the eager boy.

“I can’t see that,” said Colin, quickly, “in the church for common prayer, yes; at a bedside in a cottage, no. At least, I mean that’s how we feel in Scotland—though I suppose you don’t care much for our opinion,” he added with some heat, thinking he saw a smile on his companion’s face.

“Oh, yes, certainly; I have always understood that there is a great deal of intelligence in Scotland,” said the curate, courteous as to a South-Sea Islander. “But people who have never known this inestimable advantage—I believe preaching is considered the great thing in the North?” he said with a little curiosity. “I wish society were a little more impressed by it among ourselves; but mere information even about spiritual matters is of so much less importance! though that, I daresay, is another point on which we don’t agree?” the curate continued, pleasantly. He was just opening the gate into his own garden, which was invisible in the darkness, but which enclosed and surrounded a homely house with some lights in the windows, which, it was a little comfort to Colin to perceive, was not much handsomer nor more imposing in appearance than the familiar manse on the borders of the Holy Loch.

“It depends on what you call spiritual matters,” said the polemical youth. “I don’t think a man can possibly get too much information about his relations with God, if only anybody could tell him anything; but certainly about ecclesiastical arrangements and the Christian year,” said the irreverent young Scotchman, “a little might suffice;” and Colin spoke with the slightest inflection of contempt, always thinking of the twentieth Sunday after Trinity, and scorning what he did not understand, as was natural to his years.

“Ah, you don’t know what you are saying,” said the devout curate. “After you have spent a Christian Year, you will see what comfort and beauty there is in it. You say, ‘if anybody could tell him anything.’ I hope you have not got into a sceptical way of thinking. I should like very much to have a long talk with you,” said the village priest, who was very good and very much in earnest, though the earnestness was after a pattern different from anything known to Colin; and, before the youth perceived what was going to happen, he found himself in the curate’s study, placed on a kind of moral platform, as the emblem of Doubt and that pious unbelief which is the favourite of modern theology. Now, to tell the truth, Colin, though it may lower him in the opinion of many readers of his history, was not by nature given to doubting. He had, to be sure, followed the fashion of the time enough to be aware of a wonderful amount of unsettled questions, and questions which it did not appear possible ever to settle. But somehow these elements of scepticism did not give him much trouble. His heart was full of natural piety, and his instincts all fresh and strong as a child’s. He could not help believing, any more than he could help breathing, his nature being such; and he was half-amused and half-irritated by the position in which he found himself, notwithstanding the curate’s respect for the ideal sceptic, whom he had thus pounced upon. The commonplace character of Colin’s mind was such, that he was very glad when his new friend relaxed into gossip, and asked him who was expected at the Hall for Christmas; to which the tutor answered by such names as he had heard in the ladies’ talk, and remembered with friendliness or with jealousy, according to the feeling with which Miss Matty pronounced them—which was Colin’s only guide amid this crowd of the unknown.