“Oh, confound it, why did the governor have him here?” cried the discontented heir. “As for Matty, it appears to me she had better begin to think of doing without slaves,” he said moodily, with a cloud on his face; a speech which made his mother look up with a quick movement of anxiety, though she still smiled.
“I can’t make out either you or Matty,” said Lady Frankland. “I wish you would be either off or on. With such an appearance of indifference as you show to each other—”
“Oh, indifference, by Jove!” said Harry, breaking in upon his mother’s words; and the young man gave a short whistle, and, jumping up abruptly, went off without waiting for any more. Lady Frankland was not in the habit of disturbing herself about things in general. She looked after her son with a serious look, which, however, lasted but a moment. Then she returned immediately to her placidity and her needlework. “I daresay it will come all right,” she said to herself, with serene philosophy, which perhaps accounted for the absence of wrinkles in her comely, middle-aged countenance. Harry, on the contrary, went off in anything but a serene state of mind. It was a foggy day, and the clouds lay very low and heavy over the fen-country, where there was nothing to relieve the dulness of nature. And it was afternoon—the very time of the day when all hopes and attempts at clearing up are over—and dinner was still too far off to throw its genial glow upon the dusky house. There had been nothing going on for a day or two at Wodensbourne. Harry was before his time, and the expected guests had not yet arrived, and the weather was as troublesome and hindersome of every kind of recreation as weather could possibly be. Young Frankland went out in a little fit of impatience, and was met at the hall-door by a mouthful of dense white steaming air, through which even the jovial trees of holly, all glowing with Christmas berries, loomed like two prickly ghosts. He uttered an exclamation of disgust as he stood on the broad stone steps, not quite sure what to do with himself—whether to face the chill misery of the air outside, or to hunt up Matty and Charley, and betake himself to the billiard-room within. But then the tutor—confound the fellow! Just at that moment Harry Frankland heard a laugh, a provoking little peal of silver bells. He had an odd sort of affection—half love, half dislike—for his cousin. But of all Matty’s charms, there was none which so tantalized and bewitched him as this laugh, which was generally acknowledged to be charming. “Much there is to laugh about, by Jove!” he muttered to himself, with an angry flush; but he grew grimly furious when he heard her voice.
“You won’t give in,” said Matty; “the Scotch never will, I know; you are all so dreadfully argumentative and quarrelsome. But you are beaten, though you won’t acknowledge it; you know you are. I like talking to you,” continued the little witch, dropping her voice a little, “because—hush! I thought I heard some one calling me from the house.”
“Because why?” said Colin. They were a good way off, behind one of those great holly trees; but young Frankland, with his quickened ears, discerned in an instant the softness, the tender admiration, the music of the tutor’s voice. “By Jove!” said the heir to himself; and then he shouted out, “Matty, look here! come here!” in tones as different from those of Colin as discord is from harmony. It did not occur to him that Miss Matty’s ear, being perfectly cool and unexcited, was quite able to discriminate between the two voices which thus claimed her regard.
“What do you want?” said Matty. “Don’t stand there in the fog like a ghost; if you have anything to say, come here. I am taking my constitutional; one’s first duty is the care of one’s health,” said the wicked little creature, with her ring of laughter; and she turned back again under his very eyes along the terrace without looking at him again. As for Harry Frankland, the words which escaped from his excited lips were not adapted for publication. If he had been a little less angry he would have joined them, and so made an end of the tutor; but, being furious, and not understanding anything about it, he burst for a moment into profane language, and then went off to the stables, where all the people had a bad time of it until the dressing-bell rang.
“What a savage he is,” said Matty, confidentially. “That is the bore of cousins; they can’t bear to see one happy, and yet they won’t take the trouble of making themselves agreeable. How nice it used to be down at Kilchurn that summer—you remember? And what quantities of poetry you used to write. I suppose Wodensbourne is not favourable to poetry? You have never shown me anything since you came here.”
“Poetry is only for one’s youth,” said Colin; “that is, if you dignify my verses with the name—for one’s extreme youth, when one believes in everything that is impossible; and for Kilchurn, and the Lady’s Glen, and the Holy Loch,” said the youth, after a pause, with a fervour which disconcerted Matty. “That summer was not summer, but a bit of paradise—and life is real at Wodensbourne.”
“I wish you would not speak in riddles,” said Miss Matty, who was in the humour to have a little more of this inferred worship. “I should have thought life was a great deal more real at Ramore than here. Here we have luxuries and things—and—and—and books and—.” She meant to have implied that the homely life was hard, and to have delicately intimated to Colin the advantage of living under the roof of Sir Thomas Frankland; but, catching his eye at the outset of her sentence, Matty had suddenly perceived her mistake, and broke down in a way most unusual to her. As she floundered, the young man looked at her with a full unhesitating gaze, and an incomprehensible smile.
“Pardon me,” he said—he had scarcely ever attempted before to take the superiority out of her hands, little trifler and fine lady as she was—he had been quite content to lay himself down in the dust and suffer her to march over him in airy triumph. But, while she was only a little tricksy coquette, taking from his imagination all her higher charms, Colin was a true man, a man full of young genius, and faculties a world beyond anything known to Matty; and, when he was roused for the moment, it was so easy for him to confound her paltry pretensions. “Pardon me,” he said, with the smile which piqued her, which she did not understand; “I think you mistake. At Ramore I was a poor farmer’s son, but we had other things to think of than the difference between wealth and poverty. At Ramore we think nothing impossible; but here—” said Colin, looking round him with a mixture of contempt and admiration, which Matty could not comprehend. “That, you perceive, was the age of poetry, the age of romance, the golden age,” said the young man, with a smile. “The true knight required nothing but his sword, and was more than a match for all kinds of ugly kings and wicked enchanters; but Wodensbourne is prose, hard prose—fine English if you like, and much to be applauded for its style,” the tutor ran on, delivering himself up to his fancy. “Not Miltonian, to be sure; more like Macaulay—fine vigorous English, not destitute of appropriate ornament; but still prose, plain prose, Miss Frankland—only prose!”