“We’ve got a yacht,” said the boy, who found the scones much to his taste, and began to feel a glow of comfort diffusing itself through his inner man—“the fastest sailer I know. We made a little run yesterday down to the Kyles; but Sir Thomas prefers the grouse, though it’s awfully hard work, I can tell you, going up those hills. It’s so beastly wet,” said the young hero. “I never was down here before; but Sir Thomas comes every year to the Highlands; he likes it—he’s as strong as a horse—but I prefer the yacht, for my part.”
“And who’s Sir Thomas, if ane may speer—some friend?” said the farmer’s wife.
“Oh—he’s my father!” said the Etonian; and a natural flush of shamefacedness at acknowledging such a relationship rose upon the countenance of the British boy.
“Your father?” said Mrs. Campbell, with some amazement, “that’s an awfu’ queer way to speak of your father; and have you ony brothers and sisters that you’re this lang distance off your lane,—and your mamma maybe anxious about you?” continued the kind mother, with a wistful look of inquiry. She was prepared to be sorry for him, concluding that a boy who spoke of his father in such terms, must be motherless, and a neglected child. It was the most tender kind of curiosity which animated the good woman. She formed a theory about the lad on the spot, as women do, and concluded that his cruel father paid no regard to him, and that the boy’s heart had been hardened by neglect and want of love. “Figure our Colin ca’ing the maister Mr. Campbell!” she said to herself, and looked very pitifully at young Frankland, who ate his scone without any consciousness of her amiable imaginations.
“Oh, I’m not afraid,” said the calm youth. “She knows better; there’s ten of us, and some one of the family comes to grief most days, you know. She’s used to that. Besides, I’ll get home long before Sir Thomas. It’s only four now, and I suppose one could walk down from here—how soon?” All this time he went on so steadily at the scones and the milk, that the heart of the farmer’s wife warmed to the possessor of such a frank and appreciative appetite.
“You might put the horse in the gig and drive the young gentleman down,” said the soft-hearted woman; “or Colin could row him in the boat as far as the pier. It’s a lang walk for such a callant, and you’re no thrang. It’s awfu’ to think o’ the rain, how it’s taking the bread out of us poor folk’s mouths; but to be sure it’s the Lord’s will—if it be na,” said the homely speculator, “that the weather’s ane of the things that has been permitted, for wise reasons, to fa’ into Ither Hands; and I’m sure, judging by the way it comes just when it’s no’ wanted, ane might think so, mony a time, in this country side. But ah! it’s sinfu’ to speak,—and look at yon bonnie rainbow,” she continued, turning to the window with her baby in her arms.
Young Frankland got up slowly as he finished his scone. He was only partially sensible of the extreme beauty of the scene before him; but the farmer’s wife stood with her baby in her arms, with hidden lights kindling in her soft eyes, expanding and beaming over the lovely landscape. It did her good like a cordial; though even Colin, her sensible husband, looked on, with a smile upon his good-humoured countenance, and was a little amused and much puzzled, as he had been a hundred times before—seeing his wife’s pleasure in those common and every-day processes of nature, to know why.
Young Colin in the boat understood better,—he was lying on his oars gazing at it the same moment; arrested in his petulant boyish thoughts, as she had been in her anxieties, the lad came out of, and lost himself in the scene. The sun had burst out suddenly upon the noble range of hills which stretched across the upper end of the loch—that wistful tender sun which shone out always, dazzling with pathetic gleams of sudden love in this country, “as if he couldna tell whether he might ever see you again,” as Mrs. Campbell said—and, just catching the skirts of the rain, had flung a double rainbow across the sheltered lovely curve of the upper banks. One side of the arch stooping over the heathery hillside, lighted it up with an unearthly glory, and the other came down in stately columns one grand shaft within the other, with solid magnificence and steadiness, into the water. Young Frankland at the window could not help thinking within himself, what a beautiful picture it would make, “if any of those painter fellows could do a rainbow;” but as for young Colin in the boat, the impulse in his heart was to dash up to those heavenly archways, and embrace the shining pillar, and swing himself aloft half-boy, half-poet, to that celestial world, where fiery columns may stand fast upon moving waters—and all is true, but nothing real. The hills, for their share, lay very quiet, taking no part in the momentary drama of the elements; standing passive, letting the sudden light search them over and over, as if seeking for hidden treasure. Just in the midst of the blackness of the rain, never was light and joy so sweet and sudden. The farmer’s wife came away from the window with a sigh of pleasure, as the baby stirred in her arms; “Eh, but the world’s bonnie, bonnie!” she said to herself, with a feeling that some event of joyful importance had just been enacted before her. As for the boy on the loch, who, being younger, was more abstracted from common affairs, his dream was interrupted loudly by a call from the door: “Come in wi’ the boat; I’ve a message to gie ye for the pier,” cried the farmer, at the top of his voice; and the country boy started back to himself, and made a dash at his oars, and pulled inshore as violently and unhandsomely as if the nature of his dreams had been found out, and he was ashamed of himself. Colin forgot all the softening influences of the scene, and all the fine thoughts that had, unconscious to himself, come into his head, when he found that the commission his father meant to give him was that of rowing the stranger-boy as far as the pier, which was about three miles farther down the loch. If disobedience had been an offence understood at Ramore, possibly he might have refused; but neither boy nor man, however well-inclined, is likely to succeed in doing, the first time of trying, a kind of sin with which he has no acquaintance. To give Colin justice, he did his best, and showed a cordial inclination to make himself disagreeable. He came in so clumsily that the boat grounded a yard or two off shore, and would not by any coaxing be persuaded to approach nearer. And when young Frankland, much to his amazement, leapt on board without wetting his feet, as the country lad maliciously intended, and came against Colin with such force as almost to knock him down, the young boatman thrust his passenger forward very rudely, and was as near capsizing the boat as pride would permit him. “Sit forrit in the stern, sit forrit. Were ye never in a boat afore, that ye think I can row and you sitting there?” said the unchristian Colin, bringing one of the oars heavily against his adversary’s shins.
“What the deuce do you mean by that? Give me the oar! We don’t row like that on the Thames, I can tell you,” said the stranger; and the brief skirmish between them for the possession of the oar having terminated abruptly by the intervention of Colin the elder, who was still within hearing, the two boys set off, sullenly enough, down the loch. The rainbow was dying off by this time, the clouds rolling out again over the hills; and the celestial pillars and heavenly archways had no longer, as may be supposed, since this rude invasion of the real and disagreeable, the least remnant of ground to stand upon in the thoughts of young Colin of Ramore.