“Oh, Colin, dinna say that! dinna break my heart!” cried the Mistress. “I’m telling you every word the doctor said. He said it would be better for you in the future; better for your strength, and for getting free of danger in the many hard winters—dour Scotch winters, frost, and snow, and stormy weather, and you your duty to mind night and day—” She made a little pause to get her breath, and smiled upon Colin, and went on hastily, lest she should break down before all was said. “In the mony hard winters that you have to look forward to—the lang life that’s to come—”
“Lauderdale,” said Colin, out of the darkness, “do you hear her saying what she thinks is deception and falsehood. My mother is obliged to tell me the doctor’s lie; but it stumbles on her lips. That is not how she would speak of herself. She would say—”
“Callant, hold your peace,” said Lauderdale. His voice was so harsh and strange, that it jarred in the air, and he rose up with a sudden movement, rising like a tower into the twilight, through which the pleasant reflections from the fire sparkled and played as lightly as if the talk had been all of pleasure. “Be silent, sir,” cried Colin’s friend. “How dare you say to me that any word but truth can come out of the Mistress’s lips? How dare ye—” But here Lauderdale himself came to a sudden pause. He went to the window, as Colin had done, and then came quickly back again. “Because we’re a wee concerned and anxious about him, he thinks he may say what he likes,” said the philosopher, with a strange, short laugh. “It’s the way with such callants. They’re kings, and give the laws to us that ken better. You may say what you like, Colin, but you must not name anything that’s no true with your mother’s name.”
It is strange to feel that you are going to die. It is stranger still to see your friends profoundly conscious of the awful news they have to convey, painfully making light of it, and trying to look as if they meant nothing. Colin perceived the signification of his mother’s pathetic smiles, of his friend’s impatience, of the vigilant watch they kept upon him. He saw that, if perhaps her love kept a desperate spark of hope alight in the Mistress’s heart, it was desperate, and she put no confidence in it. All this he perceived, with the rapid and sudden perception which comes at such a crisis. Perhaps for a moment the blood went back upon his heart with a suffocating sense of danger, against which he could make no stand, and of an inevitable approaching fate which he could not avoid or flee from. The next minute he laughed aloud. The sound of his laughter was strange and terrible to his companions. The Mistress took her boy’s hand and caressed it, and spoke to him in the soothing words of his childhood. “Colin, my man—Colin, my bonnie man!” said the mother whose heart was breaking. She thought his laugh sounded like defiance of God, defiance of the approaching doom; and such a fear was worse even than the dread of losing him. She kept his reluctant fingers in hers, holding him fast to the faith and resignation of his home. As for Lauderdale, he went away out of sight, struggling with a hard sob which all his strength could not restrain; and it was in the silence of this moment that Colin’s laugh, more faintly, more softly, with a playful sound that went to their hearts, echoed again into the room.
“Don’t hold me, mother,” he said; “I could not run away from you if I would. You think I don’t take my discovery as I ought to do? If it is true,” said Colin, grasping his mother’s hand, “you will have time enough to be miserable about me after; let us be happy as long as we can. But I don’t think it is true. I have died and come alive again. I am not going to die any more just now,” said Colin, with a smile which was more than his mother could bear; and his eyes were so fixed upon her, that her efforts to swallow the climbing sorrow in her throat were such as consumed her strength. But even then it was of him and not herself that she thought. “I wasna meaning—I wasna saying—” she tried to articulate in her broken voice; and then at intervals, “A’ can be borne—a’ can be borne—that doesna go against the will of God. Oh Colin, my ain laddie! we maun a’ die; but we must not rebel against Him,” cried the Mistress. A little more, and even she, though long-enduring as love could make her, must have reached the limits of her strength; but Colin, strangely enough, was no way disposed for solemnity, nor for seriousness. He was at the height of the rebound, and disposed to carry his nurses with him to that smiling mountain-top from which death and sorrow had dispersed like so many mists and clouds.
“Come to the window, and look out,” said Colin; “take my arm, mother; it feels natural to have you on my arm. Look here—there are neither hills nor water, but there are always stars about. I don’t mean to be discouraged,” said the young man. He had to lean against the window to support himself; but, all the same, he supported her, keeping fast hold of the hand on his arm. “I don’t mean to be discouraged,” said Colin, “nor to let you be discouraged. I have been in the valley of the shadow of death, but I have come out again. It does not matter to me what the doctor says, or what Lauderdale says, or any other of my natural enemies. You and I, mother, know better,” he said; “I am not going to die.”
The two stood at the window, looking up to the faint stars, two faces cast in the same mould—one distraught with a struggling of hope against knowledge, against experience; the other radiant with a smile of youth. “I am not quite able to walk over the Alps, at present,” said Colin, leading the Mistress back to her chair; “but, for all that, let us go to Italy since the doctor says so. And, Lauderdale, come out of the dark, and light the candles, and don’t talk any more nonsense. We are going to have a consultation about the ways and means. I don’t know how it is to be done,” said Colin, gaily, “since we have not a penny, nor has anybody belonging to us; but still, since you say so, mother, and the doctor, and Lauderdale——”
The Mistress, all trembling and agitated, rose at this moment to help Lauderdale, who had come forward without saying anything, to do the patient’s bidding. “You’ll no be angry?” said Mrs. Campbell, under her breath; “it’s a’ his spirits; he means nothing but love and kindness.” Lauderdale met her eye with a countenance almost as much disturbed as her own.
“Me angry?” said Colin’s friend; “he might have my head for a football, if that would please him.” The words were said in an undertone which sounded like a suppressed growl; and as such Colin took this little clandestine exchange of confidence.
“Is he grumbling, mother?” said the object of their cares. “Never mind; he likes to grumble. Now come to the fire, both of you, and talk. They are oracles, these great doctors; they tell you what you are to do without telling you how to do it. Must I go to Italy in a balloon?” said Colin. “After all, if it were possible, it would be worth being ill for,” said the young man, with a sudden illumination in his eyes. He took the management of affairs into his own hands for the evening, and pointed out to them where they were to sit with the despotism of an invalid. “Now we look comfortable,” said Colin, “and are prepared to listen to suggestions. Lauderdale, your mind is speculative; do you begin.”