A Son of the Soil

by Mrs. Oliphant

It was thus that Colin defeated the gathering dread and anguish which, even in the face of his apparent recovery, closed more and more darkly round him; and, as what he did and said did not arise from any set purpose or conscious intention, but was a mere outburst of instinctive feeling, it had a certain inevitable effect upon his auditors, who brightened up, in spite of themselves and their convictions, under his influence. When Colin laughed, instead of feeling inclined to sob or groan over him, even Lauderdale, after a while, cleared up too into a doubtful smile; and, as for the Mistress, her boy’s confidence came to her like a special revelation. She saw it was not assumed, and her heart rose. “When a young creature’s appointed to be taken, the Lord gives him warning,” she said in secret; “but my Colin has nae message in himself,” and her tender soul was cheered by the visionary consolation. It was under the same exhilarating influence that Lauderdale spoke.

“I’ve given up my situation,” he said. “No but what it was a very honourable situation, and no badly remunerated, but a man tires of everything that’s aye the same day by day. I’ve been working hard a’ my life; and it’s in the nature of man to be craving. I’m going to Eetaly for my own hand,” said Lauderdale; “no on your account, callant. I’ve had enough of the prose, and now’s the time for a bit poetry. No that I undertake to write verses, like you. If he has not me to take care of him, he’ll flee into print,” said the philosopher, reflectively. “It would be a terrible shock to me to see our first prizeman, the most distinguished student, as the Principal himself said, coming out in a book with lines to Eetaly, and verses about vineyards and oranges. That kind of thing is a’ very well for the callants at Oxford and Cambridge, but there’s something more expected from one of us,” said Lauderdale. “I’m going to Eetaly, as I tell you, callant, as long as there’s a glimmer of something like youth left in me, to get a bit poetry into my life. You and me will take our knapsacks on our backs and go off together. I have a trifle in the bank; a hundred pounds—or maybe mair: I couldn’t say as to a shilling or two. If I’m speculative, as you say, I’m no without a turn for the practical,” he continued with some pride; “and everything’s awfu’ cheap when you know how to manage. This curate callant—he has not a great deal of sense, nor ony philosophical judgment, that I can see; and, as for theology, he doesna understand what it means; but he does not seem to me to be deficient in other organs,” said the impartial observer, “such as the heart, for example; and he’s been about the world, and understands about inns and things. Every living creature has its use in this life. I wouldna say he was good for very much in the way of direct teaching from the pulpit, but he’s been awfu’ instructive to me.”

“And you mean me to save my life at your cost?” said Colin. “This is what I have come to; at your cost or at my father’s, or by somebody’s charity? No; I’ll go home and sit in an easy-chair, like poor Hugh Carlyle; and, mother, you’ll take care——”

When the sick man’s fitful spirits thus yielded again his mother was near to soothe him into steadier courage. Again she held his hands, and said, “Colin, my man—Colin, my bonnie man!” with the voice of his childhood. “You’ll come back hale and strong to pay a’body back the trouble,” said the Mistress, while Lauderdale proceeded unmoved, without seeming to hear what Colin said.

“They’re a mystery to me, thae English priests,” said the meditative Scotchman. “They’re not to call ignorant, in the general sense, but they’re awfu’ simple in their ways. To think of a man in possession of his faculties reading a verse or maybe a chapter out of the Bible, which is very near as mysterious as life itself to the like of me, and then discoursing about the Church and the Lessons appointed for this day or that. It’s a grand tether, that Prayer-Book, though. Yon kind of callant, so long as he keeps by that, he’s safe in a kind of a way; but he knows nothing about what’s doing outside his printed walls, and, when he hears suddenly a’ the stir that’s in the world, he loses his head, and invents a’ the old heresies over again. But he’s awful instructive, as I was saying, in the article of inns and steamboats. Not to say that he’s a grand Italian scholar, as far as I can understand, and reads Dante in the original. It’s a wonderful thought to realize the like of that innocent reading Dante. You and me, Colin,” said Lauderdale, with a sudden glow in his eyes, “will take the poets by the hand for once in our lives. What you were saying about cost was a wonderful sensible saying for you. When the siller’s done we’ll work our way home; it’s a pity you have no voice to speak of, and I canna play the—guitar is’t they call it?” said the philosopher, with a quaint grimace. He was contemptuous of the lighter arts, as was natural to his race and habits, and once more Colin’s laugh sounded gaily through the room, which, for many weeks, had known little laughter. They discussed the whole matter, half playfully, half seriously, as they sat over the fire, growing eager about it as they went on. Lauderdale’s hundred pounds “or maybe mair” was the careful hoarding of years. He had saved it as poor Scotchmen are reported to save, by minute economies, unsuspected by richer men. But he was ready to spend his little fortune with the composure of a millionaire. “And myself after it, if that would make it more effectual,” he said to himself, as he went back in the darkness to his little lodging in the village. Let it not be supposed, however, that any idea of self-sacrifice was in the mind of Lauderdale. On the contrary, he contemplated this one possible magnificence of his life with a glow of secret satisfaction and delight. He was willing to expend it all upon Colin, if not to save him, at least to please him. That was his pleasure, the highest gratification of which he was capable in the circumstances. He made his plans with the liberality of a prince, without thinking twice about the matter—though it was all the wealth he had in the world which he was about to lavish freely for Colin’s sake.

“I don’t mean to take Lauderdale’s money, but we’ll arrange it somehow,” said Colin; “and then for the hard winters you speak of, mother, and the labour night and day.” He sent her away with a smile; but, when he had closed the door of his own apartment, which now at length he was well enough to have to himself without the attendance of any nurse, the light went out of the young man’s face. After his kind attendants were both gone, he sat down and began to think; things did not look so serene, so certain, so infallible when he was alone. He began to think, What if after all the doctor might be right? What if it were death and not life that was written against his name? The thought brought a little thrill to Colin’s heart, and then he set himself to contemplate the possibility. His faith was shadowy in details, like that of most people; his ideas about heaven had shifted and grown confused from the first vague vision of beatitude, the crowns, and palms, and celestial harps of childhood. What was that other existence into which, in the fulness of his youth, he might be transported ere he was aware? There at least must be the solution of all the difficulties that crazed the minds of men; there at least, nearer to God, there must be increase of faculty, elevation of soul. Colin looked it in the face, and the Unknown did not appal him; but through the silence he seemed already to hear the cry of anguish which would go up from one homely house under the unanswering skies. It had been his home all his life: what would it be to him in the event of that change, which was death, but not destruction? Must he look down from afar off, from some cold, cruel distance, upon the sorrow of his friends, himself being happy beyond reach, bearing no share in the burden? Or might he, according to a still more painful imagination, be with them, beside them, but unable by word or look, by breath or touch, to lift aside even for a moment the awful veil, transparent to him, but to them heavy and dark as night, which drops between the living and the dead? It was when his thoughts came to this point, that Colin withdrew, faint and sick at heart, from the hopeless inquiry. He went to rest, saying his prayers as he said them at his mother’s knee, for Jesus’ sake. Heaven and earth swam in confused visions round the brain which was dizzy with the encounter of things too mysterious, too dark to be fathomed. The only thing in Earth or Heaven of which there seemed to be any certainty was the sole Existence which united both, in whose name Colin said his prayers.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Miss Matty Frankland all this time had not been without her trials. They were trials as unlike Colin’s as possible, but not without some weight and poignancy of their own, such as might naturally belong to the secondary heartaches of a woman who was far from being destitute either of sense or feeling, and yet was at the same time a little woman of the world. In the first place, she was greatly aggravated that Harry, who on the whole seemed to be her fate, an inevitable necessity, should allow himself to be picked out of a canal at the hazard of another man’s life. Harry was, on the whole, a very good fellow, and was not apt to fall into an inferior place among his equals, or show himself less manful, courageous, or fortunate than other people. But it wounded Matty’s pride intensely to think that she might have to marry a man whose life had been twice saved, all the more as it was not a fault with which he could be reasonably upbraided. And then, being a woman, it was impossible for her to refrain from a little natural involuntary hero-worship of the other; who was not only the hero of these adventures, but her own chivalrous adorer to boot—perhaps the only man in the world who had suffered his life to be seriously affected by her influence. Not only so; but at bottom Miss Matty was fond of Colin, and looked upon him with an affectionate, caressing regard, which was not love, but might very easily have borne the aspect of love by moments, especially when its object was in a position of special interest. Between these two sentiments the young lady was kept in a state of harass and worry, disadvantageous both to her looks and her temper—a consciousness of which re-acted in its turn upon her feelings. She put it all down to Harry’s score when, looking in her glass, she found herself paler than usual. “I wonder how he could be such an ass,” she said to herself at such periods, with a form of expression unsuitable for a boudoir; and then her heart would melt towards his rival. There were even some moments in which she felt, or imagined she felt, the thraldom of society, and uttered to herself sighs and sneers, half false and half true, about the “gilded chains,” &c. which bound her to make her appearance at Sir Thomas’s dinner-party, and to take an active part in Lady Frankland’s ball.

All this conflict of sentiment was conscious, which made matters worse: for all the time Matty was never quite clear of the idea that she was a humbug, and even in her truest impulse of feeling kept perpetually finding herself out. If Colin had been able to appear downstairs, her position would have been more and more embarrassing; as it was, she saw, as clearly as any one, that the intercourse which she had hitherto kept up with the tutor must absolutely come to an end now, when he had a claim so much stronger and more urgent upon the gratitude of the family. And, the more closely she perceived this, the more did Matty grudge the necessity of throwing aside the most graceful of all her playthings. Things might have gone on in the old way for long enough but for this most unnecessary and perplexing accident, which was entirely Harry’s fault. Now she dared not any longer play with Colin’s devotion, and yet was very reluctant to give up the young worshipper, who amused and interested and affected her more than any other in her train. With this in her mind, Miss Matty, as may be supposed, was a little fitful in her spirits, and felt herself, on the whole, an injured woman. The ordinary homage of the drawing-room felt stale and unprofitable after Colin’s poetic worship; and the wooing of Harry, who felt he had a right to her, and conducted himself accordingly, made the contrast all the more distinct. And in her heart, deep down beyond all impulses of vanity, there lay a woman’s pity for the sufferer, a woman’s grateful but remorseful admiration for the man who had given in exchange for all her false coin a most unquestionable heart.

It will thus be apparent that Matty did not suspect the change that had come over Colin’s sentiments; perhaps she could not by any effort of her understanding have realized the sudden revolution which these few weeks had worked in his mind. She would have been humbled, wounded, perhaps angry, had she known of his disenchantment. But, in her ignorance, a certain yearning was in the young lady’s mind. She was not reconciled to give him up; she wanted to see him again—even, so mingled were her sentiments, to try her power upon him again, though it could only be to give him pain. Altogether, the business was complicated to an incredible extent in the mind of Matty, and she had not an idea of the simple manner in which Colin had cut the knot and escaped out of all its entanglements. When the accident was discussed downstairs the remarks of the general company were insufferable to the girl who knew more about Colin than any one else did; and the sharpness of her criticism upon their talk confounded even Lady Frankland, whose powers of observation were not rapid. “My dear, you seem to be losing your temper,” said the astonished aunt; and the idea gave Lady Frankland a little trouble. “A woman who loses her temper will never do for Harry,” she said in confidence to Sir Thomas. “And, poor fellow, he is very ready to take offence since this unfortunate accident. I am sure I am quite willing to acknowledge how much we owe to Mr. Campbell; but it is very odd that nothing has ever happened to Harry except in his company,” said the aggrieved mother. Sir Thomas, for his part, was more reasonable.