“If you were to come where we are going,” said his companion with a composure which was wonderful to Colin, “you would find it cheaper, and you could see things almost as easily, and it would not be so hot when summer comes. I think it would do Arthur a great deal of good. It is so hard to know what to do with a man,” she went on, unconsciously yielding to that inexpressible influence of a sympathetic listener which few people can resist; “they cannot occupy themselves, you know, as we women can, and they get tired of our society. I have so longed to find some man who would understand him, and whom he could talk to,” cried the poor girl, with tears in her eyes. She made a pause when she had said so much—not that it occurred to her that any one could misunderstand her, but because the tears were getting into her voice, which was a weakness not to be yielded to. “I don’t know why I should cry,” she added a minute after, with a faint smile; “it is talking about Italy I suppose; but you will like it when you get there.”
“Yet you do not seem to like it,” said Colin, with a little curiosity.
This time she made him no direct answer. Her eyes were following her brother and Lauderdale as they walked about the deck. “Is he nice?” she asked, with a little timidity, pointing at Lauderdale, and giving another hasty wistful look at Colin’s face.
“I don’t know if you would think so,” said Colin; “he is very Scotch, and a little odd sometimes; but kinder and better, and more truly a friend than words can describe. He is tender and true,” said the young man, with a little enthusiasm which woke up the palest ghost of an answering light in his young companion’s face.
“Being Scotch is a recommendation to me,” she said; “the only person I ever loved, except Arthur, of course,—and those who are gone—was Scotch.” After this quaint intimation, which woke in Colin’s mind an incipient spark of the earliest stage of jealousy—not jealousy proper, but only a lively and contemptuous curiosity to know “who the fellow was”—she dropped back again into her habitual silence. When Colin tried to bring her back by ordinary remarks about the voyage and their destination, she answered him simply by “Yes,” or “No.” She was of one idea, incapable apparently of exerting her mind on any other subject. When they had been thus sitting silent for some time, she began again abruptly at the point where she had left off.
“If you were to come to the same place,” she said—“Arthur can speak Italian very well, and I know it a little—we might be able to help you, and you would have very good air—pure air off the sea. If he had society he would soon be better.” This was said softly to herself; and then she went on, drawn farther and farther by the sympathy which she felt in her listener. “There are only us two in the world.”
“If I can do anything,” said Colin, “as long as we are here at least; but there is no lack of society,” he said, pointing to the groups on the quarter-deck, at which Alice Meredith shook her head.
“He frightens them,” she said; “they prefer to go out of his way; they don’t want to answer his questions. I don’t know why he does it. When he was young he was fond of society, and went out a great deal, but he has changed so much of late,” said the anxious sister, with a certain look of doubt and wonder on her face. She was not quite sure whether the change was an improvement. “I don’t understand it very well myself,” she went on, with a sigh; “perhaps I have not thought enough about it. And then he does not mind what I say to him—men never do; I suppose it is natural. But, if he had society, and you would talk and keep him from writing—”
“Does he write?” said Colin, with new interest. It was a bond of sympathy he had not expected to hear of; and here again the tears, in spite of all her exertions, got into Alice’s voice.
“At night, when he ought to be sleeping,” said the poor girl. “I don’t mean to say he is very ill; but, oh! Mr. Campbell, is it not enough to make any man ill to sit up when he is so tired he cannot keep awake, writing that dreadful book? He is going to call it “A Voice from the Grave.” I sometimes think he wants to break my heart; for what has the grave to do with it? He is rather delicate, but so are you. Most people are delicate,” said poor Alice, “when they sit up at night, and don’t take care of themselves. If you could only get him to give up that book, I would bless you all my life.”