“No,” said Colin, who was a little piqued in spite of himself; “I don’t suppose I am good for much; and I never thought of being his nurse. It is out of the question to imagine that I could be for Meredith, or any other man, what you have been for me.”
“I’ve kent ye longer than two days,” said Colin’s guardian, without showing any signs of propitiation, “which to be sure makes a little difference. Though them that are destined to come together need little time to make it up—I’ve aye been a believer, for my part, not only in love, but in friendship, at first sight.”
“There’s no question of either love or friendship,” said Colin, with prompt irritation. “Surely one may feel pity, sympathy, fellow-feeling, with a man of one’s own age without being misunderstood.”
“I understand you an awfu’ deal better than you understand yourself,” said Lauderdale; “and, as I was saying, I am a great believer in first impressions. It’s a mercenary kind of thing to be friends with a man for his good qualities—there’s a kind of barter in it that goes against my instincts; but, when you take to a man for nae reason, but out of pure election and choice, that’s real friendship—or love, as it might be,” he went on, without pity, enjoying the heightened colour and air of embarrassment on Colin’s face.
“You say all this to make me lose my temper,” said Colin. “Don’t let us talk of it any more to-night; I will think it all over again, since you oppose it, and to-morrow—”
“Ay, to-morrow,” said Lauderdale—“it’s a bonnie new world, and we’ll no interfere with it. Good-night, callant; I’m no a man that can be quarrelled with if you tried ever so hard; to-morrow you’ll take your own way.”
Colin did not sleep till the night was far advanced. He lay awake, watching the moonlight, and pondering over this matter, which looked very important as he contemplated it. By thinking was meant, in his mind, as in most minds of his age, not any complicated course of reasoning, but a rapid framing of pictures on one side and the other. On one side he saw Meredith beguiled from his book, persuaded to moderate his words in season and out of season, and induced to take a little interest in ordinary human affairs, gradually recovering his health, and returning to a life which should no longer appear to him a near preparation for dying; and it cannot be denied that there did come into Colin’s mind a certain consciousness of grateful looks and sweet-voiced thanks attending this restoration, which made the picture wonderfully pleasant. Then, on the other side, there was Lauderdale’s sketch of the sadder possibilities filled in by Colin’s imagination:—poor Meredith dying slowly, looking death in the face for long days and lonely nights, sorely wanting all the succour that human compassion could give him; and the forlorn and solitary mourner that would be left, so young and friendless, by the stranger’s grave. Perhaps, on the whole, this suggestion of Lauderdale’s decided the matter. The thought was too pitiful, too sad to be borne. She was nothing in the world to him; but she was a woman, and Colin thought indignantly of the unchristian cowardice which, for fear of responsibility, would desert a friendless creature exposed to such dangers. Notwithstanding, he was prudent, very prudent, as was natural. It was not Alice, but Arthur Meredith who was to be his friend. She had nothing to do with this decision whatever. If such a melancholy necessity should happen, Colin felt it was in him, respectfully, sympathetically, to take the poor girl home; and if, somehow, the word “home” suggested to him his mother, who that knew anything of the Mistress, could wonder at that thought?
Thus he went on drawing the meshes closer about his feet, while the moonlight shone on the sea, and poor Meredith wrote his book, and Lauderdale, as sleepless as his charge, anxiously pondered the new state of affairs. At home that same moon suggested Colin to more minds than one in the peaceful country over which the March winds were blowing. Miss Matty thought of him, looking out over the Wodensbourne avenue, where the great trees stood stately in the moonlight with a glory on their heads. She was so late because she had been at a ball, where her cousin Harry had made himself highly disagreeable, and where, prompted by his sulky looks, she had carried a little flirtation a hair’s-breadth too far—which was not a comfortable consciousness. Why she should think of Colin under such circumstances it would be hard to say; but the thoughts of a young woman at three o’clock in the morning are not expected to be logical. She thought of him with a shadow of the same feeling that made the Psalmist long for the wings of a dove; though, if Miss Matty had but known it, her reception—could she have made her escape to her former worshipper at that moment—would have been of a disappointing character. And about the same time the Mistress woke out of her quiet sleep, and saw the broad, white flood of light streaming through the little square window of the room in which Colin was born. Her fancy was busy enough about him night and day; and she fancied she could see, as clear as in a picture, the ship speeding on, with perhaps its white wings spread over the glistening sea, and the moon stealing in at the cabin window, and caressing her boy, who must be fast asleep, resting and gathering strength, with new life breathing in upon him in every breath of favourable wind that crisped the sleeping sea. Such was the vision that came to the mind of the Mistress when she woke in the “dead of night,” and saw the moonlight at her window. “God bless my Colin,” she said to herself, as she closed her tender eyes; and in the meantime Colin, thinking nothing of his old love, and not very much of his home, was busily engaged in weaving for himself another tangle in the varied web of existence—although none of the people most interested in him—except Lauderdale, who saw a faint shadow of the future—had the least idea that this night at sea was of any moment in his life. He did not know it himself, though he was conscious of a certain thrill of pleasant excitement and youthful awe, half voluntary, half real. And so the new scene got arranged for this new act of the wonderful drama; and all the marvellous, delicate influences of Providence and will, poising and balancing each other, began to form and shape the further outlines of his life.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The place which the Merediths had chosen for their residence was Frascati, where everything was quieter, and most things cheaper, than in Rome—to which, besides, the brother and sister had objections, founded on former passages in their family history, of which their new friends were but partially aware; and to Frascati, accordingly, the two Scotch pilgrims were drawn with them. Colin had, as usual, persevered in his own way, as Lauderdale prophesied, and the arrangement came about, naturally enough, after the ten days’ close company on board ship, where young Meredith, whom most people were either contemptuous of, or inclined to avoid, found refuge with his new friends, who, though they did not agree with him, at least understood what he meant. He slackened nothing of those exertions which he thought to be his duty—and on which, perhaps unconsciously, the young invalid rather prided himself, as belonging to his rôle of dying man,—during the remainder of the voyage; but, finding one of the sailors ill, succeeded in making such an impression upon the poor fellow’s uninstructed and uncertain mind as repaid him, he said, for all the exertions he had made. After that event, he went very often to the forecastle to pray with his convert, being, perhaps, disposed to the opinion that they two were the salt of the earth to their small community; for which proceeding he was called fool, and fanatic, and Methodist, and a great many other hard names by the majority of his fellow-passengers—some of whom, indeed, being, like most ordinary people, totally unable to discriminate between things that differ, confidently expected to hear of some secret vice on the part of Meredith; such things being always found out, as they maintained, of people who considered themselves better than their neighbours. “After a while, it will be found out what he’s up to,” said a comfortable passenger, who knew the world; “such fellows always have their private peccadilloes. I daresay he doesn’t go so often to the forecastle for nothing. The stewardess ain’t bad looking, and I’ve seen our saint engaged in private conversation when he didn’t know I was there,” said the large-minded Christian who denounced poor Meredith’s uncharitableness. And, to be sure, he was uncharitable, poor fellow. As for Colin, and, indeed, Lauderdale also, who had been attracted, in spite of himself, they looked on with a wonderful interest, from amid-ships, knowing better. They saw him dragging his sister after him, as far as she could go, along the crowded deck, when he went to visit his patient—neither he, whose thoughts were occupied solely with matters of life and death, nor she, who was thinking entirely of him, having any idea that the dark dormitory below, among the sailors’ hammocks, was an unfit place for her. It was Colin who stepped forward to rescue the girl from this unnecessary trial: and Meredith gave her up to him, with as little idea that this, too, was a doubtful expedient as he had of anything unsuitable in his original intention. “It is a privilege, if she but knew it,” the invalid would say, fixing his hollow eyes on her, as if half doubtful whether he approved of her or not; and poor Alice stayed behind him with a bad grace, without feeling much indebted on her own account to her new friends. “It does not matter where I go, so long as I am with him,” she said, following him with her anxious looks; and she remained there seated patiently upon her bench, with her eyes fixed on the spot where he had disappeared, until he rejoined her. When Arthur’s little prayer-meeting was ended, he came with a severe, and yet serene countenance towards the sister he had left behind, and the two friends who did not propose to accompany him. “He is a child of God,” said the sick man; “his experiences are a great comfort to me”—and he looked with a little defiance at the companions, who, to be sure, so far as the carnal mind was concerned, could not but be more congenial to an educated man.