Mrs. Oliphant

“ Not only were his dreams all frustrated and turned to nothing, but he fell ever so many degrees in his own esteem, and felt so foolish and vain and blind, as he turned upon himself with the acute mortification and sudden disgust of youth. What an idiot he had been! To think she would again leave all the brilliant world for the loch and the primroses, and those other childish delights on which he had been dwelling like a fool! Very bitter were Colin’s thoughts, as he dashed out into the middle of the loch, and there laid up his oars and abandoned himself to the buffetings of excited fancy. ”

“ There the two young creatures, wandering by the glens and streams, were the ideal youth and maiden entering upon their natural inheritance of beauty and love and mutual admiration; and at homely Ramore, where the world to which Matty belonged was utterly unknown, it was not difficult either for Colin himself, or for those around him; to believe that—with his endowments, his talents, and genius—he could do anything, or win any woman. Wodensbourne was a most sobering, disenchanting reality after this wonderful delusion. ”

“ The pure life, the high hopes, the human purpose and human happiness, were they as nothing to the great Creator who had brought them into being and suffered them to bud and blossom only that He might crush them with His hands? Colin lay still in his bed, with his lips set close and his eyes straining into that unfathomable darkness. The bitterness of death took possession of his soul—a bitterness heavier, more terrible than that of death. His trust, his faith, had given way. God sat veiled upon his awful throne, concealed by a horrible cloud of disappointment and incomprehension. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The air of home which his mother brought with her, the familiar discussions and philosophies with which Lauderdale filled the weary time, gave him a connecting link once more with the old life. And the new life again rose before Colin, fresh, and solemn, and glorious. Painfully and sharply he had been delivered from his delusions—those innocent delusions which were virtues. He began to see that, if indeed there ever was a woman in the world for whom it was worth a man’s while to sacrifice his existence and individuality, Miss Matty, of all women, was not she. ”

“ Somehow the sight of that fresh and joyous light recalled to Colin the looks of the fair spring mornings in Italy, which used to burst in upon Arthur’s deathbed with what always seemed to him a look of careless surprise and inquiry. But Alice for her part found a tender sweetness in the new day. All that was bright in nature came and paid court to her by reason of her happiness—for there is no fairweather friend so frank in her intruded intentions as Nature, though it is happiness and not grandeur to which she attaches herself. ”

“ You don’t imagine I am ill, surely, because I am lazy after last night?”
“I’ve given up imagining anything on the subject,” said Colin’s grim guardian. “When a man in his senses sets up house with a parcel of lunatics it’s easy to divine what will come of it, lie down in your bed and keep quiet, and get well again; or else get up,” said Lauderdale, giving vent to a sharp acrid sound as if he had gnashed his teeth, “and let us be done with it all, and go home.” ”

“ It was Lauderdale who made this answer to Colin’s half-pleased, half-impatient questioning. The new comer sat, gaunt and strange, throwing a long shadow over the sick-bed, and looking, with a suppressed emotion, more pathetic than tears, upon the tray which was placed on a little table by Colin’s side.{170} It was a sad sight enough. The young man, in the flush and beauty of his youth, with his noble physical development, and the eager soul that shone in his eyes, laid helpless, with an invalid’s repast before him, for which he put out his hand with a languid movement like a sick child. ”

“ There are some people whose joy is a kind of affront and insult to the sorrowful; but Alice was not one of these. Perhaps at this supreme hour of her life she was thinking more of the sad people under the sun—the mourners and sufferers—than she had done when she used to lie on her sofa at Holmby, and think to herself that she never would rise from it, and that he never would come. The joy was to Alice like a sacrament, which it was hard to think the whole world could not share ”

“ 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.”
Such an appeal from sweet lips quivering with suppressed anguish, from beautiful eyes full of heavy tears, was not likely to be without effect; and, when Colin went to his own cabin in the evening, hearing but imperfectly the criticisms of Lauderdale on his new friend and his affairs, he was more and more impressed by the conviction that something must come of an encounter so singular and unexpected. ”

“ Do what I tell you, callant, and lie down. It shows an awfu’ poverty of invention, that desire to copy everything out.”
“Stuff!” said Colin; “you don’t suppose it is for myself. I want to give it to somebody,” said the young man with a conscious smile. And to look at him with his countenance all a-glow, pleasure and fun and affection brightening his eyes, and his face lighted up with the gentle commotion of thought which had ended in that writing of verses, it was hard to think of him as a man whom God for a solemn purpose had weighted with affliction—as he had appeared in Meredith’s eyes. ”

“ I am not afraid.”
“Oh, my friend!” said the eager stranger; his voice sounded in Colin’s ear like the voice of a desperate man in a lifeboat, calling to somebody who was drowning in a storm,—“don’t deceive yourself; don’t take up a sentimental view of such an important matter. There is no escape except through one way. The great object of our lives is to know how to die—and to die is despair, without Christ.”
“What is it to live without Him?” said Colin. “I think the great object of our lives is to live. Sometimes it is very hard work. ”

“ Priests should always be detached, you know, from the world.”
“Why?” said Colin. He was quite content to go on talking on such a subject for any length of time. “As for marrying, it is only your rich squires and great people who can marry when they please; we who have to make our own way in the world—” said the young man, with a touch of grandeur, but was stopped by Miss Matty’s sudden laughter.
“Oh, how simple you are! As if rich squires and great people, as you say, could marry when they pleased—as if any man could marry when he pleased!” cried Miss Matty, scornfully. ”

“ A wise spectator might, and probably would, have said, that to learn this lesson was the best thing possible for Colin; but that did not make it the less cruel, the less bitter. In his corner the young man gradually drew nearer and nearer to the fierce misanthropy of outraged youth, that misanthropy which is as warm a protest against common worldliness as the first enthusiasm. But his heart was not yet released, though his eyes were becoming enlightened; reason works slowly against love—and bitter at the bottom of all lay the sense of the sacrifice, which was only his life. ”

“ Colin said to himself, smiling over it; and the two people who were looking at him, whose hearts and whose eyes were studying every change in his face, saw that a new era had begun, and did not know whether to exchange looks of gratulation or to betake themselves to the silence and darkness to shed tears of despair over the false hope.
“When a callant goes a step astray, you mean,” said Lauderdale, with a harshness in his voice which sounded contemptuous to Colin—“goes out of his way a step to gather a flower or the like,—a man that takes a wrong turn is altogether a false eemage. ”

“ Miss Matty who had danced away like a will-o’-the-wisp, leaving no trace behind her; and Alice who had won no such devotion, yet whose soft shadow lay upon him still; and then there was the death-bed of Meredith, and his own almost death-bed at Wodensbourne, and all the thoughts that belonged to these. Such influences and imaginations mature a man unawares. While he sat recalling all that had passed since he left this nest of his childhood, the Mistress tapped softly at his door, and came in upon him with wistful eyes. ”

“ When everything was so perfectly safe, there could be no harm in the enjoyment; and the conclusion Matty came to, as an experimental philosopher, was, that to fall in love really, and to accept its responsibilities, would be an exciting but highly troublesome amusement. She could not help thinking to herself how anxious she should be about Colin if such a thing were possible. How those mistakes which he could not help making, and which at present did not disturb her in the least, would make her glow and burn with shame, if he were really anything to her. And yet he was a great deal to her. ”

“ In that moment of strange consciousness and revelation he felt as if the intimation was true—as if his doom was sealed and his days numbered. He did not look at the anxious woman who was wringing her arms by his bedside, nor at any external object; but with an irresistible impulse confronted dumbly the new world—the changed existence. When he laid himself down again it seemed to Colin as if years had passed over his head. ”

“ Campbell looked upon this scene her heart cried out in her breast. It was Colin’s question that came to her lips as she hurried past in the cold and the gathering darkness—“Why? Oh God! why?” Her son struck to the earth in the bloom of his young life—rooted up like a young tree, or a silly flower—and this youth, this other woman’s son, taking the happiness which should have been for Colin. Why was it? The poor woman called in her misery upon the heavens and the earth to answer her. One deprived of all, another possessed of everything that soul of man could desire ”

“ How go back to the old existence, which would now be so much harder? How begin anew and try another life apart from all his training and traditions, for the sake of that wildest of incredible hopes? Colin had lived for some time in this state of struggle and argument with himself, and it was only Matty’s presence which at times delivered him from it. Now, as before, he took refuge in the thought that he could not immediately free himself; that, having accepted his position as Charley’s tutor, he could not relinquish it immediately; that honour bound him to remain for the winter at least. ”

“ Nature, which is so full of interest when the heart is unoccupied, dwindles and grows pale in presence of the poorest human creature who throws a shadow into her sunshine. Not all those wonderful gleams of light—not all those clouds, driven wildly like so many gigantic phantoms into the solemn hollows, could touch the heart of the man who was trembling for his friend. Lauderdale roused himself up when Colin came to him, and met him cheerfully. ”

“ Sometimes in the sudden darkening, out of the rosy clouds which hung over the Campagna, the face of the impossible woman, the ideal creature—she who could have divined the thoughts in his mind and the movements in his heart before they came into being, would glance suddenly out upon him for an instant, and then disappear, waving a shadowy farewell, and leaving in his mind a strange blank, which the sight of Alice rather increased than removed. ”

“ I have uttered a great deal of nonsense since I came to Wodensbourne, and you—have listened to it, Miss Frankland; and, perhaps, rather enjoyed seeing my tortures and my delights. But nothing could come of that; and when death hangs on behind everything but love flies before him,” said Colin. “It was pleasant sport while it lasted; but everything, except love, comes to an end.”
“Except love,” said Miss Matty. ”

“ Not if he had been starving would he have shared Colin’s dinner or accepted the seat offered him at the luxurious table below. “Na, na! I came without asking,” said Lauderdale; “when they bid me to their feasts it’s no for your sake, callant, or for my sake, but for their own sakes—for good breeding, and good manners, and not to be uncivil. To force a man to give you your dinner out of civility is every bit as shabby an action as to steal it. I’m no the man to sorn on Sir Thomas for short time or long.” ”

“ He did not seem to know himself or his life henceforward any more than he knew the wild, strange country over which the night and the wind ruled supreme. It seemed to him as if the solace of friendship, the consolation of sympathy, were all ended for ever; he could not talk, even to those who were most dear to him, of his betrothed, or of his marriage—if, indeed, that was what it must come to. He had walked up and down the avenue two or three times, from one end to another, before even a little coherence came to his thoughts. ”

“ It’s no use regretting what cannot be helped; but when a man takes the wrong turning once in his life, do you think he can get into the right road again?” said Colin. He had scarcely spoken the words when a smile gradually stealing over his face, faint and soft like the rising of the moon, intimated to his companions that he had already answered himself. Not only so, but that the elasticity of his youth had delivered Colin from all heavier apprehensions. He was not afraid of the wrong turning he had taken. He was but playing with the question in a kind of tender wantonness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A world, dark, confused, and full of judgments and punishments—a world in which men would not believe though one rose from the grave—was the world into which he looked, and for which he was working. His sister Alice, watching by his side, noting with keen anxiety every time the pen slipped from his fingers, every time it went vaguely over the paper in starts which told he had gone half to sleep over his work, sat with her intelligence unawakened, and her whole being slumbering, thinking of nothing but him. ”