THE parting of the two who had been thrown so much together, who had thought so much of each other, and who had, notwithstanding, so few things in common, was as near an absolute parting as is practicable in this world of constant commotion, where everybody meets everybody else in the most unlikely regions. Colin dared not propose to write to her; dared not, indeed—being withheld by the highest impulses of honour—venture to say to her what was in his heart; and Miss Matty herself was a little silent—perhaps a little moved—and could not utter any commonplaces about meeting again, as she had intended to do. So they said good-bye to each other in a kind of absolute way, as if it might be for ever and ever. As for Matty, who was not in love, but whose heart was touched, and who had a vague, instinctive sense that she might never more meet anybody in her life like this country lad—perhaps she had enough generosity left in her to feel that it would be best they should not meet again. But Colin had no such thoughts. He felt in his heart that one time—how or when he knew not—he should yet go to her feet and offer what he had to offer: everything else in the world except that one thing was doubtful to Colin, but concerning that he was confident, and entertained no fear. And so they parted; she, perhaps, for half an hour or so, the most deeply moved of the two. Miss Matty, however, was just as captivating as usual in the next house they went to, where there were one or two people worth looking at, and the company in general was more interesting than at Ardmartin; but Colin, for his part, spent most of the evening on the hillside, revolving in the silence a hundred tumultuous thoughts. It was the end of September, and the nights were cold on the Holy Loch. There was not even a moon to enliven the landscape, and all that could be seen was the cold, blue glimmer of the water, upon which Colin looked down with a kind of desolate sense of elevation—elevation of the mind and of the heart, which made the grief of parting look like a grand moral agent, quickening all his powers, and concentrating his strength. Henceforward the strongest of personal motives was to inspire him in all his conflicts. He was going into the battle of life with his lady’s colours on his helmet, like a knight of romance, and failure was not to be thought of as a possibility. As he set his face to the wind, going back to Ardmartin, the pale sky lightened over the other side of the loch, and underneath the breaking clouds, which lay so black on the hills, Colin saw the distant glimmer of a light, which looked like the light in the parlour window at Ramore. Just then a sudden gust swept across the hill-side, throwing over him a shower of falling leaves, and big rain-drops from the last shower. There was not a soul on the road but Colin himself, nor anything to be seen far or near, except the dark tree-tops in the Lady’s Glen, which were sighing in the night wind, and the dark side of Ardmartin, where all the shutters are closed, and one soft star hanging among the clouds just over the spot where that little friendly light in the farmhouse of Ramore held up its glimmer of human consolation in the darkness. It was not Hero’s torch to light her love—was it, perhaps, a sober gleam of truth and wisdom to call the young Leander back from those bitter waters in which he could but perish? All kinds of fancies were in Colin’s mind as he went back, facing the wind, to the dull, closed up house, from which the enchantment had departed; but among them there occurred no thought of discouragement from this pursuit upon which now his heart was set. He would have drowned himself cauld he have imagined it possible that he could cease to love—and so long as he loved how was it possible to fail?
“And must you be a Scotch minister?” When Colin went home a fortnight later to make his preparations for returning to the University, he was occupied, to the exclusion of almost all other questions, by revolving this. It is true that at his age, and with his inexperience, it was possible to imagine that even a Scotch minister, totally unfavoured by fortune, might, by mere dint of genius, raise himself to heights of fame sufficient to bring Sir Thomas Frankland’s niece within his reach—but the thing was unlikely, even to the lively imagination of twenty. And it was the fact that Colin had no special “vocation” towards the profession for which he was being trained. He had been educated and destined for it all his life, and his thoughts had a natural bias that way. But otherwise there was no personal impulse in his mind towards what Mrs. Jordan called “the work of the ministry.” Hitherto his personal impulses had been neither for nor against. Luckily for Colin, and many of his contemporaries, there were so many things to object to in the Church of Scotland, so many defects of order and external matters which required reformation, that they were less strongly tempted to become sceptical in matters of faith than their fellows elsewhere. As for Colin himself, he had fallen off no doubt from the certainty of his boyhood upon many important matters; but the lad, though he was a Scotchman, was happily illogical, and suffered very little by his doubts. Nothing could have made him sceptical, in any real sense of the word, and accordingly there was no repulsion in Colin’s mind against his future profession. But now! He turned it over in his mind night and day in the interval between Matty’s departure and his own return to Ramore. What if, instead of a Scotch minister, incapable of promotion, and to whom ambition itself was unlawful, he were to address himself to the Bar, where there were at least chances and possibilities of fame? He was occupied with this question, to the exclusion of every other, as he crossed the loch in the little steamer, and landed on the pier near Ramore, where his young brothers met him, eager to carry his travelling-bag, and convey him home in triumph. Colin was aware that such a proposal on his part would occasion grievous disappointment at home, and he did not know how to introduce the subject, or disclose his wavering wishes. It was a wonderful relief, as well as confusion to him, when he entered the Ramore parlour, to find Lauderdale in possession of the second arm-chair, opposite the mistress’s, which was sacred to visitors. He had arrived only the evening before, having left Glasgow “for a holiday, like everybody else, in the saut-water season; the first I ever mind of having in my life,” he said, with a certain boyish satisfaction, stretching out his long limbs by the parlour fire.
“It’s ower cauld to have much good of the water,” said the mistress; “the boat’s no laid up yet, waiting for Colin, but the weather’s awfu’ winterly—no to say soft,” she added, with a little sigh, “for its aye soft weather among the lochs, though we’ve had less rain than common this year.”
And as the mistress spoke, the familiar, well-known rain came sweeping down over the hills. It had the usual effect upon the mind of the sensitive woman. “We maun take a’ the good we can of you, laddie,” she said, laying her kind hand on her boy’s shoulder, “it’s only a sight we get now in passing. He’s owre much thought of, and made of, to spend his time at hame,” the mistress added, turning, with a half-reproachful pride to Lauderdale; “I’ll be awfu’ sorry if the rain lasts, on your account. But, for myself, I could put up with a little soft weather, to see mair of Colin; no that I want him to stay at hame when he might be enjoying himself,” she continued, with a compunction. Soft weather on the Holy Loch signified rain and mist, and everything that was most discouraging to Mrs. Campbell’s soul, but she was ready to undergo anything the skies could inflict upon her, if fortified by the society of her son.
It was the second night after his return before Colin could make up his mind to introduce the subject of which his thoughts were full. Tea was over by that time, and all the household assembled in the parlour. The farmer himself had just laid down his newspaper, from which he had been reading scraps of county gossip aloud, somewhat to the indignation of the mistress, who, for her part, liked to hear what was going on in the world, and took a great interest in Parliament and the foreign intelligence. “I canna say that I’m heeding about the muckle apple that’s been grown in Clydesdale, nor the new bailies in Greenock,” said the farmer’s wife. “If you would read us something wise-like about thae poor oppressed Italians, or what Louiss Napoleon is thinking about—I canna excuse him for what they ca’ the coo-detaw,” said Mrs. Campbell; “but for a’ that, I take a great interest in him;” and with this the mistress took up her knitting with a pleasant anticipation of more important news to come.
“There’s naething in the Herald about Louiss Napoleon,” said the farmer, “nor the Italians neither—no that I put much faith in thae Italians; they’ll quarrel amang themselves when there’s naebody else to quarrel wi’—though I’m no saying onything against Cavour and Garibaldi. The paper’s filled full o’ something mair immediately interesting—at least, it ought to have mair interest to you wi’ a son that’s to be a minister. Here’s three columns mair about that Dreepdaily case. It may be a grand thing for popular rights, but it’s an awfu’ ordeal for a man to gang through,” said big Colin, looking ruefully at his son.
“I was looking at that,” said Lauderdale. “It’s his prayers the folk seem to object to most—and no wonder. I’ve heard the man mysel’, and his sermon was not bad reasoning, if anybody wanted reasoning; but it’s a wonderful thing to me the way that new preachers take upon them to explain matters to the Almighty,” said Colin’s friend reflectively. “So far as I can see, we’ve little to ask in our worship; but we have an awfu’ quantity of things to explain.”
“It is an ordeal I could never submit to,” said Colin, with perhaps a little more heat than was necessary. “I’d rather starve than be set up as a target for a parish. It is quite enough to make a cultivated clergy impossible for Scotland. Who would submit to expose one’s life, all one’s antecedents, all one’s qualities of mind and language to the stupid criticism of a set of boors? It is a thing I never could submit to,” said the lad, meaning to introduce his doubts upon the general subject by this violent means.
“I dinna approve of such large talking,” said the farmer, laying down his newspaper. “It’s a great protection to popular rights. I would sooner run the risk of disgusting a fastidious lad now and then, than put in a minister that gives nae satisfaction; and if you canna submit to it, Colin, you’ll never get a kirk, which would be worse than criticism,” said his father, looking full into his face. The look brought a conscious colour to Colin’s cheeks.
“Well,” said the young man, feeling himself driven into a corner, and taking what courage he could from the emergency, “one might choose another profession;” and then there was a pause, and everybody in the room looked with alarm and amazement on the bold speaker. “After all, the Church is not the only thing in Scotland,” said Colin, feeling the greatness of his temerity. “Nobody ventures to say it is in a satisfactory state. How often do I hear you criticising the sermon and finding fault with the prayers? and, as for Lauderdale, he finds fault with everything. Then, look how much a man has to bear before he gets a church as you say. As soon as he has his presentation the Presbytery comes together and asks if there are any objections; and then the parish sits upon the unhappy man; and, when everybody has had a turn at him, and all his peculiarities and personal defects and family history have been discussed before the Presbytery—and put in the newspapers, if they happen to be amusing—then the poor wretch has to sign a confession which nobody—”
“Stop you there, Colin, my man,” said the farmer, “that’s enough at one time. I wouldna say that you were a’thegither wrong as touching the sermon and the prayers. It’s awfu’ to go in from the like of this hill-side and weary the very heart out of you in a close kirk, listening to a man preaching that has nothing in this world to say. I am whiles inclined to think—” said big Colin, thoughtfully—“laddies, you may as well go to your beds. You’ll see Colin the morn, and ye canna understand what we’re talking about. I am whiles disposed to think,” he continued after a pause, during which the younger members of the family had left the room, after a little gentle persuasion on the part of the mistress, “when I go into the kirk on a bonnie day, such as we have by times on the lock baith in summer and winter, that it’s an awfu’ waste of time. You lose a’ the bonnie prospect, and you get naething but weariness for your pains. I’ve aye been awfu’ against set prayers read out of a book; but I canna but allow the English chapel has a kind of advantage in that, for nae fool can spoil your devotion there, as I’ve heard it done many and many’s the time. I ken our minister’s prayers very near as well as if they were written down,” said the farmer of Ramore, “and the maist part of them is great nonsense. Ony little scraps o’ real supplication there may be in them, you could get through in five minutes; the rest is a’ remarks, that I never can discriminate if they’re meant for me or for the Almighty; but my next neibor would think me an awfu’ heathen if he heard what I’m saying,” he continued, with a smile; “and I’m far from sure that I would get a mair merciful judgment from the wife herself.”
The mistress had been very busy with her knitting while her husband was speaking; but, notwithstanding her devotion to her work, she was uneasy and could not help showing it. “If we had been our lane it would have been naething,” she said to Colin, privately; “but afore yon man that’s a stranger and doesna ken!” With which sentiment she sat listening, much disturbed in her mind. “It’s no a thing to say before the bairns,” she said, when she was thus appealed to, “nor before folk that dinna ken you. A stranger might think you were a careless man to hear you speak,” said Mrs. Campbell, turning to Lauderdale with bitter vexation, “for a’ that you havena missed the kirk half a dozen times a’ the years I have kent you—and that’s a long time,” said the mother, lifting hers soft eyes to her boy. When she looked at him she remembered that he too had been rash in his talk. “You’re turning awfu’ like your father, Colin,” said the mistress, “taking up the same thoughtless way of talking. But I think different for a’ you say. Our ain kirk is aye our ain kirk to you as well as to me, in spite o’ your speaking. I’m well accustomed to their ways,” she said, with a smile, to Lauderdale, who, so far from being the dangerous observer she thought him, had gone off at a tangent into his own thoughts.
“The Confession of Faith is a real respectable historical document,” said Lauderdale. “I might not like to commit myself to a’ it says, if you were to ask me; but then I’m not the kind o’ man that has a heart to commit myself to anything in the way of intellectual truth. I wouldna bind myself to say that I would stand by any document a year after it was put forth, far less a hundred years. There’s things in it naebody believes—for example, about the earth being made in six days; but I would not advise a man to quarrel with his kirk and his profession for the like of that. I put no dependence on geology for my part, nor any of the sciences. How can I tell but somebody might make a discovery the morn that would upset all their fine stories? But, on the whole, I’ve very little to say against the Confession. It’s far more guarded about predestination and so forth than might have been expected. Every man of common sense believes in predestination; though I would not be the man to commit myself to any statement on the subject. The like of me is good for little,” said Colin’s friend, stretching his long limbs towards the fire, “but I’ve great ambition for that callant. He’s not a common callant, though I’m speaking before his face,” said Lauderdale; “it would be terrible mortifying to me to see him put himself in a corner and refuse the yoke.”
“If I cannot bear the yoke conscientiously, I cannot bear it at all,” said Colin, with a little heat. “If you can’t put your name to what you don’t believe, why should I?—and as for ambition,” said the lad, “ambition! what does it mean?—a country church, and two or three hundred ploughmen to criticise me, and the old wives to keep in good humour, and the young ones to drink tea with—is that work for a man?” cried the youth, whose mind was agitated, and who naturally had said a good deal more than he intended to say. He looked round in a little alarm after this rash utterance, not knowing whether he had been right or wrong in such a disclosure of his sentiments. The father and mother looked at each other, and then turned their eyes simultaneously upon their son. Perhaps the mistress had a glimmering of the correct meaning which Colin would not have betrayed wittingly had it cost him his life.
“Eh, Colin, sometime ye’ll think better,” she cried under her breath—“after a’ our pride in you and our hopes!” The tears came into her eyes as she looked at him. “It’s mair honour to serve God than to get on in this world,” said the mistress. The disappointment went to her heart, as Colin could see; she put her hands hastily to her eyes to clear away the moisture which dimmed them. “It’s maybe naething but a passing fancy—but it’s no what I expected to hear from any bairn of mine,” she said with momentary bitterness. As for the farmer, he looked on with a surprised and inquiring countenance.
“There has some change come over you, Colin—what has happened?” said his father. “I’m no a man that despises money, nor thinks it a sin to get on in the world, but it’s only fools that quarrel wi’ what’s within their reach for envy of what they can never win to. If ye had displayed a strong bent any other way I wouldna have minded,” said big Colin. “But it’s the new-fangled dishes at Ardmartin that have spoiled the callant’s digestion; he’ll come back to his natural inclination when he’s been at home for a day or two,” the farmer added, laying his large hand on his son’s shoulder with a pressure which meant more than his words; but the youth was vexed, and impatient, and imagined himself laughed at, which is the most dreadful of insults at Colin’s age, and in his circumstances. He paid no attention to his father’s looks, but plunged straightway into vehement declaration of his sentiments, to which the elder people around him listened with many complications of feeling unknown to Colin. The lad thought, as was natural at his years, that nobody had ever felt before him the same bondage of circumstance and perplexities of soul, and that it was a new revelation he was making to his little audience. If he could have imagined that both the men were looking at him with the half sympathy, half pity, half envy of their maturer years, remembering as vividly as if it had occurred but yesterday similar outbreaks of impatience and ambition and natural resistance to all the obstacles of life, Colin would have felt deeply humiliated in his youthful fervour; or, if he could but have penetrated the film of softening dew in his mother’s eyes, and beheld there the woman’s perennial spectatorship of that conflict which goes on for ever. Instead of that, he thought he was making a new revelation to his hearers; he thought he was cruel to them, tearing asunder their pleasant mists of illusion, and disenchanting their eyes; he had not an idea that they knew all about it better than he did, and were watching him as he rushed along the familiar path which they all had trod in different ways, and of which they knew the inevitable ending. Colin, in the heat and impatience of his youth, took full advantage of his moment of utterance. He poured forth in his turn that flood of immeasurable discontent with all conditions and restrictions, which is the privilege of his years. To be sure, the restrictions and conditions surrounding himself were, so far as he knew, the sole objects of that indignation and scorn and defiance which came to his lips by force of nature. As for his mother, she listened, for her part, with that mortification which is always the woman’s share. She understood him, sympathised with him, and yet did not understand nor could tolerate his dissent from all that in her better judgment she had decided upon on his behalf. She was far more tender, but she was lest tolerant than the other spectators of Colin’s outburst; and mingled with all her personal feeling was a sense of wounded pride and mortification, that her boy had thus betrayed himself “before a stranger.” “If we had been our lane, it would have been less matter,” she said to herself, as she wiped the furtive tears hurriedly from the corners of her eyes.
When Colin had come to an end there was a pause. The boy himself thought it was a pause of horror and consternation, and perhaps was rather pleased to produce an effect in some degree corresponding to his own excitement. After that moment of silence, however, the farmer got up from his chair. “It’s very near time we were a’ gaun to our beds,” said big Colin. “I’ll take a look round to see that the beasts are comfortable, and then we’ll have in the hot water. You and me can have a talk the morn,” said the farmer to his son. This was all the reply which the youth received from the parental authorities. When the master went out to look after the beasts, Lauderdale followed to the door, where Colin in another moment strayed after him, considerably mortified, to tell the truth; for even his mother addressed herself to the question of “hot water,” which implied various other accessories of the homely supper-table; and the young man, in his excitement and elevation of feeling, felt as if he had suddenly tumbled down out of the stormy but lofty firmament, into which he was soaring—down, with a shock, into the embraces of the homely tenacious earth. He went after his friend, and stood by Lauderdale’s side, looking out into a darkness so profound that it made his eyes ache and confused his very mind. The only gleam of light visible in earth or heaven was big Colin’s lantern, which showed a tiny gleam from the door of the byre where the farmer was standing. All the lovely landscape round, the loch and the hills, the sky and the clouds, lay unseen—hidden in the night. “Which is an awfu’ grand moral lesson, if we had but sense to discern it,” said the voice of Lauderdale ascending half-way up to the clouds; “for the loch hasna’ vanished, as might be supposed, but only the light. As for you, callant, you ken neither the light nor the darkness as yet, but are aye seeing miraculous effects like yon man Turner’s pictures, Northern Streamers, or Aurora Borealis, or whatever ye may call it. And it’s but just you should have your day;” with which words Lauderdale heaved a great sigh, which moved the clouds of hair upon Colin’s forehead, and even seemed to disturb, for a moment, the profound gloom of the night.
“What do you mean by having my day?” said Colin, who was affronted by the suggestion. “You know I have said nothing that is not true. Can I help it if I see the difficulties of my own position more clearly than you do, who are not in my circumstances?” cried the lad with a little indignation. Lauderdale, who was watching the lantern gliding out and in through the darkness, was some time before he made any reply.
“I’m no surprised at yon callant Leander, when one comes to think of it,” he said in his reflective way; “it’s a fine symbol, that Hero in her tower. May be she took the lamp from the domestic altar and left the household god in darkness,” said the calm philosopher; “but that makes no difference to the story. I wouldna’ say but I would swim the Hellespont myself for such an inducement—or the Holy Loch—it’s little matter which; but whiles she lets fall the torch before you get to the end—”
“What do you mean? or what has Hero to do with me?” cried Colin, with a secret flush of shame and rage, which the darkness concealed but which he could scarcely restrain.
“I was not speaking of you—and after all, it’s but a fable,” said Lauderdale; “most history is fable, you know; it’s no actual events, (which I never believe in, for my part,) but the instincts o’ the human mind that make history—and that’s how the Heros and Leanders are aye to be accounted for. He was drowned in the end like most people,” said Lauderdale, turning back to the parlour where the mistress was seated, pondering with a troubled countenance upon this new aspect of her boy’s life. Amid the darkness of the world outside this tender woman sat in the sober radiance of her domestic hearth, surrounded and enshrined by light; but she was not like Hero on the tower. Colin, too, came back, following his friend with a flush of excitement upon his youthful countenance. After all, the idea was not displeasing to the young man. The Hellespont, or the Holy Loch, were nothing to the bitter waters which he was prepared to breast by the light of the imaginary torch held up in the hand of that imaginary woman who was beckoning Colin, as he thought, into the unknown world. Life was beginning anew in his person, and all the fables had to be enacted over again; and what did it matter to the boy’s heroic fancy, if he too should go to swell the record of the ancient martyrs, and be drowned, as Lauderdale said—like most people—in the end?
There was no further conversation upon this important subject until next morning, when the household of Ramore got up early, and sat down to breakfast before it was perfect daylight; but Colin’s heart jumped to his mouth, and a visible thrill went through the whole family, when the farmer came in from his early inspection of all the byres and stables, with another letter from Sir Thomas Frankland conspicuous in his hand.