Harry Frankland’s return made a great difference to the tutor, between whom and the heir of the house there existed that vague sense of jealousy and rivalship which was embittered on the part of young Frankland by a certain consciousness of obligation. He was a good-natured fellow enough, and above the meanness of treating unkindly anybody who was in a dependent position; but the circumstances were awkward, and he did not know how to comport himself towards the stranger. “The fellow looks like a gentleman,” he said privately in confidence to his mother; “if I had never seen him before we might have got on, you know; but it’s a horrible nuisance to feel that you’re obliged to a fellow in that kind of position—neither your equal, you know, nor your inferior, nor—. What on earth induced the governor to have him here? If it hadn’t been for these cheap Scotch universities and stuff, he’d have been a ploughman that one could have given ten pounds to and been done with him. It’s a confounded nuisance having him here.”
“Hush, Harry,” said Lady Frankland. “He is very nice and very gentlemanly, I think. He used to be very amusing before you came home. Papa, you know, is not entertaining after dinner; and really Mr. Campbell was quite an acquisition, especially to Matty, who can’t live without a slave,” said the lady of the house, with an indulgent, matronly smile.
“Oh, confound it, why did the governor have him here?” cried the discontented heir. “As for Matty, it appears to me she had better begin to think of doing without slaves,” he said moodily, with a cloud on his face; a speech which made his mother look up with a quick movement of anxiety, though she still smiled.
“I can’t make out either you or Matty,” said Lady Frankland. “I wish you would be either off or on. With such an appearance of indifference as you show to each other—”
“Oh, indifference, by Jove!” said Harry, breaking in upon his mother’s words; and the young man gave a short whistle, and, jumping up abruptly, went off without waiting for any more. Lady Frankland was not in the habit of disturbing herself about things in general. She looked after her son with a serious look, which, however, lasted but a moment. Then she returned immediately to her placidity and her needlework. “I daresay it will come{123} all right,” she said to herself, with serene philosophy, which perhaps accounted for the absence of wrinkles in her comely, middle-aged countenance. Harry, on the contrary, went off in anything but a serene state of mind. It was a foggy day, and the clouds lay very low and heavy over the fen-country, where there was nothing to relieve the dulness of nature. And it was afternoon—the very time of the day when all hopes and attempts at clearing up are over—and dinner was still too far off to throw its genial glow upon the dusky house. There had been nothing going on for a day or two at Wodensbourne. Harry was before his time, and the expected guests had not yet arrived, and the weather was as troublesome and hindersome of every kind of recreation as weather could possibly be. Young Frankland went out in a little fit of impatience, and was met at the hall-door by a mouthful of dense white steaming air, through which even the jovial trees of holly, all glowing with Christmas berries, loomed like two prickly ghosts. He uttered an exclamation of disgust as he stood on the broad stone steps, not quite sure what to do with himself—whether to face the chill misery of the air outside, or to hunt up Matty and Charley, and betake himself to the billiard-room within. But then the tutor—confound the fellow! Just at that moment Harry Frankland heard a laugh, a provoking little peal of silver bells. He had an odd sort of affection—half love, half dislike—for his cousin. But of all Matty’s charms, there was none which so tantalized and bewitched him as this laugh, which was generally acknowledged to be charming. “Much there is to laugh about, by Jove!” he muttered to himself, with an angry flush; but he grew grimly furious when he heard her voice.
“You won’t give in,” said Matty; “the Scotch never will, I know; you are all so dreadfully argumentative and quarrelsome. But you are beaten, though you won’t acknowledge it; you know you are. I like talking to you,” continued the little witch, dropping her voice a little, “because—hush! I thought I heard some one calling me from the house.”
“Because why?” said Colin. They were a good way off, behind one of those great holly trees; but young Frankland, with his quickened ears, discerned in an instant the softness, the tender admiration, the music of the tutor’s voice. “By Jove!” said the heir to himself; and then he shouted out, “Matty, look here! come here!” in tones as different from those of Colin as discord is from harmony. It did not occur to him that Miss Matty’s ear, being perfectly cool and unexcited,{124} was quite able to discriminate between the two voices which thus claimed her regard.
“What do you want?” said Matty. “Don’t stand there in the fog like a ghost; if you have anything to say, come here. I am taking my constitutional; one’s first duty is the care of one’s health,” said the wicked little creature, with her ring of laughter; and she turned back again under his very eyes along the terrace without looking at him again. As for Harry Frankland, the words which escaped from his excited lips were not adapted for publication. If he had been a little less angry he would have joined them, and so made an end of the tutor; but, being furious, and not understanding anything about it, he burst for a moment into profane language, and then went off to the stables, where all the people had a bad time of it until the dressing-bell rang.
“What a savage he is,” said Matty, confidentially. “That is the bore of cousins; they can’t bear to see one happy, and yet they won’t take the trouble of making themselves agreeable. How nice it used to be down at Kilchurn that summer—you remember? And what quantities of poetry you used to write. I suppose Wodensbourne is not favourable to poetry? You have never shown me anything since you came here.”
“Poetry is only for one’s youth,” said Colin; “that is, if you dignify my verses with the name—for one’s extreme youth, when one believes in everything that is impossible; and for Kilchurn, and the Lady’s Glen, and the Holy Loch,” said the youth, after a pause, with a fervour which disconcerted Matty. “That summer was not summer, but a bit of paradise—and life is real at Wodensbourne.”
“I wish you would not speak in riddles,” said Miss Matty, who was in the humour to have a little more of this inferred worship. “I should have thought life was a great deal more real at Ramore than here. Here we have luxuries and things—and—and—and books and—.” She meant to have implied that the homely life was hard, and to have delicately intimated to Colin the advantage of living under the roof of Sir Thomas Frankland; but, catching his eye at the outset of her sentence, Matty had suddenly perceived her mistake, and broke down in a way most unusual to her. As she floundered, the young man looked at her with a full unhesitating gaze, and an incomprehensible smile.
“Pardon me,” he said—he had scarcely ever attempted before to take the superiority out of her hands, little trifler and fine{125} lady as she was—he had been quite content to lay himself down in the dust and suffer her to march over him in airy triumph. But, while she was only a little tricksy coquette, taking from his imagination all her higher charms, Colin was a true man, a man full of young genius, and faculties a world beyond anything known to Matty; and, when he was roused for the moment, it was so easy for him to confound her paltry pretensions. “Pardon me,” he said, with the smile which piqued her, which she did not understand; “I think you mistake. At Ramore I was a poor farmer’s son, but we had other things to think of than the difference between wealth and poverty. At Ramore we think nothing impossible; but here—” said Colin, looking round him with a mixture of contempt and admiration, which Matty could not comprehend. “That, you perceive, was the age of poetry, the age of romance, the golden age,” said the young man, with a smile. “The true knight required nothing but his sword, and was more than a match for all kinds of ugly kings and wicked enchanters; but Wodensbourne is prose, hard prose—fine English if you like, and much to be applauded for its style,” the tutor ran on, delivering himself up to his fancy. “Not Miltonian, to be sure; more like Macaulay—fine vigorous English, not destitute of appropriate ornament; but still prose, plain prose, Miss Frankland—only prose!”
“It appears to me that you are cross, Mr. Campbell,” said Matty, with a little spite; for her young vassal showed signs of enfranchisement when he called her by her name. “You like your rainy loch better than anything else in the world; and you are sorry,” said the siren, dropping her voice, “you are even so unkind as to be sorry that you have come here?”
“Sometimes, yes,” said Colin, suddenly clouding over. “It is true.”
“Always,” said Matty; “though you cannot deny that we freed you from the delightful duty of listening to Sir Thomas after dinner,” she went on, with a laugh. “Dear old uncle, why does he snore? So you are really sorry you came? I do so wish you would tell me why. Wodensbourne, at least, is better than Ardmartin,” said Miss Matty, with a look of pique. She was rather relieved and yet horribly disappointed at the thought that Colin might perhaps be coming to his senses, in so far as she herself was concerned. It would save her a good deal of embarrassment, it was true, but she was intent upon preventing it all the same.
“I will tell you why I am sorry, if you will tell me why I{126} ought to be glad,” said Colin, who was wise enough, for once, to see that he had the best of the argument.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Matty; “if you don’t see yourself—if you don’t care about the advantages—if you don’t mind living in the same—I mean, if you don’t see the good—”
“I don’t see any good,” said Colin, with suppressed passion, “except one which, if I stated it plainly, you would not permit me to name. I see no advantages that I can venture to put in words. On the other hand, Wodensbourne has taught me a great deal. This fine perspicuous English prose points an argument a great deal better than all the Highland rhymings in existence,” said the young man, bitterly; “I’ll give you a professional example, as I’m a tutor. At the Holy Loch we conjugate all our verbs affirmatively, interrogatively. Charley and I are getting them up in the negative form here, and it’s hard work,” said Charley’s tutor. He broke off with a laugh which sounded strange and harsh, an unusual effect, to his companion’s ear.
“Affirmatively? Interrogatively?” said Miss Matty, with a pretty puzzled look; “I hate long words. How do you suppose I can know what you mean? It is such a long time since I learnt my verbs—and then one always hated them so. Look here, what a lovely holly-leaf! Il m’aime, il ne m’aime pas?” said Miss Matty, pricking her fingers on the verdant spikes and casting a glance at Colin. When their eyes met they both laughed, and blushed a little in their several ways—that is to say, Miss Matty’s sweet complexion grew a little, a very little, brighter for one moment, or Colin at least thought it did; whereas the blood flushed all over his face, and went dancing back like so many streams of new life and joy to exhilarate his foolish youthful heart.
“By the bye, I wonder if that foolish Harry came from my aunt; perhaps she wants me,” said Miss Matty, who had gone as far as she meant to go. “Besides, the fog gets heavier; though, to be sure, I have seen it twenty times worse at Kilchurn. Perhaps it is the fog and the rain that makes it poetical there? I prefer reality, if that means a little sunshine, or even the fire in my lady’s dressing-room,” she cried, with a shiver. “Go indoors and write me some pretty verses: it is the only thing you can do after being such a savage. Au revoir—there are no half-partings in English; and it’s so ridiculous to say good-bye for an hour or two,” said Miss Matty. She made him a little mock curtsey as she went away, to which, out of{127} the fulness of her grace, the little witch added a smile and a pretty wave of her hand as she disappeared round the corner of the great holly, which were meant to leave Colin in a state of ecstasy. He stayed on the foggy terrace a long time after she had left him, but the young man’s thoughts were not ecstatic. So long as she was present, so long as the strongest spell of natural magic occupied his eyes in watching and his ears in listening to her, he was still carried along and kept up by the witchery of young love. But in the intervals when her presence was withdrawn, matters grew to be rather serious with Colin. He was not like a love-sick girl, able to exist upon these occasional sweetnesses; he was a man, and required something more to satisfy his mind than the tantalizing enchantments and disappointments of this intercourse, which was fascinating enough in its way, but had no substance or reality in it. He had spoken truly—it had been entire romance, sweet as a morning dream at the Holy Loch. 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 Franklands were all so kind to the young tutor, and their sense of obligation towards him made his position so much better than any other tutor’s of his pretensions could have bee............