“They’re awfu’ grateful, Colin—I canna but say that for them,” said Mrs. Campbell; “and as anxious as if you were their own son. I’ll no undertake to say that I havena an unchristian feeling myself to Harry Frankland; but, when you’re a’ weel and strong, Colin,”—

“And what if I am never well and strong?” said the young man. His mother’s presence had subdued and silenced, at least, for a time, the wild questions in his heart. She had taken them upon herself, though he did not know it. So far human love can stretch its fellowship in the sufferings of its Master,—not to the extent of substitution, of salvation temporal or spiritual, but, at least, to a modified deliverance. She had soothed her son and eased him of his burden, but in so doing had taken it to herself. The eagle that had been gnawing his heart had gone to fix its talons in hers; but she carried it like the Spartan, under her mantle, and smiled while it rent her in twain.

“Whisht, whisht!” she said, in her martyrdom of composure and calm looks, and took her boy’s hand and held it between hers—God only could tell how fondly—with a firm, warm grasp that seemed to hold him fast to life. “Colin, my man, it’s a’ in God’s hands,” said the Mistress of Ramore; “whiles His ways are awfu’ mysterious. I’m no one that pretends to read them, or see a’thing plain, like some folk; but I canna think He ever makes a mistake or lets anything go by hazard. We’ll bide His time, Colin; and who can tell what mercy and goodness he may have in His hand?”

“Mercy and goodness, or, perhaps, the contrary,” said Colin. If he had not been a little comforted and eased in his heart, he would not have given utterance to words which he felt to be unchristian. But now, with his longing to be soothed and to accept the softening influence which surrounded him, came an impulse to speak,—to use words which were even more strong than his feelings. As for his mother, she was too thoughtful{159} a woman, and had in her own heart too heavy a burden, to be shocked by what he said.

“Maybe what appears to us the contrary,” she said, “though that maun be but an appearance, like most things in this life. I’m no one to deny my ain heart, or make a show as if I understood the ways of the Lord, or could, aye, in my poor way, approve of them, if a mortal creature might daur to say so, Colin. There’s things He does that appear a’ wrang to me—I canna but say it. I’m no doubting His wisdom nor yet His love, but there’s mony a thing He does that I canna follow, nor see onything in but loss and misery. But oh, Colin, my bonnie man, that’s nae cause for doubting Him! He maun have His ain reasons, and they maun be better reasons than ours. If you’ll close your eyes, and try and get a sleep, I’ll take a breath of air to myself before night sets in. I was aye an awfu’ woman for the air; and eh, laddie! I think ye’ll be thankful to get back to Ramore after this dreary country, where there’s neither hill nor glen—though maybe it might be cauld for you in the spring, when there’s so much soft weather,” said the tender woman, smoothing his pillows, and bending over him with her anxious smile. “It minds me o’ the time when you were my baby, Colin, to get you into my hands again. They say a woman’s aye a queen in a sick room,” said the Mistress. Her smile was such that tears would have been less sad; and she was impatient to be gone—to leave her son’s bedside—because she felt herself at the furthest stretch of endurance, and knew that her strained powers must soon give way. Perhaps Colin, too, understood what it was that made his mother so anxious to leave him, for he turned his face to the waning evening light, and closed his eyes, and after a while seemed to sleep. When he had lain thus quietly for some time, the poor mother stole downstairs and out into the wintry twilight. Her heart was breaking in her tender bosom; her strength had been strained to the utmost bounds of possibility; and nature demanded at least the relief of tears.

Two days before the Mistress had been tranquil and content in her peaceful life at home. When Sir Thomas Frankland’s telegram came late at night, like a sudden thunderbolt into the quiet house, the Holy Loch was asleep and at rest, cradled in sweet darkness, and watched by fitful glances of that moon for which Colin and his friends had looked to guide them on the night of the accident; and no means of communicating with the world until the morning was possible to the inhabitants of{160} Ramore. The anxious mother, whose eyes had not been visited with sleep through all the lingering winter night, set off by dawn to thread her weary unaccustomed way through all the mazes of the railways which were to convey her to Wodensbourne. She had neither servant nor friend to manage for her; and no fine lady, accustomed to the most careful guardianship, could be more unused to the responsibilities of travelling than Mrs. Campbell. When she arrived, it was to find her boy, her firstborn, stretched helpless upon his bed, to see the examination made by the great doctor from London, to hear his guarded statements, his feebly-expressed hopes, which conveyed only despair—and with that sudden arrow quivering in her heart to undertake the duties of a cheerful nurse—to keep smiling upon Colin, telling him the news of the parish, and the events of the countryside, as if her coming here had been a holiday. All this, put together—though so many women have borne it, and though the Mistress of Ramore was able to bear it, and more, for her boy’s sake—was a hard strain upon her. When she got downstairs into the air, the first thing she did was to sit down on the steps of the glass door which led into the terrace and cry bitterly and silently. She was alone among strangers, with scarcely even a friendly feature of familiar nature to give her a little confidence. The aspect of the great house, stretching its long wings and solemn front into the twilight, containing a whole community of people unknown to her, whose very voices were strange and sounded like a foreign tongue, completed the forlorn sense she had of absence from everything that could help or console; and when, in the restlessness of her musing, she got up and began to walk about upon that deserted terrace which Colin had paced so often, all Colin’s questions, all his doubts, rushed with double force and feminine passion into his mother’s mind.

As she pursued her uncertain way, her eye was attracted by the lights in the windows. One of them was large and low, and so close upon the terrace that she could not help seeing the interior, and what was passing there. Harry Frankland was standing by the fire with his cousin. The long billiard-table behind them, and the cue which Miss Matty still held in her hand, did not enlighten Mrs. Campbell as to what they had been doing. Matty had laid her disengaged hand on her cousin’s shoulder, and was looking up, as if pleading for something, into his face; and the fire-light which gleamed upon them both, gave colour and brightness to the two young faces, which seemed to the{161} sorrowful woman outside to be glowing with health and love and happiness. When Mrs. 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; one heart smitten and rent asunder, and another filled to overflowing with safety and happiness.

As she went on in her haste, without knowing where she went, another window caught the Mistress’s eye. It was the nursery window where all the little ones were holding high carnival. Little boys and little girls, the younger branches of the large happy family, with again the light gleaming rosy over their childish faces. One of them was having her toilette made for presentation in the drawing-room, and at sight of her another blow, keen and poignant, went to Mrs. Campbell’s heart. Just such a child had been the little maiden, the little daughter who once made sunshine in the homely house of Ramore. It came upon the poor mother in the darkness to think what that child would have been to her now had she lived—how her woman child would have suffered with her, wept with her, helped to bear the burden of her woe. Her heart yearned and longed in her new grief over the little one who had been gone so many years. She turned away hastily from the bright window and the gay group and sank down upon her knees on the ground with a sob that came from her heart—“Why? oh why?” God had His reasons, but what were they? The agony of loss, in which there seemed no possible gain; the bitterness of suffering, without knowing any reason for it, overpowered her. The contrast of her own troubl............