It was for about six weeks altogether that the Mistress of Ramore remained Sir Thomas Frankland’s guest. For half of that time Lauderdale, too, tall, and gaunt, and grim, strode daily over the threshold of Wodensbourne. He never broke bread, as he himself expressed it, nor made the slightest claim upon the hospitality of the stranger’s house. On the contrary, he declined steadily every advance of friendship that was made to him with a curious Scotch pride, extremely natural to him, but odd to contemplate from the point of view at which the Franklands stood. They asked him to dinner or to lunch as they would have asked any other stranger who happened to come in their way; but Lauderdale was far too self-conscious to accept such overtures. He had come uninvited, an undesired, perhaps unwelcome, visitor; but not for the world would the philosopher have taken advantage of his position, as Colin’s friend, to procure himself even the comfort of a meal. 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.” And, in pursuance of this{176} whimsical idea of independence, Lauderdale went back every evening along the dark country lanes to the little room he had rented in the village, and subdued his reluctant Scotch appetite to the messes of bacon and beans he found there—which was as severe a test of friendship as could have been imposed upon him. He was not accustomed to fare very sumptuously at home; but the fare of an English cottager is, if more costly, at least as distasteful to an untravelled Scotch appetite as the native porridge and broth of a Scotch peasant could be to his neighbour over the Tweed. The greasy meal filled Lauderdale with disgust, but it did not change his resolution. He lived like a Spartan on the bread which he could eat, and came back daily to his faithful tendance of the young companion who now represented to him almost all that he loved in the world. Colin grew better during these weeks. 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. And after this divergence out of his true path, after this cloud that had come over him, and which once looked as though it might swallow him up, it is not to be described how beautiful his own young life looked to Colin, when it seemed to himself that he was coming back to it, and was about to enter once more upon his natural career.

“I wonder how Macdonald will get on at Baliol,” he said; “of course he’ll get the scholarship. 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. Neither his health nor his lost opportunity gave him much trouble. The tide of life had risen in his heart, and again everything seemed possible; and, such being the case, he trifled{177} pleasantly with the dead doubts which existed no longer. “There is a tide in the affairs of men,” 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. Everything in this world is awfu’ mysterious,” said the philosopher. “I’m no clear in my mind about that wrong turning. According to some theories there’s no such thing in existence. ‘All things work together for good.’ I would like to know what was in Paul’s head when he wrote down that. No to enter into the question of inspiration, the opinion of a man like him is aye worth having; but it’s an awfu’ mysterious saying to me.”

“Eh, but it’s true,” said the Mistress; “you’re no to throw ony of your doubts upon Providence. I’ll no say but what it’s a hard struggle whiles; but, if God doesna ken best—if He’s not the wisest and the kindest—I would rather, for my part, come to an end without ony more ado about it. I’m no wanting to live, either in earth or heaven, if there’s ony doubts about Him.”

“That’s aye the way with women,” said Lauderdale, reflectively. “They’ve nae patience for a philosophical question. But the practical argument is no doubt awfu’ powerful, and I can say nothing against it. I’m greatly of the same way o’ thinking myself. Life’s no worth having on less terms; but at the same time—”

“I was speaking only of the Baliol Scholarship,” said Colin, with a momentary pettishness; “you are more abstruse than ever, Lauderdale. If there should happen to be another vacancy next year, do you think I’ve injured myself by neglecting this one? I never felt more disposed for work,” said the young man, raising himself out of his chair. It said a great deal for his returning strength that the two anxious spectators allowed him to get up and walk to the window without offering any assistance. The evening was just falling, and Colin looked out upon a grey landscape of leafless trees and misty flats, over which the shadows were gathering. He came back again with a little exclamation of impatience. “I hate these dull levels,{178}” said the restless invalid; “the earth, and the skies are silent here, and have nothing to say. Mother, why do we not go home?” He stood before her for a moment in the twilight looking, in his diminished bulk and apparently increased height, like a shadow of what he was. Then he threw himself back in his chair with an impatience partly assumed to conceal the weakness of which he was painfully sensible. “Let us go to-morrow,” said Colin, closing his eyes. He was in the state of weakness which feels every contradiction an injury, and already had been more ruffled in spirit than he cared to acknowledge, by the diversion of the talk from his own individual concerns to a general question so large and so serious. He lay back in his chair, with his eyes closed, and those clouds of brown hair of which his mother was so proud hanging heavily over the forehead which, when it was visible, looked so pale and worn out of its glory of youth. The colour of day had all gone out of the whispering, solemn twilight; and, when the Mistress looked at the face before her, pale, with all its outlines rigid in the grey light, and its eyes closed, it was not wonderful that a shiver went through her heart.

“That was just what I had to speak about, Colin, my man,” said Mrs. Campbell, nerving herself for the task before her. “I see no reason myself against it, for I’ve aye had a great confidence in native air; but your grand doctor that was brought down from London—”

“Do not say anything more. I shall not stay here, mother; it is impossible. I am throwing away my life,” cried Colin, hastily, not waiting to hear her out. “Anybody can teach that boy. As for the Franklands, I have done enough for them. They have no right to detain me. We will go to-morrow,” the young man repeated with the petulance of his weakness; to which Mrs. Campbell did not know how to reply.

“But, Colin, my man,” said the Mistress, after a pause of perplexity, “it’s no that I’m meaning. Spring’s aye sweet, and its sweet aboon a’ in your ain place, when ye ken every corner to look for a primrose in. I said that to the doctor, Colin, but he wasna of my opinion. A’ that was in his mind was the east wind (no that there’s much o’ that in our countryside, but thae English canna tell one airt from another) and the soft weather; and I couldna say but what it was whiles damp,” said the candid woman; “and the short and the long is, that he said you were to gang south and no north. If it wasna for your health’s sake, which keeps folk anxious, it would sound ower{179} grand to be possible,” she continued, with a wistful smile, “and awfu’ proud I would be to think of my laddie in Italy—”

“In Italy!” said Colin, with a cry of excitement and surprise; and then they both stopped short, and he looked in his mother’s eyes, which would not meet his, and which he could see, hard as she struggled to keep them unseen, were wet and shining with tears. “People are sent to Italy to die,” said the young man. “I suppose that is what the doctor thinks?—and that is your opinion, my poor mother?—and Lauderdale thinks so too? Don’t say No, no; I can see it in your eyes.”

“Oh, Colin, dinna say that! dinna break my heart!” cried the Mistress. “I’m telling you every word the doctor said. He said it would be better for you in the future; better for your strength, and for getting free of danger in the many hard winters—dour Scotch winters, frost, and snow, and stormy weather, and you your duty to mind night and day—” She made a little pause to get her breath, and smiled upon Colin, and went on hastily, lest she should break down before all was said. “In the mony hard winters that you have to look forward to—the lang life that’s to come—”

“Lauderdale,” said Colin, out of the darkness, “do you hear her saying what she thinks is deception and falsehood. My mother is obliged to tell me the doctor’s lie; but it stumbles on her lips. That is not how she would speak of herself. She would say—”

“Callant, hold your peace,” said Lauderdale. His voice was so harsh and strange, that it jarred in the air, and he rose up with a sudden movement, rising like a tower into the twilight, through which the pleasant reflections from the fire sparkled and played as lightly as if the talk had been all of pleasure. “Be silent, sir,” cried Colin’s friend. “How dare you say to me that any word but truth can come out of the Mistress’s lips? How dare ye—” But here Lauderdale himself came to a sudden pause. He went to the window, as Colin had done, and then came quickly back again. “Because we’re a wee concerned and anxious about him, he thinks he may say what he likes,” said the philosopher, with a strange, short laugh. “It’s the way with such callants. They’re kings, and give the laws to us that ken better. You may say what you like, Colin, but you must not name anything that’s no true with your mother’s name.”

It is strange to feel that you are going to die. It is stranger still to see your friends profoundly conscious of the awful news they have to convey, painfully making light of it, and trying to{180} look as if they meant nothing. Colin perceived the signification of his mother’s pathetic smiles, of his friend’s impatience, of the vigilant watch they kept upon him. He saw that, if perhaps her love kept a desperate spark of hope alight in the Mistress’s heart, it was desperate, and she put no confidence in it. All this he perceived, with the rapid and sudden perception which comes at such a crisis. Perhaps for a moment the blood went back upon his heart with a suffocating sense of danger, against which he could make no stand, and of an inevitable approaching fate which he could not avoid or flee from. The next minute he laughed aloud. The sound of his laughter was strange and terrible to his companions. The Mistress took her boy’s hand and caressed it, and spoke to him in the soothing words of his childhood. “Colin, my man—Colin, my bonnie man!” said the mother whose heart was breaking. She thought his laugh sounded like defiance of God, defiance of the approaching doom; and such a fear was worse even than the dread of losing him. She kept his reluctant fingers in hers, holding him fast to the faith and resignation of his home. As for Lauderdale, he went away out of sight, struggling with a hard sob which all his strength could not restrain; and it was in the silence of this moment that Colin’s laugh............