After this interview it was strange to meet again the little committee upstairs, and resume the consideration of ways and means, which Sir Thomas would have settled so summarily. Colin could not help thinking of the difference with a little amusement. He was young enough to be able to dismiss entirely the grave thoughts of the previous night, feeling in his elastic, youthful mind, something of the fresh influence of the morning, or at least—for Colin had found out that the wind was easterly, a thing totally indifferent to him in old times—of the sentiment of the morning, which, so long as heart and courage are unbroken, renews the thoughts and hopes. Money was a{195} necessary evil, to Colin’s thinking. So long as there happened to be enough of it for necessary purposes, he was capable of laughing at the contrast between his own utter impecuniosity and the wealth which was only important for sake of the things that could be done with it. Though he was Scotch, and of a careful, money-making race, this was as yet the aspect which money bore to the young man. He laughed as he leaned back in his easy chair.
“What Lauderdale makes up by working for years, and what we can’t make up by any amount of working, Sir Thomas does with a scrape of his pen,” said Colin. “Downstairs they need to take little thought about these matters, and up here a great deal of thought serves very little purpose. On the whole, it seems to me that it would be very good for our tempers and for our minds in general if we all had plenty of money,” said the young philosopher, still laughing. He was tolerably indifferent on the subject, and able to take it easily. While he spoke, his eye lighted on his mother’s face, who was not regarding the matter by any means so lightly. Mrs. Campbell on the contrary was suffering under one of the greatest minor trials of a woman. She thought her son’s life depended on this going to Italy, and to procure the means for it there was nothing on earth his mother would not have done. She would have undertaken joyfully the rudest and hardest labour that ever was undertaken by man. She would have put her hands, which indeed were not unaccustomed to work, to any kind of toil; but with this eager, longing in her heart she knew at the same time that it was quite impossible for her to do anything by which she could earn those sacred and precious coins on which her boy’s life depended. While Colin spoke, his mother was making painful calculations what she could save and spare, at least, if she could not earn. Colin stopped short when he looked at her; he could not laugh any longer. What was to him a matter of amusing speculation was to her life or death.
“There canna but be inequalities in this world,” said the Mistress, her tender brows still puckered with their baffling calculations. “I’m no envious of ony grandeur, nor of taking my ease, nor of the pleasures of this life. We’re awfu’ happy at hame in our sma’ way when a’s weel with the bairns; but it’s for their sakes, to get them a’ that’s good for them! Money’s precious when it means health and life,” said Mrs. Campbell, with a sigh; “and it’s awfu’ hard upon a woman when she can do nothing for her ain, and them in need.{196}”
“I’ve known it hard upon mony a man,” said Lauderdale; “there’s little difference when it comes to that. But a hundred pounds,” he continued, with a delightful consciousness of power and magnificence, “is not a bad sum to begin upon; before that’s done, there will be time to think of more. It’s none of your business, callant, that I can see. If you’ll no come with me, you must even stay behind. I’ve set my heart on a holiday. A man has little good of his existence when he does nothing but work and eat, and eat and work again, as I’ve been doing. I would like to take the play a while, and feel that I’m alive.”
When the Mistress saw how Lauderdale stretched his long limbs on his chair, and how Colin’s face brightened with the look, half sympathetic, half provocative, which usually marked the beginning of a long discussion, she went to the other end of the room for her work. It was Colin’s linen which his mother was putting in order, and she was rather glad to withdraw to a distance, and retire within that refuge of needlework, which is a kind of sanctuary for a woman, and in which she could pursue undisturbed her own thoughts. After a while, though these discussions were much in Mrs. Campbell’s way, and she was not disinclined in general to take part in them, she lost the thread of the conversation. The voices came to her in a kind of murmur, now and then chiming in with a chance word or two in the current of her own reflections. The atmosphere which surrounded the convalescent had never felt so hopeful as to-day, and the heart of the mother swelled with a sense of restoration, a trust in God’s mercy which recently had been dull and faint within her. Restoration, recovery, deliverance—Nature grows humble, tender, and sweet under these influences of heaven. The Mistress’s heart melted within her, repenting of all the hard thoughts she had been thinking, of all the complaints she had uttered. “It is good for me that I was afflicted,” said the Psalmist; but it was not until his affliction was past that he could say so. Anguish and loss make no such confession. The heart, when it is breaking, has enough ado to refrain from accusing God of its misery, and it is only the inhumanity of human advisers that adjure it to make spiritual merchandize out of the hopelessness of its pain.
Matters were going on thus in Colin’s chamber, where he and his friend sat talking; and the mother at the other end of the room carefully sewing on Colin’s buttons, began to descend out of her heaven of thankfulness, and to be troubled with a pang of apprehension lest her husband should not see things in the{197} same light as she did, but might, perhaps, demur to Colin’s journey as an unwarrantable expense. People at Ramore did not seek such desperate remedies for failing health. Whenever a cherished one was ill, they were content to get “the best doctors,” and do everything for him that household care and pains could do; but, failing that, the invalid succumbed into the easy chair, and, when domestic cherishing would serve the purpose no longer, into a submissive grave, without dreaming of those resources of the rich which might still have prolonged the fading life. Colin of Ramore was a kind father, but he was only a man, as the Mistress recollected, and apt to come to different conclusions from an anxious and trembling mother. Possibly he might think this great expense unnecessary, not to be thought of, an injustice to his other children; and the thought disturbed her reflections terribly, as she sat behind backs examining Colin’s wardrobe. At all events, present duty prompted her to make everything sound and comfortable, that he might be ready to encounter the journey without any difficulty on that score; and, absorbed in these mingled cares and labours, she was folding up carefully the garments she had done with, and laying them before her in a snowy heap upon the table, when the curate knocked softly at the door. It was rather an odd scene for the young clergyman, who grew more and more puzzled by his Scotch acquaintances the more he saw of them, not knowing how to account for their quaint mixture of homeliness and intelligence, nor whether to address them politely as equals, or familiarly as inferiors. Mrs. Campbell came forward, when he opened the door, with her cordial smile and looks as gracious as if she had been a duchess. “Come away, sir,” said the farmer’s wife; “we are aye real glad to see you,” and then the Mistress stopped short, for Henry Frankland was behind the curate, and somehow the heir of Wodensbourne was not a favourite with Colin’s mother. But her discontent lasted only a moment. “I canna bid ye welcome, Mr. Frankland, to your own house,” said the diplomatical woman; “but if it was mine I would say I was glad to see you.” This was how she got over the difficulty. But she followed the two young men towards the fire, where Colin had risen from his easy chair. She could but judge according to her knowledge, like other people; and she was a little afraid that the man who had taken his love from him, who had hazarded his health and, probably, his life, would find little favour in Colin’s eyes; and to be anything but courteous to a man who came to pay her a visit, even had he been her{198} greatest enemy, was repugnant to her barbaric-princely Scotch ideas. She followed accordingly, to be at hand and put things straight, if they went wrong.
“Frankland was too late to see you to-day when you were downstairs; so he thought he would come up with me,” said the curate, giving this graceful version of the fact that, dragged by himself and pursued by Lady Frankland, Harry had most reluctantly ascended the stair. “I am very glad indeed to hear that you were down to-day. You are looking—ah—better already,” said the kind young man. As for Harry Frankland, he came forward and offered his hand, putting down at the same time on the table a pile of books with which he was loaded.
“My cousin told me you wanted to learn Italian,” said Harry; “so I brought you the books. It’s a very easy language; though people talk great nonsense about its being musical. It is not a bit sweeter than English. If you only go to Nice, French will answer quite well.” He sat down suddenly and uncomfortably as he delivered himself of this utterance; and Colin, for his part, took up the grammar, and looked at it as if he had no other interest under the sun.
“I don’t agree with Frankland there,” said the curate; “everything is harmonious in Italy except the churches. I know you are a keen observer, and I am sure you will be struck with the fine spirit of devotion in the people; but the churches are the most impious edifices in existence,” said the Anglican, with warmth—which was said, not because the curate was thinking of ecclesiastical art at the moment, but by way of making conversation, and conducting the interview between the saved man and his deliverer comfortably to an end.
“I think you said you had never been in Scotland?” said Lauderdale. “For my part I’m no heeding much about the churches; but I’m curious to see the workings of an irrational system where it has no limit. It’s an awfu’ interesting subject of inquiry; and there is little doubt in my mind that a real popular system must aye be more or less irrational——”
“I beg your pardon,” said the curate. “Of course there are many errors in the Church of Rome; but I don’t see that such a word as irrational——”
“It’s a very good word,” said Lauderdale. “I’m no using it in a contemptuous sense. Man’s an irrational being, take him at his best. I’m not saying if it’s above reason or below reason, but out of reason; which makes it none the worse to me. All{199} religion&rsq............